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[Pachinko]

I'm moving soon so I've been going through my stuff, sifting through an entire drawer of drawings I've found crap I doodled and small reviews I'd make of games I was playing at the time . Reviews which I intended to throw up on my then (to me) spectacular geoyahoo website.

The following was written likely in early 2000 at some point I may have been as old as 17. It's kind of embarasing but I wanted to open the flood gates to any craptacular reviews you folks may have done in the past .
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Final Fantasy 8
Graphics = 10/10
+ some of the best ever seen on the PSX
+ CG movies are amazingly good

Music = 9/10
+ Surpasses final fantasy 7 in quality
+ The vocal and orchestral tracks are cool
- but the majority is still to synthesized

Gameplay = 7/10
+ The story makes the game fun to play through
- The battles are too repetative
- boss battle difficulty is too erraditic

Replay Value = 8/10
+ It's easy to miss out on some guardian forces and items , so you can play through it again to get them
- but would you really want to waste another 40 hours going through an RPG twice ?

Innovation = 9/10
+ no more MP
- drawing magic tends to throw the games balance off to much
+ It's a new final fantasy game!

Review total 50/60 + personal opinion score of 39/40 = 89

89%
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It's funny to think that I liked squaresoft games so much in junior high and high school and now I have a hard time playing for more then an hour in them. Notice how I mention that the story makes the game fun, and that I'm not to fond of the actual gameplay... hell I even wrote a mini review in a similar vien to this one for FF7 at the time and I was so in love with FF8 I liked it more then 7.


I might add that while cleaning my drawing drawer I also found that old old tear out earthbound print ad, the one with the smelly holes. Even after 10 years they still stink.

 

[speedpop]

Ahahaha.

Like you, my adoration and playability for Square games have drastically dropped as I got older. Is there still a beacon of hope for the once mighty Square?

At the current moment.. I don't think so.

 

[belgurdo]

Boss battle difficulty "too erratic?" Maybe if the levels of all your party members differed by 10 or 20 for each character

 

[Bog]

I wish someone had saved the review I wrote for GA (the site, not the forum) back in the day.

 

[Socreges]

FFXII should prove to rock.

Though the battle system worries me. Maybe I need to be educated on it.

 

[jett]

Heh, I've also been increasingly losing interest in Square's game. I used to worship them blindly when I was in high school.

 

[ErasureAcer]

Most addicting mini game ever.

 

[Late Stage Marxist]

Heh, I've also been increasingly losing interest in Square's game. I used to worship them blindly when I was in high school.

Same here. What happened? (I still have a soft spot for all things FFVI, though)

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Same here. What happened? (I still have a soft spot for all things FFVI, though)

We got older and harder to make a big impression on. I still enjoy Square games, but I doubt anything they ever do will match up to playing FF VI, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana 10 years back.

 

[nitewulf]

Ahahaha.

Like you, my adoration and playability for Square games have drastically dropped as I got older. Is there still a beacon of hope for the once mighty Square?

At the current moment.. I don't think so.

i agree. im in the same boat. i think what happened is, we were teenagers and fell in love with the teen geared story-lines.

now they are just embarassing.

i still buy and play them just for the graphics(locales, special techniques, spells, summons, FMV cutscenes) and music.

square should make some games that are more adult oriented, thematically more intelligent, geared for us.

 

[SolidSnakex]

FF8 is really the only FF where I really like more than 1 aspect of the game alot. The other ones just have a really incomplete feeling to them. Although with the FFX's I can overlook their other flaws since they have really fun battle systems.

 

[Ar_]

i agree. im in the same boat. i think what happened is, we were teenagers and fell in love with the teen geared story-lines.

now they are just embarassing.

True, true.

I apprecciated FF8 for keeping the levels of the enemyes equal to yours thought; now they need to make the next step and remove levels althogheter.

 

[lordmrw]

I have the PC version of FF8 (it took me an inhumanly long time to find it!), and I noticed something: there's no option anywhere to exit from the game. I have to ctrl, alt, delete to quit. What the fuck is that?

 

[LakeEarth]

I have the PC version of FF8 (it took me an inhumanly long time to find it!), and I noticed something: there's no option anywhere to exit from the game. I have to ctrl, alt, delete to quit. What the fuck is that?

Yeah I noticed that too. They never put any thought into the PC version.

 

[Tsubaki]

We got older and harder to make a big impression on. I still enjoy Square games, but I doubt anything they ever do will match up to playing FF VI, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana 10 years back.

I think it has to also do with:

1) Those games were good in their time. But Square.. and Enix for that matter... have done very little to evolve their respective flagship games, while several games are all about the evolution in gameplay (ie Panzer Dragoon Saga, Grandia, Growlanser). I think it has to do more with this than us getting older. It's easier to replay FFVI now than FFIX because you keep the mindset that FFVI was great in the timeframe it was released. But when I played FFIX, I had almost nothing but complaints.

2) More accurately though, the games weren't necessarily good in their time, but they were definitely more tolerable. Gameplay (ie levelupfest featuring random encounters every few seconds w/non-strategic battle engine) was never their strongest suit.

 

[LakeEarth]

Boss battle difficulty "too erratic?" Maybe if the levels of all your party members differed by 10 or 20 for each character

No I'd agree to that. Assume that the person didn't know how to junction perfectly. Some bosses you didn't have to hit much, while others would destroy you. For example, getting the GF Cerberus was harder than beating the Edea boss at the end of Disk 2 (which happens right after).

 

[Pachinko]

Yeah when I wrote that up I"m not 100% positive I'd beaten the game but I was atleast on disc 4. There were 2 bosses in particular that I found way more difficult then the rest for thier respective areas in the game. Fighting cerberus in galbadia garden was tough, and when you have fight raijin and fuujin at the begining of I think disc 3 ? Whereas the rest of the game was pretty simple difficulty wise. Although you may be right about the junction thing, I hadn't quite figured it out until the last portion of the game .

 

[LakeEarth]

If you junction right, NOTHING is hard except for the Omega Weapon. I was having small problems with the final boss (because of the move Griever would kill everyone off at once), but then I just junctioned up my HP so I could survive it easier.