This game has one of the worst reputations in the series. New fans are encouraged to skip it. Many echo this reputation without giving it a chance. More people should try it. It’s not perfect, but way better than it gets credit for.

I think there are a number of reasons for this reputation.

This was, by far, the most experimental Final Fantasy game to be released yet. FFVII already took a big leap into 3D, and Square chose to continue that momentum into an even bigger leap. FFVIII had a unique progression system that diverged significantly from genre expectations. It had a different art style than any other entry so far. The setting it took place in was very different from the rest of the series.

It was also intentionally created to be an “opposite” of FFVII. In an interview with Famitsu, the directors mentioned that if Final Fantasy VII was about “light in the shadows”, Final Fantasy VIII was about “shadows in the light”. Meaning, it’s not about a dark world in need of a spark of hope, but rather that evil can be lurking even in the seemingly brightest places. The world design reflects this, filled with beautiful bright colors and prosperous civilizations instead of the dark, dystopian world of VII. If fans wanted “another FFVII”, this was never going to be it.

FFVIII also has a problem with bad first impressions. Pretty much every character, every gameplay mechanic, and every setting concept is introduced to you at their respective worst parts. The characters start in bad places so you can watch them grow. The gameplay mechanics give you the boring, information-heavy parts up front. The setting starts confusing and mystified so that you can uncover it as you go. It all gets better as the game continues, but it takes faith and willingness to withhold judgement to get there without already writing the game off.

Finally, and I think most importantly, it was simply ahead of its time. I look at this game and I see a lot of elements that we now praise in modern games, but got criticized at the time of this game’s release. That art style that was too different from the old ones? Every Final Fantasy game after IX uses it. Settings that mix high fantasy and sci-fi more directly like this? Now, very popular. Additionally, some of the more ambitious gameplay ideas may have been saved by a few more years of aggregate industry knowledge and hardware improvements. In particular, this game’s UI is very dense and unintuitive. The complex systems could be made far more accessible with a few more pixels to give the UI room to breathe and give more clear indicators. This was a design fit for the console generation that came after it.

Does that explain away all the flaws and turn this into a masterpiece? No. Of course not. For every experiment this game tried that aged extraordinarily well, another experiment flopped. Some of those flops were pretty rough, too. On the other hand, there’s some real gold in here, and I think it’s been dismissed by the community for far too long.

It’s a great looking game, especially for the time it came out. I was continually impressed by the cinematic flare it managed to pull off on a PS1. I found this story very emotionally impactful and well written. For me, that’s the most important part.

Is this a perfect game? No. It’s not even my favorite Final Fantasy so far. Do I love it dearly? Yes. Absolutely.

The Review#↑

Gameplay#↑

I’ll start with the bad news. This gameplay was kinda shit.

It has redeeming elements, and I appreciate the ideas that it set out to accomplish. Unfortunately, the implementation was a bit overcooked. Worse, it brought with it all of the things I liked least about VII’s system without the good bits.

Transferable builds#↑

I’ll start simple, with what I disliked about both VII and VIII. I don’t love when a character build can be effectively copied to another character unchanged. The characters (ideally) have distinct personalities, and I prefer for them to have gameplay styles that reflect that. So I’m disappointed when all the characters are blank slates, empty shells for me to fill with stats. Further, my sense of investment in a character’s battle progression is lost when there aren’t any significant permanent additions to them based on my choices. If there are significant permanent changes, at least I can “make my own” distinct playstyles for each character. I can make one more like a thief, and another more like a mage or a warrior, or whatever. In a system like this, I can make them more like a thief or a warrior right this moment, but that immediate flexibility cheapens the distinction between the roles.

FFVII differentiates its characters slightly with different limit breaks, and some minor stat adjustments that make the characters slightly better at one role or another. In practice, that isn’t significant enough to make the characters feel distinct.

FFVIII does the same, but at least takes it 1/10th of a step further in that some characters actually do have some meaningful base stats. For example, Squall can never miss, and the player can force a crit (though, weaker than normal) with well timed button presses during combat. So, any accuracy built onto him is worthless, and building for crits is worth significantly less. Due to the way the Junction system works, this does incentivize you to avoid certain build choices on him. However, it’s a pretty small incentive, and only really applies to one character.

Junction system pain…#↑

Speaking of, let’s tackle the Junction system. Once I wrapped my head around it, I actually started to like it. It’s sort of like a hybrid of the FFVI and FFVII systems. You equip summons (called Guardian Forces in this game, more on that later), as many as you want on each character. Having these summons equipped in battle causes them to learn new abilities. However, the learned abilities stay on the summon even if transferred to another character, like materia. The additional, much more complicated part, is that each summon also has a set of slots. These slots are overlaid onto your character’s stats. For example, one summon might have slots for strength and hp, and another might have slots for magic and speed. What do you put into the slots? Magic. Every spell has different affinities for being slotted into each stat, and it tends to follow an intuitive logic. Cure type magic is probably pretty good at scaling your HP, damaging spells are good at scaling your strength, you can put elemental magic on your armor to resist that element, and so on.

All of those parts of the Junction system, I like. I would have maybe preferred if Junctioning a Guardian Force to a character was permanent, but that’s mostly tangential. There’s a lot of potential customization, and Guardian Forces are both way cooler than materia and way more detailed than Espers/magicite.

