Final Fantasy 8 was the first Final Fantasy game I ever played. I borrowed the PC version from a friend at school. Although I remember my PC wasn't quite up to the task of running it and so I played it with a bad frame-rate. I specifically remember GF boosting being basically impossible to do correctly. Still I did manage to beat it and I've gone through it at least once more (also PC) since then.
Initial Observations
As a Final Fantasy game it represents a lot of refinement over Final Fantasy 7. It's not as revolutionary in terms of technology but it makes much better use of what it has. This can be seen in just the opening. While FMV was no longer new, the quality of the FMV in terms of texturing and animation is greatly enhanced versus the robotic movement seen in Final Fantasy 7's cutscenes. It also no longer switches between art styles which creates more consistency, especially when it tries to flow from in-game into a cutscene. The improvements to animation extend into the in-game graphics as well. While Final Fantasy 7 has a lot of custom animation, it was also stiff and there was a fair bit of reuse and most of all the stunted proportions didn't lend themselves to subtle movement. Final Fantasy 8 fixes this by having more realistically proportioned characters in and out of battle, but also but just having more detailed animation in general. Smaller gestures like laughing or shifting weight come through leading to more expressivity. Characters are also texture mapped giving much more detail to clothing and embellishments as well as decal shadowing versus the simple untextured garoud shading (at least in this version I cannot gauge the original model quality accurately because it's been updated to have more polygons and higher res textures). Extra care was given to the backgrounds. Versus Final Fantasy 7 they have much improved legibility, to the point where they no longer felt the visual indicators for exits and ladders were necessary. And for the most part, they are right. Pathways have proper contrast and camera angles are a little less creative and follow more natural lines to make seeing the paths through them easier. In battle they got rid of the bottom window, expanding the overall resolution as the whole screen is used with significant UI reductions. You just see character names and HP and the bars are transparent letting you see the the full frame as much as possible. From a design perspective, it still follows Final Fantasy 7's lineage. We're still in near future tech with broody young boys with swords but the swords are also guns! Although the setting feels more like green futuristic with natural spaces, brighter and more inviting that Final Fantasy 7's Migar industrial slums and dark hamlets.
Even the music gets a bump. Playing over the intro is Liberati Fatali which serves as Final Fantasy 8's main theme. This rendition is orchestrated with a Latin choir, no doubt capitalizing on One Winged Angel but pushing beyond MIDI. The rest of the game's soundtrack is MIDI (save for Eyes on Me which actually became a popular enough song outside of the game) but relies on a lot more sampling. I would argue it's probably one of the best the series has ever had. Sound effects too seem to come from real samples rather than digital noise sounding a lot less like an SNES game.
Gameplay-wise Final Fantasy 8 is an interesting one. Not since Final Fantasy 2 did they go so experimental. I'm guessing it's for the same reasons. It would not do to have the follow-up game be so similar. And so they went hard on differentiation. MP is gone again. Magic is more like items now and you get them either from the environment or from using the "draw" command on enemies. Each enemy has certain magic you can draw and each time you get a few of them. In this way you can more-or-less use magic constantly but you might want to save the good, hard-to-find stuff. Part of the reason is because it also determines stats. You "junction" magic to stats including status effects and elemental buffs, and the better the magic and the more you have, the bigger the boost. So casting a lot of magic means your stats will actually decrease. Junctioning is based on "GFs" which are this game's versions of summons. I'm guessing that the summons in Final Fantasy 7 were well-liked because they are the crux of this game. You can attach a summon to a character and use it indefinitely. The only downside is a cooldown timer until the GF is summoned during which time any damage is redirected to it. Eventually they can be KO'd like party members. But this means you will be using them constantly as the battle system is built around this. The balance is that magic cannot be group cast save for special buffs like "double" and "triple" but is cast instantly and no GF has healing capability which creates specialization between the two commands. You'll also get used to seeing GF animations, a lot. In fact, to somewhat help with the boredom each GF has a "boost" ability where you must tap the button during the animation to get a damage boost. If you press at the wrong time you will do less than normal damage so it's meant to keep your attention during endless summoning. GF's learn skills and level up and this is actually more important than leveling the characters themselves. Leveling is actually completely unnecessary, enemies scale with you so grinding, at least for exp, is unnecessary. Even for money you don't need to battle as you get money on regular intervals (number of steps) based on your SeeD rank. This can go up or down depending on somewhat opaque story actions. The main point of battling is for replenishing magic, getting AP to get new GF abilities and items which can be used to update weapons, and this latter part feeds into a very complex system of GF abilities for converting one thing to another and getting extremely powerful items and materials. While it can be a lot to take in at once because it is so different from the rest of the series, I feel the overall "complication" of it is usually exaggerated and it's the general systems are explained adequately in game.
