Final Fantasy VIII

 PlayStation
User Score
8.7

Generally favorable reviews- based on 1236 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,043 out of 1236
  2. Mixed: 119 out of 1236
  3. Negative: 74 out of 1236
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  1. ZackAbraham
    Jun 3, 2020
    0
    Starts too slow. Junction system was a confusing mess. And even when understood, it was not nearly as fun as FF7's materia system, FF9's abilities system, or FF6's job system. And seriously: only 6 playable characters this time? Too few. And none really that interesting. Even if it was not sandwiched between two great games 7 and 9, FF8 would still come end up at the bottom of my trash.
  2. dz9
    May 29, 2012
    2
    From reading my reviews, I am a huge Final Fantasy Fanboy in general. FYI my least favorite final fantasies are 2, 8, and 13. This game is a little hard to review because I could imagine this game would've been ground breaking for its time. But looking at it objectively, I have to believe that it gets mixed in with the greatness which is 6,7,9, 10, that it fools people into thinking itFrom reading my reviews, I am a huge Final Fantasy Fanboy in general. FYI my least favorite final fantasies are 2, 8, and 13. This game is a little hard to review because I could imagine this game would've been ground breaking for its time. But looking at it objectively, I have to believe that it gets mixed in with the greatness which is 6,7,9, 10, that it fools people into thinking it is good. First, what does this game have going for it?? Well not much... it has an iconic hero in Squall and it had great graphics and presentation for a PS title. That's about it. In this title, Combat is repetitive and to maximize its capability you literally have to spend hours on nearly every random encounter due to the redundant "draw" system. Besides this, its the classical final fantasy gameplay for all its good and bad. The story, starts off pretty strong, but once you get past the first disc, the game appears to have a fetish for plot holes and plot progression that is just down right silly and dumb even for a JRPG title. Like I said, Squall is a very iconic character.. but besides him, not only are the other characters bland, with the exception of Seifer, they are all annoying and despicable. The style in which you equip weapons is no where to be found and the way you "junction," almost eliminates all desire to even use magic. Side content outside of synthesizing for better weapons is useless and doesn't even reward you for doing them. For one, there is no armor in the game and all the weapon upgrades are down by monsters dropping rare items, so the best you can hope for is a magazine which most likely doesn't even do anything. In the End: This game is a downright mess, some of the gameplay makes you want to like it for the nostalgia, but the plot makes no sense, all the characters are forgettable and unlikable (outside of Squall and Seifer), adventuring is pointless, and equipment is either no where to be found or is counter intuitive. Horrible game, but despite this, if you are a hardcore final fantasy fan, it is worth a quick play through, others might want to stay away completely.… Expand
  3. hongosan
    Sep 11, 2014
    0
    how is this rated so highly it befuddles me its the worst Console or handheld FF game by Far lets get one thing right i like powering up in RPGs like most players do and this robs me of that [ it punishes you for leveling up] that that bad RPG /

    i Have play game with odd Leveling systems but this as one of the worst and the magic system is the worst in    how is this rated so highly it befuddles me its the worst Console or handheld FF game by Far lets get one thing right i like powering up in RPGs like most players do and this robs me of that [ it punishes you for leveling up] that that bad RPG /

    i Have play game with odd Leveling systems but this as one of the worst and the magic system is the worst in any rps i have ever played since you cannot use you powerful magic i do not like party based RPG that disallow mages in you Party im sorry that is a bad mark on the game

    this has the worst Side quest in FF history Triple Triad Just Hateful    … Expand
  4. sufflaminandus
    Jun 16, 2019
    1
    Square Enix recently announced Final Fantasy 8 Remastered. Good news, now new generations will have an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the most boring video game ever created on planet Earth.

    Aside from being a JRPG which is automatically puts score into 1-3 range, FF8 introduced a brand new Junction System, a revolutionary mechanic, that completely removed equipment system    Square Enix recently announced Final Fantasy 8 Remastered. Good news, now new generations will have an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the most boring video game ever created on planet Earth.

