- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Am I the only one who likes that the XIV translation uses more archaic wording? Like, there are any number of games where people talk like modern Yankees even if that doesn't fit the aesthetic.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
I love it, it's great. It's why I don't really get the way people poo-poo the WotL translation, though I do understand the grumbling over losing some of the really great lines from the old translation.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, talking about eating pie for breakfast doesn't actually fit into too many contexts
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yankee detected
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'm a huge sucker for that dialogue style, yeah. It's part of the reason I'm such a fan of Matsuno's works in general.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
On the one hand, I do like the broader range of vocabulary and more lyrical phrasing used in FFXIV. Even Urianger is inoffensively fine, especially since his English localization is true to the Japanese dialogue, where he speaks ponderously like he's composing tanka.
On the other hand, I have to concede even the current localization lead, Kate Cwynar, has complained about her predecessor Koji Fox going rather too far on some of the dialogue, especially when most of it was just "it seemed like a fun idea at the time" rather than anything sustainable.
- Location
- Canada
Also don't forget the 'number' of 'quotation marks' around every 'noun' in the 'conversation' to emphasize 'dialogue'.
Buddy you put me in the Dragoon class and tell me to do the LPing
I'm Dragooning my way right outta here with Horizontal Jump 8 and not coming down for another six games
...Man, I clearly suppressed more of the bad translations than I thought, these are bringing up some memories. Probably forgot just how bad it could be because I played FFT forever and an age ago, so yeah maybe I'll throw my vote behind War of the Lions... even if that does mean you lose out on the occasional really good lines, and iirc WotL also cuts out the spellcasting incantations that occasionally happen for skills and spells (which is a sin).
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- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I absolutely agree, there especially wasn't a third/first person shooter on the PSP, and anyone who says otherwise is a heretic. *pulls out Commissar hat and boltgun*
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Anyway, this is a convenient segue to a topic I've been pondering for a while, about localization troubles, and the intersection with dialects and speech patterns. I admit I haven't arranged my thoughts into a proper essay, so this is going to be a bit rambling.
In a fair number of games I'm familiar with, some localization choices for character dialogue can be puzzling. The famous example I'm thinking of is in Chrono Trigger, where there is a character who is given a particular archaic speech pattern, when literally nobody else in the setting, including in that character's home time period, talks like that. In fact, other characters in that time period talk just like "modern" people, with modern casual slang, because Ted Woolsey was doing his thing at the time. The modern remasters have retranslated the dialogue, so at least the people of that time period now have a more consistent speech style.
FFVIII has a completely different issue that nevertheless ends up with the same outcome: there are several characters who have speech patterns and verbal tics that literally nobody else in the setting share, but this is largely not an invention of the localization, because they also have unique speech patterns and verbal tics in Japanese that nobody else in the setting share.
The one exception, as has been mentioned in this thread, is Ultimecia. Where the localization gives her a weird "c into k" speech pattern, while the Japanese script has nothing different about Ultimecia's speech. In fact, Ultimecia just talks like the average character, with very little differentiating her from most other NPCs in the game; this might have hidden the plot twist of "Sorceress Edea was possessed by Ultimecia" back in Disc 1, since she doesn't talk any different.
For every other example (which I can think of), the weird accents or verbal tics of characters are either also in the Japanese script, or have equivalent weirdness. And the problem is, as mentioned, how these accents are completely unique to those characters, with no indication of where those accents come from.
At one end of the spectrum are characters like Fujin and Raijin. Fujin speaks almost entirely in kanji, rendered as all-caps in the English script, and there is no reason given for this other than "that's just how the character talks". Raijin uses "mon yo" as a sentence ender like a verbal tic, which the English script translates as "ya know", and which has as much lack of significance or meaning other than "weird verbal tic". Why are they doing this? Nobody knows. The only speculation we might have is they're teenagers at a high school, and so they consciously decided to use those speech tics to express their own individualism. It's along the same category as Zell's usage of the casual rough "ze", or Selphie drawing out her syllables to seem cute; one could plausibly encounter Zell and Selphie's speech tics in real life, while Fujin and Raijin's are an extreme example of it, but not completely bizarre.
And at the other end of the spectrum are Odine and Norg. No other Shumi talks like Norg, much less any other character. Why is he talking like that? How is he talking like that, with the interpuncts? What is the difference between "You・About the Sorceress・Give report" and "You, about the Sorceress, give report" when spoken aloud? Might he be able to talk with other punctuation symbols, like "Blue ☆ Yellow ☆ Red, lots of ♥ MAGIC ♥ when red"? Nobody knows.
Odine, meanwhile, uses the archaic "ojaru" sentence ending, but so ubiquitously it stops being an archaic speech pattern and turns into a verbal tic just as ridiculous as Raijin's "mon yo". The English localization turns it into a bad faux-German accent, because what can you do with that? It's not a natural speech pattern; it's a caricature. It's like adding "eth" at the end of every word and pretending that's "old timey English": "Know-eth thou what-eth is-eth going-eth on-eth?"
The overall impression is the writers of FFVIII decided to throw in all sorts of weird speech patterns and dialects for no reason other than they could. There was little to no consideration given to whether this adds to the characterization, or whether any of it makes sense. When viewed with the knowledge about the dropped plot points and rushed plotting near the end of the game, I end up suspecting the writers were more interested in playing around with the details which interested them, rather than the greater story which did not.
Having said all that, I should address the one dialect which was handled entirely realistically, ie Selphie's Kansai dialect. Like most Japanese speakers who are familiar with Kansai/Kyoto/Osaka dialects (and other non-standard Japanese dialects, like Tohoku or Kyushu), she can switch between that and standard Japanese easily. Hence Selphie using the same dialect as everyone else (who isn't speaking weirdly), unless she's particularly emotional or with others who speak the Kansai dialect. In FFVIII, this means Trabia.
My speculation is unlike the other notable speech patterns and verbal tics, which were made up or exaggerated for the game, Selphie's Kansai dialect is a real thing that the writers were already familiar with, including how it is used in real life. So they can write it believably, while everything else is much less so.
In a fair number of games I'm familiar with, some localization choices for character dialogue can be puzzling. The famous example I'm thinking of is in Chrono Trigger, where there is a character who is given a particular archaic speech pattern, when literally nobody else in the setting, including in that character's home time period, talks like that. In fact, other characters in that time period talk just like "modern" people, with modern casual slang, because Ted Woolsey was doing his thing at the time. The modern remasters have retranslated the dialogue, so at least the people of that time period now have a more consistent speech style.
