Ryan H.

Somebody just walked into my yard.

Let me address your points individually:

1- SeeD Ranking. You are not punished for exploration. You are punished for playing cards too much, for making poor decisions in battle, for being caught when you're not supposed to be, for fleeing from easy battles, etc. I would also point out that at any time you can take tests to level up your rank. As for rank going down, I once spent 110 hours on one play through and my rank dropped once due to me playing cards too much on the Lunar Base during the whole crisis with Rinoa.

2- Memory loss/orphanage. It wasn't just some silly "It's the GF's fault". The explanation is that junctioning to a GF requires you to allow that GF to invade your mind, and by doing so it creates its own place in your brain, which is the part responsible for memory. The reason why Irvine remembered more than anyone is that Galbadia Garden did not use GF as much as Balamb (Irvine himself never used one until he joined your party).

3- Zell/Quistis plot development. You must not have paid attention to Quistis' soliloquy in the 'secret area' during disc one. She talks about her past, her experiences at Garden, and tries to open up to Squall. His refusal of her exacerbates her sense of vulnerability, even in light of her position of great strength in combat, making her a very appealing character. As for Zell, had you stayed at his house during the occupation of Balamb by Galbadia, you would have learned about him, his grandfather, and more.

4- Laguna/Kiros/Ward. I too found them amazingly appealing as a party, and would like to point out that you CAN intergrate them as a party through the use of junction exchanges. They are just as customizable as anyone else in your party. If you mean to say that it sucks that they were not permanent members of your party, then my response is that it would never have worked, and would have, IMO, lessened the excitement of getting to control them in battle.

5- Having all the spells. You don't have close to all the spells. There are certain spells you can't even get until disc late, late in disc three, and I would bet that some of the spells I am about to list you haven't seen in the game. Here goes, the major spells of FFVIII:

Meteor, Triple, Pain, Flare, Meldown, Break, Meltdown, Quake, Tornado, Holy, Death, Regen.

Now, you may have a lot of those, but I would be willing to bet you don't have Pain or Meltdown, because Pain is rare as hell and Meltdown isn't available until you can start drawing it from monsters who are at least at level 50 or so.

6- Junction system. Best system ever implemented in an FF game. You can take weak characters and make them strong, but if you let a character fall too far behind the party, it will show no matter how you junction them. You'll see what I mean if you ever go after the big game in FFVIII, like Ultima or Omega Weapon.

FFVIII is one of the most amazing achievements in the history of gaming, and I have yet to find a valid negative comment on it, except for the character detail- they were pretty grainy in a lot of scenes.

Overall, though, it has some of the best music, cinema, and gameplay I have ever encountered in a game.

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