Final Fantasy VIII

See the characters on the cover? By the end of the game, you'll wish the bottom 3 had all died.

Let me start off by saying that I know a lot of Final Fantasy fans hate this game.  I know few people consider it the best game in the series.  However, I also know that there are a lot of fans who ardently love it.  I'm here to ridicule those of you who fall into the last category.  And because it's time for me to start explaining why some of the older classics suck alongside newer games.

I'll go ahead and admit that the early portion of the game (mostly disk one) was enjoyable.  But it really goes to shit after that.  It's bad that it starts off all school drama, but at least it was interesting for a little while, outside of Squall being the worst character in the series.  But then they meet up with Rinoa, who likes Squall for no particular reason and decides through unspoken consent to gang up with his group.  They always have to rescue the bitch because she's your typical damsel in distress (more on the characters later), but eventually they try an assassination attempt on Edea.  And this is where it hits the fan.  Squall is seemingly killed but then regenerates (unless you believes theories  "he was dead the whole time" bullshit) and the story jumps all over the place but I can't tell you all that happens because I didn't give a shit.  They go to a city that is behind some kind of fucking invisibility veil, a rocket thing shoots them to the moon (this really comes out of nowhere), the moon gives birth to a bunch of monsters that start attacking the world, the group travels to Ultimecia's time-compressed castle floating above the world (or some shit like that), Squall and Rinoa end up floating in outer space but Squall saves her or something and then they're saved by deus ex machina, at one point all the main characters learn that they grew up in an orphanage together with Edea looking after them but can't remember any of it.  I seriously can't be making this up.

What in the fuck?

 This is the worst cast of characters Final Fantasy has ever seen, and one of the worst cast of characters in video game history.  That is really saying a lot.  Squall is an emo who can't interact with society (what was Square Enix's obsession with these types of personalities back then?), and yet everybody loves him, even the hot girl.  Why?  I've never in my life seen an emo get a smoking hot girl (or typically any girl at all), much less be so goddamn popular.  All of the girls love his ass for no particular reason; I guess the nerd game developers are using Squall as a means of picturing their own emo selves getting lots of vagina.  And then there's damsel-in-distress Rinoa who can't take care of herself and whores herself off between Squall and Seifer.  And she can shove her little dog up her pussy for all I care.  Seifer is Squall's rival and becomes Edea's knight, but doesn't play a role throughout the last third of the story.  Then there's Zell, the cool-dude punk who becomes annoying after the first five minutes he appears in the game.  Selphie is the happy-go-lucky character of the game, who manages to keep her sky-high spirits even after her former Garden, Trabia, is obliterated and almost all of her childhood friends incinerated (lol I'm serious, she is sad for about 7 seconds before moving on).  Then there's the sniper-cowboy (?) Irvine who acts like a cool customer but melts down and shits his britches when it's actually time for him to pull the trigger.  Then of course there's Quistis, but she is the red-headed step-child (figuratively) of the group and nobody even gives a shit about her.  Oh, and everybody likes Laguna, who is better than the rest of the characters, but appears only in dream/flashbacks, so isn't enough to overcome the rest of the cast's suckage.  

Your base: Balamb Garden. It flies, swims, and holds a boxing match with another Garden.

The other aspects of the game aren't quite as bad, but still not good.  The combat revolves around the easily-abused Junction system, which is kinda cool in the way that you can earn summons and then learn a lot of awesome attacks through them, but if you don't figure out how to master the system (which includes learning how to stock up spells to increase your stats, which is what can REALLY be abused) you might be screwed by the end of the game.  Otherwise, it's extremely easy.  They also made the decision to have your enemies level up with you (like in Oblivion), which I've always thought of as retarded.  Leveling up is worthless here.  There are some side quests in getting summons as well, though knowing where to get materials to upgrade your weapons will be very hard on a first play-through. I guess I'll give some complements before calling it a day.  The graphics were great for the time (way better than the puke that was Final Fantasy VII's graphics), and the music was solid.  Rinoa has one of the best character models in the series.  The end.

6/10