Finally, limit breaks are still present. They are a little bit closer to the desperation moves in Final Fantasy 6 though as they're randomly made available based on how little health you have left. The risk reward is that by staying low on HP you get more opportunities to use limit breaks but risk being KO'd. Other than low HP and random chance you can use them as much as you'd like and like Final Fantasy 7 they are very powerful. With later ones, particularly Lion Heart though the system doesn't work very well. Lion Heart can 1-hit KO almost any boss so you can always roll the dice until you trigger it even if it takes several attempts.
Storming the beaches of Dollet
Starting out we're in a school setting, the main character, Squall, training to be a member of SeeD which are basically mercenaries (the first time I played I pronounced "SeeD" like "CD" due to the odd capitalization). Call me a weeb but I rather enjoy these setting if they are done well and I think Final Fantasy 8 qualifies. Squall wakes up with scar from the intro movie fight with Seifer and an unknown women talks to him. Then you meet your teacher Quistis (blue mage). Quistis is really flirty and while it's later pointed out the age gap is only one year it's a little weird. The opening dungeon is a fire cave to get Ifrit that's right next to the school, Balamb Garden. Do students get multiple Ifrits or something? It's implied that many people have done this but through the course of the game no one outside the party has GFs. When you get back you are formed into a group with Seifer and Zell (monk) to do the rest of your SeeD test, fighting off soldiers from Galbadia who have taken over a town to use its radio tower for mysterious purposes. It's not explained directly but there are a lot of things in the next sequence that determine your starting SeeD rank, most are not obvious, like choosing to go around versus jump off a cliff to reach your destination. Siefer gets bored after the enemies are cleared out of the main square and goes to fight enemies in the radio tower. He's then swapped out with Selphie who eventually becomes a permanent party member. At the top you fight a boss and then have to run from a spider mech all the way back to the boat you came on.
This is a pretty neat opening if you know what's going on because even if you do, it can be difficult to get things correct. If you don't know it's unlikely you will do well though so I think it's to boost repeat playthroughs. Even the cut-scenes change a bit if you do certain things. It's very well put together if a bit opaque. When you get back to the garden you're promoted to SeeD with the appropriate rank and can start earning money.
After being promoted there's a ball in your honor and we're introduced to Rinoa during a FMV of her and Squall ballroom dancing. Afterward, Quistis tells Squall to meet up with her in the training area. Basically a date of sorts. The cutscene here is fantastically awkward with her pouring her heart out and Squall not giving a shit. And the mysterious woman from the intro appears again to be saved.
The revolution with be televised
The first day of being SeeD Squall and company go on their first mission by taking a train from the nearby city. On the train the party falls asleep and you're given the first Laguna dream sequence. These are short little segments where you play as a party of Galbadians. They basically serve to give you previews of upcoming areas and have their own subplot. In this one Laguna and crew go to Deling to see his crush and they have a little moment together. Squall and friends wake up and arrive at Timber. Here you meet Rinoa again and have to perform a train heist to capture the present of Galbadia. This sequence is also pretty good. It a couple of mini-games and while they aren't too hard they are engaging. The main thing I noticed here is that Final Fantasy 8 does not take itself seriously. So much up until this point has been silly and Rinoa and the Timber Owls are also very silly. Turns out they captured a fake and need to go to the television tower in Timber where the Galbadian president is announcing a new partnership with the Sorceress. Seifer busts in starts a scene and gets captured by the sorceress.
It was about here that I remembered I had to play some cards and promptly lost my Ifrit and couldn't get it back. If you don't talk to the right people you may not realize that you should do this, but you should because cards are important to expedite obtaining rare items (and it's fun before they introduce all the stupid rules). The main issue I have is that there's not a good onboarding point to this. I had just enough cards to start but once I lost I needed new ones and the only way was card modding low level enemies which left me with a loser deck. Next, it's suggested you head to Galbadia garden to escape from the chaos at the television station. I found it a bit hard to navigate. It's wedged between some hills that can be a little hard to see but there's not really anywhere else you can go. There's another Leguna sequence showcasing a later game area and the crew jumping off a cliff to escape from somewhere. You wake up and arrive at Galbadia garden and are given a new mission. Turns out some locals think the Sorceress is evil and need you to assassinate her JKF style and you get your new party member Irvine.
