Outstanding Follow up to the amazing FF7. Is the greatest Final Fantasy game to date.
The Story in Final Fantasy 8 as you'd expect is amazing. You play as Squall Lionheart a young trainee at Ballam Garden, he is training in a art to become a SeeD cadet in response to a plea due to the Galabadian invasion, Shortly after Graduating Squall finds out that Eda, the sorceress is the mastermind beyond Galabadia's violence, and that Seifer, Squalls rival from the garden, has betrayed Ballam and joined forces with the sorceress as basically her puppet.
There are many twists and turns in the story to keep you gripped, the story always has been the biggest highlight of the final fantasy games to date and this being no exception, it offers great scenes of betrayal, action, character building and some great plot twists, that just adds to the great experience.
The gameplay in Final Fantasy 8 still relies on the series well known turn based system and still works a treat. Even though you cant technically control the action the way that it is portrayed to you is that in a way that makes you feel like you are involved, this is done by some simple things such as when squall attacks an enemy with his gunblade just as he strikes if you time the R1 button correctly he will pull the trigger and inflict more damage, just little touches like this add to the fun of the battles.
There is also a magic system that is still intact from the previous games, the spells can be from inflicting damage to your opponent, to reviving members of your squall, giving attack boosts and so on, the magic system is a great way of changing the pace and making the longer battles more fun and preventing them from getting repetitive.
GF's return to Final Fantasy in style, there are a number of GF's or guardian forces as they are called at your finger tips to battle and then command and use them to your advantage in battle, once a GF is selected it will go into an animation of them performing there attack, the animations are amazing and are a joy to watch and some have different effects than just inflicting damage such as the GF carbuncle, who when summoned casts reflect unto your characters preventing them from getting hurt by magical based moves.
One new feature to the Gameplay is the limit break feature; each character has their own unique limit break. This works on a random basis when the characters health is depleted under a certain extent or keeps on depleting under a certain hp, the option for limit break will become available and when in limit break mode the character that is performing the limit break will either continuously strike there opponents with there weapon or inflict one large attack on the enemy you are fighting, limit breaks are fun to use and if appear at the right times can be a great benefit to the battles in swinging them in your favour. Also characters can have multiple limit breaks depending on what level of weapon they have, this is a good idea is it gets rid of the repetitiveness of seeing the same limit break over and over again when you can simply just upgrade your weapon and have a different more powerful Limit Break.
Final fantasy 8 like 7 and previous instalments is a very long game, if you wasn’t to do any of the side quests or take a break from the story to level up your characters like I did it would probably take you in between the 50 - 60 hour range to complete the story, but if you was to do what I did and run about exploring the land and the environments and trying to get every character maxed out with there highest classed weapon it would take you somewhere into the 130- 140 hour range to complete the game fully, and possibly longer.
Another aspect of this game where it shines is the graphics, the environments are greatly detailed the character models look great, and the effects from the attacks and the spells are of high standard.
The Cinematic's in the game look outstanding and besides from them looking great and being lavishly detailed they offer action packed scenes of tension, curiosity, battle sequences and character building that really help bring the games amazing experience to life.
One of the Mini games that runs through the game is the card collecting. This works by you firstly purchasing a deck and then going around numerous people on your quest and battling them, there are a load of cards to collect and each time you win or loose a match you will win or loose a card respectfully. This is a good way to pass the time while playing FF8, and in the end there will be numerous different combinations of a deck that you can make with the large amount of cards that are at your disposal.
The Character Building like Previous games plays a big part in final fantasy 8, levelling up is simple, you simply just enter battles with your characters and you gain experience from winning, eventually you will level up and from that you gain numerous benefits such as stronger attacks, greater resistance to damage, more magic points and health points etc. The character building isnt just for there attributes as well, you can assign GF's and magic powers to all your characters which adds an element of strategy to the game as you could balance your characters out in your favour and makes party selection more interesting as you could try out numerous different GF and magic options with your characters to what suits you best and what you think works best for you in battle.
The Audio in this game is spot on, Nobuo Uematsu composes the main soundtrack for the game and is an outstanding achievement, he uses a blend of classical music with opera and the final product is amazing.
Walking round the garden there is a very upbeat but simple tune playing in the background which is ambient and really reflects the type of mood that you are in exploring round the garden, while in the cut scenes and battle sequences the music comes to life and is more dramatic and complicated and in some ways the audio narrates the cut scenes as it will either slow down or completely stop during times when big events have either just or are about to happen.
The in game sound effects are also of high standards and quality, but where the sound effects truly come to life is in the games amazing Cinematic’s, the only problem with them is that there is no talking in the game what so ever, which isnt really a problem but would be nice to see appear in Future Instalments of the franchise.
Final Fantasy 8 in all is a necessary RPG. I thought that final Fantasy 7 couldn’t be beaten and that this was to turn out a total and utter flop, but that did not happen and what did happen was Squaresoft made a product that was better than its previous game in virtually everyway and will be a game that will be with you for years to come.