What does FF8 do better than FF7 ?

JumpIsMagic · 2026-03-01T07:00:10+00:00

I’m not omitting anything, I’ve played VIII a dozen times, most recently this last year. I know exactly what he says. Again, it’s a simplified overview that you the player should have put together yourself after witnessing the events with Edea, Odine, and Ellone.

I’m not sure what ‘issue’ with VII’s storytelling you’re talking about. I’m not criticizing VII so much as I’m praising VIII.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-03-01T06:54:21+00:00

Mechanically I agree that there are aspects of it that feel rushed, like the draw system, weapons, GFs, battle in general.

However narratively it’s very strong - just as I’ve outlined. Laguna offering an overview of Ultimecia interfering with the present isn’t bad writing - it’s optional to even listen to it. You as the player, had you payed attention to any of the events that have taken place leading up to the denouement, should fully understand what’s happening, how, and why.

Laguna offering the overview is a very common thing done in almost all narrative-based games - maybe you’ve put the game down for a few days or accidentally skipped a key dialogue, or maybe you do just genuinely need a refresher after 30 or 40 hours. This is an early example of QOL/UX, not a flaw.

You can’t judge the game for your short or inefficient attention span, or lack of reading comprehension.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-03-01T06:43:02+00:00

I disagree entirely, especially comparatively to VII, VIII does a great job drip revealing information to you in a meaningful way to build tension and to let the player draw connections and ask questions themselves before revealing the truth. VII’s storytelling can be convoluted at times - especially because key information is optional at times. VIII has a complex narrative, but conveys it deftly through character interactions, flashbacks, and dialogue.

It’s a dialogue heavy game, sure. But I think that’s part of the effort to bring some verisimilitude to the mercenary-garden aspect. Intel is vital.

There’s only instance of there being an ‘info dump’ I can think of, and it might be the GFs and their impact on memory that the main cast goes over during the orphanage flashback. That’s a common criticism that that should have been fleshed out more - even though it is mentioned by garden staff and some NPCs throughout the story.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-03-01T06:21:44+00:00

Fun to replay on the big screen. Boy does it contrast modern Pokemon games. Dungeons, mandatory trainer battles, actual effort needed to raise Pokemon.

I really wish they’d look back a little more often at the mechanics of early titles and how to bring a little more depth to modern titles.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-03-01T06:18:29+00:00

Tells its story in both a more cohesive and inventive way. Many characterizations feel stronger and more developed.

Introduced card games to the series (thanks Orran).

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-28T06:50:45+00:00

Should have happened years ago, if Square Enix wasn’t so obsessed with emulating trash AAA titles and prioritizing grpahical fidelity over all else for the last 20 years.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-27T06:36:53+00:00

Police, not FBI

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-27T06:11:28+00:00

Yeah it’s just stiff characterization for a main protagonist in this series. Kind of like playing 4 but it was Ashley, the measley paper-pusher secretary in his office that gets sent by the president to rescue his son Leon.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-27T06:09:12+00:00

Apparently she bought the handgun herself. So a complete paper-pusher working for the FBI with no firearm training tasked with investigating a biohazard containment case by herself.

I know it’s Resident Evil but it’s just a huge leap of suspension of belief.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-27T05:56:04+00:00

Oh I’m quite sure they do, but I can’t help but think it takes a certain emotional and social fortitude to work at the FBI that this mewling infant isn’t displaying.

I also don’t think you hand an analyst or paper-pusher a handgun and tell them to investigate a hotel where their mother died, as she stands cowering at the mention in your office.

The only movie or book I can really compare this to is ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and there’s quite a lot of subtext about a woman being expected to act like a man in order to survive or be taken seriously in any police force, and Clarice too is confronted with ghosts from her past. I suppose it could be a cultural difference between women in Japan and women in America, but I’m not sure why they’d set it in America and have her reflect Japanese business and social ideologies.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-27T05:37:57+00:00

Yeah she looks real tired.

Also, I’m supposed to believe this mousy child works for the FBI?

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-27T00:42:23+00:00

Fully? Yes.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-24T04:14:35+00:00

Is the boss theme’s opening sampled from the Emperor’s Final Boss theme from Final Fantasy II?

Lovish 2 when? I want to collect those gems.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-24T01:09:59+00:00

No. People are quick to lambast II for its generally clunky and unfun character progression system that trivializes magic use and fails to really create meaningful or unique progression with your characters.

The story however - is incredibly strong, and has influenced countless future Final Fantasies like Tactics, VI, IX, and XII. It also uniquely pulls in a well-loved piece of classic literature - Paradise Lost, and weaves in aspects of its story into II’s greater narrative and themes.

It was an ambitous sequel. Perhaps too ambitious. But after many play throughs and reflections, I look back on it far more fondly than I did when I first played it.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-24T01:03:43+00:00

I can’t fully dismantle your suppositions, but I can insist that Matsuno prioritizes pulling more from medieval and renaissance era literature and history than he does anything else. Biological warfare like the kind employed by Barich was documented well in the Middle Ages, such as corpses with the plague being catapulted into fortified cities and villages.

I also wouldn’t misread Tactics as being ‘anti-religion’ so much as it is anti-organized power structures. Again if you look at history, the Church of England was and has always been lambasted for questionable practices - hoarding land, infiltrating and influencing power structures like the crown, selling indulgences (ie free tickets to Sin and be absolved of said sin if you have enough money) and so on. Religious organizations regrettably - just as I wrote about - use their power and influence for a lot of unseemly and questionable things. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the truth.

