Extract from an email
More importantly, I finished Final Fantasy VIII a few weeks ago (did I mention?) So, as promised, it's now time to regale you with my correct opinions about it. Prepare yourself for the full force of my insight as I deliver my searingly accurate analyses, only six years too late!
--- FFVIII: A Retrospective ---
*Game engine*
FFVIII of course introduced many gameplay elements which confused and angered the gameplaying public. Firstly the concept of the monsters levelling up with you. I have absolutely no strong opinions about this. So they level up with you? Whee. The junctioning system was described by many as confusing, and indeed it was, for the few seconds it took to assimilate the information the game tutorial was giving you and henceforth understand it completely. No, these people are wrong idiots. And indeed, the complaint is irrelevant, as all you have to do is go in the menu and press the button to automatically give you all the best options. You know, like in all the other games. Although I agree it is stupid to have to junction abilities. What, you need your soul bonded to some elemental force to be able to drink a potion? Why's that, then?
No, the real drawback is the draw command. I don't know, maybe it looked good on paper. But it destroys the entire game dynamic, by encouraging you to hoard lots and lots of magic spells and then never use them. The task of drawing spells from monsters is reduced to a tedium of letting a monster repeatedly hit you whilst each of your party members draws 100 of each spell it carries, before killing it, junctioning those spells, and never using any of them ever. What, and have to wait for another of those monsters to draw the spell again, and until then have to cope with only 9987 hit points? I think not. Battles are therefore reduced to a charade of you repeatedly hitting the monsters with your sharp blades and ridiculous, irritating boomerang weapons until they simply fall over and die, because you have 100 Firaga spells junctioned to your Attack statistic, or something. Horrible. Of course, all Final Fantasy games are at their heart an exercise in tedious, menial repetition, but the idea is that they should be a bit less transparent about it. That way they feel a bit more like a game and a bit less like a minimum-wage factory job without the wage.
I suppose one could argue that I was playing the game wrong. But take a moment to analyse that statement. It makes no sense on any level.
*Storyline*
Some stories work on many levels. The story of FFVIII *doesn't* work on many levels, and works on approximately one level.
The first level it doesn't work on is in its actual premise. The premise being that a sorceress from the future is trying to compress time in order to take over the world, or something. The truth is that after returning to the game to finish it after a few months of absence, I no longer had any idea what was happening. Taking the story as a whole, the first bit works quite well, in an "oh, I get it, it's sort of like Dawson's Creek only they're in a mercenary academy" kind of way, but then the suspension of disbelief becomes ever more harshly tested.
"What... so, it turns out the *school* can *fly*?"
"This girl can send you back in time into someone else's head? For no apparent reason, right?"
"They... they all went to the same ORPHANAGE!?"
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that burying a note about something in the tutorial pages on a computer terminal in a classroom in Balamb Garden DOESN'T COUNT AS FORESHADOWING. Argh.
The second level on which the story doesn't work is in the characterisation. When your main protagonist's character arc doesn't ring true, you have a real problem. Squall's main characteristic as defined by the story is that he is often a bit sullen and uncommunicative. This is eventually resolved by the revelation that it relates back to psychological traumas he suffered as a tiny child. It does not appear to cross anyone's mind that the reasons for Squall's awkward demeanour might have something to do with... oh, I don't know, let's say... him being a seventeen year old boy? Of course not; perish the thought! After a couple of discs of Squall's behaviour being reinforced by his friends basically taking the piss out of him any time he shows any hint of emotion, he is redeemed by his inexplicable love for Rinoa, the blandest love interest since Rinoa (see, the joke is that Yuna would be the blandest love interest since Rinoa were it not for Rinoa being blander still. It would work better in the context of a review of Final Fantasy X, but I just thought of it and damn it, I'm writing it down.)
*Graphics*
Yes.
*Music*
Pretty good, on the whole. There are some duff tracks, but the main theme is good and, crucially, the overworld and battle themes are pretty good. The airship theme is a bit clunky (let's face it, we haven't had a decent airship theme since FFVII, right? Am I right? People?) Also, as with most Final Fantasy games, the town themes suffer from the problem of being really nice for the first couple of minutes but then making you want to go to sleep (I'm looking at you, Balamb Garden and Fisherman's Horizon - in addition to Kalm, Dali, and every single town in FFVI.)
More importantly, this is the game that gave us Eyes On Me, which is significant for heralding the dawn of every Final Fantasy game having to contain a rubbish, bland pop song sung by a Japanese woman. Except, wait! Eyes On Me is actually good. The reason for me thinking this is that, unlike Melodies Of Life or Suteki Da Ne, Eyes On Me actually has something to do with the game's story - in fact, it refers directly to the story and is actually a part of it, being a song sung by one of the characters. And it is this that brings me to the one aspect of the game that actually hangs together properly.