The final catch is that magic is consumable in this game. Nobody is really “naturally” good at magic in this world. If you earn 5 Thunder in a battle, you get to cast Thunder 5 times. Additionally, junctioning 10 Thunders gives you more stats than junctioning 5 Thunders, all the way up to 100. So, magic tends to get hoarded. Casting it is only really effective in a handful of circumstances, and definitely not worth it to spam when every cast is reducing your stats.

That part is… annoying, but not unforgivable. As mentioned, magic is supposed to be pretty rare in the world, and even the ability of the characters to earn and spend this limited magic makes them exceptional. Plus, it isn’t like any of the characters feel like they were supposed to be mages and are being robbed of that due to this system, the characters were designed with this setting restriction in mind. So it feels far more fitting that everyone is attacking with their weapons far more often. Now, is it a little more boring to only ever hit attack instead of casting some more varied spells? Yeah… but if I’m being honest, even my spell casting characters in earlier FF games ended up spamming the same few spells pretty often. Still, I feel like this implementation could have been better.

The truly irredeemable part is how you get those spells. There is a special command that comes free with every Guardian Force, Draw. Draw lets you pull magic from monsters (and occasionally loot it from the world, but that’s more of a bonus). You can either immediately cast a spell you drew (which is more useful than it sounds), or store it away as part of your big ol’ stash o’ magic. If you do the latter, you get a handful, like 3-7. This takes up your turn and causes an annoyingly long animation with a harsh sound effect. Remember the cap for each magic? Yeah. 100. So, if you want your characters to be strong—every time a new magic appears, it’s time to strap in to drag out a fight for 40-90 extra turns. Probably more if you need to stop and heal occasionally, but you can often put enemies to sleep to remove any possible stimulation and put your real life self in danger of falling asleep at the same time.

Now, fortunately this isn’t forced. You can get through the game without all of the magic, though you’ll likely need to focus on some farming near the very end to catch up. You also don’t need to maintain a full 100 stack of magic at all times, since even a partial stack of a stronger magic tends to be better than 100 of a weaker magic. Unfortunately, I have brain worms. They whisper in my ear, you’ll regret not being strong enough for the next boss, you’ll be frustrated if you feel like you missed out on character power instead of provably losing to a skill issue, you don’t really need those 10 minutes anyways. So unfortunately, I just couldn’t find this style of progression fun. This could have been way better if enemies simply dropped magic on death instead, or if magic wasn’t consumable at all and Guardian Forces could gain access to spells as part of their progression like FFVI.

There are a few ways around that problem, but the game doesn’t point them out very well, and they’re all way more complicated. For example, your Guardian Forces can learn abilities to refine items into other items. This can include spells. So, you could take monster drops and refine them into spells, but not all monster parts become spells, and some are necessary for quests and crafting. You can also buy items at shops or win Triple Triad cards, and refine those into other items, sometimes spells. Sometimes, you get other items. So you’d have to do multiple steps of transmutation to get X of this item to make Y of another item so that you could make Z spells. Try to figure that out for all the dozens of spells in the game, or take the long, mind-numbing, brute force approach? Hope I don’t get an RSI from all this button spamming, because I know my answer.

No matter what, to progress in the game you have to avoid playing the game. That sucks. It’s close to a really cool system. The implementation just sucks.

…is all in your head#↑

All of that said, it turns out, you can ignore all of that and it’s fine!

The problems are driven purely by brainworms.

Slotting in a higher level spell is so much more effective than stacking up a maximum pool of the same old magic that it’s barely worth worrying about. As long as you throw out a few Draws whenever you see new enemies, you’ll be plenty strong. You can also melt down all your items that you don’t need, which gives you a wide array of powerful magic quite easily. Getting “good enough” in the Junction system is easy…

…but the brain worms don’t like “good enough”

So, by engaging with the Junction system, I found myself compelled to kill my own fun in order to gain power. I imagine many other players experienced the same thing.

What I find really interesting about this is how this aligns with the small amount of lore we have on Guardian Forces and Junctioning in general. You can find out in literally the first scene of the game (by poking through some lore documents) that there is a cost for Junctioning:

Guardian Forces draw power from ideas, concepts, and emotions. The live in the Junctioned user’s brain, feeding off of their memories to grant themselves form. Use of Guardian Forces has been associated with mental issues, including loss of memories, especially those with strong emotions.

I think there’s an interesting, probably unintended, parallel here. The characters using the Guardian Forces are sacrificing their strongest emotional memories to gain power. The players are choosing to engage in a mind-numbing activity and/or put effort into memorizing a lot of item refinement information, to gain power.

Do I think they intentionally released an unfun system to make the players feel more immersed in the pain of the characters? No. That would be ridiculous.

Still, I find it interesting enough that I’ll forgive the Junction system after all.

A little bit.

Unnecessary leveling system#↑

Speaking of avoiding playing the game to progress, the level system is… bizarre.

This game has automatic level scaling. The higher level you get, the higher level your enemies become. You effectively never get an edge by leveling up. Instead, you have to use the Junction system to get ahead of the curve.

Interestingly, enemies becoming higher level means they will start carrying higher level magic. So, the higher level you become, the more magic you will have to draw in order to stay ahead. Ideally, if you could max out 100 of every spell available to you at level 1, and then stay at level 1, you’d never have to draw spells again and you could stay powerful for the whole game.

Even more interestingly, the designers seem to have realized this. Almost all forced story encounters give zero experience points, but do progress your Guardian Forces significantly.

This makes every random encounter feel like not just a waste of your time, but a punishment.