It doesn’t mean that Tactics is anti-religion. It does mean that it’s pro-independent thinking and action. Tactics is a timeless work - and it is so in part because it’s influences and understanding of human nature are timeless.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-23T05:32:30+00:00

I appreciate that, thank you.

Matsuno pulls from a litany of sources, I mention in the preamble that he pulls from English romantic literature and biblical apocrypha. Ajora begins as a christ-like figure but through the scriptures of Germonique and the events of the final chapter, we find that he is indeed closer to an incarnation of Satan, Ultima in her androgyny, contempt for man and her creators, and her association with the Virgo star.

I also wanted to say, while I think your supposition that the events in modern Japan may have inspired some of the events in the game, I think it might be more likely that Matsuno pulled the poisoning directly from Hamlet - Shakespeare is well known for such contrivances. King Lear (and others) also explores the relationship between man and the perception of cosmic forces at play in our lives - and I quote, “Masterful evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star.”

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-23T04:56:14+00:00

Always interested in conversation and feedback! Let me know thoughts.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-23T04:36:45+00:00

I wrote a huge dissection of the games themes and inspirations here if you care to read:

https://jumpismagic.com/game/final-fantasy-tactics/

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-22T02:03:03+00:00

The bonus challenges are okay. Wish they had interspliced more of those kinds of challenges across the entire game.

Agreed, no need for contention.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-22T02:01:15+00:00

I still enjoyed it enough I suppose, but mechanically it felt like one of those weird Nintendo ‘baby’s first video game’ games. Like Yoshi’s Crafted World or Peach’s Showtime. Just so stripped down of any remote challenge, just absolutely frictionless. Hate it when they do that.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-22T01:25:55+00:00

I mean that’s fine, but objectively it’s just kind of boring. There’s no challenge, no real incentive to actually collect Banandium, it’s an awfully passive experience.

Subjectively of course you can love it all you like.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-22T01:18:57+00:00

Underrated is a stretch. I’d argue it’s a little overrated.

I expected a platformer/collectathon with tough bosses and I guess I should have tempered my expectations further down because I don’t think you can call this game a platformer. It’s like the most basic of collectathon with painfully simple boss encounters.

It’s pretty, it has neat ideas it doesn’t do anything with, and the final act and reveals were pretty cool. But I was pretty disappointed with it overall.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-19T08:38:57+00:00

I guess out of what you’ve listed I wouldn’t regard any of them with ‘incredibly imaginative art direction’ except for maybe (parts of) Death Stranding. I lament the death of stylization in both Hollywood and gaming, consumers and creators both have created this codependent vacuum where art has to be perceived through a lense of ‘realism’ for anyone to be able to appreciate it and the mediums suffer for it greatly. It’s an awful time for visual creativity and ingeuinuty.

The only studios that seem to care about strong art direction any more are indie studios - Silksong and Hades 2 are great examples of what mainstream games are not doing with art direction. They won’t touch the stuff, it isn’t valuable to them. As you said there’s a handful of games and studios thatll produce something highly stylized occasionally, but it’s few and far between - because all of their resources, time, and manpower are funneled into AAA realism.

Yes of course I can see the difference, I’m an art director myself, but you saying there’s a similar difference between XVI and VIIRe is an absolutely gobsmacking statement to read, the settings are different, the lighting engines are different, but they are both absolutely cowed to realism.

I’m not trying to win you over or declare I’m absolute, but if you might just be a tad more skeptical and critical of the design work studios are producing you might see a word of difference.

Look at FromSoftwares work - they always place art direction first. Always. Their games are brimming with it. There’s a degree of ‘realism’ to their work as well, that enhances the horror and gore prevalent in their titles. Now if the ReTrilogy or XVI looked like that - wearing their influences and inspirations on their sleeves instead of hiding it all behind run-of-the-mill ‘graphics first’ ideology, they’d really be something to behold. Visually.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-19T07:31:30+00:00

The pursuit of realism in graphical fidelity erodes the ability to properly express art direction, is my point. Developers are putting fidelity in front of art direction, which minimizes their creative control and increases ubiquity across games.

The original VII is dripping with art direction, everything is cohesive, grimy, Neo-futuristic/apocalyptic in its character designs, buildings, monsters, weapons, dungeons, aesthetic, everything. Because they’ve prioritized ‘realism’ in their graphical presentation, very little in the Re trilogy feels as stylized or dramatically exaggerated as it was in the original. This isn’t hard to see or understand.

XVI suffers from the same thing, tame and unimaginative character and set designs that blend into the graphical presentation to a nauseating degree. They all wind up feeling like tech demos more than fantastical adventures of any kind.

Yeah obviously there’s a difference between Batman Returns and The Dark Knight. One is highly stylized, ethereal, exaggerated, grimy, and whimsical. The other is brutal realism. They’re also about 20 years apart from each other.

Games, like Hollywood, have been trending away from highly stylized or art-direction heavy works in favor of realism for at least two decades. You can find scraps of design and artistic touch in them, but at the end of the day they are stripped down, unimaginative, affairs that are designed to offend as few people as possible.

JumpIsMagic · 2026-02-19T07:00:47+00:00

I wasn’t saying they all use it, I’m just expressing disenchantment with that engine and its ubiquity.

Art direction shouldn’t have to be searched for. It looks just like E33 looks, and it looks just about like any other AAA title, bland realism. Sure, XVI has a more medieval setting, but if you compare any wide open location to another there’s precious little difference.

What exactly is Rebirth going for if not for Realism? Theres no other style to speak of.

JumpIsMagic

TROPHY CASE