Through its inexplicable flashbacks, FFVIII is attempting, with some success, to evoke a theme. Scholars have noted that Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec is an anagram of 'succession of witches' and 'love'. "And these," they have continued, nodding sagely, "are the themes of Final Fantasy VIII." They are wrong; horrifically wrong. The theme of FFVIII is concealed within the plot elements improperly shoehorned into it: time. Ellone sends the party's consciousnesses back in time in an effort to rewrite history. But, she concedes, you can't change the past. FFVIII is about coming to terms with this, and Eyes On Me is a document of its pivotal plot point. Laguna is obsessed with piano player Julia, and one day finds out that, against all odds, she likes him too. They seem destined to be together, but circumstances dictate that they are taken away from one another. Julia writes a song about Laguna and ends up in a loveless marriage with some military type. Laguna fathers a child with a widow and goes off to overthrow the sorceress in Esthar (for reasons which I can't quite recall) whilst the widow dies in childbirth. By all accounts you could say that they both missed their one chance at true happiness. But observe Laguna's face as he visits the widow's grave in the ending sequence. He is happy with the experiences life has given him, not morbid with obsession over the relationship he missed out on. And this relationship is somehow commemorated when his son and Julia's daughter find happiness together. And if you ignore the clunkiness of the characterisation surrounding this last event, and the insane storyline that encompasses the whole thing, this is actually a fairly moving theme.
At least, that's what I think anyway. It might just be the music. Aeris' death didn't move me at all at the time (I blame the lack of blood; how else am I supposed to distinguish between that and any other of the thousand critical blows she has sustained over the last hundred battles? It genuinely took me a while to figure out she was supposed to have been killed) but Aeris' theme still gives me chills. Similarly, Eyes On Me might be working its insidious magic on me. But still.
Oh, and still speaking of the music, Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec is an almost perfect soundtrack album, marred only by the inclusion of the ending theme, which is basically just Eyes On Me again. They should just have put the Final Fantasy bit of it in, or maybe not bothered at all. Eyes On Me is on the CD twice already, once as itself, and then as the superbly orchestrated Love Grows. We don't need it again!
-------------------------------
This concludes my opinions on FFVIII, which I have just realised go on for many words. It would probably seem slightly more appropriate in the context of some sort of review site, but I don't write for one of those, so you get it instead. I would welcome your own thoughts and/or opinions.
--- FFVIII: A Retrospective ---
*Game engine*
FFVIII of course introduced many gameplay elements which confused and angered the gameplaying public. Firstly the concept of the monsters levelling up with you. I have absolutely no strong opinions about this. So they level up with you? Whee. The junctioning system was described by many as confusing, and indeed it was, for the few seconds it took to assimilate the information the game tutorial was giving you and henceforth understand it completely. No, these people are wrong idiots. And indeed, the complaint is irrelevant, as all you have to do is go in the menu and press the button to automatically give you all the best options. You know, like in all the other games. Although I agree it is stupid to have to junction abilities. What, you need your soul bonded to some elemental force to be able to drink a potion? Why's that, then?
No, the real drawback is the draw command. I don't know, maybe it looked good on paper. But it destroys the entire game dynamic, by encouraging you to hoard lots and lots of magic spells and then never use them. The task of drawing spells from monsters is reduced to a tedium of letting a monster repeatedly hit you whilst each of your party members draws 100 of each spell it carries, before killing it, junctioning those spells, and never using any of them ever. What, and have to wait for another of those monsters to draw the spell again, and until then have to cope with only 9987 hit points? I think not. Battles are therefore reduced to a charade of you repeatedly hitting the monsters with your sharp blades and ridiculous, irritating boomerang weapons until they simply fall over and die, because you have 100 Firaga spells junctioned to your Attack statistic, or something. Horrible. Of course, all Final Fantasy games are at their heart an exercise in tedious, menial repetition, but the idea is that they should be a bit less transparent about it. That way they feel a bit more like a game and a bit less like a minimum-wage factory job without the wage.
I suppose one could argue that I was playing the game wrong. But take a moment to analyse that statement. It makes no sense on any level.
*Storyline*
Some stories work on many levels. The story of FFVIII *doesn't* work on many levels, and works on approximately one level.
The first level it doesn't work on is in its actual premise. The premise being that a sorceress from the future is trying to compress time in order to take over the world, or something. The truth is that after returning to the game to finish it after a few months of absence, I no longer had any idea what was happening. Taking the story as a whole, the first bit works quite well, in an "oh, I get it, it's sort of like Dawson's Creek only they're in a mercenary academy" kind of way, but then the suspension of disbelief becomes ever more harshly tested.