Assassin's SeeD
In Deling you need to go to a mansion but need a special password which involves going over to some local ruins. This area is very nostalgic for me. Something about the peaceful setting and the beautiful dungeon music (Find you way) just really stood out. The dungeon itself is a navigation puzzle. You have to figure out how to traverse through the maze but most screens look like identical intersections. If you know the layout (which I vaguely remember) it's not too bad. You also need to collect some float magic from enemies outside because the boss uses earth magic and recovers if they are standing on the ground. In reality though, it's not necessary. I tried doing it the intended way and wasted a bunch of turns casting float on everyone and got wiped. The second time I just GF blitzed to exceed the healing amount and that was just so much less finicky. The effort gets you the Brothers GF. Back in Deling you find out that the person that the person from Galbadia that hired you is Rinoa's dad and there's a feud going because her dad is military and she is a freedom fighter for Timber although this never actually results in any character building. After getting the instructions for the plan, you slow walk through the city to get ready but things goes wrong. Rinoa gets mind-controlled, Quistis and gate team get stuck in the mansion and Irvine gets the jitters. The sorceress (Edea) starts the parade by giving a speech and it's not clear what's going on. She basically tells the crowd she'll rule over them and kills the president while they cheer so I guess everyone is supposed to be entranced? Except your party? Anyway the cutscene transitions are extremely well done, shifting pretty seamlessly from gameplay to the prerendered parade. In the end Edea gets trapped in the gate as planned but blocks Irvine's shot forcing Squall to take her on. It's really odd that with all this commotion that nobody goes to protect her. Squall fights Seifer who has become her bodyguard (not that she needed one) and then the whole party arrives to fight her but then lose in the cutscene.
The assassination is a very cool sequence all around and a fitting end for disc 1. While you need to suspend some disbelief to make sense of it her full reveal as villain is a high point. The cutscenes really show off the technical and artistic growth since Final Fantasy 7.
Drill Breaker
Disc 2 starts with you waking up as Laguna and he meets with Kiros in some small town. It turns out this takes place about a year after the escape in the last flashback. Laguna has settled down and is courting a woman in town who has a young daughter. We learn that Julia, the woman he had a crush on before had a hit song and got married to a Galbadian general and it's assumed to mean she's Rinoa's mother. All the player is expected to do is walk a couple of screens fighting random battles and back it's really pointless aside from the exposition.
Back in the present, the party sans Squall wakes up in prison. Usually prison is how game developers get creative and maybe throw in some stealth section or an escape puzzle and there would have been stuff like Metal Gear Solid to act as inspiration. Instead they just have the Zell punch out the guard and find everyone's weapons on the next floor in a pile for some reason. Then it's 12 levels of identical circular floors that you need to traverse up and down. Pure time wasting. The final cutscene is cool though as you find out that the prison cell block is part of a giant screw that goes in and out of the ground and Squall needs to shimmy over to one side of a bridge before it sinks into the sand. It's like the graphic designer had this really cool idea and they couldn't make it work so they just didn't try. Does it going down make it more secure because the prisoners are underground? Does making go up make it more secure because the prisoners are suspended in the air? What is the point of this thing? Why is there a door at the bottom if it has to be partly submerged to stand up? Why does everyone stop pursuing the party when it drills down? Why did it drill down if they knew they were trapped in the air? No re-enforcements came? The keys were just left in the car? Nothing about this makes sense. They also introduce these lion looking characters called Moombas that the guards boss around. It feels like they were looking for another cute mascot type character after Moogles and Chocobos but completely failed. They don't really do anything and only briefly appear again in disc 3. What was the point? Disc 2 starts off on a bad foot.
The Notorious ORG
Following that the protagonists learn that Edea is using a Galbadian base to fire missiles at Balamb Garden and Trabia Garden. The team splits in two: Selphie's squad goes to the base to stop the second salvo and Squall's squad goes to Balamb Garden. The missile base it pretty basic. You sneak in disguised as guards but you just go back and forth talking to people until you make progress. At the end is a fairly tough tank boss, harder than any so far because it has an attack that is basically a one hit KO. While the team set the error ratio to high they couldn't stop the missile launch and get locked in when the base self-destructs.
This raises the stakes on Squall's team who have to warn the garden. Since the party has been gone someone named NORG (all caps) has been trying to take over and factions have formed. Or really it seems like the students side with Cid and the straw hat attendant characters side with NORG. This just becomes a bunch of pseudo boss battles until you find Cid who is just in his office because it was too obvious for them to look there. I can't tell if this is suspension of disbelief or just the game being unserious again. Cid gives you a key and says Balamb Garden was once a shelter and even he doesn't know what's down in the lower level but you should go there. After traversing some pipes you turn on the engines and it turns out that Balamb Garden can drive itself around. There's another cool scene at the garden raises up, nearly crashes into Balamb Town and ends up in the ocean.
Next the party is called to talk to NORG and things get weird fast. NORG is apparently some creature that lives in the windowless basement and put up the money for the creation of Balamb Garden. It turns out he sent the hit request on Edea (I thought that was Rinoa's dad?) and now that it failed he wants to placate her by turning the party over. And Edea is actually Cid's wife. You fight NORG I'm not even sure what to make of it all. This plot twist feels so completely forced. What is NORG doing in the basement? Why did we never hear of him (other NPCs later know of him). Cid must have know that the garden could move because he was literally involved in the construction of the garden but he lied about it? Apparently beating (killing?) NORG has no repercussions even thought he owns the garden and seems highly respected. It's a very strange way to lay down a lot of exposition, especially since NORG talks in capslock. Everything feels ridiculous and confusing.
