@bocam: I think I had subconsciously muted that part for myself. But the rest of the soundtrack is pretty ace.

FFVIII's plot development seems to parallel the Modern Warfare-series. Big, gaudy things start happening, followed by incomprehensible bedlam and madness.

Regarding the last boss: the fight itself is comparable to previous installations, and the character's agency in the world is ludicrous.

@zombiepie This was an excellent post. I have played the beginning parts of FFVIII many times over the past 10 years having only just finished it this March. I used a guide for the latter parts of the game. You are totally right about one thing, with a little bit of work it is pretty easy to break the combat in this game, which actually made it really fun for me. After you get to the end of disc 1 the game really starts to take off with its craziness. Hopefully you can enjoy it for what it is, which is teenage insanity.

But be warned, you are going to start Disc 2 with an incredibly annoying mission which is fairly lengthy.

Glad you decided to keep going, because boy am I interested in your reactions on some of the stuff that comes up next. I don't think disc 2 is quite the shit show it's made out to be, but...well...let's just say that things could certainly be better.

Also, yeah, Laguna is the best character in the game, even though his next few scenes can get a bit depressing for various reasons.

Are you telling me it isn't? Was I wrong all those years...

@dudeglove: Well, the story certainly gets convoluted as fuck (even compared to what happens before Squall gets impaled), but from what I remember most of the upcoming plot twists do actually make "sense" and are explained relatively coherent. I could go into some amount of detail, but I'd rather not post huge spoilers here. (Also it's been years since I last played through FF8, so who knows how accurate my memory even is.)

I do see where people are coming from with this and there are some merits to the theory, but honestly it's probably just people that are disappointed with the craziness, which happens in this game

Anyway I always love when people come up with stuff like this to try and explain a game/movie/book for whatever the reason may be.