FFVIII has a completely different issue that nevertheless ends up with the same outcome: there are several characters who have speech patterns and verbal tics that literally nobody else in the setting share, but this is largely not an invention of the localization, because they also have unique speech patterns and verbal tics in Japanese that nobody else in the setting share.
The one exception, as has been mentioned in this thread, is Ultimecia. Where the localization gives her a weird "c into k" speech pattern, while the Japanese script has nothing different about Ultimecia's speech. In fact, Ultimecia just talks like the average character, with very little differentiating her from most other NPCs in the game; this might have hidden the plot twist of "Sorceress Edea was possessed by Ultimecia" back in Disc 1, since she doesn't talk any different.
For every other example (which I can think of), the weird accents or verbal tics of characters are either also in the Japanese script, or have equivalent weirdness. And the problem is, as mentioned, how these accents are completely unique to those characters, with no indication of where those accents come from.
At one end of the spectrum are characters like Fujin and Raijin. Fujin speaks almost entirely in kanji, rendered as all-caps in the English script, and there is no reason given for this other than "that's just how the character talks". Raijin uses "mon yo" as a sentence ender like a verbal tic, which the English script translates as "ya know", and which has as much lack of significance or meaning other than "weird verbal tic". Why are they doing this? Nobody knows. The only speculation we might have is they're teenagers at a high school, and so they consciously decided to use those speech tics to express their own individualism. It's along the same category as Zell's usage of the casual rough "ze", or Selphie drawing out her syllables to seem cute; one could plausibly encounter Zell and Selphie's speech tics in real life, while Fujin and Raijin's are an extreme example of it, but not completely bizarre.
And at the other end of the spectrum are Odine and Norg. No other Shumi talks like Norg, much less any other character. Why is he talking like that? How is he talking like that, with the interpuncts? What is the difference between "You・About the Sorceress・Give report" and "You, about the Sorceress, give report" when spoken aloud? Might he be able to talk with other punctuation symbols, like "Blue ☆ Yellow ☆ Red, lots of ♥ MAGIC ♥ when red"? Nobody knows.
Odine, meanwhile, uses the archaic "ojaru" sentence ending, but so ubiquitously it stops being an archaic speech pattern and turns into a verbal tic just as ridiculous as Raijin's "mon yo". The English localization turns it into a bad faux-German accent, because what can you do with that? It's not a natural speech pattern; it's a caricature. It's like adding "eth" at the end of every word and pretending that's "old timey English": "Know-eth thou what-eth is-eth going-eth on-eth?"
The overall impression is the writers of FFVIII decided to throw in all sorts of weird speech patterns and dialects for no reason other than they could. There was little to no consideration given to whether this adds to the characterization, or whether any of it makes sense. When viewed with the knowledge about the dropped plot points and rushed plotting near the end of the game, I end up suspecting the writers were more interested in playing around with the details which interested them, rather than the greater story which did not.
Having said all that, I should address the one dialect which was handled entirely realistically, ie Selphie's Kansai dialect. Like most Japanese speakers who are familiar with Kansai/Kyoto/Osaka dialects (and other non-standard Japanese dialects, like Tohoku or Kyushu), she can switch between that and standard Japanese easily. Hence Selphie using the same dialect as everyone else (who isn't speaking weirdly), unless she's particularly emotional or with others who speak the Kansai dialect. In FFVIII, this means Trabia.
My speculation is unlike the other notable speech patterns and verbal tics, which were made up or exaggerated for the game, Selphie's Kansai dialect is a real thing that the writers were already familiar with, including how it is used in real life. So they can write it believably, while everything else is much less so.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
This is Parasite Eve 2 revisionism and I won't stand for it, good sir!
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I'm really puzzled at people suggesting War of the Lions on the merits of the translation alone, when there's mod for the PSX version that replace the PSX dialogue with the War of the Lion dialogue. Everything else about War of the Lion is inferior to the original - how can people genuinely criticize FFVIII for its problems of gameplay, and then suggest Omicron play a version of FFT that exacerbate all of the issues with FFT gameplay (there is a net 10% increase in the grinding necessary in what is already a game that requires a lot of grinding, and that's without including the lore-breaking additional class which it takes a mad grind just to unlock), on the basis of a translation which, when you reach the lategame, is just as bad as the one it's replacing? I am extremely puzzled by all this. And, of course, the War of the Lion version adds extraneous FMVs that break the flow of the narration, and has characters from games that weren't even released at the time FFT was published showing up in plot battles with no explanations at all.
Plus, as mentioned, posting the differences in translation like I was doing for FFVIII as @Omicron plays along would be extremely simple; it's absolutely not a good enough reason to play a worse version of the game.
Anyway, I'll repeat my suggestion that the best way to experience Final Fantasy Tactics is to use the PSX version on emulator modified by the LFT mod - for those who really think the WotL translation is better, there's even a version which adds that in - and, if people want me to, I can go on a long, in-depth analysis on why the LFT mod is as close to a "true-in-spirit remaster" as we're likely to get for a while.
Speaking of which, if somebody can confirm for me that posting a link to the page from where the mod can be downloaded doesn't break thread or site rules - the site only has the mod, it doesn't have the original game, you need to own the original game and then apply the mod on your own - I can provide the link. So that people can actually download it and try it for themselves, and be able to compare the mechanical differences on their own, instead of having to rely on my analysis of it.
Plus, as mentioned, posting the differences in translation like I was doing for FFVIII as @Omicron plays along would be extremely simple; it's absolutely not a good enough reason to play a worse version of the game.
Anyway, I'll repeat my suggestion that the best way to experience Final Fantasy Tactics is to use the PSX version on emulator modified by the LFT mod - for those who really think the WotL translation is better, there's even a version which adds that in - and, if people want me to, I can go on a long, in-depth analysis on why the LFT mod is as close to a "true-in-spirit remaster" as we're likely to get for a while.
Speaking of which, if somebody can confirm for me that posting a link to the page from where the mod can be downloaded doesn't break thread or site rules - the site only has the mod, it doesn't have the original game, you need to own the original game and then apply the mod on your own - I can provide the link. So that people can actually download it and try it for themselves, and be able to compare the mechanical differences on their own, instead of having to rely on my analysis of it.
