Final Fantasy VIII
Rating: 4.5
Platform: Playstation
Genre: Role-Playing Game
FF8 is another title in legendary Final Fantasy series of japanese Role-Playing Games. A game this old (1999 vintage) and this famous doesn't really need an introduction.
Final Fantasy 8 is only the second Playstation game I played. I never owned the system so this review is done from a somewhat unusual perspective - a six year old game and almost no frame of reference regarding the capabilities of the hardware platform. Be it as it may, FF8 is an amazing achievement when compared with its predecessor. Even though the FF7 itself was considered a milestone in computer gaming and is not rarely quoted as one of the greatest games ever produced, I am here to tell you that the Eight is better than Seven. Well, that's probably not the only reason I'm here but let's pretend it is for now...
It would be too easy to just contribute this game's improvements to advances in the technology used in its production. Even though improvements are dramatically obvious at the first glance. You must realize that both of these games are designed for the same old Sony Playstation and as such FF8 doesn't hold any intrinsic advantage compared to FF7 unlike, say, any PC game where the changing technology is a far more pronounced influence on game design. Therefore it is not reasonable to expect big improvements from one title to another. But Square Enix managed to achieve big improvements anyway! Pre-rendered video quality aside, the game engine is so much better that it that makes FF8 look more like a Playstation 2 title. Whatever tricks were utilized by Square Enix, it's a startling achievement. Those tricks probably include some kind of selective rendering so that stuff that is closer gets rendered while the stuff that is farther away is either static or changes very little. Whichever way it was achieved, you can notice more detailed characters and environments. I won't go into any more details as they can be found in many places, and, well, the game is old.
And even cutscenes, where it is reasonable to expect improvements, are not simply "better" than those in FF7; they are in an entirely different league! The amount of animation as well as the level of detail and dynamics is stunning, for the time it was produced. They hold up well even today. Not all is good though, for example the facial expressions are - surprisingly - not always correct. For example, when Rinoa smiles she looks fairly repulsive, and it doesn't happen just once. This is an area where Square Enix had to improve, and at least in Final Fantasy X they succeeded.
But technical virtuosity doesn't make a game alone. At best it can make it into a "technical demo". Consider Doom 3 as such an example, though personally I did find that game enjoyable and have even replayed it. Still, I replayed it only once I got a better video card. So, there's some truth in the claim that I did it just to admire the higher resolution and higher detail graphics. Well, Doom 3 at least didn't suck, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered, insane graphics engine or not.
But this is about Final Fantasy 8. So now that we are done with the technicalities (pun intended or not, who cares except British or nitpickers) - let's talk about how else the Eight differs from the Seven. Unlike FF7 which suffered from many plot and character weaknesses - even though many of what we now consider cliches might've originated from this game - FF8 is more polished in all aspects. It is more mature, but manages to stay serious while still being funny. Speaking of mature, while characters are supposedly teenagers - aged between fifteen and eighteen - their visual presentation and their behaviour (for the most part) are certainly not. They are quite simply young adults who are "teenagers" only for the purpose of satisfying the grand japanese RPG cliche that sais that you can't have a character older than 18 in a game unless they're considered experienced, seasoned warriors with expert skills. Why is that, I don't know. Perhaps there's an opinion in the upper echelons of japanese salarymen that games won't sell to their target audiences unless all lead characters are kids or teenagers. In FF8, perhaps most of any japanese RPG I played with the exception of Final Fantasy X, these characters are simply adults in everything but the label. In fact, it is not believable that they're teenagers when you consider the story, behaviour, circumstances and visuals. Except maybe for Selphie and Zell.
So you could count declared age of characters as the weakness of the game. There are a few more weaknesses, but overall much less than in FF7 which was just a hodgepodge of a story. The biggest problem with FF8 by far is the sequence at the end of disc 1 (I believe). Skip the paragraph is spoilers bother you - since this is an old game, most people have already finished it years ago. Anyhow, this sequence involves the asassionation attempt. There was more than just one completely illogical event here, the biggest one having the sorceress kill the president - a long serving, dictator president - right there on the stage and the crowd didn't seem to mind at all. Well, ok, I won't say they'd mind that their dictator is killed - but when it's done in front of their very eyes it is bound to elicit some kind of reaction. But in fact (or should I say, in fantasy) their behaviour, gestures, chants - they didn't change at all. Utterly unbelievable. Did they run out of animation budget, or have just realized while making it that they cannot do anything about it because it will screw up a lot of stuff they already produced? I can't believe even the crappiest, craziest game producer would have ever produced this kind of a story event on purpose. They must've made a colossal mistake in planning somewhere which tied their hands - for example, they could've already had prison sequences done by the time they started to work on the assasination sequence, and thus any change in the latter would mean throwing out a lot of work already finished.
The second issue related to the assassination sequence was about the country seamlessly accepting the rule of the sorceress. What I mean to say is, what would come out of her public murder would be invariably chaos, at least for the next few hours or so. Crowd would disperse screaming, or it would just stand there stunned for a while - and then disperse screaming. And I doubt the army would react as if the sorceress is immediately the new commander, without any kind of transition period. She would certainly establish her reign - of terror - but she would have to terorrize first to reign in the chaos. It wouldn't just happen within an hour of her killing the president on stage during a live event. And the parade just goes on? Wow. Were the game any lesser, it would knock off more than just half a point from the score. The sequence was made even less realistic by having the standard trappings of "I defeated the boss, in fact two of them, yet they are both alive and well after the battle, and in the cutscene it's me who's injured and imprisoned". Nah, that's just the sugar on top.
Even so, FF8 plot is much more coherent overall than the one we had in FF7. It grabs you from the very beginning, and it manages to keep your interest up for quite a while - but there are times when that grip loosens a bit too much. At those moments the urgency of the story seems to fade - it happens during disc 2 mostly - and this accounts for less than perfect score, in addition to the bizzare sequence already mentioned.
While Final Fantasy, like almost all RPGs, japanese or not, has an epic story as the driving force, in this particular installment it often feels that it's actually the love story driving the saving of the world. Many reviews say that FF8 is a more personal game, which is true in sense that priorities of the lead character are more personal in nature than in FF7, even though the underlying world is just as threatened by the cataclysm as in its predecessor. That's because Squall is driven by his personal beliefs and desires rather than some noble cause. Saving the world is just a chore that was thrusted upon him due to circumstances, and it just so happened that the fate of the woman he falls in love with is linked with it. And even that is a gross oversimplification, because the game doesn't start with either him being in love nor with him in position of authority.
And that is what makes this game work - seeing all these characters grow up (in some ways literally) makes you connect with them stronger, leading to the sob-fest as the credits roll. Final Fantasy series was always good about this - supposedly, I only played 3 of them so far - and in this way it also one-ups the FF7.
As for the general sillyness, the 8 is just less silly than 7, although you certainly can't say that it doesn't have a lot of humorous moments. They just don't seem as inappropriate and intruding upon story as in 7. There are a few goofballs on the team - Selphie and Zell primarily, who act silly most of the time, and it's mostly through their action that you can believe that these characters are teenagers. While you might certainly attribute some "immature" characters traits to other team members, those are not necessarily teenage exclusives; growing up doesn't end at the age of 18. For some people it never ends.