Quote Originally Posted by Josh View Post
I'm an oddball on this issue because I love Final Fantasy VIII.
I like FFVIII plenty. I just don't think it's among the best games in the series. Still a lot of fun, though. More than anything, I think I'm annoyed at how much the story falls apart after the second disc. At least in my eyes. I really, really love the first two discs, but I always find myself losing interest after that when I go to replay it. It felt like they threw in a bunch of unnecessary plot twists just because they could, when the game had been nice enough up until that point without them. And it just made the game such a mess to me. I love complex plots, but not when everything just...doesn't seem to mesh.

Actually, I hated the final acts of the game so much that I went away hating it completely the first time. Now I just try and forget about it, and focus on how much I liked, and still like, its opening half~

After saying that Final Fantasy VIII falls apart in its latter segments, and thus I don't like it as much as I might, it's probably a bit hypocritical to say that my favourite Playstation RPG is Xenogears. XD 'LOL budget-cut second CD' and so forth. Still, it's one of only a few games that I can safely say I will never forget. The gameplay is fairly standard RPG stuff, and the pixel-y sprites are pretty hideous. But the whole setting is so immaculately detailed, the plot is completely engrossing, and the level of development given to a bunch of its side characters exceeds that given to most other RPG leads. Which is saying nothing of the main character himself. I was having a pretty bad time in my fifth year of high school when I first discovered the game, and it kind of just...swallowed me up completely. I used to skip school and play it. Somehow I still can't make myself regret that~

Also, the soundtrack is maybe my favourite game soundtrack ever. <3 Yasunori Mitsuda.

You're so mean, forcing me to pick just one. I also really love Vagrant Story for its wonderful storyline, gameplay, and soundtrack, Final Fantasy VII for the point in my life at which I first played it, and the importance it took on as a result, the Lunar games and Grandia for their charming casts and light-hearted, adventurous atmospheres, and Suikoden II for its completely engrossing narrative, for the wonderful relationship portrayed between its three lead characters, and for one of the best game villains ever.

Also also Valkyrie Profile. It has been engraved upon my soul. *mentally high-fives Danny and Elmdor*