Final Fantasy VIII is a role playing game from Square Soft, playable on the PlayStation system.  Final Fantasy VIII is among the top ranked Final Fantasy games and, although several years old, it offers games many hours of entertainment.  Final Fantasy VIII actually had a different graphics artist then that of Final Fantasy VII and X on, but the mix around in visual style adds to the beauty of the game.  This Final Fantasy offers the most solid mini game out of the series, has great limit technique abilities, offers a very engaging storyline, and offers fun ways to obtain summons and magic.  The Junction menu is also unique to Final Fantasy VIII.  The minuses of Final Fantasy VIII, including the game starting to seem dated, are highly outweighed by the pluses.

Final Fantasy VIII has an incredible storyline that makes its leading character, Squall, a very mysterious, yet courageous figure.  Throughout the game, little "phases" of character swaps occur, in which Squall and other party characters fall asleep and then the game is played as the other main character, Laguna, in a "dream world" - relating to the phrase "Final Fantasy".  The plot adds quite a bit of emotion and passion throughout the game and it quickly ropes in gamers.  Many teens appeal to the game by its storyline coinciding with a boarding school style life and war zones.  The storyline is one of the better in the Final Fantasy series.

The game also offers a very different equip screen called the junction screen.  In Final Fantasy VIII, every character can learn and use summons, they are actually a huge part in individual strengths.  By "junctioning" a summon, or equipping a summon, to a character, actions besides attack (such as draw:  to obtain magic and some summons, magic, summon, item, special actions, etc.) become available to characters.  While summons can be junctioned on to a character, certain magic spells that a character has in his or her inventory also is junctioned to improve every stat of a character (such as hp, strength, defense, speed, etc).  Junctioning is a method that most Final Fantasy players love or hate, while I tend to not like it as much as other methods.  When a player uses junctioning correctly, it makes a huge difference in the difficulty of the game.

The limit breaks in Final Fantasy VIII are some of the better in the Final Fantasy realm.  In order to beat some of the hardest bosses, however, limit breaks become nearly required in order to defeat them.  Each character has a very different limit break abilities that make more damage in regards to hitting the right combination of buttons, pushing buttons in time sequences, and even walking around (for Rinoa's pet abilities/limit breaks).  The limit breaks in Final Fantasy VIII really add a lot to this Final Fantasy and make up for the "oldness" of the game and other aspects.

The mini games featured in Final Fantasy VIII include a very solid card game and another chocobo mini game.  The card game in this Final Fantasy comes in handy to acquire the ultimate weapons of each character and cards can be "refined" or turned into very useful items.  Card games can grow quite intense, as each region in the world has its own rules that you can manipulate and play with.  The card game really adds a bit to this Final Fantasy, where some other Final Fantasies lose some points for mini games.  The chocobo mini game is actually my least favorite in the Final Fantasy games and to totally finish it up, its required to purchase another device for the Play Station.  Overall, the mini games are mostly solid and fun.

Throughout the game, the tone set is very engaging, as you fight to save the world, again, and for a character that Squall falls for.  I highly recommend this game to past Final Fantasy players and would recommend people new to the Final Fantasy games to try out Final Fantasy X first and then shift over to Final Fantasy VIII, so as to see the full level of entertainment and, for lack of a better word, awesomeness that Final Fantasy has to offer.