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Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
With how legally murky emulation is I think it's best we don't link to anything involving it. The fact you've informed us it exists is enough, and those interested can search it out on their own.
Incidentally how does the WotL translation fall apart in the late game? I've only ever played that edition on PSP, not the PSX original.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
It becomes so excessively archaic that it is incomprehensible. Also, several characters have their characterization changed heavily, and while it might just be that the original translation had it wrong to begin with, when the result is that the game's main villain appear to be an underling of the villain you kill halfway through, it's weird. I would need to post the actual text of the game to explain it more clearly, but the ending of the game in the WotL version is quite confusing if you haven't played the original and thus already know what's going on.
Gamefaq has the script for both versions, so anybody who is curious can check the two and decide for themselves which of the two is clearer.
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
LFT if a good mod, if a bit dated. It's however not how the game exists as baseline, and frankly FFT mods in general do cater more to veterans that want a spin for a playthrough than to a first-timer. See what LFT does to the Goland sidequest/Nelveska Temple and the Deep Dungeon.
Thena gain the best mod so far is The Lion War ReMixed, if only for this:
Andy0915
I should write something clever here but...effort.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Kyle does appear in Parasite Eve 2 (its where he originates from) but his characterization is very different in that game.
Third Birthday really was a character assassination on almost every member of the cast from previous games.
I still haven't forgotten or forgiven what they did to Maeda. They made him a complete creep in Third Birthday.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
Yeah, it's not a great position to blame a game for another that came a decade later butchering everything that came before and ignoring the rest. Still, that's getting offtopic, so lets leave that aside.
Out of curiosity, is there a chance there's a mod for Tactics correcting the text, as a middle ground?
Out of curiosity, is there a chance there's a mod for Tactics correcting the text, as a middle ground?
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Do you mean a fan translation? Not that I know of. As I said, there are mods that just put the WotL translation into the PSX game, replacing the original translation but making no other modifications, for whatever that might be worth. I prefer to use a mod that also adds gameplay modifications because having to waste a ton of time grinding at the very beginning of the game is a chore, but mods that modify only the text while leaving the rest of the game untouched absolutely exist.
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- Pronouns
- She/They
I guess if it comes down to it one option would be to play the first, I dunno, hour or two of each version of Tactics, and just see which version Omi vibes with more? Full simultaneous playthroughs are probably out of the question, but sampling each might be a bit better than trying to figure out which you'd prefer by research/watching the stans of each version argue over it in the thread.
Whatever version arguements are put forward, I'll at least put forward my own opinion that the farthest Omi should go in patching/overhauling is minor things like fixing the spellcasting slowdown in the PSP version; actually installing an overhaul mod like LFT or WotL Tweak defeats half the purpose of experiencing the game as it is in the first place.
Final Fantasy VIII: Final Thoughts
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Final Fantasy VIII, Final Thoughts
Disc 1 of Final Fantasy VIII is the best Final Fantasy game of all time.
Unfortunately, then the game keeps going.
…
It's hard to tell the extent to which Final Fantasy VIII happened to hit in my strike zone and the extent to which it literally shaped that strike zone in the first place, more than twenty years ago. Choreographed duels mixing swords and magic? Protagonists with cool facial scars? Modern fantasy set in a fantastical world where guns, cars and modern architecture exist alongside monsters and magic? Magical high school that set the typical beats of a teenager's life and growth against fantastical happenings and deadly battles? Stories mixing personal drama and fantasy tropes such as witches but grounding them in semi-realistic geopolitics? Ominous Latin chanting? Evil women? They are all things that I love.
They're also all defining features of Disc 1 that the game progressively leaves behind as it goes on. And what replaces it is… Stranger.
I've been struggling to put together my thoughts on FF8 for a few days now. What can I say that I haven't already said before?
Let's take it in order.
On Story
Final Fantasy VIII's story is deeply frustrating to me, because it has within it the seeds of greatness, yet it fails to develop them to their full potential.
I truly love what VIII puts down in its opening disc. Balamb Garden, the shiny, white, pristine school of battle magic, which grows increasingly sinister with each passing hours. You want that place to just be unambiguously cool, because come on, it's a magic high school where teenagers ('teenagers like you,' implicitly, in the game's original intended demographic) get to master magic powers and badass fighting styles and go on combat missions that shape the fate of the world. But at the same time, the game raises the question - isn't it kinda fucked up that these are children being raised and used as soldiers? And say, isn't there quite an unusual number of orphans among them? And isn't it suspicious how the faculty keeps telling you not to worry about rumors regarding the side-effects of the powerful spirits you're learning to bind to yourselves? But at the same time, look at this prom ball! This cool uniform! Wouldn't you want to study at Balamb Garden? Isn't Cid almost like a father figure, someone you want to like and trust?
And then, as the game progresses, it eventually turns out that… Yes, Cid is in fact a literal father figure that everyone is justified in liking and trusting. The child soldier mercenaries had a true purpose and that purpose wasn't actually sinister but unambiguously positive (protecting the world from the apocalyptic threat of the final witch). The Garden Faculty were, perhaps, setting the Garden on the wrong path, but now you've kicked them all out and don't have to worry about that. The GFs did erase your memories, but then you got those memories back, so it's fine, and we won't be talking about it ever again. Cid will never be taken to account for raising child soldiers hopped up on memory-eating juice. Aren't child soldiers kind of fucked up? The game asks, and then it says, "yeah, they sure are," and just doesn't elaborate. You're left just waiting for a resolution that will never come.
Galbadia is introduced as a complicated nation, a dictatorship bent on conquest whose ambitions were shaped by the fires of the Sorceress War, its leadership riven by conflict over using a Sorceress of their own. Edea takes it over in a sudden and dramatic reversal of power roles, suggesting the use of mind control magic to influence the population, and then… The game leaves it there. For the rest of the story, Galbadia serves as a source of infinite soldiers for the bad guys to deploy. When Edea vanishes, Seifer and Ultimecia just take over as if nothing had happened. Some citizens have updated dialogue to reflect this, but Galbadia as a political entity never matters again. It's just there to feed you mooks to destroy. Until the end of the game, General Caraway remains in his house, answering the same three questions you can ask him and playing cards with you if you want, and he never has any new dialogue with Rinoa ever again. Is the threat of Galbadian imperialism even solved? Now that Seifer and Ultimecia are gone, will pacifists somehow end up in charge? Who knows! The game clearly doesn't care about that.
