Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII is the eighth main installment in the Final Fantasy series. The gameplay makes a departure from many series standards. While it still uses the Active Time Battle system, it deviates from the series' traditional means of boosting a character's power via leveling, although levels are not completely abandoned as they were in Final Fantasy II. In addition, it does not have a Magic Point-based system for spell-casting. Instead, magic is collected, drawn, and created from items, and is used to…
Gorgeous, bold and broken in the best way, as long as you learn to bend the Junction system instead of grinding.Kit · Sadkitty Games
Loved
- Junction system rewards clever players hugely
- Triple Triad is one of gaming's best side games
- Stunning FMV and a sweeping Uematsu score
Not so much
- Drawing magic is tedious if you play it straight
- Enemies scale with your level, which punishes normal grinding
Play it if players who love tinkering with systems until they can wreck the game.
Skip it if anyone who wants a simple, classic turn-based RPG with clear progression.
No cheat codes
Final Fantasy VIII doesn't have cheat codes. The tips and secrets below are the next best thing.
Play it better
- Enemies level up with you, so killing everything makes fights harder without making you much stronger. Lean on ability cards and stat junctions instead of XP.
- Drawing ten spells at a time is slow. Card-mod enemies into cards and refine cards into stacks of 100 magic using Quezacotl's Card Mod and the Refine abilities.
- Play Triple Triad from the very first town. Rare cards refine into top-tier items, including ones that teach powerful GF abilities early.
- Ask Headmaster Cid for the Magical Lamp on disc 1 and use it to fight Diablos. Its Enc-None ability turns off random battles whenever you want.
- Give Quistis Blue Magic items as soon as you find them. Degenerator and Mighty Guard carry many tough fights.
- Junction Elemental and Status defenses before bosses; stacking 100 of a matching spell can make a character immune.
- The Remastered version has built-in boosters for 3x speed, no random encounters and max stats if you just want the story.
Hidden in plain sight
Tap a secret to reveal it.
Trivia
- It was the first mainline Final Fantasy to use realistically proportioned characters throughout.
- Its theme song, Faye Wong's 'Eyes on Me', was the first vocal ballad in the series.
- Tetsuya Nomura designed the cast, and Kazushige Nojima wrote the scenario.
- It shipped on four discs on the original PlayStation.
