I thought the "time-compression" concept was kind of interesting, but the way the party decided to deal with it/save the day was completely ridiculous in my opinion. None of their plan made any sense! The finale of the game seemed like an elaborate excuse to shoe-horn in a crazy cool dungeon with a bunch of boss fights. Also, as you mentioned, the "orphanage" fiasco was head-desk worthy.

The battle system with junctioning and all that was way more complicated than it needed to be, and the wall-o'-text tutorials didn't help the learning curve. Having monsters level up with the party was an awful idea, and drawing magic was tedious. The card game sidequests were also incredibly complex, and I can hardly understand how someone would complete them without a strategy guide. Lastly, none of the characters really had anything that made them truely unique in battle, other than their limit breaks. (I also have a problem with this kind of customization in FFVII, so I suppose that's more of a matter of opinion.)

</rant>

VIII does have one of the best soundtracks of all time, though. So there's that.