Since it can't be steered, Balamb Garden crashes into Fishermen's Horizon. A very chill solar punk style town. The mayor and his wife are a bunch of pacifist hippies who tell you to get lost but they'll help repair the garden. As expected, to test the pacifists, Galbadia shows up roughs him up a bit. You fight the tank from the missile base that has found it's way over here and it turns out the other party survived the explosion by getting in the tank but got locked in. How fortunate. Before leaving, there's also a little date scene between Squall and Rinoa where you get to remix some music and Squall gets mad and winds up storming off like a loser. Back at Balamb, Cid lets on a little more information, that it was Edea's idea to start SeeD and NORG's idea to become a mercenary corps to bring in money to maintain the garden. Then a ship approaches that claims to be Edea's SeeDs and asks for Ellone which the party recognizes as the little girl with Laguna in the flashback. Cid asks you to go get her. It turns out she was the woman who was watching Squall in the first scene of the game and also that she has powers to let others see the past. She boards the ship and they take her away. It's not really explained what's going on at this point, so we just gave her over to the sorceress?
The party goes back to Balamb town and there's a bunch of Galbadians looking for Ellone because Edea wants her, but this is in direct conflict with Edea's ship picking her up and just making the plot confusing. There's another bad twist coming because Cid is conveniently withholding information. You have talk to people in Balamb town to find the captain and commander. This is similar to Wutai in that you need to talk to certain people in a constrained area to make progress. Unlike Wutai you are given some opportunities to skip the sequence and get hints but these will impact your SeeD rank. The captain and command turn out to be Raijin and Fuujin and you have a fight. They leave and tell you they are on "Seifer's side" and Balamb is cleared of occupation.
{Redacted}
Next, Selphie wants to travel to Trabia garden to see what happened. I stumbled upon it pretty quickly but I could easily see getting lost trying to find it. Trabia garden was blown up by missiles but there are still some people around trying to help survivors. The party takes a break and the ruined basketball court and then things get weird. In a group flashback it goes full Star Wars and turns out everyone in the party went to the same orphanage run by Edea and including Ellone. Everyone even has Muppet Baby style diminutive nicknames, it's really just cringey. Apparently everyone forgot about this because the GFs make you forget, a fact that literally nobody in the history of fighting with GFs ever seemed to notice or document. As a massive plot point it's just so forced and so silly. As strained as Final Fantasy 7's Nimbelhiem was, they at least tried to create a mystery, this just feels like they unveiled a mystery with no prior lead up and it feels absolutely baffling.
With this new information you go find Edea's House. I also found this one quickly. After looking around, surprise! Galbadia Garden (the whole thing) appears behind you and attacks.
Garden Warefare
This sequence is probably the high point of the game. You get some very nice cutscenes of the two gardens slamming into each other, paratroopers flying in on motocycles and a lot of those FMV background transitions that look really slick. It's mostly forced random battles around Balamb Garden but you have to break into teams so everyone gets a little exercise. But it's also a bit annoying because you constantly need to manage switching the junctions on characters or you screw yourself over with one or two useless unjunctioned team members. Rinoa pretty immediately falls over a cliff but thankfully has arms of steel because it was probably a good 10 minutes before I got to her. Eventually Squall gets pulled into a not-quite-quick-time event where you must beat a paratrooper in a flying armor which is basically the same fighting minigame from Final Fantasy 7's Golden Saucer. You catch Rinoa and then hit the ground on Galbadia Garden. The background has a massive fight scene that even for FMV would have been very impressive in the 90s and really helps sell the scale even if from gameplay it is notably more sparse.
Inside Galbadia is a simple labyrinth. Certain student hold key cards which unlock more doors. In the middle of the quad is Cerberus which looks really menacing. He's optional, and easily the hardest boss up until that point. I actually took a little time to grind here. While you never specifically need to level up, getting AP for GF abilities and stocks of magic to junction makes a huge difference from getting one-shot KO'd to absorbing elemental damage. There's plenty of decent enemies in the area to farm. Beating Cerberus took me a couple tries and bit of luck. Enemy levels are randomized and at this part you straddle the line between enemies having basic and -ra/-ga magic. Enemies might randomly have either due to how levels calculate, so you sometimes need to fight multiple packs to get the higher stuff but also Cerberus with higher magic will cast Tornado and Quake which wrecks the party if you don't resist/avoid it. At the end you fight Seifer twice and then Edea who pops out of her mind control and Rinoa falls into a coma.