The whole game is like this! It keeps introducing things it never elaborates on, asking questions and then not following them up with anything. "Persecution of witches sounds like it would be bad," yes game, it sure does, you going anywhere with that? No? Ah, well.
I'm getting mad about the opening movie now. The first thing we see in the game, aside from Rinoa, is Squall and Seifer dueling and inflicting identical scars on one another. They are framed as rivals, vying for equal narrative importance, mirroring one another, and that's a cheque Seifer absolutely cannot cash. Yes, his position as the misguided Sorceress's Knight to a sorceress that doesn't actually care about him is indeed a mirror to Squall being the Knight to a Sorceress who loves him, but that's just… Not enough? He never earns the narrative weight required to truly warrant top billing with Rinoa, Squall and Edea on the game's cover. He's not even a rival. He's some asshole from school.
I could go on. I could take apart pretty much every single element in the game's story and ask, "but what point is this driving towards?" Culminating, of course, in Ultimecia/Artemisia: A character who is almost one of the best villains in Final Fantasy history, until you reach the end and it turns out the game didn't have any last-minute reveal, any cool twist, any nuance of character to bring about at the end, that it was running on empty the entire time, putting up a facade of a cool design and a couple of nice evil speeches to disguise the vacuous Nothing at the heart of its Big Bad. What you have to go on to draw a picture of Ultimecia is one speech she gives while in the body of another character, in which she alludes to past persecution which we never see or experience, and then the entire rest of her role in the narrative tries to rest on this one cool moment in which she didn't even look like the person she actually is. I'm not sayin Ultimecia specifically needed to be Future Rinoa, she just needed to be something, anything. Because the way she carries herself, her style, her contemptuous pride, it's all fantastic dressing, and I want that dressing to rest on a foundation of real characterization, of actual depth, I want her to be good.
Instead she's merely okay.
As I was saying, I could spend this entire post going through the game in sequence to find all the ways it doesn't work. Instead, I'll say this: The central arc of Final Fantasy VIII, that being the romance between Squall and Rinoa, is actually the best romance Final Fantasy has ever done, and it works completely, to the point that I barely even noticed how much it relied on the Damsel in Distress angle with multiple scenes of a hapless Rinoa needing Squall to save her, because their relationship is genuinely compelling. This is where FF8 shines: In character work, in dialogue, in relationships. Laguna's entire plotline is about confronting Squall with his father's life, and how a man who was incredibly goofy and unserious was still, ultimately, more of a force for positive change in the world than Squall was until he shed his apathetic mercenary ethos. Does it make sense that our two heroes adrift in space would stumble upon the Ragnarok, completely operational after seventeen years drifting in space? No, but Squall and Rinoa hugging while Eyes On Me plays is one of the best emotional beats in the series.
Emotion. That's where Final Fantasy VIII shines. Not in realistic events, not in thematic depth, not in actual resolutions to the plot beats it raises, but in emotional truth, in embracing the power of feelings and vibes. What matters isn't the fate of the world, it's the fate of these people. I've been thinking a lot about the fact that Selphie, Zell and Irvine kind of don't have a lot going on as characters, and I'm realizing that I've been thinking of 'a lot going on' in terms shaped by modern gaming's companion systems - that a character isn't just a personality, but also a backstory to progressively uncover as the game goes on, that they need an arc, a personal side quest, and an emotional resolution. Selphie, Zell and Irvine (and frankly, past Disc 1, Quistis as well) don't really have any of that. What they have is being fun to hang out with.
That's all they need to be, really. You care about Selphie not because you've spent twenty hours uncovering the trauma of her childhood, but because she's energetic and weirdly amoral and violent in a way that contrasts her bubbly and cheerful attitude, and that makes her fun.
In the end, the fate of the entire universe, every nation on earth, every star in the sky, all past and present and future, comes down to the relationship and shared history of Cid and Edea Kramer, the six orphans under their care, the father of one of these orphans, the daughter of that guy's ex-girlfriend, and a witch from the future. To save any of these handful of people is the same as saving the world.
…
But also it's impossible to fully ignore the fact that the game, like.
Isn't finished.
I've hit on this in the last post, so I'll only be brief: What even is Hyne, Lunar Cry where, Seifer arc not complete, Ultimecia more time to cook, whatever happened to the NORG of tomorrow, etc. But it leaves me wondering to what extent the game was ever interested in answering these questions even if it did have more time to cook. Was the game ever going to flesh out Ultimecia, or did the writer just think what they had was perfectly sufficient? Was the Lunar Cry ever meant to have more of an impact than it does in the story as it exists?
Disregarding what I just said about the party members above, it's striking to me that every single FF7 cast member has something that looks vaguely like a moment of narrative focus: Cloud, Aerith and Tifa are the centerpiece of the narrative, of course, but Barret gets Correl and Dyne, Red XIII gets the Gi Tribe, Yuffie gets Wutai, Cait Sith gets the Ancient Temple's "sacrifice," Vincent gets the meeting with Lucrecia in the cave, Cid gets to lead the team for a bit and to finally go to space. By contrast, even though VIII has fewer characters, it nonetheless gives them less focus. Selphie's visit to Trabia barely counts, Irvine is a secondary character even in the memories he reveals to others, Zell gets one visit to his bedroom. That's it. Quistis's arc about alienation from her peers and longing for a romantic connection? Never resolve.
I'm not saying every game needs to follow modern narrative structure but give these poor bastards a loyalty mission, like c'mon. But like I said, this feels like the kind of thing that would have been in the game… If it was, you know.
Finished.
Do I come out of FF8 with a positive experience? Well it's the Narrative Construction equivalent of that "glowing anime recommendation only 70% caveats": Yes, I did like the game's story. Yes, I have an overall positive impression of it. But I'm really more interested in talking about all the flaws in it than the positives.
Still - even a mediocre story riddled with holes can save itself a lot of credit by ending well, and this is one respect in which VIII clearly surpasses its predecessor: The final cinematic is fantastic, and a perfect positive note to end the game on. Combine with the game having a fantastic opening hours, and the game starts well, ends well, and it becomes easy to forget and forgive all the trouble in the middle.
