Many a year ago, I sat down to play Final Fantasy VII. I didn’t play the game the instant it was released, I was but a poor college student and had to wait for a price drop before plunking down the cash. I thoroughly enjoyed every instant of the game, it wasn’t the first FF title I had played, but it may have been – outside of the original game – the best. I liked it so much that I went out and bought Final Fantasy VIII upon completing VII. Yes, I knew that it wasn’t a sequel that Final Fantasy games – at least at that point – didn’t do sequels, but I had so enjoyed my time with VII that I instantly wanted to immerse myself in a new Final Fantasy world. That proved to be a mistake.
As, I think happened to so many others, playing VIII on the heels of VII didn’t go particularly well. VII was such a great game that unless VIII surpassed it in every way, it was almost certain to be a letdown. I slogged through the entire four discs, and while I ended up liking the game, I never had remotely the same good feelings for it that I did for VII.
Happily, we now all have that wonder of wonder known as downloadable content, or DLC. Final Fantasy VIII, a game I always wanted to click with but never quite did – and have actually lamented through the years that I didn’t spend more time exploring its universe – is now available for download from the PlayStation Store.
Rather than rehashing the entire story and gameplay of a 10-year-old title, let me say that the game plays out exactly as it did before, same group of SeeD candidates, same evil sorceress, same odd Guardian Force junctioning system (which I could still do without), and same graphics. Perhaps this last aspect is the most impressive. When played on a high definition screen, Final Fantasy VIII’s main gameplay graphics do appear somewhat pixilated and fuzzy, but the cinematic cutscenes, while not up to today’s high-end, are absolutely more than passable. That certainly is a testament to the amount of effort and energy that went into creating the game for its original release and just how far ahead the graphics were at the time.
Article comments
1 - Matteo
Final Fantasy 8 is the best play I ever played in all my life (ps1, ps2, PC, xbox 360); is the best story ever wrote for a game; the graphics, for his age was the best, and the playability was wonderful. I advice this game for all players who are looking for hours (many or few depends on you) of entertainment.
Bye from Rome, Italy