In my opinion Final Fantasy VIII is the most underappreciated game in the series.

VIII of course is the game after VII. VII was an incredible hit and really brought a new sense of creativity and capabilities to the series. With such great innovation and and even more solid and dramatic storyline it set expectations for Squaresoft's next installment high.

The expectations for VIII were unbelieveable, and I felt that Sqaure met them in every possible way and it takes only a bit of thickheadedness and ignorance to fail to realize this.

VIII featured one of the most epic storylines. It's a realistic sci fi storyline that doesn't feature any world threatening magic spell, no device capable of any mass destruction, but simply a defunct line of Sorceress geneology and an unusual ability to experience the past when linked to a special individual.

The concept of time compression I do not want to say is realistic, but it provokes very intersting metaphysical thought of the possibility that time has more than one continuous flow. Almost as if to say our current human experience may not be all that is going on in the totality of the cosmological world. It's brilliant! We can be in the present, our relatives could still really be existing in the past, and our children could be existing in the future. Only we don't have the possibility to understand or experience such a thing as three distinct flows of time. Final Fantasy VIII however does give us a way to comprehend this.

The characters are among the very best in the series. There's no supernatrual hero who shoulders the load easily, there's to jaw dropping female with fantastically excenuated features. There's just real people put into an extraordinary circumstance. The way they respond to it is a pleasure to watch.

I don't feel I need to say anything about the gameplay, but the Junction system was the most intellectually free way in any Final Fantasy game to develop a character, and the GFs played an integral role in that. Rather than just being some summon magic to call in battle, they really meant something to the characters. I thought the signifigance of their role in both character development and having a role in the characters in the story was an excellent move by square.

All this is supported by the best soundtrack to grace the series.

In my opinino this game is the most underappreciated in the series, and had it now stood in the shadow of the giant we know as Final Fantasy VII, we'd be seeing sequels and movies to make this game just part of a very pleasant experience for fans.

I actually thought the characters and story for this game were better than 7. I didn't like materia so i favor the gf system. I like 8 better than 7, so i don't think it's underappreciated except by people who fall in line with hype and don't make functional decisions. Still, I would not take it over ten.

Well, we all know whatyou think of X Jimi.

And we all know that I just really wanted to make the first thread in this forum!

lol yeah you love this game too much ^^

I love the characters and the story in VIII, and the thing with GF's is awesome ^_^

this game was the ff tht took the gfx to the next level.... this1 is one of my fav.... the story n the character design was nearly if not as good as FFVII...

The Junction System was one of my favorite gameplay elements in the game. I always challenged myself to find the best magic to get the best results with my Junction abilities. I wished that they would've transfered it to the other games.

Yet when Squaresoft merged with the other company to become Square-Enix their games did degrade but that is a totally different arguement..

I found VIII a lot more superior than VII in the story line. VIII had one of the greatest love stories behind it and also just an all around great stroyline..

This game was my favorite and shall always be my favorite...espcially the arguement of Is Laguna really Squall's father..me and my friends always go head to head on that one..

(which he is btw...look at the signs in the game)

Yes Leon, the signs are obvious. What I think is so interesting about the relationship is that Laguna's love for Julia was really fulfilled through Squall and Rinoa. It almost makes me think Square was trying to send a message about geneology.

Rinoa is obvious the child of Julia and General Caraway. Squall is never directly related to his parents being an orphan, but you'd have to think that Raine's child Ellone wasn't called Sis by Squall with no meaning at all. It's very reasonable to believe that after Laguna went on his quest to Esthar to find Ellone that Squall ended up at the orphanage after Raine's death. Where's a lovely young boy to go at a young age with a missing father and a dead mother, well the orphange wouldn't be all to strange of a guess.

jesus christ..you are just like my friend David in everyway...even teh smoke weed part lmao

he always wins the FFVIII arguements >>

VIII definately has its obsessors. It probably has more distinctive die hard fans than any other game in the series. That's one of the benefits of it being so underappreciated, it has a definate underground fanbase that a more popular game like VII doesn't have.