This leads to a lot of tricks. If you can avoid gaining xp, that is better for your character power level. Some abilities take enemies out of action without granting xp, such as turning them into cards. Doing so also allows you to refine them into magic and other items. So it’s a win-win. However, that can be pretty annoying, since you have to bring enemies to low HP without killing them. It interrupts the flow of the game. You could also seek to skip as many fights as possible, using abilities that reduce the encounter rate for example. All solutions involve seeking to play the game as little as possible.

I bet the game would have been better without a level system at all, leaning entirely on Guardian Forces for progression. I wonder if the fans would have been even angrier at that deviation, though. The level system feels like it was forced into the game to appease fans, and ultimately led to a worse game. Sometimes, listening to fans is bad, actually, unironically.

The good parts#↑

As mentioned above, I found the Junction system to be really cool, in theory. I wanted to emphasize that a bit more.

It’s not just an interesting and unique system that would provide a huge amount of character customization, it’s also got some really cool ties into the story. I’ll go into more detail about that later, but in brief: This is a story about connections between people, how they influence who we are, how they provide us strength, and how they have a cost that is worth paying. Guardian Forces are in-universe manifestations of that idea.

Also, the little touches of timed interaction during combat helped freshen it up. It wasn’t much. They were simple enough that I could challenge myself to queue up other character’s turns while timing the button presses for the current character’s turn. Only a few characters interacted with that system at all, but I appreciated that it was there.

I really appreciated the simple cinematic gameplay elements too. Sometimes it’s cooler to throw a character into a cinematic minigame or add some quicktime events than to boil a situation down to a combat, or worse, make it an entirely uninteractive cutscene. There was a lot of variety in them too. There were so many systems designed entirely for one-off scenes just to make the impact greater (and it definitely worked). I was impressed.

There were also some surprisingly good QoL options. Don’t want to mess around with the magic sockets in the Junction system? Cool, hit the Auto button. It’ll ask you if you want weapon damage or magic damage, and it will optimize for you. Don’t want to worry about what abilities your Guardian Forces are learning? No worries, they’ll automatically switch for you. Swapping party members for a story moment, and don’t want to have to rebuild them? Easy, there’s a one-button “swap these characters’ builds” solution, which even works if a party member is temporarily unavailable.

Also Triple Triad is pretty fun. There’s a reason it’s one of the few Final Fantasy minigames that made it into later games, and is super deeply integrated into FFXIV.

Finally, this may be controversial, but I enjoyed being limited to 3 ability slots. It made me much more conscious of my build choices. Having to choose, “do I want this character to have access to magic or items?” was a tough, but meaningful decision. It got even harder to choose (in a good way) when more commands started becoming available through Guardian Force progression.

Visuals#↑

I think this is the best looking Final Fantasy game so far.

It took what VII started and improved on it. What I really appreciate is the consistency. While VII jumps between multiple different art styles for combat, exploration, dialogue, and pre-rendered cutscenes—VIII has a unified style that makes everything feel much more seamless and grounded.

The value goes beyond simple consistency though. The single art style allowed much more impressive transitions between gameplay and cutscenes. This is a very cinematic game. Running from crashing and tumbling vehicles, fighting while dangling from a rope beneath an out of control airship while an intense battle rages in the background, tricking my attacker by hitting the emergency release latch on the door behind me just in time—all of these are examples from a single segment of gameplay. The camera could cut to pre-rendered cutscenes in the middle of gameplay to get closeup shots or show off complicated animations and it would feel perfectly natural.

Of course, unifying around an art style meant picking one of the several options VII presented. I’m very glad they opted to go for the more “realistic” style instead of the chibi one used for most of VII’s gameplay. That chibi style was the thing I liked least about VII, and I’m already disappointed looking ahead at IX, even though they managed to clean the style up a lot. I’ve heard that IX looks that way largely due to fan feedback on VIII, which is a bummer. Looking even further ahead, the style FFVIII chose is the one that gets used for all 3D Final Fantasy games after IX. I guess people just weren’t ready for it yet.

I played the remastered version, which I highly recommend. I liked everything I saw. However, I’m still impressed by how the original looked.

This was the first game in the series, and one of the first games in general, to use 3D motion capture. Way better and more natural looking than the robotic motions of FFVII. To be one of the first games to use a technology still in use today, it couldn’t possibly be more ahead of its time. Fans at the time didn’t know how good they were eating.

Also, from my limited research, this was one of the first RPGs to pursue such a cinematic style. VII toyed with it in a few scenes, but largely stuck to more classic styles of cutscenes. To be fair, it’s pretty hard to get those chibi character models to look cinematic. But just look at scenes like this from relatively early on. The closeups on the dancers, the sweeping camera angles, the lighting, the gameplay mixed in, it’s all so good. I know “cinematic” has become a negative buzzword for games, but I think it actually applies here.

This game often felt like it was being directed more like a movie, and that really helped sell the emotional parts for me. It knew when it was okay to let a moment sit in silence for a bit, and to let things slow down and drag out in contemplation. It knew when to ramp up the pace because shit just got real. It had some of my favorite representations of timeline collapse I’ve seen in a game. It had some action scenes that felt right out of a spy movie or thriller. Best of all, those scenes were all interactive. I never stopped being impressed.

FFVIII feels like a much more modern game than it is.

Audio#↑

So many iconic tracks in this one. Some people joke that FFVIII is an extended album with a game attached.

It’s true! There are some great tunes in here. I knew right from the intro that I was going to love this music direction. It’s dramatic as hell.

Speaking of drama, there’s some top tier “such evil we now witness” music. For example, FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC, SUCCESSION OF WITCHES, Heresy, or Adel.