On Gameplay
Oh god, oh fuck.
This is where everything breaks. While the story of FF8 has issues but is still, at its core, great but flawed, the gameplay is just. It's.
It's not good, guys.
The junction system is a fascinating idea and I really wish Square had had a chance to refine it over new iterations in subsequent games, so that we could see what a good implementation of it looks like. I cannot, however, blame them for dropping it instantly and never looking at it again, because its FF8 incarnation is just… It's not even just that it's bad. It's that whatever merits it may have had exist in such a context as to erase them and emphasize the flaws. It's not just that the junction system has problems; it's that the junction system exists in the same game that also inexplicably has level scaling, so you're faced with stupid incentives like carding enemies instead of ever gaining a level or hitting certain level thresholds to draw specific spell lists. It 's not just that the junction system is broken, it's that the junction system exists in a PSX game where navigating the UI to check your magic list, exchange spells between characters and compare different junction benefits is incredibly inconvenient and takes forever, so you're disincentivized to actually try things out and explore the depth the system has to offer.
And none of it is like, obscure or second-order aspects of gameplay. It takes many hours for VI to introduce magicites and even longer for the problems with that system to become obvious. It takes less than an hour for a new player experiencing Final Fantasy VIII for the first time to realize: 1) More spells to junction means more power to your stats, so you should find the weakest enemy you can Draw from and spend the next half-hour drawing 100 of each spell they have, 2) actually casting your spells depletes your junctioned stocks and weakens you so you should hoard them like a dragon. And thai is only the surface level! Things get even more broken the further you explore the system! It's like the system wants you to break it wide open, and in fact has resolved to make actually engaging with the game fairly inconvenient as hell. An inconvenience which is emphasized by the game's insistence on constantly changing your party, creating perverse incentives towards developing a way of playing that erases each character's already lacking identity to get them to Just Work every time the game insists on swapping someone in and out.
As for the aspects of gameplay that aren't junction… The change to Limit Break mechanics, where it's triggered by being at low health rather than a gauge that accumulates over time, is an interesting one, and I suppose whether you like it or not depends on whether you consider the incentives this creates (maxing out HP and then leaving your characters in 'Crisis' at ~2k HP, having Squall perpetually affected by Blind, that kind of thing) to be creative applications of gameplay or counter-intuitive ways of breaking the game by abusing its mechanics. Personally I lean towards the latter, though I certainly was glad to abuse Limit mechanics when dealing with Malboro hunting and the Omega Weapon.
The concept of refining magic from items is a really interesting one, but it's one that is inherently rooted in solving a problem of the game's own making, which is that it completely broke the classical JRPG economy. You have a steady drip of infinite money from your salary, but you can only purchase basic healing items and nothing else; there is no armor or accessories, your weapons are upgraded by hunting for crafting materials by killing the right opponents, magic is drawn from enemies or refined instead of purchased as spells or Materia. The result is that the entire 'item shop' system is there as vestigial remnants that no longer make sense within the game. Even the weapon upgrade system can be largely ignored because all weapons do is increase Strength, which can already be capped at 255 through Junctions.
And then, there are GFs, which frustrate me, because they're so interesting. The way each GF comes packaged with its own set of abilities that you purchase with AP, so characters' abilities are based on the combination of GFs equipped? That's really interesting! Unfortunately the fascinating 'GF customization' system, with Amnesia items that let you erase abilities from their menu so that you can make room to teach them new abilities and customize their set, is completely irrelevant to 90% of normal gameplay because the natural incentives created by the game is to split your GFs three ways so that everyone in your party is loaded up with every ability and junction. Also, like half of the GF roster is Drawn from battle or hidden behind obtuse side quests. And yet, even though this is the game where GFs are most important to the gameplay, it completely fails to really explore them as a narrative device. I will die mad that no character even brings up talking to their GFs after learning that junctioning gives them amnesia. But you've heard me rant about this enough.
The thing is… Maybe I'd enjoy VIII more on a second run. Because now that I actually know how everything works and can look up all details of the mechanics without risking spoiling myself, I could just decide exactly how to play ahead of time, where all the break points are, exactly how to tackle each issue and how to plan my path in advance. Maybe that is what it would take to make the game fun.
Unfortunately we'll never know because I'm unlikely to ever play it again.
On Presentation
This is where everything is almost redeemed.
Even looking at it from today's perspective, decades later and with CGI technology evolved far beyond the capabilities of the PSX, Final Fantasy VIII remains an incredibly beautiful game.
This is most evident in its FMVs, which blow so far past what VII was capable of as to be in a different world entirely. It's not just that the character models are more realistic; it's that the game has a sense of cinematography, it knows how to frame and block a scene, how to create choreography, how to make exciting action, how to emulate the language of film. That shot of Squall looking at the briefing pictures of Dollet and then pulling them down to reveal the real Dollet wracked by artillery? The moon staring down like an eye? Squall and Seifer's duel? The graduation ball dance? Everything about the ending? This game looks so fucking good it almost humiliates the entire PSX generation.
But it's not just the immaculate FMVs. Every screen in the game is composed like a movie shot, leveraging camera angles to create atmosphere - whether it's the atrium of Balamb Garden, where Squall is seen from above as just one tiny student among many others, or the close-up shots of Timber making the town feel small, cozy, a peaceful place unjustly beleaguered by imperial ambitions (only to reveal that Timber is actually a huge city when we climb above the rooftops), everything about the perpetual glittering night of Deling City evoking the ideal Paris, the gothic grandeur (leaning into kitsch at times) of Ultimecia's Castle, the space shots of the Lunar Base…
The game is just beautiful to move through, which is good, because it pays for that artistic excellence with constant loading times every time you take five steps. But you almost forgive it. Even the overworld feels bigger than it's ever been, the roads and railways (with actual trains moving through!) make it feel more interconnected, more real.
And the music! Here, just listen to Force Your Way again.
Liberi Fatali is a total banger, Succession of Witches is fantastically ominous, every battle theme drips with thrilling action, I've been listening to remixes of The Extreme on loop for the past three days. I can't really say much about the music because I lack the proper background, but what I can say is that the game sounds really freaking good.
When the game closed, and I sat watching through the ending movie, the credits movie, and the post-credit movie, every issue I had with the game almost seemed to fade away and not matter anymore.
