Why new fan blog “Final Fantasy VIII is the Best” is the best
A love letter to a bygone era of personal blogs and fan sites.
There's a lot to be said for missing the weirdness and personality of the early internet. There's a nostalgia for that which I'm seeing frequently in the fediverse. It almost makes me want to find my niche and begin my own weird little website.
This is why I love the fediverse. I would never find this article by myself.
Do it!
It's almost as if human-powered platforms never went bad and it's all the capitalistic nonsense that made them shitty.
Well said!
I guess FFVIII hit at the right time for me, it was always my favorite, and I've come back to it many times over the years. It's so calming to play, and the side quests and games can keep you distracted from the main plot for days or weeks.
It really is though.
The music was great, the Triple Triad card game actually was fun and had depth, card and item crafting was excellent, the draw system required a totally different approach to battles, it had a unique atmosphere, an open world map that actually had secrets to explore and not just an illusion of freedom to frame the story, interesting unique characters compared to most RPGs... I could go on.
I made so many Reddit comments on threads where everyone was falling over themselves to talk about VII and IX, got routinely ignored, but never doubted VIII was worth defending.
The junction system made min maxing actually fun, as well as being ahead of it’s time with the ability to get rid of random encounters. Fantastic game
The fan site in question: https://ff8isthe.best/
FFVIII was the first mainline FF game I played after exposing myself to the franchise with Tactics. I was new to turn based systems, so I never picked up on the criticism. I was blown away by the presentation, fantasy and adventure of it all. The gunblade was about the coolest thing a kid of my age could have been exposed to at that time as well. Right now I’m big into VII for obvious reasons, but I really want to replay VIII.
Final fantasy 8 is the best...
Agreed!
I'm sorry, "final fantasy 9 left the weird emotions behind" have they played ffix???
I'm not a fan of ff7. I actually love 8, and a few of the older ones but 7 never pulled me in. So to me it's kinda crazy to see like a dozen games released based on ff7 alone, when there are a dozen+ other final Fantasy worlds out there to explore.
I tried the ff7 remake and didn't like it either, so I wish they'd move on from ff7 already and work on expanding on the rest of the series.
I'm very happy they're finally moving on to an ff8 remake.
I think the one of the biggest reasons was FF7 just came first and helped to bridge common themes in the FF universe to a more novel (at the time) style of gameplay which included 3D graphics and a significantly larger story with a more expansive world.
IMO FF8 took a lot of what made FF7 critically acclaimed and fine-tuned it while giving a more modern and realistic story/world.
I see FF7/8 as a sort of renaissance to the FF universe; FF9 and beyond owing a bit of themselves to what 7/8 accomplished.
Haven't played FFVIII since it was released back in 1998. From what I can remember I really liked it. Seemed to have a more mature story than most games at the time.
Exactly what I liked about it too
![[FFVIII] Why new fan blog “Final Fantasy VIII is the Best” is the best](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/984f9310-89f5-45ed-9efa-bf1a9cf04c02.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)