    Aside from being a JRPG which is automatically puts score into 1-3 range, FF8 introduced a brand new Junction System, a revolutionary mechanic, that completely removed equipment system (goodbye exploration), made the game ridiculously imbalanced (easy), and introduced idiotic spell grinding. I could forgive failed attempt to bring something new to the table but the story (which is usually a strong suit of FFs) just make me say no. The most insipid, unnatural, unbelievable, unrelatable romance I have ever seen spiced with regular Japanese theme of friendship realized in the most generic way possible narrated through tremendous amount of ‘cutscenes’ you cannot skip. Indeed, if you suffer from insomnia FF8 is the game just for you: the amount of content that can easily put a player into deep slumber is tremendous.    … Expand
  5. FogCityRoller
    Mar 14, 2015
    3
    This is truly the most overrated Final Fantasy game in existence. The characters and story are all fairly uninteresting and you spend most of the game wishing one of the other characters was the protagonist. The controls are fussy and the world feels more futuristic than fantastical. While it will always have that segment of the FF population that thinks it is the best thing since slicedThis is truly the most overrated Final Fantasy game in existence. The characters and story are all fairly uninteresting and you spend most of the game wishing one of the other characters was the protagonist. The controls are fussy and the world feels more futuristic than fantastical. While it will always have that segment of the FF population that thinks it is the best thing since sliced bread, I'd rather play Final Fantasy I (which was mediocre even for its time).… Expand
  6. Derringer
    Dec 23, 2015
    0
    Please. Please somebody explain to me why is this game considered as a "legendary game" if it is so boring and linear. Nowadays there are even better gameboy rpgs than this one! You dont have so much choice in what to do and when to do it or where to go. You always use the same weapons and the same attacks. I just finish the disc one by the way. So painful, boring and unnecesarily long.
  7. ThatRetroGamer
    Mar 16, 2014
    0
    This game is just awful. Final Fantasy 7 may be a pretty bad game, but it's Ocarina of time compared to this one.Sucks that I hate this one more than FF13. Where 7 had potential and blew it, this one had no potential at all and is just a piece of crap.
  8. AlessioP.
    Oct 6, 2009
    2
    This game sucks. No, this is not trolling-this game REALLY sucks. The combat system is annoying and unnecessary complex and the story is full, i really mean it, full of plot holes. Basically, and dont worry you are not losing anything learning it now, its the tipical evil dude which, for no reason but being evil (truly-no motivation) want to fuck up everything. The heroes final plan? Let This game sucks. No, this is not trolling-this game REALLY sucks. The combat system is annoying and unnecessary complex and the story is full, i really mean it, full of plot holes. Basically, and dont worry you are not losing anything learning it now, its the tipical evil dude which, for no reason but being evil (truly-no motivation) want to fuck up everything. The heroes final plan? Let her do it and destroy everything. Oh, man.... Bu, the most valuable part of this game (beside the graphics-top notch for a ps1) is being the inspiration for the spoony' reviews of it. Go watch a couple of it-1000x times better than this crappy game… Expand
  9. moricetimeofwar
    Jul 19, 2014
    4
    this game is a deception of the great name of Final Fantasy. First, the game is the most boring of all final fantasy, boring character, boring story who takes you forever to start. During the fighting, all you do is draw, draw draw draw draw to retrieve the magic enemies so there no more magic bar. improving the character system is one of the worst I've ever seen. I do not recommend thisthis game is a deception of the great name of Final Fantasy. First, the game is the most boring of all final fantasy, boring character, boring story who takes you forever to start. During the fighting, all you do is draw, draw draw draw draw to retrieve the magic enemies so there no more magic bar. improving the character system is one of the worst I've ever seen. I do not recommend this game to anyone, take FFVII instead which is much more fun with its system of materia. In short, Final Fantasy VII >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Final Fantasy VIII and you can even add an exponential.… Expand
  10. StephanieR.
    Apr 22, 2008
    0
    One word.. Boring!! Stopped at Disc 2.
  11. camilo1010
    Nov 23, 2020
    0
    People usually say your first final fantasy is your favourite, yet this was my third and gosh it is good, its my favourite by a good margin, It has an excellent story and, the junction system, although not easy when you start playing this game, turns out to be an excellent system which leads you to and endlessly customizable experience.
  12. greninjaX
    Nov 21, 2021
    0
    possibly one of the worst RPGs I have ever played. the game is fundamentally broken and goes against everything an RPG should be. leveling up makes it HARDER. the junction system is awful, they try way to hard to be cinematic to the point it gets in the way of gameplay. the worst example being when they actually make you wait in an office for someone to arrive and talk to you. also, thepossibly one of the worst RPGs I have ever played. the game is fundamentally broken and goes against everything an RPG should be. leveling up makes it HARDER. the junction system is awful, they try way to hard to be cinematic to the point it gets in the way of gameplay. the worst example being when they actually make you wait in an office for someone to arrive and talk to you. also, the train part.… Expand
