Looks like Final Fantasy VIII is out on Steam. The pendulum of opinion has swung back to the positive for this title because, I suspect, the people who hate it have grown tired of voicing that opinion. It’s not cool to bash Final Fantasy VIII these days. But I don’t mind. I’m hip to hate Square.

Its predecessor Final Fantasy VII was a huge moment in gaming for me. During a computer summer camp in Minnesota I got my first taste of bilinear filtering when we managed to get the PC version of FF7 running through a Voodoo 3D accelerator card. You know, back in the prehistoric days when computers had two video cards to handle 2D and 3D graphics separately. Wow am I glad we overcame that limitation.

I’ve bought FF7 for the PS3 and PC to relive those glory days.

FF8 was not a glory day. It felt like a cheap sequel to Square’s first 3D RPG. Instead of Cloud, badass mercenary with a cool name, chill attitude and a soft heart, we got Squall, stupidly named emotionally dead trainee. The music for FF8 sounded like a lame techno remix of the tracks from FF7. They had more Japanese-isms, like the “fan group” for one of the other main characters. I’m not going to say that the Cloud/Tifa/Aeris romance was one for the ages, but Cloud never told a girl to go talk to a wall. Squall was a jackass, so controlling him and his dream buddies or whatever against a time-travelling witch didn’t resonate.

Dang, now I’ve gotten myself in the mood to play Final Fantasy VII again. See you in 80 hours.