Disc 1 was a really strong start but disc 2 literally loses the plot. So many random things are introduced suddenly and never really expanded upon. Still, the characters are charming especially when everyone is dunking on Squall. Gameplay-wise it's still very strong. There's a very good difficulty ramp as bosses get more and more difficult. Disc 1 you could flatten anything by just summoning GFs over and over, but disc 2 requires you lean more into the junctioning system, and that you start using more magic to boost yourself. Enemies start absorbing elements meaning you have to pay more mind to how you allocate GFs beyond skills. I also tried some Triple Triad but mostly got my ass kicked because I didn't want to play my good cards so I didn't make much progress there.
Esthar Forever 🙅♂️
Rinoa is in a coma and going to visit her triggers another Leguna flashback. It's a comedy bit where they're filming a movie with a fake dragon but you fight a real dragon. I forgot to junction (because everyone except Laguna start unjunctioned) so it was a pretty hard battle. When the party wakes up, you talk to Edea and find out that Cid didn't tell you anything because he didn't want you to kill her. Edea was under mind control from a future sorceress Ultimacia and it's established that Edea created SeeD seemingly because she knew this was going to happen. Again the twists get very stupid. Ultimacia actually wants Ellone because of her flashback powers because it will somehow achieve "time compression." Edea chose to be mind controlled because that let Ellone escape somehow. Nothing at this point makes any sense and it's just a huge exposition dump. Apparently there is another existing sorceress who is a little less chill, Adel, in Esthar who Ultimacia will probably try to possess next. It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do here. You need to find Edea's white ship and they tell you that Ellone was rescued from a battle by Estar soldiers. This doesn't trigger right away though, you need to have triggered the earlier flashback so I circled the world a few times looking for a ship that did not exist. Getting into Esthar is through Fisherman's Horizon and before entering the continent Edea joins your party temporarily, so there's no good reason not to choose her for a bit.
Ester is hidden Wakanda style and the party finds a way in. But first a flashback! Laguna and the boys are basically being used as slave labor to get close to Dr. Odine, a a French stereotype with a chomage and a clown collar who is generally an asshole. Very unserious character. He has Ellone captive to study her and Laguna breaks her out. Back in the present, Squall and friends need to meet with him to get to Ellone in the present. Turns out she's in outer space. You get some time to explore Esthar which is a massive futuristic city filled with transport tubes and floating highways. It has a pretty dreamy look to it and the background music heavily reminds me of the Moon in Final Fantasy 4, which probably not a coincidence.
Ellone Resurrection
Squall and Rinoa get blasted into space on a giant space launcher. It's another one of those design items that must have been really cool to think of, but will ultimately not really go anywhere. In the mean time a giant floating obelisk called the Lunatic Pandora comes flying over Esthar for some reason. Zell and the rest of the party need to get onboard it by climbing aboard at one of 3 intersections. This is an interesting sequence visually but I'm not really sure why it exists. You have a timer and you need to get to the specific part of the city which is pretty easy. I'm guessing if you miss it, then your SeeD rank goes down. Even though you get onboard the party gets ejected so it has no actual point. It eventually flys to a place called Tears Point. Up in space Rinoa is placed in the sick bay and Squall visits Ellone. At the same time we learn that the purpose of the space station is to guard and maintain Adel who is cryogenically frozen and floating in space with some locks. It's a futuristic version of the sealed evil trope, but again, why? Why did they not just kill her instead of creating an entire space program just to keep her asleep? Rinoa, under the control of Ultimacia wakes up, disengages the locks and goes out in a space suit to wake her up. At the same time the Lunatic Pandora hits Tears Point. I guess in this world monsters come from the Moon and for some reason if the Lunatic Pandora hits Tears point they are summoned in something called the Lunar Cry, more unelaborated lore. This causes them to pool at the surface of the moon and detach like a droplet, which conveniently falls in the path of Adel's tomb taking her with them and landing at Tear's Point. The rest of the party has to escape the space station but Rinoa is cast off into space by the wave of monsters. Squall with literally no plan goes to save her as she runs out of air and by sheer Deus Ex Machina they get pushed directly into a derelict spaceship.
Onboard there are 8 enemies that need to be defeated in pairs or they will revive. So you have to avoid getting caught while hunting down the other monster/aliens because once you're caught you can't run. They are somewhat difficult so this is actually an interesting gimmick. Once finished cleaning up, it turns out the ship has been there for 17 years but still has fuel to autopilot home. Squall and Rinoa share a romantic moment floating before the control team tells you she will be taken into custody because she's a sorceress. Back on Earth she goes with them and the party tells Squall he's an idiot for not stopping her and they break into the facility holding her and threaten the people working there. And then a mysterious official lets everyone off the hook, Rinoa is free and none of it mattered save for some artificial character building for Squall.