There’s more than just spooky stuff though, I’ve always loved this iconic overworld theme, Blue Fields. I first heard it in FFXIV, and now I’ve finally experienced it in its original form! It’s such a laid back exploration theme, with alternations between wonder and somberness. Something about it just hits different during the early story of FFVIII. The first time I hit the overworld and this played, it just felt so right.

Those battle themes are also iconic. The Landing is a classic, as is Force Your Way. Again, heard these a lot in FFXIV. They rock, hard.

This game had plenty of “spy movie” action, with songs that matched, like Never Look Back. This hits so hard during tense moments.

And of course, what would a romance about overcoming depression be without some songs that melt your heart? My Mind is so calm and touching. The perfect music for a heart to heart. Fragments of Memories is devastating in context. Ami is more upbeat and playful, but man is it heartwarming. Where I Belong is like a slower and sadder version of it, too, just in case we needed a more sad version of anything in this game.

I can’t possibly end this section without talking about Eyes on Me which is an in-universe romance song written about two of the prominent characters, which becomes the the theme of Squall and Rinoa’s romance.

Nobuo Uematsu is, as always, a genius.

Story#↑

The story of this game has a reputation just as bad as its gameplay, but I found myself pleasantly surprised. I found it much less confusing, much more emotionally impactful, and much better written than I had heard.

I think some of the confusion some players ran into was due to not reading all the materials made available to them. I do fault the game for not making it more obvious that reading materials were actually important, but I really enjoyed digging through the lore and figuring things out myself. It felt rewarding, like I was unravelling a conspiracy on my own. The designers probably thought that anyone interested in the lore would read, and anyone uninterested in the lore would simply go along with the plot. Unfortunately, people scrutinize things far harder when they already aren’t enjoying them. So even the people who might have normally just went with it were screaming “plot holes, contrivances, and nonsense!” whenever they got to a plot point they didn’t understand (because they didn’t read). The game definitely could have been made easier to understand if all this necessary information was forced upon the player, but I’m not convinced that’s the right approach either.

I played this game over the span of several months. Not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but simply because this year has already had so many games releasing that I’ve wanted to play. So it went on the back-burner. It was also my Steam Deck game of choice, and I coincidentally had less Steam Deck time over those months. Yet, even with weeks in between play sessions and months in between major plot points (and plenty of time spent playing Triple Triad)—I still followed this story just fine.

Something I didn’t realize while playing, but I learned while researching to write this, is that the localization for this game was pretty bad. Squall’s infamous “…whatever” response to every situation was not present in the original script. He had a unique, and much more relevant response to every situation in the original, and they all seem much more nuanced and interesting. Further, they make him sound like much less of an asshole, because he’s far more tactful and diplomatic in the original. For a super simple example, a “my bad” got turned into a “…whatever”. Those are very different vibes! That said, he’s still a very apathetic character—but that’s his arc! (Plus, he’s still got more personality even in his worst moments than Cloud did over an entire game).

Jargon overload#↑

Unfortunately, this game has an issue with too many barely-defined terms and covering everything in its own jargon. Worse, these terms… sound kinda silly?

Some examples:

Guardian Forces - What? What are they guarding? Some things are vaguely explained, but we’re left to speculate. They are summons, which have been given many names throughout the series, but this is possibly the dumbest name they’ve ever had.

SeeD - Okay, the Garden grows and produces Seeds. That much makes sense, it’s even cute. But why the capitalized D? Is it supposed to mean something else, too? We’ll never know…

Junction - This feels like a needless obfuscation. Sure, it technically means connecting or joining things, but it feels like they cracked open a thesaurus just to make it sound a little more technical, or mechanical. Maybe that coldness is intentional, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost of making everything sound more jargon-y. Worse, it’s used in a few different ways in multiple different places, adding to the confusion.

I really don’t mind not being given all the details of lore like this. I often find it’s more fun to speculate and let my mind rush with possibilities than have the details over-explained to me ahead of time. However, if the terms are going to be entirely invented, I’d really appreciate learning how those names came about in the universe. Or, at the very least, I’d appreciate those names sounding cooler.

The game has a real problem with this, and even pokes fun at itself for it. There’s a town called Fisherman’s Horizon. Sounds like a relatively straightforward name, given that it’s a city in the middle of the ocean. However, through a sidequest, you can discover that the founder picked the name essentially at random and had no reasoning behind it.

…Well, at least they’re self-aware.

Not enough setup#↑

One of the main things that holds me back from calling this my favorite Final Fantasy story is that a lot of plot points feel as though they were pulled out of thin air. That’s not a unique thing to the series—in fact, it might as well be a hallmark of it. This might be the worst of the lot when it comes to this, though. As detailed as this story is, there are some plot points that aren’t foreshadowed at all, and some that are just dropped entirely.

Adel is a potentially very interesting villain, who pops into the story at a time when the villain goalposts needed to be moved, only to be used as little more than a plot device in everyone else’s schemes. Maybe she’s not important, but I think she could have had a much larger impact had she been utilized earlier and given more screen time.

Speaking of villains, this game keeps the true threat hidden just a little too long. The reveal is dramatic, but the way it was done makes it feel like the previous villain was rapidly ripped out from under the story, leaving it stumbling. It also doesn’t feel like there’s enough prior support from the plot. More scattered details, or whispers of her name, or anything really, could have helped a lot. This in combination with the above makes it feel like “who is the villain?” is a constantly moving target.