  13. sebastianali
    Nov 12, 2019
    4
    Final Fantasy VIII es el segundo peor Final Fantasy de todos después del After Years. Se maneja en hacer algunas cosas bien como el sistema de invocaciones y el de habilidades que en lo personal, creo que de todos los juegos es el mejor. Poder entrenar a tus invocaciones y que te protejan es algo increíble, al igual que como cualquier otro juego de la saga, la historia, gráficos y sonidoFinal Fantasy VIII es el segundo peor Final Fantasy de todos después del After Years. Se maneja en hacer algunas cosas bien como el sistema de invocaciones y el de habilidades que en lo personal, creo que de todos los juegos es el mejor. Poder entrenar a tus invocaciones y que te protejan es algo increíble, al igual que como cualquier otro juego de la saga, la historia, gráficos y sonido son casi de 10. Sin embargo, los puntos negativos que hacen que este juego no se gane un sobresaliente son el imperdonable sistema de magias, incluso peor que el sistema de materia del FF7, los niveles escalados para los mounstruos, los exámenes seeds, combates lentísimos, el disco 4 en su totalidad y una batalla final que puede llegar a durar 1 hora literal.… Expand
  14. nachoespoz
    Sep 2, 2019
    3
    un juego que quise que me gustara pero lo termine odiando, solo rescato la música y los momentos con laguna, NADA MAS.
    lo malo; los personajes son desagradables, sin carisma y planos solo salvo a rinoa, un romance forzado, un villano patético como seifer, un villano final olvidarle, el juego es muy fácil si usas las invocaciones y la magia es un paseo el juego....y la magia ?.... MUY MAL    un juego que quise que me gustara pero lo termine odiando, solo rescato la música y los momentos con laguna, NADA MAS.
    lo malo; los personajes son desagradables, sin carisma y planos solo salvo a rinoa, un romance forzado, un villano patético como seifer, un villano final olvidarle, el juego es muy fácil si usas las invocaciones y la magia es un paseo el juego....y la magia ?.... MUY MAL el sistema de magia de este juego es un desastre, puedes tener magia de forma muy fácil y abundante, sin mencionar que puedes acceder a las magias mas fuertes desde la mitad de la partida, las invocaciones hacen el juego muy fácil. y la historia no es para tanto pero no es mala solo decente.
    no quiero ofender a nadie y respeto a la gente que le gusta este juego pero no puedo con el, me aburrí demasiado jugando a este titulo, lo termine porque era un final fantasy y porque quería que me gustara pero no pude.    … Expand
  15. Gamepro3093
    Sep 27, 2022
    1
    Terrible game! How this POS failure has defenders is past me. It’s about as horrid as the 13 trilogy and 15, it’s offspring but those abortions get far more criticized. The plot is a broken, horribly convoluted mess that’s MST3K material full of ginormous holes, astronomical coincidences and laughable plot twists , the characters aren’t interesting or very deep at all, the romance isTerrible game! How this POS failure has defenders is past me. It’s about as horrid as the 13 trilogy and 15, it’s offspring but those abortions get far more criticized. The plot is a broken, horribly convoluted mess that’s MST3K material full of ginormous holes, astronomical coincidences and laughable plot twists , the characters aren’t interesting or very deep at all, the romance is artificial in its entirety and gag inducing, the soundtrack is mediocre in general with a couple tracks that are actually really good, the gameplay “innovations “ are are pointless and get in the way of getting any possible fun out of this abortion by causing unnecessary frustration and tedium, the locations aren’t that interesting or exciting looking and Squall is a whiny emo prick who isn’t particularly fun or interesting and Lightning and Noctis seem to have regretfully borrowed a bit too much from him. One of the biggest mistakes to come out of this franchise. People wonder why this franchise has been struggling more than succeeding with its fans but Final Fantasy 8 is a big part of what caused this. Almost everything to come out of it was a bad thing before it was a good thing.… Expand
  16. ElevatorDreams
    Jul 4, 2021
    3
    Possibly the worst mainline final fantasy game to date. The combat systems while interesting end up being terribly broken. Any RPG where you want to avoid leveling up due to level scaling is a terrible RPG. You know you made a bad RPG when you spend more time playing cards than fighting battles.
  17. QilBoy
    Sep 25, 2021
    4
    Final Fantasy VIII is a game with many problems, and most of these problems lie in the very fundation of this game's Combat: the Junction System. The Junction System is made up of many different new Mechanics: GFs, GF abilities, Consumable Magic and Magic Junction. GFs and their abilities are great: Summons can now give new abilities or improve the Stats of the character they are linkedFinal Fantasy VIII is a game with many problems, and most of these problems lie in the very fundation of this game's Combat: the Junction System. The Junction System is made up of many different new Mechanics: GFs, GF abilities, Consumable Magic and Magic Junction. GFs and their abilities are great: Summons can now give new abilities or improve the Stats of the character they are linked to, essentially becoming a new form of Equipment. They are just great, anything negative to note about them. The problems arise with the last two: Consumable Magic and Magic Junction.