Heaven or Hell, Let's Ragnarok
The rest of the Esthar area is overrun with powerful monsters so it's a bit harder to navigate but you can also start getting end-game materials as drops. You take a trip back to Edea's House and she tells you that her sorceress powers were transferred, presumably when Rinoa entered her coma, and she's no longer a Sorceress so that whole trip wasn't necessary (but she was still a sorceress on the trip Esthar?). She also says something like "I was a sorceress from a young age but I also met one 13 years ago who transferred her power." Does that mean she's a double sorceress? I'm not sure what that was about. Anyway you get called back the Esthar.
I used this time to start doing side quests. I got Odin, which I should have done earlier because he randomly wins battles for you. But also collecting materials for ultimate weapons. At this point I had barely upgraded anything because the item system is so complex. You need magazines to learn recipes for getting weapons but these are typically hidden, subtly visible in certain places through the entire game. Getting materials is also hard because it's not clear how you get them. There's usually a few ways either by modding items or cards, or by mugging and drops. But you also have to consider levels and such and even just leveling up and acquiring the GF skills to do it. I feel this is not feasible without a guide. Even if you know which cards or enemies you want you still need to know how to get find them. So it's a lot of looking at tables in a guide. To be honest this type of planning is kinda fun. Chocobos in Final Fantasy 7 were similar but it can be tedious if you want to push through. The game is fairly generous with power grinding as long as you know where to look. Two relatively non-descript islands on either side of the map have always 100 level enemies and hidden draw points with all the best magic. I use Quistis' degenerator limit which is an instant-death spell that works on pretty much anything except bosses. This lets you boot strap a few characters until it's manageable. While waiting for the draw points to respawn I took trips to get the last few GFs like Tonberry, Cactuar, and Doom Train.
The other major side-quest is the deep sea laboratory found in one of the corners of the map. The first half you can't move while the light is on otherwise you fight a hard enemy, and then you reach the reactor and are asked some questions. This is similar to recruiting Yuffie in Final Fantasy 7, you just guess at it. I remembered the answers though, including the final one which is not actually shown but resides in the 3rd cursor position. You then fight Bahamut which is a fairly easy battle if you've been grinding. Afterwards you need to leave and talk to anyone. Literally anyone but for some reason the progress gate doesn't activate until you do which confused me for a while. Once you come back you get a save point and can descend. The next part is an obtuse puzzle where you expend steam energy to unlock lower levels. It's poorly explained and it doesn't make sense to ever use more than the minimum to open a door. So you'll probably fail the first time through until you notice the secret. It turns out there's a side door you can expend steam power to open that gets you more steam power and this is required to have enough at the bottom to operate the machine. Really just awful design. Once you do it though you fight the Ultima Weapon. This is modeled directly after the one in Final Fantasy 7, even sporting the sword. You can try a few times and optimize equipment or just get lucky and roll a Lion Heart which basically ends it in one go. You also get to draw the strongest GF, Eden.
I'm not even sure what Eden is. It's a weird cyber-space space-ship thing that turns into the Earth and shoots a laser into a Galaxy to create a black hole. Also has this weird blur effect going on. Not nearly as cool as Knight of the Round but also has a really long animation. At this point limit breaks are a better option most of the time especially now that you have stocks of aura magic and GF summoning is largely a waste of time.
Compression Inception
Powered-up and back at Esthar, we learn Laguna is the president which explains why Ellone was up in space (to visit him). This one is fairly telegraphed at least so it doesn't feel random. He has a long explanation of how he stayed in Esthar and helped fight Adel in the sorceress wars and that's why he's president. It's also explained that Dr. Odine created a machine from his research on Ellone that allows Ultimacia to travel back in time but that it probably can't go back far enough and that's why Ellone in the present is still needed to inception her way back further. Then Laguna lays out the plan to beat Ultimacia. Since you can't beat her in the past, she has to achieve time compression so that you go to her. So you let her succeed even though it's explained only Ultimacia can exist under time compression? Whatever. This makes even less sense than Final Fantasy I's time loop. In any case, you fly to the Lunatic Pandora see some neat cutscenes with the Ragnarok ripping the Pandora with it's claws (I'm guessing someone was a fan of Outlaw Star) and with and fight Seifer for the last time. In a bizarre scene Odin shows up at the start of the fight but somehow splits himself in half on Seifer's gunblade (he didn't even move). Once Seifer's HP is depleted Gilgamesh appears with Odin's Zantetsuken and 3 other swords and knocks Seifer out. Literally none of it is explained but it changes the Odin mechanic such that when Gilgamesh randomly appears he uses one of 4 swords and he can also appear mid-battle as well. Seifer somehow takes Rinoa hostage despite gameplay-wise her being substantially stronger than him and gives her to Adel to be absorbed. The final boss of disc 3 is Adel with Rinoa attached. You have to focus your attacks on just Adel and avoid GFs. At this point battles are pretty trivialized since characters have ultimate weapons and are junctioned with the best magic.