On top of that, because Squall is so unmotivated at the start of the game, we, the players are left without any clear motivations for a long time. There’s no clear villain. There’s no clear goal. We’re just doing this because we’re told to. And again, that makes a lot of sense for how Squall feels at the time, but it doesn’t make for a very engaging early story.

Finally, one of the most controversial scenes in the game: basketball. I found the presentation of this scene touching. There’s something picturesque about a heart to heart with friends under a sunset while casually shooting hoops on a court shattered by war. The scars of war cover the characters as well as their surroundings, but they still find a moment for some casual peace together. We get a bunch of really well executed flashbacks that do a lot to sell the emotions being talked about, and I love that too. That’s not the problem though. The problem is that it is suddenly revealed that they all grew up in the same orphanage together, and that their Matron is the Sorceress they are trying to kill, and that they forgot all of this. They all have the exact same amnesia, woo! This, alone, isn’t an issue either. Stories like that can really hit me right in the heart. The problem is the suddenness. VII does a much better job of foreshadowing very similar memory issues, while it feels like this one didn’t try at all. So, all at once, the characters relationships with each other and how they view their goal gets completely flipped. It’s a bit much all at once.

Theories upon theories#↑

This game’s story leaves a lot of details vague, asking us to interpret it as we will. I like this, even though I would appreciate some more detail in a few places. This has led to a number of fan theories that attempt to explain some of the crazier elements of the story. It’s worth noting that all of these have been denied by the creators, but I think they’re worth talking about.

One of the most popular is that Squall is dead. There’s a point in the story where Squall is severely wounded, and it is after this that all of the craziness of the story ramps up. This one is interesting, but I don’t particularly like it, because it feels like it undermines a lot of the core themes. It feels more like an attempt to rationalize the story logically than to understand it emotionally.

One I do like, is the very tragic Rinoa is Ultimecia. In a world with all these crazy powers, time travel of consciousnesses, and memory loss, it’s possible. I mainly feel attached to this one because it doesn’t ever feel like we’re given a satisfactory backstory for Ultimecia|, she is simply evil because she does bad things, and she does bad things because she is evil. This would also draw another parallel between Squall and Rinoa’s relationship and that of Cid and Edea much like the parallel to Laguna and Julia. I’m also a sucker for tragedy, and this would be a massive one.

A half-baked one that I hold is that Time Compression has been active for the whole story. We see such a massive gap in technology levels, which feel like they are rising faster and faster as the story progresses. Almost as if they are being accelerated by something. We get glimpses of the past, we see futuristic technology, and we see it all mixed together in the present. Does that not sound like Time Compression: the past, present, and future all combined in a single moment? This one has a lot of potential implications. Is the Junction system something born from futuristic tech brought to the past, or a manifestation of fate making the time paradox possible? Are the main party coincidentally brought together because they are still together, in the past? Was Adel’s actions in the past, setting up Esthar for the future all a result of Ultimecia’s plan? Is the reason everything worked out so well that the human connections we see get formed throughout the story helped them choose from the infinite possibility of compressed time the perfect outcome? There’s a lot to think about, and it’s a hard thing to get my head wrapped around, but I like it. I think there are a lot of hints suggesting it, but they could just be generic time travel hints.

This is a story about…#↑

This is a complicated story. Not just because there are some concepts involved that are difficult to understand, but also because it’s got several major themes that all have intertwined arcs. These characters are more complex than they appear on the surface—but you have to be willing to sit with them and let questions linger in your mind a bit until they are ready to be answered, instead of immediately assuming there are no answers and the characters are simple.

I’ll break the different themes that spoke to me into different parts, and talk about how they build on each other. However, this will be tricky, because they also intertwine with each other so much that they’re hard to separate.

In the following sections, I’ll be discussing some spoilers. I will use spoiler tags for all the heavy spoilers: twists, major plot events, emotional moments, and so on. However, I will be talking openly about vague details of character arcs, relationships, the setting, and so on.

…growth#↑

It’s hard not to see the extremely blunt metaphor of all the characters starting out as “seeds” departing the “garden”. What else would a seed do? Sure, character development is a given, that’s not special, but the game tells us up front that it will be particularly important in this story.

Why? Well, really, all of the below themes have growth at their core. However, in this section, I’d like to focus on the themes of non-character growth that are also present in the story.

Over the course of the game, the technology level you see in the setting continues to rise. It starts out not that different from our own world, though it could be assumed maybe a handful of decades earlier. People ride in cars. There are modern day elevators. Computer terminals exist, but they are large and only really connect to local-campus resources. When deployed on a mission, you ride in boats that open ramps onto the beach to let you emerge onto the battlefield. You learn that radio is the primary form of communication, and long-range radio TV is a relatively special thing, used for state communication.

Then, another location has flying mechanical exoskeleton suits. Then, you see soldiers in high-tech gear, exploring a huge excavation site filled with crazy sci-fi stuff. Then, another location has massive cranes clearly used long ago to construct some mega-structure. Then, your school is revealed to actually be a massive, flying mobile base . Then, you find your way into an incredible sci-fi city spanning most of a continent, with a population multiple times larger than what you probably thought the entire population of the world was, hidden behind holographic mountains . Then, you go to space . Then, you get a personal vessel capable of land, air, water, and even space travel . Then, it is revealed that the scientists have found a way to replicate unique innate magic abilities by copying electrical brain patterns to achieve time travel . It never stops growing. It never stops accelerating. As the stakes rise, the tech level of everything around you is revealed to be way beyond what you previously thought. If you didn’t click any of the above spoilers, you can probably still grasp how crazy it gets based entirely on how much I felt like I needed to mark as spoilers. This technology represents one of humanity’s greatest strengths: the ability to grow.

