It’s time for another legendary Final Fantasy adventure. This one really switches up the mechanics quite a lot. I have to admit that going into it I didn’t know a whole lot about the gameplay. I kind of just assumed it was the same ole style as the others but in this case it was actually quite different. Leveling up isn’t particularly necessary here and is in fact discouraged for parts of the game. I tend to be a heavy farming guy though so that would be a real change of pace. Give me an RPG and I’ll usually give you a few hours of fighting every minion that I can.

The game follows a group called SeeD, who are soldiers with a mysterious purpose. Squall has always been extremely talented but he’s not the most personable fellow. He does the job but isn’t here to make friends. He does share a nice dance with a new girl who shows up though and it turns out that she is with a resistance faction. This is going to get Squall into a lot of trouble right? Well, the whole group is in trouble as he starts to find out about the secret bosses behind the organization and that their purpose may be rather nefarious as well. Additionally, he’s having these strange dreams of being someone else in the past. What can it all mean?

Final Fantasy VIII does a great job of reminding you how weird the franchise could be back in the day. Final Fantasy is part of what popularized the trope of RPGs having incredibly convoluted plots with tons of twists that would shock the normal audience. This game fits quite in with that as we have time travel, abilities that let you transcend time, and there are a ton of twists. The story is definitely great and the ending really seals the deal in a good way. If you haven’t checked this one out yet then you should get on that.

So what about the gameplay then? Well, it’s an active turn based combat system similar to Final Fantasy XIII. When it’s your turn you have to move quickly because the opponent’s turn gauge is still loading up. This is one of the toughest things because you have a whole lot of options and you have to go through them quickly. We’re talking attacks, magic, summons, draws, etc. Now what are draws? Well they’re a big point of emphasis in this game.

You can basically drain an enemy’s magic to use as your own. Sometimes they will even have a secret summon hidden among the options. The tricky thing is that it can feel like a waste of a turn at times. You can stockpile magic which helps with the grind though. See, your summon can be equipped and then you add magic onto your connection which increases your stat.

You can equip magic to each stat based on if your summon has them unlocked. Then if you have 100 of that magic spell, it will greatly increase your stats. That means you probably don’t want to be using that magic a whole lot though. It’s really hard to keep track of all this though and if you don’t draw enough, you’ll actually lose out on some summons which is rough. By the end of the game I got most of them but still missed around 4 or so which means that my stats were permanently nerfed.

When battling enemies you earn EXP for yourself and for your summons. You can then have the summons learn new abilities through AP which you then connect onto yourself. It’s a whole lot of things to remember and you can only equip 2-3 abilities at a time out of dozens. So choose carefully. Also make sure you actually add magic/summons as options on your menu or you will wind up in battle with only the ability to attack.

Several times I went into battle without the ability to use magic because I forgot to re-equip it after getting into battle. I wish those settings would save even when removing your summons but eventually you’ll just be reminded to check. You can level up your weapon by getting a bunch of items and finding a magazine to learn the recipe from but I never ended up getting the hang of that. So I beat the game with the default weapons. That meant attacking was basically useless for the whole game so I relied exclusively on magic and summons.

There’s also a whole card game built into Final Fantasy and this is how you learn a lot of strong magics. I probably should have played the game much more but in the end that’s why I had to grind hard on an island to get magic. I lost my first card game and never ended up going back into it. You later gain the ability to turn opposing monsters into cards but I never got to try that.

Then the cherry on top is that the enemies scale with you but they do so at a higher rate. So if you are level 5 then your opponent will be level 5. You will have the advantage though because you started out stronger. However, if you are level 20 and your opponent is level 20, now they have the advantage because they gain stats much quicker than you do. So there’s a lot to consider here and getting too strong can be an issue. Apparently they stop scaling around level 60 so you could eventually just power level to a point where they can’t stop you. The summon abilities are what you are really supposed to lean on though.

It goes against my usual strategies but I adapted. You can see how the game is really complicated and in depth with all of these mechanics though. It makes for a pretty intense experience. I’m not in fan of some of the mechanics to be honest. I like my RPG experience to be a bit simpler. In general I feel like going too far into the weeds can make a game feel a bit more like homework than just letting you have a blast. The game is still great overall and I had my fun but the gameplay does lag a bit behind the others.

The remastered version does have two good quality of life features though like being able to turn off random encounters as well as speeding up the game 2X. Certainly great when you have to run around the world looking for a spell or the next destination. There is also an option to just make the game much easier by multiplying your attacks but I didn’t use that one since it is going a step too far. Without the double speed though, the gameplay might have felt a bit tedious at times with how long the combat animations are.

When it comes to the graphics, the Final Fantasy games never disappoint. This one certainly doesn’t either with a lot of great effects the whole time and attention to detail. It was always a real treat to see the fully animated cutscenes that would come up from time to time as the game flexed its CG. The soundtrack is also pretty good. Perhaps not quite as noteworthy as some of its rivals but I liked the final boss theme and there was also a really good tension theme. That one had a whole lot of replay value to it.

In terms of value, the story will take you around 30 hours. There is also a ton of other things to do in the game like beating all of the card fighters so by the end you’re probably looking more at 50 hours or so. If you go too far then you won’t be able to tackle the side content so you should always have a backup save at the ready. There are plenty of areas to get soft locked. Either way you’re getting a ton of value here, especially since you can sometimes get the game for under $10 when it is on sale.

Overall, I would definitely recommend picking this game up. You should really take time to actually learn the gameplay style though. You can cruise through a lot of the game like I did by playing it normally but then when you get stuck it will hurt a lot more than if you had already gotten the fundamentals down. I really had to change my whole approach near the end and even then I barely won. Had I been defeated by the final boss’ last phase that would have been a real setback. You always do expect that the game will end with a bang though and it did not disappoint. I look forward to seeing how Final Fantasy IX goes.

Overall 8/10