After the success of Final Fantasy VII SqaureSoft where going to find it tough to equal, does VIII do the Genre justice?
One thing that makes this game stand out is its hugely impressive Cutscenes that show the true power of the Playstation. Its a shame that they are in very short supply.
The game starts at Balamb Garden, a training ground for SeeD, a military unit trained to help the World fight the problems caused by Galbadia and the Sorceress. You begin as Squall Leonhart, a renegade SeeD member who finds its hard to adapt to life having to rely on other SeeD members. Over time you can play as Zell, Selphie, Quistis, Irvine and Rinoa.
Each character have their own special abilities and their own unique weapons. Squall starts out with a Gunblade which can be upgraded throughout the game when various items are found. Each character can upgrade their weapons to do more damage and improve their Limit Breaks.
Similar to other games in the Genre VIII allows a character to use a Limit Break when low on health that can do devastating manoueveres on Fiends. The main part of this game however is Drawing Magic. Moving away from the Materia needed in FF7 this game has your characters using a move called Draw. Doing this on an enemy will draw certain magic that the character is currently holding, so for example a Bomb might carry Fire so you can draw from this character.
You have an unlimited amount of times you can draw from one monster, so its very easy to get 100 of each Magic item. The Magic can then be used in the Junction system, also new to the FF8 game. The Junction system allows you to Junction certain magic to certain people that increases their stats. The stats that can be increased are Health, Strength, Magic Defense etc. whilst you can also enhance your defence against certain attacks.
The way to gain the Magic Junction is to Junction GF's (Guardian Forces) these are the Summons of the game and there are about 14 or so in the whole game and they allow a character to junction certain magic attributes to themselves. The GF can also be summoned in battle and uses one move that usually does a hefty amount of damage.
The game itself has a great storyline focusing on the Sorceress Battles and the relationships between the various characters within the game, as well as an added feature in which you go back into the past and play as Laguna, a Galbadian Soldier turned Journalist who looks after a young girl called Ellone.
Another added fature is a Card Game. This allows you to collect cards and play another character,. The aim of the game is to have an higher number on one side of your card than your opponent (Makes sense on the game) and you can gain some rarer cards along the way that can be turned into items later on down the line.
Despite the impressive visuals and the great storyline the game is flawed in its gameplay. Its not the gameplay itself thats a problem but the sheer ease of every battle thats annoying. If you collect every GF and draw 100 Magic for every rare Magic item (Such as Triple, Meltdown, Full Life, Flare etc.) then you can become stupidly hard to the extent where your Level doesnt even matter, my Rinoa character did just as much damage as Squall despite the fact she was only Lvl 19 and he was Lvl 52 at one point.
Add to this the fact that your GF's do a hefty amount of damage its doesnt even seem a challenge. The fact you can also become immortal from using the item Hero really doesnt add to the challenge.
Overall the game is a good one, and is a great sequel to Final Fantasy VII that should please RPG fans and FF gamers over the world, but its sheer ease makes it lack a litte.