It's just a shame for the best part of a video game to be the part where you're not playing it.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy VIII is not the best Final Fantasy game so far. The trend has finally been broken. While I love its characters, its setting, its style, the story overpromises and fails to fully deliver, and the gameplay, while incredibly original and ambitious, pays the price of its hubris. It is, above all, a game that fails because it attempts so much, in too little time. How much of the game could have been improved by just giving it an extra six months to cook? It's impossible to say. It is unlikely that any amount of time spent on the junction system could have truly solved the problems inherent to its premises, but it could have made a good story into one of the greatest video game series of all time.
Still. It is the most beautiful Final Fantasy game to date, and it is the greatest love story told in a Final Fantasy game so far. For all its flaws, these are merits that can't be taken from it.
Our next game will either be IX or Tactics, though I can't promise when it will start - I need to focus on writing a few other things first. Tactics and IX are very different games to me, in that I have never even touched Tactics, while IX is the first Final Fantasy I almost completed as a child. I'm eager to do both, but the tragedy of linear time means we can't do both at the same time, and I will likely start with Tactics, though that may be subject to change.
Thank you for reading.
Disc 1 of Final Fantasy VIII is the best Final Fantasy game of all time.
Unfortunately, then the game keeps going.
…
It's hard to tell the extent to which Final Fantasy VIII happened to hit in my strike zone and the extent to which it literally shaped that strike zone in the first place, more than twenty years ago. Choreographed duels mixing swords and magic? Protagonists with cool facial scars? Modern fantasy set in a fantastical world where guns, cars and modern architecture exist alongside monsters and magic? Magical high school that set the typical beats of a teenager's life and growth against fantastical happenings and deadly battles? Stories mixing personal drama and fantasy tropes such as witches but grounding them in semi-realistic geopolitics? Ominous Latin chanting? Evil women? They are all things that I love.
They're also all defining features of Disc 1 that the game progressively leaves behind as it goes on. And what replaces it is… Stranger.
I've been struggling to put together my thoughts on FF8 for a few days now. What can I say that I haven't already said before?
Let's take it in order.
On Story
Final Fantasy VIII's story is deeply frustrating to me, because it has within it the seeds of greatness, yet it fails to develop them to their full potential.
I truly love what VIII puts down in its opening disc. Balamb Garden, the shiny, white, pristine school of battle magic, which grows increasingly sinister with each passing hours. You want that place to just be unambiguously cool, because come on, it's a magic high school where teenagers ('teenagers like you,' implicitly, in the game's original intended demographic) get to master magic powers and badass fighting styles and go on combat missions that shape the fate of the world. But at the same time, the game raises the question - isn't it kinda fucked up that these are children being raised and used as soldiers? And say, isn't there quite an unusual number of orphans among them? And isn't it suspicious how the faculty keeps telling you not to worry about rumors regarding the side-effects of the powerful spirits you're learning to bind to yourselves? But at the same time, look at this prom ball! This cool uniform! Wouldn't you want to study at Balamb Garden? Isn't Cid almost like a father figure, someone you want to like and trust?
And then, as the game progresses, it eventually turns out that… Yes, Cid is in fact a literal father figure that everyone is justified in liking and trusting. The child soldier mercenaries had a true purpose and that purpose wasn't actually sinister but unambiguously positive (protecting the world from the apocalyptic threat of the final witch). The Garden Faculty were, perhaps, setting the Garden on the wrong path, but now you've kicked them all out and don't have to worry about that. The GFs did erase your memories, but then you got those memories back, so it's fine, and we won't be talking about it ever again. Cid will never be taken to account for raising child soldiers hopped up on memory-eating juice. Aren't child soldiers kind of fucked up? The game asks, and then it says, "yeah, they sure are," and just doesn't elaborate. You're left just waiting for a resolution that will never come.
Galbadia is introduced as a complicated nation, a dictatorship bent on conquest whose ambitions were shaped by the fires of the Sorceress War, its leadership riven by conflict over using a Sorceress of their own. Edea takes it over in a sudden and dramatic reversal of power roles, suggesting the use of mind control magic to influence the population, and then… The game leaves it there. For the rest of the story, Galbadia serves as a source of infinite soldiers for the bad guys to deploy. When Edea vanishes, Seifer and Ultimecia just take over as if nothing had happened. Some citizens have updated dialogue to reflect this, but Galbadia as a political entity never matters again. It's just there to feed you mooks to destroy. Until the end of the game, General Caraway remains in his house, answering the same three questions you can ask him and playing cards with you if you want, and he never has any new dialogue with Rinoa ever again. Is the threat of Galbadian imperialism even solved? Now that Seifer and Ultimecia are gone, will pacifists somehow end up in charge? Who knows! The game clearly doesn't care about that.
The whole game is like this! It keeps introducing things it never elaborates on, asking questions and then not following them up with anything. "Persecution of witches sounds like it would be bad," yes game, it sure does, you going anywhere with that? No? Ah, well.
I'm getting mad about the opening movie now. The first thing we see in the game, aside from Rinoa, is Squall and Seifer dueling and inflicting identical scars on one another. They are framed as rivals, vying for equal narrative importance, mirroring one another, and that's a cheque Seifer absolutely cannot cash. Yes, his position as the misguided Sorceress's Knight to a sorceress that doesn't actually care about him is indeed a mirror to Squall being the Knight to a Sorceress who loves him, but that's just… Not enough? He never earns the narrative weight required to truly warrant top billing with Rinoa, Squall and Edea on the game's cover. He's not even a rival. He's some asshole from school.
I could go on. I could take apart pretty much every single element in the game's story and ask, "but what point is this driving towards?" Culminating, of course, in Ultimecia/Artemisia: A character who is almost one of the best villains in Final Fantasy history, until you reach the end and it turns out the game didn't have any last-minute reveal, any cool twist, any nuance of character to bring about at the end, that it was running on empty the entire time, putting up a facade of a cool design and a couple of nice evil speeches to disguise the vacuous Nothing at the heart of its Big Bad. What you have to go on to draw a picture of Ultimecia is one speech she gives while in the body of another character, in which she alludes to past persecution which we never see or experience, and then the entire rest of her role in the narrative tries to rest on this one cool moment in which she didn't even look like the person she actually is. I'm not sayin Ultimecia specifically needed to be Future Rinoa, she just needed to be something, anything. Because the way she carries herself, her style, her contemptuous pride, it's all fantastic dressing, and I want that dressing to rest on a foundation of real characterization, of actual depth, I want her to be good.
