/uj This is my first time playing this game so please no spoilers.

/rj Son I'm crine😭😭😭✌️✌️✌️

It's almost been 2 months since I beat FFVIII but since I wanna get to IX soon, I wanted to give my thoughts on VIII.

Junction System

First of all, before even starting FFVIII I had to look up numerous tutorials on how the junction system worked because it seemed confusing to me and from what I had seen, the game doesn't really explain the junction system all that well. Now those YouTube tutorials have been watched and now I have a general idea of how the junction system works and as a result I had no issues junctioning until the end of the game(oooo boy I'll get to that later). But yeah, the junction system.... I actually kinda enjoyed tinkering in the menus trying to figure out which spell would be best to put on each stat, trying to decide which GF ability I wanted to learn next etc. I don't think it's my favourite JRPG system(from the handful of JRPGs I have played so far anyway) but it's not bad either.

Drawing

So, the main way you get spells at the beginning of the game is by drawing magic from enemies and the higher the magic stat a character has, the more spells they can draw in a single turn. Now I'm not gonna lie, the drawing is tedious but I don't think its as bad as some people think because drawing gets replaced relatively early on by refining items into magic. Drawing still sucks tho. And the fact you can only get some Guardian Forces by drawing from bosses is just ridiculous. I don't see why they couldn't have given you the GF by defeating the boss.

Triple Triad

I don't usually like card games but Triple Triad was fun......in the early game, later on in the game they introduce some stupid ass rules that made Triple Triad unfair and ultimately unfun imo and for me, there wasn't really any point of playing Triple Triad past a certain point.

Story/Characters

Now to the section that I would assume most people are here for. After Final Fantasy VII had you going to specific towns to get a character's backstory and you know the characters in that game are well written, I expected nothing on the level of that but generally that most of the characters in FFVIII wouldn't be background characters and I'm extremely disappointed to say that with the exceptions of Squall, Rinoa and maybe Laguna, the rest of the party are all just background characters. You barely get any backstory behind these characters and dare I say it, they are just straight up bland. I get that this game's focus is mainly on it's love story but at least give us something with these characters.

For example, Quistis. You know, when Quistis was explaining to Squall how she doesn't feel like she's good enough to be a good instructor to her students and Squall tells her to go talk to a wall, after that, you can just erase Quistis from the rest of the game because she's just so unremarkable.

Zell is just the typical hothead who just so happens to love hotdogs. I still liked him, he was my all-rounder for the entire game but ehhhh there's not much to him.

Selphie does have a bit more backstory behind her. Recruiting others to participate in the Garden Festival and what not. But when Trabia Garden is destroyed, she still insists on keeping the festival one way or another, maybe trying not to think about her friends who died at Trabia Garden and when you visit Trabia Garden after it was destroyed, you get a cutscene with her that stood out to me. Seeing Selphie reminisce about the good times with her friends while being surrounded by their buried bodies made me think. Is Selphie's happy go lucky personality just a facade to deal with the grief of losing her friends? She's not the best character in the world but I liked her enough to the point I made her my main mage for the entire game, I guess that counts for something.

Irvine is there I guess?🤷🏿‍♂️

And Seifer too, he exists.

Now the main characters

Squall comes off as a douche and a jerk early on but he started to grow on me. Especially when he tells a comatose Rinoa that as much as he tries to convince himself that he doesn't care what other people think about him, he knows it's a lie. He's no Cloud but he's not the worst protagonist in the world either.

Rinoa..... I'm just gonna be honest, I didn't really care for Rinoa at all really. To me, the romance between Squall and Rinoa just seemed forced. Like Squall just goes from dismissing Rinoa entirely to being madly in love with her in an instant, just seems inauthentic to me personally.

Laguna is cool. His goofy personality contrasts Squall's more timid personality perfectly, and his flashbacks are pretty interesting but I don't like when you finish a Laguna flashback, it resets your junctions, just why?

Now the story starts off interesting enough (except the Timber/Deling City mission that was boring as hell) but then it starts to get weirder and weirder and weirder. Like, at first you're just a SeeD agent and now time travel is involved and now you have to go to space and now there's a big floating thing in the sky and now there's monsters dropping from the moon for some reason. Oh and by the way the person you've been fighting this entire time was being mind controlled by a sorceress from the future. Now, it's not to say that it's bad, I do like it but this explanation is not the best way of describing the story but it is all over the place. I do find the concept of the failed romance between Laguna and Julia and having Squall and Rinoa (Laguna's son and Julia's daughter respectively) be the ones who worked out, despite what they've been through on their journey really interesting. I just which the romance between Squall and Rinoa was handled better though.

The Final Boss

Remember when I said that I had no problems with the junction system until the end of the game? Well let me tell you the final battle with Ultimecia was easily the hardest final boss I've ever beaten in this series. Kefka and Sephiroth were cakewalks when compared to Ultimecia especially since she was Level 56 in my playthrough. I almost beat Ultimecia on the first try and after struggling to beat her the next couple of times it was time I decided to strategize my way to victory by refining cards into Mega-Potions(this was a lifesaver) and trying to find the best spells with the cards and items I had (the spell Triple was a lifesaver as well) and after junctioning and preparing, finally overcoming that final hurdle with the FANTASTIC music playing in the background and defeating Ultimecia, I can confidently say that it's EASILY the best part of FFVIII and is the best final boss in the Final Fantasy series so far.

Conclusion

So those were my thoughts on Final Fantasy VIII. It's not my favourite in the series but it's still good and I enjoyed the journey for the most part. Now I plan on playing FFIX soon. Hopefully that will be good as well as I'm not setting high expectations for that game. I'm not saying I think it will be bad but I don't want to be disappointed either. If there's anything I have learned from Final Fantasy VI, it's that putting the highest of expectations for a game can leave you disappointed.

This is the .TELEMATIC that was featured alongside Born Slippy and .NUXX, not the .TELEMATIC that was featured alongside the Winjer Mix of Cowgirl as that is a completely different song. If you want to hear that version of .TELEMATIC, you can find it here(https://youtu.be/p2IsOAXlCkw).