Disc 3 goes all over the place. It's like the whole Balamb/Galbadia stuff didn't exist because literally everything in this world comes from Esthar and it's a super advanced society that literally does not have to deal with the other goings on in the world. There's a lot of cool set pieces, like the space stuff is visually cool but doesn't really add much of anything. The Ultimacia plot is completely underbaked and feels like a rug pull. The challenge continues to creep up especially as you start the final grind but everything sans super bosses no longer matter.
Intertemporal Castle Ultimacia
After defeating Adel the plot (letting evil win) goes off and Ellone send Rinoa to the past. Apparently, Ultimacia needed young Adel. We don't know why or what happens but time compresses and there's a trippy cutscene and a battle battle with a bunch of sorceress clones. Finally the party arrives as Edeas house which is now attached by long chains to Ultimacia's castle in the sky. Disc 4 is a point of not return. You can use doors along the chain to teleport back and complete a few side-quests, but most towns are completely blocked off and you need to use chocobos to carefully navigate the world map until you find the Ragnarok. Forced to learn catching chocobos, I found it way too tedious and just paid the guy (thankfully this hot/cold idea gets much better in Final Fantasy 9). Being mostly leveled up I just went back to the castle as there was nothing more to do.
The castle works as the final dungeon and it's a really good one. You start with nearly everything except basic attacks locked, and you need to traverse the castle and solve puzzles and fight bosses to unlock more abilities. It's a neat gimmick and serves as the final test of the junctioning system since you need to junction properly to take bosses down. Of course being leveled up and having stocks of ultimate magic make it easy but you can't quite brute force all the bosses. The setting reminds me of the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil and that's maybe not a total coincidence but it's another great location.
Omega Grindset
I really wanted to beat the Omega Weapon because I never had before. Also because I forgot about the card quest before moving on to disc 4 I couldn't get the Gilgamesh card and thus the 10 holy wars which help with this fight. In order to even survive you need 9999 HP for every character as Megido Flame does 9998 to everyone so it was off to the grind. I got everyone to level 100 just to give me the best chance and stocked up on 100 of all the best magics. It took a couple hours. 3x mode helps but you need to be quick in the menus because you can get roughed up really fast by certain enemies if you aren't careful. That and remember to save lest a Ruby Dragon wipe your party with Breath. The actual battle with Omega is intense. He has a set order of attacks but the timing is a bit random, sometimes you barely get your turn sometimes you get multiple turns and it's hard to judge when you need to heal, versus when to attack. To be successful you have to be a little conservative but assuming you are, then it's just finding the rhythm and making sure to not misjudge the pattern. Very rewarding fight, not many gimmicks, just execution.
Ultimacia herself is not hard after this. She puts up a bigger fight than Sephiroth but that's mostly due to substantially higher HP, many phases and a few mechanical gimmicks like randomly selecting your party, instakilling GFs and blowing away magic. You don't even learn much more about her other than she's the second sorceress Edea mentioned, after having lost and compressed time she winds up in Squall's past and transfers her powers as she dies. Squall meeting with Edea explains that he's a SeeD and that Edea created them to defeat the sorceress thus explain why she started SeeD and setts up an unnecessary timeloop.
The final cutscene is a callback to the intro. Squall is lost in time and their connection allows Rinoa to find him. Of course we don't know how anyone gets back to their time or why time compression just goes back to normal but it's par-the-course for these things.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy 8 is such a mixed-bag. On the one hand you have beautiful designs and graphics, music, and some decent characters and gameplay. On the other, none of it is connected in any coherent way. The story does not work, the plot is swiss cheese, things are randomly introduced as a twist and promptly forgotten. Remember when the GFs made people forget stuff? Me neither, it's never mentioned again. In fact GFs in general aren't really mentioned in world lore. We have these fantastic beasts that people junction with and it's not mentioned. No one else even has one despite the fact that they allow humans to interact with magic. Ultimacia's motivation simply is not fleshed out in a way that makes her interesting at all. She exists as a cross between the ambitious evil guy and the malevolent god Final Fantasy villain archetype. The problem is that malevolent gods like Cloud of Darkness and Zemus/Zeromus appear as a rug pull at the very end after following a separate more developed or sympathetic villain character (not that this is great storytelling either). We don't need their motivation, they are pure evil and exist so that the villain can be redeemed. Ultimacia plays that role for Edea, but Edea is redeemed far too early. The entire third and forth act center on Ultimacia who we never see or hear and can only infer but has no coherent motivation. We never learn what time compression really is, why she wants it, or how she accomplishes it. We don't really learn anything about why sorceresses exist and what they mean in the world. We don't know what the deal with that NORG guy was who commissioned the garden with Cid. How does anyone know about the Lunar Cry? It seemed important to explain why monsters exist so there must have been history or prophecy or something. Where did the Lunatic Pandora come from if Esther found it? There's just so much stuff that is there that just hangs like a lose thread, like it was created simply because it was cool. And to that end things do work. They are cool and there's a lot of great visual set-pieces and ideas, they just are abandoned after use.