"What... so, it turns out the *school* can *fly*?"
"This girl can send you back in time into someone else's head? For no apparent reason, right?"
"They... they all went to the same ORPHANAGE!?"
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that burying a note about something in the tutorial pages on a computer terminal in a classroom in Balamb Garden DOESN'T COUNT AS FORESHADOWING. Argh.
The second level on which the story doesn't work is in the characterisation. When your main protagonist's character arc doesn't ring true, you have a real problem. Squall's main characteristic as defined by the story is that he is often a bit sullen and uncommunicative. This is eventually resolved by the revelation that it relates back to psychological traumas he suffered as a tiny child. It does not appear to cross anyone's mind that the reasons for Squall's awkward demeanour might have something to do with... oh, I don't know, let's say... him being a seventeen year old boy? Of course not; perish the thought! After a couple of discs of Squall's behaviour being reinforced by his friends basically taking the piss out of him any time he shows any hint of emotion, he is redeemed by his inexplicable love for Rinoa, the blandest love interest since Rinoa (see, the joke is that Yuna would be the blandest love interest since Rinoa were it not for Rinoa being blander still. It would work better in the context of a review of Final Fantasy X, but I just thought of it and damn it, I'm writing it down.)
*Graphics*
Yes.
*Music*
Pretty good, on the whole. There are some duff tracks, but the main theme is good and, crucially, the overworld and battle themes are pretty good. The airship theme is a bit clunky (let's face it, we haven't had a decent airship theme since FFVII, right? Am I right? People?) Also, as with most Final Fantasy games, the town themes suffer from the problem of being really nice for the first couple of minutes but then making you want to go to sleep (I'm looking at you, Balamb Garden and Fisherman's Horizon - in addition to Kalm, Dali, and every single town in FFVI.)
More importantly, this is the game that gave us Eyes On Me, which is significant for heralding the dawn of every Final Fantasy game having to contain a rubbish, bland pop song sung by a Japanese woman. Except, wait! Eyes On Me is actually good. The reason for me thinking this is that, unlike Melodies Of Life or Suteki Da Ne, Eyes On Me actually has something to do with the game's story - in fact, it refers directly to the story and is actually a part of it, being a song sung by one of the characters. And it is this that brings me to the one aspect of the game that actually hangs together properly.
Through its inexplicable flashbacks, FFVIII is attempting, with some success, to evoke a theme. Scholars have noted that Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec is an anagram of 'succession of witches' and 'love'. "And these," they have continued, nodding sagely, "are the themes of Final Fantasy VIII." They are wrong; horrifically wrong. The theme of FFVIII is concealed within the plot elements improperly shoehorned into it: time. Ellone sends the party's consciousnesses back in time in an effort to rewrite history. But, she concedes, you can't change the past. FFVIII is about coming to terms with this, and Eyes On Me is a document of its pivotal plot point. Laguna is obsessed with piano player Julia, and one day finds out that, against all odds, she likes him too. They seem destined to be together, but circumstances dictate that they are taken away from one another. Julia writes a song about Laguna and ends up in a loveless marriage with some military type. Laguna fathers a child with a widow and goes off to overthrow the sorceress in Esthar (for reasons which I can't quite recall) whilst the widow dies in childbirth. By all accounts you could say that they both missed their one chance at true happiness. But observe Laguna's face as he visits the widow's grave in the ending sequence. He is happy with the experiences life has given him, not morbid with obsession over the relationship he missed out on. And this relationship is somehow commemorated when his son and Julia's daughter find happiness together. And if you ignore the clunkiness of the characterisation surrounding this last event, and the insane storyline that encompasses the whole thing, this is actually a fairly moving theme.
At least, that's what I think anyway. It might just be the music. Aeris' death didn't move me at all at the time (I blame the lack of blood; how else am I supposed to distinguish between that and any other of the thousand critical blows she has sustained over the last hundred battles? It genuinely took me a while to figure out she was supposed to have been killed) but Aeris' theme still gives me chills. Similarly, Eyes On Me might be working its insidious magic on me. But still.
Oh, and still speaking of the music, Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec is an almost perfect soundtrack album, marred only by the inclusion of the ending theme, which is basically just Eyes On Me again. They should just have put the Final Fantasy bit of it in, or maybe not bothered at all. Eyes On Me is on the CD twice already, once as itself, and then as the superbly orchestrated Love Grows. We don't need it again!
-------------------------------
This concludes my opinions on FFVIII, which I have just realised go on for many words. It would probably seem slightly more appropriate in the context of some sort of review site, but I don't write for one of those, so you get it instead. I would welcome your own thoughts and/or opinions.
posted by Solid Jim at 2:12 AM
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