Instead she's merely okay.
As I was saying, I could spend this entire post going through the game in sequence to find all the ways it doesn't work. Instead, I'll say this: The central arc of Final Fantasy VIII, that being the romance between Squall and Rinoa, is actually the best romance Final Fantasy has ever done, and it works completely, to the point that I barely even noticed how much it relied on the Damsel in Distress angle with multiple scenes of a hapless Rinoa needing Squall to save her, because their relationship is genuinely compelling. This is where FF8 shines: In character work, in dialogue, in relationships. Laguna's entire plotline is about confronting Squall with his father's life, and how a man who was incredibly goofy and unserious was still, ultimately, more of a force for positive change in the world than Squall was until he shed his apathetic mercenary ethos. Does it make sense that our two heroes adrift in space would stumble upon the Ragnarok, completely operational after seventeen years drifting in space? No, but Squall and Rinoa hugging while Eyes On Me plays is one of the best emotional beats in the series.
Emotion. That's where Final Fantasy VIII shines. Not in realistic events, not in thematic depth, not in actual resolutions to the plot beats it raises, but in emotional truth, in embracing the power of feelings and vibes. What matters isn't the fate of the world, it's the fate of these people. I've been thinking a lot about the fact that Selphie, Zell and Irvine kind of don't have a lot going on as characters, and I'm realizing that I've been thinking of 'a lot going on' in terms shaped by modern gaming's companion systems - that a character isn't just a personality, but also a backstory to progressively uncover as the game goes on, that they need an arc, a personal side quest, and an emotional resolution. Selphie, Zell and Irvine (and frankly, past Disc 1, Quistis as well) don't really have any of that. What they have is being fun to hang out with.
That's all they need to be, really. You care about Selphie not because you've spent twenty hours uncovering the trauma of her childhood, but because she's energetic and weirdly amoral and violent in a way that contrasts her bubbly and cheerful attitude, and that makes her fun.
In the end, the fate of the entire universe, every nation on earth, every star in the sky, all past and present and future, comes down to the relationship and shared history of Cid and Edea Kramer, the six orphans under their care, the father of one of these orphans, the daughter of that guy's ex-girlfriend, and a witch from the future. To save any of these handful of people is the same as saving the world.
…
But also it's impossible to fully ignore the fact that the game, like.
Isn't finished.
I've hit on this in the last post, so I'll only be brief: What even is Hyne, Lunar Cry where, Seifer arc not complete, Ultimecia more time to cook, whatever happened to the NORG of tomorrow, etc. But it leaves me wondering to what extent the game was ever interested in answering these questions even if it did have more time to cook. Was the game ever going to flesh out Ultimecia, or did the writer just think what they had was perfectly sufficient? Was the Lunar Cry ever meant to have more of an impact than it does in the story as it exists?
Disregarding what I just said about the party members above, it's striking to me that every single FF7 cast member has something that looks vaguely like a moment of narrative focus: Cloud, Aerith and Tifa are the centerpiece of the narrative, of course, but Barret gets Correl and Dyne, Red XIII gets the Gi Tribe, Yuffie gets Wutai, Cait Sith gets the Ancient Temple's "sacrifice," Vincent gets the meeting with Lucrecia in the cave, Cid gets to lead the team for a bit and to finally go to space. By contrast, even though VIII has fewer characters, it nonetheless gives them less focus. Selphie's visit to Trabia barely counts, Irvine is a secondary character even in the memories he reveals to others, Zell gets one visit to his bedroom. That's it. Quistis's arc about alienation from her peers and longing for a romantic connection? Never resolve.
I'm not saying every game needs to follow modern narrative structure but give these poor bastards a loyalty mission, like c'mon. But like I said, this feels like the kind of thing that would have been in the game… If it was, you know.
Finished.
Do I come out of FF8 with a positive experience? Well it's the Narrative Construction equivalent of that "glowing anime recommendation only 70% caveats": Yes, I did like the game's story. Yes, I have an overall positive impression of it. But I'm really more interested in talking about all the flaws in it than the positives.
Still - even a mediocre story riddled with holes can save itself a lot of credit by ending well, and this is one respect in which VIII clearly surpasses its predecessor: The final cinematic is fantastic, and a perfect positive note to end the game on. Combine with the game having a fantastic opening hours, and the game starts well, ends well, and it becomes easy to forget and forgive all the trouble in the middle.
On Gameplay
Oh god, oh fuck.
This is where everything breaks. While the story of FF8 has issues but is still, at its core, great but flawed, the gameplay is just. It's.
It's not good, guys.
The junction system is a fascinating idea and I really wish Square had had a chance to refine it over new iterations in subsequent games, so that we could see what a good implementation of it looks like. I cannot, however, blame them for dropping it instantly and never looking at it again, because its FF8 incarnation is just… It's not even just that it's bad. It's that whatever merits it may have had exist in such a context as to erase them and emphasize the flaws. It's not just that the junction system has problems; it's that the junction system exists in the same game that also inexplicably has level scaling, so you're faced with stupid incentives like carding enemies instead of ever gaining a level or hitting certain level thresholds to draw specific spell lists. It 's not just that the junction system is broken, it's that the junction system exists in a PSX game where navigating the UI to check your magic list, exchange spells between characters and compare different junction benefits is incredibly inconvenient and takes forever, so you're disincentivized to actually try things out and explore the depth the system has to offer.
And none of it is like, obscure or second-order aspects of gameplay. It takes many hours for VI to introduce magicites and even longer for the problems with that system to become obvious. It takes less than an hour for a new player experiencing Final Fantasy VIII for the first time to realize: 1) More spells to junction means more power to your stats, so you should find the weakest enemy you can Draw from and spend the next half-hour drawing 100 of each spell they have, 2) actually casting your spells depletes your junctioned stocks and weakens you so you should hoard them like a dragon. And thai is only the surface level! Things get even more broken the further you explore the system! It's like the system wants you to break it wide open, and in fact has resolved to make actually engaging with the game fairly inconvenient as hell. An inconvenience which is emphasized by the game's insistence on constantly changing your party, creating perverse incentives towards developing a way of playing that erases each character's already lacking identity to get them to Just Work every time the game insists on swapping someone in and out.
