When Final Fantasy 7 came out, many people loved the jump into 3d and the FMV's (Full Motion Video's). Square's next project was to make the next Final Fantasy appear more like real life. VIII was a resounding success in that area. Characters looked and acted like real humans do. Because it was set in a near-present setting, we were able to be shown sweeping views of cities and relate to them. It was the first venture that Square made into cinematics that succeeded.
The gameplay was solid, much like 7's. The characters special attacks were different enough to make you feel that party members were just skins of each other. Personally though, the best part of the gameplay was that you didn't need to grind out levels to beat the game. Unlike Final Fantasy 7, your gained more power from smart allocation of stats than from mindless beatdowns. In fact, since the enemies levelled with you, gaining exp just to gain it was actually a waste.
However, the best part of FFVIII wasn't even in the main game. It was a little card game called Triple Triad.
Unfortunately, Final Fantasy 8 suffers from the same problem as all of the other Final Fantasy's (except for one, which will be later on in the countdown). The plot of 8 devolves into insanity and ridiculousness towards the last quarter of the game. No more real world, intriguing enemies. Now you're fighting beings in a temple of time that hadn't been mentioned til 5 minute ago.
Oh well, at least the one Final Fantasy that didn't have that problem is further up the list.
Ah, so you're one of them who like FF8 more than FF7. Silly!
ReplyDeleteAlthough I never finished FF8 for some reason, so can't say officially whether or not this is truly a silly post.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, I feel that for all of the advances that 7 made, it was actually a step back in gameplay. The characters were cookie cutters of each other. Cloud or Barrett takes a lot of damage, gets a limit break, boom, repeat.
ReplyDeleteSquall or Zell receive damage in FF8, Squall does a random attack that you pray during, Zell does a combo limit break where you have to rapidly pick the correct attack or the combo ends. I know it's not a massive difference, but I at least felt like they weren't exactly the same.
Although, yet again, 7 is possibly the most important RPG ever. No arguments there.
Yeah. I suppose because I never beat the game and since it's been so long since I did play it in general that my comparison may be a little off. I know they got rated dead even for the most part so I do suppose this could be deserving of making the list. I am still mind-bottled by FF7 not making it.
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