My opinion about this game might be tainted by the fact that this is my first Final Fantasy game. It might have been my first jrpg after Pokemon and Super...
I really disliked how leveling up made you weaker. Things scaled with your level faster than the stat gains empowered you. Completely stupid design.
The card game is also too rewarding and too obscure. Without a guide, you’d never catch on to stuff like “lose this card to this unnamed person, then win a better version back from this other unnamed person”. Also various “everything is on fire! You wanna play cards?” moments really hamper the pacing and tone. But you want to play it, because it gives a ton of power.
Discouraging you from actually using magic was an interesting experiment, but I don’t think it was fun. Maybe it could have been rebalanced, but as-is you just stocked up on magic for the stats.
I don’t remember the story very well. I remember getting locked out of a lot of content because I went past a point of no return without realizing it.
You pretty much nailed most of the mechanical things wrong with FF VIII. It ruined the game for me. The story itself was decent, but I absolutely loathe FF VIII the game. It is quite literally my least favorite FF game, and I’ve played pretty much all of them.
I really disliked how leveling up made you weaker. Things scaled with your level faster than the stat gains empowered you. Completely stupid design.
The card game is also too rewarding and too obscure. Without a guide, you’d never catch on to stuff like “lose this card to this unnamed person, then win a better version back from this other unnamed person”. Also various “everything is on fire! You wanna play cards?” moments really hamper the pacing and tone. But you want to play it, because it gives a ton of power.
Discouraging you from actually using magic was an interesting experiment, but I don’t think it was fun. Maybe it could have been rebalanced, but as-is you just stocked up on magic for the stats.
I don’t remember the story very well. I remember getting locked out of a lot of content because I went past a point of no return without realizing it.
You pretty much nailed most of the mechanical things wrong with FF VIII. It ruined the game for me. The story itself was decent, but I absolutely loathe FF VIII the game. It is quite literally my least favorite FF game, and I’ve played pretty much all of them.