You genuinely care about the characters you're playing and although Squall, the central hero, is a bit of an arse, you still get attached to him. Flashbacks mix with dream sequences and character betrayals to provide more plot twists than the entire archive of Tales Of The Unexpected. It starts off as wet as a puddle, with too much slop and sentiment, but you just know it's going to improve. Square must have commandeered every single workstation in Japan and had them running 24x7 for a couple of years to end up with as much quality footage as they have here. It doesn't affect the quality of the game itself, but it's lazy programming and completely at odds with the cut-scenes that are by far the best we've seen on the PC, ever. The peculiar control system is still present and correct, and the dialogue boxes look like they've been ported across from the SNES. It's still blatantly obvious that Final Fantasy VIII has originated from a console and anyone who says otherwise is talking from the wrong end. If you're looking for a radical overhaul, you won't find it here. The fact that your GFs can take damage instead of you, when their summon-bar is charging down, adds another tactical element to the fights. The process goes as follows: obtain a Guardian Force and you get the option to Junction various abilities such as Magic, Draw (used to obtain magic spells from either a Draw Point or an enemy in battle), Item and GF (summon the beastie itself).Īs you move through the game you're given access to more powerful magic, and as well as the characters levelling-up, your GFs do as well, learning new abilities in the process and improving their hit point tally (for they can suffer the humiliating KO as well). It took us about an hour of solid head scratching before we realised that there wasn't actually anything to it. Squaresoft has tried to make this seem as complicated as possible, and if you can get a solid handle on the concept by sitting through the on-screen tutorials, then you're better men than us. Watford JunctionĪlso, there's a new Junction system that provides access to magic and the extremely powerful Guardian Forces. As well as providing 640x480 visuals, the graphics are more conventional and Western in style and there's a distinct lack of cutesy surreal Japanese-ness, which is going to be good news for some (us included) and a source of distinct discomfort for other, may we say younger, players.
And, in those 50 hours you can expect to be gobsmacked by the visuals (which have been sharpened up for the PC release this time round), gripped by the amazing storyline, and left cold by the feeling that you're not actually having to do a great deal to progress.Ī few things have changed since the last outing.
Unless you're particularly good or especially bad at these games, you can expect to complete it in about 50 hours. In a lot of respects the game is exactly the same as Final Fantasy VII.
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