Best Final Fantasy in the Series!!
If you would check out the reviews for these games you'd find most of them would say the game's biggest strength is also the game's biggest annoyance. That would be in fact the GFs, they are the summons if you remember in the previous FF series, but now they are much more closely related to the game and chracters more than just using it as an offence. The graphics and cinematics are the most awesome ever seen in the FFseries which is the "strength" as stated by most reviewers, but then again it's the biggest "annoyance" since you'll have to use it multiple times (and you can't cancel the cinematics since you want to get over it and so on bla bla bla)
Yes, it may be true it does get annoying watching a 30 second long GF scene over and over again on the same enemy. "They" say that if they had the "Skip" function for this cinematics then the game would be a lot better. For me I totally DISAGREE, since there is but a very good REASON (in case the reviewers haven't noticed), why they don't add the "skip-the-cinematics" function in this game. Let's say you summon Shiva, she comes up in Ice and does her "thing" to blast the enemies that takes about 30 seconds and all and you think that's that, YOU'RE SADLY MISTAKEN. I don't remember seeing this in ANY tutorial in the FF8 and any mentioning about it in the reviews but I'll gladly tell you (if you didn't know).
While summoning a GF you instantally hold the SELECT button, you'll find a small Playstation square button on the bottom-right corner of the screen and a number next to it, you press the square button as much as you can muster and you'll find that the number increases, so basically the higher the number, the HIGHER the damage you can do, WHICH MEANS, the longer the cinematics, the more times you can press the button, you see (there are times where you can't press the button)! For that reason alone, you won't feel bored watching the same cinematics all over again since you're too busy with your mashing of the button again and again!!
This is a very unique feature in the Final Fantasy series if not any game, and I don't seem to understand why the reviewers never mentioned about it?? Oh well, now you know and I'll tell you, don't try to finish the game too quickly, it's quite easy but then the "Secret" bosses are again the most difficult ones in the game (a feature that exists if not all in the FF series).