Much deeper into the setting, buried in the lore, is the origin story for the setting. Long ago, there was an incredibly powerful being named Hyne. He created humanity as servants. They displeased him, by growing too fast. They grew beyond what he intended for them. When they gained their own free will, he declared war on them. Echoes of that war are the basis for the entire plot of this game, and for the setting as a whole. Additionally, Sorceresses, those who have inherited Hyne’s power, don’t ever really grow. They simply pass their power on to their successors, replacing each other over time. That power is never created or destroyed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this is a story about the conflict between those who grow and those who remain the same.

…responsibility#↑

Squall begins this story as a student. He’s about to graduate, but he seems to just be doing so because those around him have ushered him along. He’s going with the flow. Graduating is just “what you do”. He’s gifted, and those around him can see it. So, they pick up his slack and push him to continue along this path. Hell, he even has a rival… one who he seems entirely disinterested with.

At every step along the way, Squall is frustrated when more responsibility falls on his shoulders. Every time a new mission starts and a leader must be selected, the others turn to him. He’s bothered by this. Someone who was his instructor only a few weeks ago will now be his subordinate. He doesn’t want to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong. He doesn’t want to be the cause of anything going wrong. He lacks confidence in himself. Further, he hates relying on others. He has resolved to only rely on himself due to some deep rooted trauma, so he has trouble delegating. Early on, he’s a pretty bad leader.

Over the course of the game, Squall begins to see gaps in the armor of all those he deferred to due to his perception of their confidence. He begins to realize that confidence isn’t entirely involuntary. It isn’t effortless for those around him… they’re just like him. They have concerns and fears just as much as he does. They intentionally “put on” confidence. Some do it to hide their insecurities. Some do it because somebody has to. Some do it to reassure others.

Squall grows. As new levels of leadership are placed on his shoulders, he begins rising to the occasion. He starts to gain confidence in his choices. He stops overthinking all the possibilities and paralyzing himself. Most importantly, he learns to trust and rely on others. He learns his own reason for “putting on” confidence.

By the end of the game. Squall is a damn good leader, and takes on some of the highest imaginable responsibilities.

That’s not the only place responsibility turns up in the story though. It turns out, the other side of this conflict, Sorceresses, have very similar issues. The power of a Sorceress is not always passed on to a willing host. The power must be passed on, as a law of the universe, so sometimes not even the originating Sorceress gets to choose. The power of a Sorceress is an extreme burden for many reasons, and it is often simply dumped in someone’s lap without warning. The game shows multiple choices a new Sorceress could make, along many different extremes, and the outcomes those bring. It shows that the power of a Sorceress, their responsibility is not important in those outcomes. What is important, is what they choose to do with it.

…apathy#↑

One of the most frequent criticisms leveled against FFVIII can be summed up in one word: “…whatever.” Though this specific word choice was a localization flub, the core argument doesn’t change much. Squall seems like an edgy teen who is hard to get attached to, because he doesn’t care about anything. How do you enjoy the personality of a character who never lets their feelings slip?

At the beginning of the story, Squall is emotionally distant (to put it lightly). He experienced some pretty rough trauma and put up many emotional walls. Backstory spoilers, though most of it is covered pretty early: Squall is an orphan of war. He grew up in a world that already took everything from him. Then, even his found family at the orphanage was ripped away from him without explanation, and while he was far to young to properly process that. He then vowed to never rely on anyone ever again, to never invest emotionally in anything ever again. He would not experience that pain again, even if it meant feeling nothing.

When we meet Squall at the start, he’s already lived through a decade of severing his emotions. These habits are deeply rooted, pulled down by hooks of even deeper trauma.

However, we get some other forms of interaction from Squall. He’s got a ton of internal monologues. While he may be quiet, and outwardly uncaring, the inside of his head is a never-ending torrent. He’s constantly worried about all the possibilities. He’s constantly thinking about others. He’s constantly thinking very deeply about a wide range of topics, often introspective. He’ll ask to himself, “Why do other people rely on each other?” and go off on a long internal monologue while he tries to figure it out. He compares his interpretations with those held by others and tries to find those logical conclusions. Crucially, he often asks questions he can’t find the answer to. These questions are the seeds of his growth.

The other characters quickly learn to read Squall when he gets lost in his own head. So even when Squall says very little, the other characters can react to his internal monologues, as if they understood what he was thinking. This lets us get that inter-party communication that would have been lacking if Squall was truly silent. It also gives us a better peak into Squall’s head than we’ve had for any other Final Fantasy protagonist so far, as well as the emotionally satisfying arc of the team coming together to understand Squall and to help him come out of his shell.

I would argue that Squall is actually the most interesting Final Fantasy protagonist so far.

I found myself relating to Squall, a lot. No, I’ve not gone through the cruel tragedies he has. No, I’ve not experienced the insane pressure he gets placed under. But I’ve been hurt. I’ve given up on feeling. I’ve chosen to shut myself in and let know one approach my heart. I’ve chosen to sacrifice my own joy out of a perception that I didn’t deserve it. I’ve worried and worried and worried about every little detail of every possible way I could be perceived. I’m better now, but I’ve been there. So watching Squall overcome all that was really touching for me.