At least the core thread of Squall and Rinoa's relationship does largely work organically. It's not perfect, but you do feel that there is a bond and that the touching moments are earned over time. The rest of the party sans maybe Quistis don't really see any character growth. I think a chapter should have been dedicated to each of them, similar to how Final Fantasy 7 did it, but as is they're mostly interchangeable.
The gameplay works extremely well given the circumstances. It's unconventional but manages to be engaging and fairly well balanced. You have lots of different options and they mostly viable. Difficulty ramps up steadily, even the end game super-boss does not feel like it's luck, you just got to learn the pattern and don't need some game-breaking junction hack. The game gives you plenty of opportunity to do endgame grinding with two areas that have a variety of enemies so it doesn't feel super monotonous. Aside from those difficult optional bosses there's largely no reason to grid anyway because of auto-leveling enemies. It's probably one of the most seamless versions of such a system too. Battles can still be challenging while still allowing you to feel end-game powerful. The optional Triple Triad is still one of the best minigames in the series however I felt like the game doesn't really give you enough opportunities to really get started with it. They should have offered you a starter deck and a little more explanation for how and why you should be playing it. Maybe even progress gate you so that you don't totally fall behind like I did. The endgame material gathering and pseudo-crafting is engaging but not well documented. It felt almost as opaque as fusing Personas, you really need a guide to figure out what you are doing, where to be farming, which cards to get etc. but the system is quite powerful. The same is true of junctioning. It's weird at first but it's pretty intuitive and very deep. It's nice that they give you quick switching capabilities but this also creates a problem where you just rotate a single setup. The game fixes a big criticism I had of Final Fantasy 7 by forcing you to do more with your other party members but because you're just doing junction swaps you aren't exactly building them but rather the loadout. And while the endgame suggests everyone should have their own loadout similar to Final Fantasy 6, it's not only unenforced, but it's actually physically difficult to do because junction swapping is all or nothing meaning 3 characters will almost always own all the good magic unless you completely re-junction from scratch on switching characters.
The Port
The port is quite good. Like Final Fantasy 7 it's a port of the PC version running in an x86 emulator with 3x speed, turning off random battles and cheat mode layered on top. Most of it is pretty seamless aside from 3x speed causing sounds to desync which can create awful and loud noises. Also Quistis' degenerator would not pass modern photosensitivity guidelines, I had to close my eyes every time it was on screen due to rapid flashing that was painful to look at. The PC version also has weird quirks like no analog movement, and the PSX used a special hardware feature for 60FPS menus despite the battle scenes being 15FPS. This isn't normally too much of an issue but you can feel it at bit and it's more apparent with Squall's Renzokuken timing UI (although it's sweet zone is so big its still really easy to hit). Compared to the Final Fantasy 7 port it has some significant upgrades though which is why it's a "remaster." They were able to inject new models and textures. The updates look very good, about on par with something you'd see on PSP, not modern, but on the extreme end of what might have been possible at the time. I think a sign of a good graphical "remaster" is that it looks "like you remember it." That is to say, you're imagination filled in details and that's what you think of. The models keep the original style and don't look out of place at all. I do wish there was a toggle though but given it's emulation hackery that's probably a tall order. Cutscenes are prerendered backgrounds are also better upscaled. They still can look like crap especially in some parts where they embedded characters in them but otherwise they are not too bad compared to the scaling on Final Fantasy 7. Overall, it's a very good port given what they were working with.
Final Thoughts
Since 8 was my first Final Fantasy it holds a bit of a place for me, but having replayed the entire series thus far, I can safely say it's one of the best. The gameplay really holds up. I didn't use disabling encounters or 3x speed nearly as much as with Final Fantasy 7 because moment to moment gameplay is just better paced. It's still very useful for grinding though but even that requires a little more management than mashing the attack button.
If any Final Fantasy needed a big budget and fleshed out remake it's 8. It is foundationally stronger than Final Fantasy 7, and has all of the visual flare that makes for a big budget game. But it needs a complete re-write. Something that coherently ties those aspects together. Something that digs into the world and does proper building. As is it's just feels like a cluster of ideas mashed together haphazardly. The gameplay result is good, but as an RPG with a driving plot it's just not. It's very confusing and it's not surprising that while I have played this multiple times there's less I remember than with Final Fantasy 7 because it's so disjointed.
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