Final Fantasy VIII Remastered - Reviews

It also felt like FFVIII is much easier than I remember it. I was pretty new to RPGs when I originally played it and now, thanks in large part to FFVIII, RPGs are my bread and butter. Perhaps this increased general knowledge has lessened the difficulty curve here. Plus, I spent a lot of time with FFVIII and unlocked a lot of its secrets; as a result there's no learning curve for me here. Fights which I recall being terrible seem much simpler now. The characters also seemed to level up far faster than I thought they had before, but I could just be misremembering. Squall was level 30 by the time got to Disk 3, and I did almost no extra exploring or random encounters. That feels a bit off to me, because when I originally played I did all of the side stuff before finishing disk 2 and I feel like I only had Squall at barely level 25.
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Final Fantasy 8 Remastered keeps everything that made the original a classic, including its polarizing leveling system, the Triple Triad card game, and the ugly backgrounds. The game's ugly graphics outside of the character models makes it feel like a half measure at times, but regardless, Final Fantasy 8 Remastered is still the best way to experience the game today. Oh, and the soundtrack is still fantastic, too.

Despite my qualms with Final Fantasy VIII, it has admittedly aged very well. It is still a unique JRPG experience even in 2019. It has a cool love story, an amazing soundtrack, and a gorgeous visual design. While this is the best way to play the game, the remaster isn't on the same level as the ones FFVII and IX received. That's sad since this is arguably the best looking of the PS1-era FF titles.