10 Video Games Fans And Critics Can Never Agree On
6. Final Fantasy VIII
The instant Final Fantasy VIII booted up, players were blown away by the stunning graphics and Nobuo Uematsu's beautiful orchestral score. Even though the characters in FFVII resembled blocky Lego figures, everyone in FFVIII has realistic proportions, looking as close to human as video game characters could get (by 1999 standards, of course).
Despite FFVIII's gorgeous aesthetic, it's regarded as among the weakest games in the series. Although the plot is non-sensical and the protagonist is whiny, it's the Junctioning battle system that irked gamers the most. Junctioning requires the player to stockpile spells repeatedly to perform certain commands, which becomes tiresome quickly. The system is so unnecessarily complicated, you can play the entire game without fully understanding how Junctioning works!
But during its release, it was difficult to find anyone who said a bad word about the game. It received perfect scores, became a best-seller in Japan, and won EGM's Game of the Year. Edge, Gamespot, and other gaming magazines praised FFVIII's Junctioning system, claiming it was revolutionary. (Reminder - It wasn't.)
FFVIII is, by no means, a bad game, but it is far from the best the series has to offer.