As for the aspects of gameplay that aren't junction… The change to Limit Break mechanics, where it's triggered by being at low health rather than a gauge that accumulates over time, is an interesting one, and I suppose whether you like it or not depends on whether you consider the incentives this creates (maxing out HP and then leaving your characters in 'Crisis' at ~2k HP, having Squall perpetually affected by Blind, that kind of thing) to be creative applications of gameplay or counter-intuitive ways of breaking the game by abusing its mechanics. Personally I lean towards the latter, though I certainly was glad to abuse Limit mechanics when dealing with Malboro hunting and the Omega Weapon.
The concept of refining magic from items is a really interesting one, but it's one that is inherently rooted in solving a problem of the game's own making, which is that it completely broke the classical JRPG economy. You have a steady drip of infinite money from your salary, but you can only purchase basic healing items and nothing else; there is no armor or accessories, your weapons are upgraded by hunting for crafting materials by killing the right opponents, magic is drawn from enemies or refined instead of purchased as spells or Materia. The result is that the entire 'item shop' system is there as vestigial remnants that no longer make sense within the game. Even the weapon upgrade system can be largely ignored because all weapons do is increase Strength, which can already be capped at 255 through Junctions.
And then, there are GFs, which frustrate me, because they're so interesting. The way each GF comes packaged with its own set of abilities that you purchase with AP, so characters' abilities are based on the combination of GFs equipped? That's really interesting! Unfortunately the fascinating 'GF customization' system, with Amnesia items that let you erase abilities from their menu so that you can make room to teach them new abilities and customize their set, is completely irrelevant to 90% of normal gameplay because the natural incentives created by the game is to split your GFs three ways so that everyone in your party is loaded up with every ability and junction. Also, like half of the GF roster is Drawn from battle or hidden behind obtuse side quests. And yet, even though this is the game where GFs are most important to the gameplay, it completely fails to really explore them as a narrative device. I will die mad that no character even brings up talking to their GFs after learning that junctioning gives them amnesia. But you've heard me rant about this enough.
The thing is… Maybe I'd enjoy VIII more on a second run. Because now that I actually know how everything works and can look up all details of the mechanics without risking spoiling myself, I could just decide exactly how to play ahead of time, where all the break points are, exactly how to tackle each issue and how to plan my path in advance. Maybe that is what it would take to make the game fun.
Unfortunately we'll never know because I'm unlikely to ever play it again.
On Presentation
This is where everything is almost redeemed.
Even looking at it from today's perspective, decades later and with CGI technology evolved far beyond the capabilities of the PSX, Final Fantasy VIII remains an incredibly beautiful game.
This is most evident in its FMVs, which blow so far past what VII was capable of as to be in a different world entirely. It's not just that the character models are more realistic; it's that the game has a sense of cinematography, it knows how to frame and block a scene, how to create choreography, how to make exciting action, how to emulate the language of film. That shot of Squall looking at the briefing pictures of Dollet and then pulling them down to reveal the real Dollet wracked by artillery? The moon staring down like an eye? Squall and Seifer's duel? The graduation ball dance? Everything about the ending? This game looks so fucking good it almost humiliates the entire PSX generation.
But it's not just the immaculate FMVs. Every screen in the game is composed like a movie shot, leveraging camera angles to create atmosphere - whether it's the atrium of Balamb Garden, where Squall is seen from above as just one tiny student among many others, or the close-up shots of Timber making the town feel small, cozy, a peaceful place unjustly beleaguered by imperial ambitions (only to reveal that Timber is actually a huge city when we climb above the rooftops), everything about the perpetual glittering night of Deling City evoking the ideal Paris, the gothic grandeur (leaning into kitsch at times) of Ultimecia's Castle, the space shots of the Lunar Base…
The game is just beautiful to move through, which is good, because it pays for that artistic excellence with constant loading times every time you take five steps. But you almost forgive it. Even the overworld feels bigger than it's ever been, the roads and railways (with actual trains moving through!) make it feel more interconnected, more real.
And the music! Here, just listen to Force Your Way again.
Liberi Fatali is a total banger, Succession of Witches is fantastically ominous, every battle theme drips with thrilling action, I've been listening to remixes of The Extreme on loop for the past three days. I can't really say much about the music because I lack the proper background, but what I can say is that the game sounds really freaking good.
When the game closed, and I sat watching through the ending movie, the credits movie, and the post-credit movie, every issue I had with the game almost seemed to fade away and not matter anymore.
It's just a shame for the best part of a video game to be the part where you're not playing it.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy VIII is not the best Final Fantasy game so far. The trend has finally been broken. While I love its characters, its setting, its style, the story overpromises and fails to fully deliver, and the gameplay, while incredibly original and ambitious, pays the price of its hubris. It is, above all, a game that fails because it attempts so much, in too little time. How much of the game could have been improved by just giving it an extra six months to cook? It's impossible to say. It is unlikely that any amount of time spent on the junction system could have truly solved the problems inherent to its premises, but it could have made a good story into one of the greatest video game series of all time.
Still. It is the most beautiful Final Fantasy game to date, and it is the greatest love story told in a Final Fantasy game so far. For all its flaws, these are merits that can't be taken from it.
Our next game will either be IX or Tactics, though I can't promise when it will start - I need to focus on writing a few other things first. Tactics and IX are very different games to me, in that I have never even touched Tactics, while IX is the first Final Fantasy I almost completed as a child. I'm eager to do both, but the tragedy of linear time means we can't do both at the same time, and I will likely start with Tactics, though that may be subject to change.
Thank you for reading.
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- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Something a lot of games can say. Oddly enough, one game that came out at around the FF7-FF8 period was Xenogears. Not gonna spoil anything here, just that it was RPG with giant mecha, which was awesome - but everyone remembers how the second CD continued the story. Turns out that between FF7 and FF8, Square kept squeezing Xenogear's development for more cash to divert to its real big cash cows, the now-3D Final Fantasy games, and that had a pretty bad effect on how Xenogears came off.
To put it simply, the first disk of Xenogears is a great mecha/hybrid JRPG with a gripping story. The second half is... a massive disappointment and rushes through several plot points because they ran out of budget.