    Making Magic a consumable item isn't a bad idea at all: It can lead to a new layer of strategy tied to resource management. Magic Junction isn't a bad idea either: by linking a type of Magic to a Stat, that Stat raises, and different types of Magic have different results on different Stats. It can lead to satisfying situational equipment, keeping players on their toes. But now, if you take these two mechanics, Consumable Magic and Magic Junction, and mesh them together, suddenly enormous cracks start to appear: players will collect as much new Magic as possible from enemies to enhance their Stats as much as possible, leading to hours and hours of mindless, tedious collecting. And in battle they will always hesitate in using Magic, to avoid hurting linked Stats, or maybe even avoid battles entirely (which begs the question of why are we playing this game at all if we actively wish not to engage in fights). Maybe avoiding Combat isn't an option, like in Boss Fights, and we are forced to use Magic linked to Stats. This leads to a very boring process, after Combat, where we need to check if now we have any other Magic to increase the Stat again.
    As you can see, Consumable Magic and Magic Junction weren't a problem individually, but as soon as they're present in the same game they actively hinder each other, resulting in extremely anti-fun gameplay full of tedious farming, battles that discourage the player from using their tools and constant boring micromanagement. In this spectacular failure of a Combat System, players are basically incentivized to simply spam GFs since using them doesn't require any resource whatsoever (There are bosses that are challenging enough to be entertaining, but they're few and far between).
    So yeah, gameplay is pretty awful, but there's a pretty substantial amount of good ideas and concepts sprinkled here and there, which help make the overall experience a lot less terrible.
    Firstly, there are many instances where the turn-based combat takes an Action-esque twist: requiring the player to press a button with the right timing, or powering up GFs by repeatedly pressing a button, or a Limit Break that asks players to input combos of buttons quickly, and many more. These are all extremely cool ways to keep the player's attention high outside the menus and add a bit of Action to the mix. A shame that later Final Fantasy didn't develop this concept.
    The world-map is also just as beautiful and full of secrets as it was in the last installment, giving plenty of hours of content to dig in after the main story. Also the level of details of the backgrounds and the quality of the soundtrack are once again great.
    But arguably the absolute best thing about Final Fantasy VIII's gameplay is "just" a minigame: Triple Triad. This card game is just perfect: simple, yet challening. The possibility to collect and catalogue every card also adds a layer of collectionism to the mix, and even if you don't like collecting for the sake of it, you'll be able to convert cards into items, and rare cards turn into extremely valuable items, so there's something to gain from this fun minigame for every type of player. Almost every single NPC in the world can be challenged, always providing a fun diversion from the monotonous gameplay and... messy plot. I think it's time to talk about the story of FFVIII.
    The story of FFVIII is rich of incredible locations, tremendously fantastical concepts and creative ideas to potentially craft a story even better than FFVII. And yet all of it, every single thing crumbles under some of the worst storytelling and character writing I have ever seen. Plotlines that are introduced with great emotional impact only to lead absolutely nowhere, inconstistencies and plotholes too huge to be ignored, romance between characters that have no chemistry whatsoever, vital plotpoints completely left unexplained and lastly an ending that simply doesn't make any sense. This is the story of FFVIII.
    There are many well directed emotional and epic moments, but they can't shine properly or be as great as they could've been because they're still part of this jumbling mess of a plot.
    Or, in other words: FFVIII is a bad game and an even worst story. What saves it from being straight garbage are some very good gameplay ideas, the incredible beauty of its vast, rich world full of secrets, and its soundtrack    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

9
#9 Best PS1 Game of 1999
1
#1 Most Discussed PS1 Game of 1999
3
#3 Most Shared PS1 Game of 1999

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
90

Universal acclaim - based on 24 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 24
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 24
  3. Negative: 1 out of 24
  1. GMR Magazine
    90
    Things were more "real" this time around. [Feb 2003, p.97]
  2. Gamestyle
    80
    Unfortunately while the game is graphically superior to FFVII, in terms of setting, story and controls it lags way behind.
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  3. Absolute Playstation
    98
    Spanning four discs, this is a massive RPG. You can try and skate through it in 50 hours but can easily spend over a 100 hours playing if you decide to take on all of the side games, collect all of the Cards and experience all there is to experience from this game.
    Read full review
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