Doomed to love everything that is the ♏definitive “bad entry” to every series, Final Fantasy 8 is my favorite Final Fantasy. I’ve heard it all; I know you hate its broken battle system; I understand everyone despises the GF plot twist, and that you think Squall has the personality of a wet rag. I don’t deny that it’s a messy, flawed entry to a se🌃ries otherwise known for its brilliance. We could spend hours nitpicking all the moments when FF8 really seems to stumble, and I’ve long pined over the idea of a remake to right some of its biggest wrongs, but I think I’m over my remake dreams in the scale of FF7R. I think what I want instead is an FF8 movie or television series, and the more I stew on the idea, the more it works.
Perhaps I need to stop insisting that FF8’s failed experiment with the junction system can be fixed, or at the very least, just made “less bad.&r🍃dquo; I’ve probably spent one-too-many nights painfully explaining that “actually, it’s very good if you just give it a chance and break it.” FF8, in all of its flashy, glorious battles, does not have a great battle system. Squall’s Renzokuken is always a blast to watch, and I love that Rinoa fights with her dog, but that’s about it for redeeming qualities. I know, it’s a hard sell.
So, instead of listing out every crime against video games that FF8 has committed, I’d rather lament on and on about what there is to truly adore. At its core, FF8 is a love story—it belabors that point far longer than any of its predecessors or successors. Perhaps to the less enthusiastic, the less hardcore among us, it’s a lot to ask that you grind out 20-30 hours through a hellish series of junctions, actually pointless levels, and magic drawing to see Squall and Rinoa flirt. There is, largely, no love for that battle system among the Final Fantasy fan base. I cannot dangle a remake in front of them, with the promise of revisiting something you loved 𒐪but better this time. People fondly look back at the materia system, even if FF7R did shake things up, but I can’t sell FF8 on nostalgia alone.
FF8’s story of young love, child soldiers, and time-warping witches doesn’t get a fair shake if I pitch it again as a game. So, instead, I look to things like FF9’s new television series or FF7’s Advent Children, hoping that a promise of watching, not playing, would win FF8 another go. If you look at FF8’s more modern ports, where you can turn invincibility on and blast through it, that’s actually the best way to play it. Outside of Triple Triad, there’s not a lot to love there gameplཧay-wise, but the tale of Squall, Rinoa, and their friends, is still brilliant.
I’ve gone on a lot about it before, but I do love Rinoa. While FF8’s story isn’t exactly child-friendly like the FF9 cartoon aims to be, I think we forget a lot of these games were just rated for teenagers. Rinoa’s is a tale of constant failure, a girl who has a clear vision of right, wrong, and what the world should be, but she kind of sucks at executing any of it. Yet it&r💞squo;s her relentless love, warmth, and compassion that drives her through every failure, determined to liberate the people of Timber, and yearning to help her friends. She fails damn near every time, and I love that it never breaks her spirit.
I don’t think Squall is quite the emotionally ♍detached disaster everyone thinks he is, either. He’s gotten a bit of the same treatment Cloud has over the years, but my man is traumatized, y’all. He’s an actual child soldier, along with his party of classmates, and their entire existence has been nothing but jumping from conflict to conflict.
And perhaps it’s not portrayed the best in-game at all times, but I think Squall’s story is something worth telling. Perhaps a multiple part triple-A game series is just too tall an order. There’s so much to🌳 lo💝ve about FF8’s bizarre world, its flying war schools, weird sci-fi elements, and terrifying sorceresses. I can admit that my favorite may not be ultimately worth an FF7R scale remake, but I hope we can meet in the middle, and agree it should at least have a few hours of an animated series. You may not wanna play it, but I still think it’s worth watching.