Squall slowly learns to express his feelings to the others over the course of the game. It’s not easy. It never is. But he gets better at it. At the very end, Squall cries out. He truly relies on his friends and trusts them with his whole heart, and all of the vulnerability that comes with that. This happens at the literal climax of the story. It couldn’t be more clear what the real final boss was, but just in case, we get another metaphor:

Squall carries with him a ring decorated with a lion head. Squall says that he loves lions, because they are strong and proud. Squall’s ultimate weapon is called Lionheart, and it’s shown throughout the story that this lion truly does represent (or perhaps, guards) his heart. Rinoa and Squall end up exchanging this ring a few times, as they dance around the romance budding between them. When Rinoa is in a coma, Squall leaves this ring with her. When Squall is desperate to reach Rinoa through a Junction, we’re told “his heart reached her, not his words” as we’re shown this lion ring floating in front of her face and reminding her of him. This all comes back at the end. The final boss is that lion, made manifest as a Guardian Force. Squall must defeat his own pride in order to finally, truly feel again. Blunt? Sure, but I kinda love that.

As a side note, this gives me a theory about what Guardian Forces represent, but it’s all spoilers: This makes me think that Guardian Forces are “emotional walls”, or perhaps “willful ignorance”. I don’t think it is a coincidence that they feed on strongly emotional memories. Rather, they repress them. All SeeD party members grew up in the same orphanage, but after using GFs they all forgot, because it would be painful to remember that they were torn apart and are now hunting their “Matron”. Squall’s arc to learn to feel again is at the center of the story, and Griever (the lion) is called the strongest Guardian Force, and is pulled directly out of Squall.

To tell you the truth… I worry too much about what others think of me. I hate that side of me… That’s why I didn’t want anyone to get to know me. I wanted to hide that side of myself. I hate it.

You were afraid of losing us? Is that why you kept your distance?

I was always alone…

Squall… you missed out on all the good things in life. You’ve missed out on so much.

…connection…#↑

There are many connections between people in this story. Familial, romantic, friendly, obligational, national… endless categories of connections. All of them are examined, to show their impact.

At the center of it all, so core to the game that it is depicted on the logo, is the romance between Squall and Rinoa.

…and how it hurts#↑

There are many, many failed connections in this story. Obviously, all spoilers, but you can probably get a rough idea just from the number of spoiler blocks.

Squall was torn away from his family, multiple times, due to the war. He never knew his father. His mother died giving birth to him. His sister was torn away without explanation. Even when he had friends in the orphanage, those memories were stolen from him.

Cid and Edea were married, and ran an orphanage together, before Edea was torn away and Cid was forced to become the head of an organization dedicated to slaying her.

Laguna and Julia never worked out, though the song of their love is the same theme played for Squall and Rinoa. Interestingly, Squall is Laguna’s son and Rinoa is Julia’s daughter.

Laguna lost Raine, and unknowingly, his own son.

Quistis originally followed Squall because she had a crush on him, even giving up her career to stay close to him. However, she backed off when Rinoa came into the picture, and Squall remained clueless of her feelings.

Seifer always sought to be the Sorceresses Knight, but he always failed to be useful, and was merely puppet being manipulated.

Laguna, Ward, and Kiros were torn apart by the war.

Raijin and Fujin were Seifer’s best friends, his posse. But when he was being manipulated by the Sorceress, they gave it their all to try and understand him and maybe even bring him back, but they failed.

That’s not even a comprehensive list. The game shows us the cost of getting close to someone, time and time again: they can be torn away. That, obviously, hurts. It will always hurt. Squall’s opinion at the start is that nothing could possibly be worth that pain.

There’s another cost: it’s hard to be vulnerable. It’s hard to let someone in. It’s hard to trust.

Additionally, our connections change us. We can’t possibly remain the exact same after letting someone else in. Inevitably, they become a part of us. Does changing mean losing something? When we become someone new, do we lose our old selves? There’s a real fear there. We could respond to that fear by shutting everyone out, never losing anything, never changing—but what potential do we lose in that process?

I find it interesting that Guardian Forces are the other side of this coin. I have a theory (mentioned earlier) that they represent emotional repression. Guardian Forces are parasitic. Sure, they have utility, and they can take the pain instead of you, but they also harm those they inhabit by robbing them of precious memories. Additionally, Guardian Forces harm those around you. Both directly by causing violence, but also because they are the only source of the Draw ability—the ability to steal the energy of others.

…and how it strengthens us#↑

It’s not all gloom though, the game also shows clearly how our connections with others bring us far more strength than anything we can find within ourselves. Ultimately, it suggests that even if relationships have a cost, they are absolutely more than worth it.

Early on, when Squall is a poor leader and he doesn’t connect with anyone, things constantly go wrong. He (and Irvine) keep trying to take things on themselves, take the path of the loner, and power through. They are proved wrong time and time again.

A moment I loved that shows this off very well was the end of the Sorceress assassination mission. Irvine, the loner, the sniper, is in position. Unlike Squall, he is confident. He still hides his emotions, but it’s behind a veil of collectedness. He shuts everyone out, focusing on preparing for his shot. Then, when the time comes, he chokes . Squall is confronted with an example of the “loner path” failing, right in front of him. The confidence he once saw in Irvine is shattered, and he sees Irvine be vulnerable. Squall at first is angry. Then he recognizes the vulnerability, and adjusts. Squall gives Irvine a pep talk that gives Irvine the strength he needs. In this scene, both Irvine and Squall show more outward emotion than they have in the game so far.

Squall sees how he was able to connect with Irvine and that they were stronger together. He begins changing his behavior around the others, being more mindful of their feelings. It doesn’t sink in for him until much later that everyone else is trying to be mindful of his, too.

