First of all, the characters were two-dimensional and boring. Yuffie and Vincent, SECRET characters from the last game, had more character development than most of the characters in 8 (*cough*Quistis*cough*)! The only characters that were even remotely interesting were Squall and Rinoa. Everyone else was boring (Irvine had ONE interesting scene where he couldn't pull the trigger).
Second, no armor? No accessories? No new weapons? Talk about gay...if I want to play a game with no equipment I'll play Wild ARMs 3 which is about 100,000 times better.
Third, where's the magic? It's a Final FANTASY game, not sci-fi! Yeah, it had sorceresses, but that ain't enough. Plus the Draw system blew chunks, and the junctioning magic to stats stunk. "Hmm, should I cast a powerful spell on this guy? My stats will go down if I do!" The characters also have NO individuality. In 7, Aeris always had low strength and high magic stats. In FFVIII, if I use GFs and junctioning magic, I can make Squall a weak magic user and Selphie a magic-weak physical attacker. What incentive do I have to use different characters? They're all the same except for their Limit Breaks!
Speaking of which, Limit Breaks were horrible in that game! Ooh, should I stay near-death and possibly get killed, or cast the Aura spell and make my stats go down?
The computer cheats at cards. No way can it get a Plus or Same on EVERY turn.
No money from monsters! I wanna EARN my money, not take some dumb test that I can memorize the answers to so I can get A-rank immediately the second time I play through the game.
Only three battle commands? Gimme a break! I could outfit someone with the Master Magic, Command, and Summon materias in VII and get practically every command there is! Does it make it "more challenging" or something? It's just irritating to me.
I'd also like optional bosses that require skill not luck. Omega WEAPON? Yeah. Cast Aura on all your characters and hope that he doesn't kill you before you use Holy War, then hope that you get Squall's Lionheart Limit a bunch of times, then hope that you get a turn before he attacks so you can use another Holy War...I like STRATEGY in my optional boss battles, with only a TINY bit of luck, not luck making the whole thing work.
Okay, now here's the stuff I liked about the game. The scene on the Ragnarok where Squall found out the truth about Rinoa was awesome. I loved it. Also, the scene where the monsters fell from the moon to the ground was really kewl.
The chocobo forests were interesting and difficult (some of 'em). I loved 'em.
This one gave you a reason to play cards, since rare cards could be turned into rare items. Not like 9, where there was no reason to play cards other than to get a high "Collector's level."
I liked the junctioning GF thing, just not the junctioning magic. I wish it had been more like Wild ARMs 3. In that each Medium you can invoke makes certain stats go up, for example Grudiev's Medium increases your HP and Defense. I wish the GF's had been like that instead of magic determining your stat increases.
Finally, the story was actually pretty decent. Squall was a jerk at the beginning, but he got better at the end. And I was curious at the whole Laguna thing, what was causing it and how it tied into the story. That was kinda kewl.
So, anyway, I said what I disliked about it, and also what I liked. So can anyone give me insight onto why they liked 8 so much?
). I also thought Rinoa and Laguna were done well.
One must understand, now, that I play the PC versions of 7 and 8 (as opposed to the PlayStation versions).
It wouldn't matter anyway - you don't genuenly seem to want responses. All you do when people do respond is get either judgemental or defensive. If you really want to know what I think, you'll be able to track down the Walkthrough on my personal Website. I'm not holding my breath, though.