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| Erwin's Pages Central > Articles > Games Reviews > Final Fantasy 8 | |||
   
  
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A game of epic proportions Didn’t we all become histerically happy when we released the fury of Knights of Round on some poor monster? Didn’t we all cry when Aeris was killed by that bastard Sephiroth? Didn’t we (assuming “we” played Final Fantasy VII) all enjoy seeing Sephiroth die when Cloud bombarded him with Omnislash and us whispering “For Aeris you bastard” ? With that in mind I started Final Fantasy VIII (FF8). The first 10 minutes I felt that feeling I had when I finished FF7: the intro is truely state of the art. And this also applies on all other animations: they are the best in the industry. Goodbye low-res .avi movies of FF7! Squaresoft even has a Final Fantasy Movie in production, but lets hope they don’t have a “decisive encounter with reality”, go ask Chris Roberts if you don’t believe me. But anyway, I’m jerking you around. In FF8, you’re Squall Leonhart, an aspiring SeeD member, the elite mercenary force of Garden, a independent military organisation. FF8 will develop as a true epic tale of love (I’m sorry guys...), hatred, adventure and revenge, just like any other Final Fantasy classic. With and added dimension this time, but I won’t tell which (I’d hate to spoil your fun!) The game is huge (4 cd’s, 1 install) and the story is excellent. Just like in FF7, it really drags you in and it won’t let go. But that we knew, so what’s new, dude? Officially, much. Off the record, shamelessly little. Okay, we have a new story, the all-new Junction system, the better field characters and the even more spectacular special effects but other than that, FF8 is a copy of FF7. Examples? Savepoints, MIDI, 640x480 resolution, no speech, 8-bit paletted textures (didn’t all TNT and TNT2 owners hate this in FF7? It caused a “fail” in the config program so that the hardware acceleration was disabled. This was later fixed, but graphical glitches and off-colours appeared),... As a (spoiled) pc gamer, I somehow expected more. It looks like either Squaresoft had a killer deadline, or was just happy enough with his profits from the Playstation version and thought pc gamers were strange abnormal lifeforms groveling beneath the feet of Playstation groupies. And to further explain the (scarce) new features (to wash that horrible Playstation taste out of our mouths) of FF8. Concernig overall gameplay, FF8 is very comparable to FF7, with one exception: As I said before, the new Junction system, designed to govern Magic, Guardian Forces (formerly known as Summons) and Stats. In FF8 the Guardian Forces become an essential part of any character. Without “junctioning” to one or more GF’s, you won’t be able to cast magic, use items, summon GF’s, etc. Once junctioned to a GF, magic, which now is expandable and must be drawn from enemies or found on “draw points”, can be junctioned to stats. “Cure” for example raises HP, setting “Sleep” to Stat-Def-J (don’t try to understand) will raise your immunity to sleep, setting Blizzard to Elem-Atk-J will make any attack to be an “Ice” element strike, etc. Although this sounds very complicated, you’ll get the hang of it, also thanks to the (still, like in FF7) great Tutorial function, where all techniques you need to master are shown. And talking about menus, they still are as crummy, heck, even crummier than in FF7 and controlled by keyboard or game controller. This sometimes painfully reminds me that FF8 is “just a PS conversion”. Also new are the more realistic characters in the field. Although built with a low polygon count, they look convincing. At least, way better than the “cute short guys” of FF7. Their movements and postures are realistic, but tend to repeat themselves later on. But heck, that’s okay. The field by the way is still the somewhat blocky CGI backdrop equal to the ones in FF7. Although some effects like smoke are added, from time to time they look a bit tacky. Raising the resolution to 800x600 or even 1024x768 would dramatically improve graphics quality. Oh and by the way, the characters are still only farily integrated in the field, like in FF7. I’ve seen better in Nocturne! On a positive note though: these moderately detailed backdrops allow smooth transition, and even integration in animation and movies (e.g. a scene where you a see yourself on a ship that is moving), something that no game has ever matched. As in FF7, the best graphics are to be seen during battle, and FF8 is no exception. Magic is cast beautifully and the GF special effects are amazing, even in the 640x480 resolution. So far a 10 or 9 for graphics, at least concerning the battle engine, finally the Playstation burden is removed. And then I saw the world map. Oh god. It looks like some huge monster puked (probably in admiration of presidential candidate George W. Bush’s “security and law-abiding” policies in Texas, by the way visit www.billbradley.comJ) and covered the entire world with it. Even the best bilinear-trilinear filtering doesn’t get the job done, heck, this only makes the goo look worse. I’m through that stage know, but still, the world map gave a “sucky” impression.
How about resonating variating waves of air displacement (music for you and me)? As I stated, MIDI. This isn’t all bad, since the tunes are quite well composed, but can’t it be a bit more? Sure, EAX support is added, but I hardly noticed anything on my SB Live! Player. Hell: the config program greyed out the option “EAX”!! Sound effects are normal, and speech is still missing. Squaresoft probably never heard of that and probably thinks Lernout & Hauspie are two men selling Belgian waffles on some local marketplace. By the way: the audiotrack “Eye on me” is way too stereotypical and gooey. The dame can’t sing, and the lyrics suck. Even the romantic souls among us will agree, read my lips. Oh and I almost forgot: there is a new cardgame “Triple Triad” where cards can be won, which can be used to get special items or magic. Chocobo World is also included, a sort of Chocobo version on Tamagotchi, but is linked to the actual game.
So, does FF8 suck? No man. Because FF7 was a great game and FF8 improves all it’s qualities. The game really is fun to play, if you bite the bullet and consider yourself blind for Playstation shortcomings. You want to know what happens, you want to check out the cool new GFs, you want to jump up and down when you killed a very tough boss. In one word, FF8 is addictive, unless these kind of games give you feelings of nausea and mental images of Rosanne performing “peculiar” acts.
EP sez: After a lot of critisism, it’s time for a final thought. I am by the way a Final Fantasy fan. Final Fantasy VIII reeks of two things: Final Fantasy and Playstation. Final Fantasy? Great story, divine movies, smooth gameplay, addictiviness. Playstation? Savepoints, 640x480, MIDI, sometimes bad textures (world map). Is FF8 worth a try? I’d say “yes, definitely”. If you push through for just 30 minutes you’ll be hooked. Guaranteed. Besides, don’t we all have dreams and fantasies? During this review (further stated
as “the Document”) Erwin Husin (further stated as “the
Author”) had no intention whatsoever to critise the exsistance,
qualitites or users of the Sony® Playstation® entertainment
console (further stated as “the Console”), nor to indoctrinate
his feelings about the Console. The Author would also like to state
that he does not campaign for or supports explicitly any of the USA
presidential candidates. Pros and Cons + Epic proportions Gameplay: 8,5 Overall: 82%
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