But… when he finally realizes it—when he finally starts relying on others, the team gets shit done. They start absolutely crushing challenges far greater than the ones they stumbled over at the start.

When Squall once more chooses to sacrifice himself, he doesn’t realize how he is causing pain to those around him. Rinoa chooses to be taken to be put into stasis because the world is afraid of her newfound Sorceress power. Squall decides that it is her decision to make, and resolves himself to suffer without her. He doesn’t think about how she was prodding him to give her the strength to change her mind. He doesn’t think about how the rest of the team would feel. He just assumes this is how it always ends. Every relationship gets torn from him. He was silly for thinking otherwise for once. This is his fault.

Then, the rest of the team shows up, he’s given a pep talk that gives him the strength to fight against the cruel fate he and Rinoa have been handed. I love how this is handled. Selfie and Irvine, always impulsive, immediately take off to try and fix the problem. Zell tries to appeal to Squall, asking if that’s what he really wants. Quistis gets enraged. She had a crush on Squall, and tells him that she gave up on it when it was clear that he and Rinoa were meant for each other. She basically tells him, “you broke my heart, you asshole. Go and get your girl already” and it’s exactly what Squall needed to hear.

This pattern of being stronger together culminates in the final plan. Everyone comes together at the end. Every single connection gets pulled on, and everyone has something to contribute. Through a mad plan only possible with everyone together and a massive amount of faith in each other, they accomplish the impossible, and kill the Sorceress at the far end of time .

…and how it can transcend any barrier#↑

This is a love story, and love is shown to be the most powerful force of all, the ultimate connection. In a world with so many other failed connections, we get to see Squall and Rinoa, the one relationship that maybe has a chance at working out.

My favorite sequence in any Final Fantasy game so far, is infamous. Is it corny as shit? Oh yeah. Did it have a massive emotional impact on me? You better believe it. Is it maybe a little slower than necessary? Maybe, but I think the quiet contemplation works for it.

I really wish I could just put a link to a video here, but it’s built up on such a huge amount of context, it wouldn’t hit right. I could write out the context, or even describe the scene, but this is already getting long enough. But if you play the game, and you get to The Space Scene you’ll know. I’ll at least reference what happens in my examples below.

So, what was that about transcending barriers?

First, we’re shown love transcending a barrier of time. Ellone, Squall’s older sister figure from the orphanage, has a unique power to connect consciousnesses of people she’s met. So, they must connect to her, and she binds their connections together, across a gap of time. Interestingly, it seems that the strongest connections tend to win out, even when she doesn’t try to force them. For example, Squall was automatically connected with the past experiences of his father, even though Ellone didn’t try to make that specific connection. This power is shown to even be able to change time, in some small ways that don’t cause a paradox, at least. Additionally, those in the past who receive these connections end up mentioning how much stronger they feel whenever it happens. This is probably due to the party’s levels and magic transferring over, but in the narrative, I think it’s an affect of connections making you stronger.

We’re even shown quite literally love transcending the barrier of space. When Rinoa is left drifting alone out in space, waiting helplessly to die, Squall reaches out to her through Ellone. Ellone says his heart reaches her, instead of his voice. Even as he screams out to her across the connection, she does not hear it. But, as she is about to give up, as the last of her breath leaves her, Squall’s ring (his most prized possession, given to her while she was in a coma) floats across her vision. She finds the strength to hold on, and her suit kicks on an emergency backup oxygen supply. She’s still stranded. Still doomed. But now she has hope, and she’s thinking of Squall. Squall dives out to save her, with an incredibly small chance of success, and throwing his life on the line. A true miracle happens. Thanks to their love, Squall is able to locate her and get to her in time.

And finally, at the end, when all of time is compressed part of the grand plan is that the characters will have to think strongly on their bonds to make it home. Lost in the swirling chaos, the only possible thing they can do is lean on that hope. It turns out to be true. In a really touching ending sequence, Squall cries out, releasing all of his repressed emotions. He calls out to his friends, to his love. At first, it doesn’t work, because he is trying alone. We see some truly haunting stuff as he struggles alone against the anxieties of infinite possibility. But when we see him cry out to each other at the same time, it finally works. He is pulled out of the depressing darkness and into a beautiful, joyful field of flowers. To the place where they promised to meet if they ever lost each other, they crossed all of time and space, and infinite possibility to reach it. Because time is compressed, we get to see all the characters’ resolutions at once. It’s touching. And then—Everyone. Goes. Home.

Love is the true, ultimate power.
Cliche? Sure. I’m a sucker, sorry.
I’ll never stop enjoying stories like this.

We’re gonna make it home, right?

We can only hope.

I don’t want the future. I want the present to stand still. I just want to stay here with you.

I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting for you. If you come here, you’ll find me. I promise.

Final Thoughts#↑

Rating: 8/10
Playtime: 25 hours

Unfortunately, I think this game came out at the wrong time. The fans weren’t ready for it yet, and that left a long-lasting negative reputation. However, I think there’s a ton here that a more modern audience would adore, as long as they could tolerate the issues.

I would love to see a remake of this that smooths out all the rough edges and lets the good parts shine brighter than ever. I think there’s a core to this game that is really, really good, and I want more people to experience it.

…and I think people are finally coming around on it in recent years. I’ve been seeing more and more positive buzz about FFVIII online lately. I’m really hoping this trend continues.

This is not my favorite Final Fantasy game. It’s got some pretty glaring flaws. I love it regardless. I think it has had the deepest emotional impact on me so far, and I’ll be thinking about this one for some time.