Written 9/11/99 Having played through Final Fantasy 8 completely, I can give you my fair, honest review. OK, well, I didn't exactly make it all the way through the game, but still, I played enough of it to give you a good idea. OK, so I haven't exactly played it that much, but I can still give you my basic impressions. Alright, so I've never played the game, but I saw the TV commercial! I've also read a paragraph about it, so I can fairly judge the game. I CAN'T STAND IT! What's Squaresoft thinking! This is the most (thinks of an inoffensive word to use) fruity game to ever hit the planet. It's the same Final Fantasy fare, save the frikkin world, but THIS time they must have been testing the mindless PSX fans to see if they have 100 percent mind control, because that's the only way so many could like this game! You get to control a not-so-erstwhile generically made bunch of emotional damaged fighters from the organization, just try to guess it, GARDEN!! They couldn't come up with a better name than that! Even SOLDIER was better. Squall puts Cloud to shame. Well, not exactly, but it's hard to compare the two's ridiculousness, since they are both so wussy in different ways. From what I've seen of it, here is how I THINK the story goes. Squall wants to be a big name pop-icon like Micheal Jackson and Prince, but his cowboy friend tells him it can't be because Micheal Jackson and Prince are outdated. He then shows him the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, and tells him he must be like this to be a pop-icon. Squall gets upset because he is an emotionally unbalanced puss, so he drives off in his car, but his flaky girlfriend chases after him. That's what I THINK the storyline will be like, judging solely from the television commercial. FF fans, get ready to be upset. There are NO chocobos in the entire game, there is NO frikkin MP even, the weapons system sucks and so does the magic system. FF7 whiners will be glad to hear that summons are MUCH longer in this game, no annoying QUICK spells like in the past, no crappy spells that are over in way under 10 minutes, just good full FMV summons that you can do infinitely (where's the challenge here?) without losing MP, get the popcorn out and get a drink, then sit down for a nice FMV movie, then press two buttons and do it all over again!! Sound fun? I didn't think so.