Final Fantasy 8's Director Would Make One Big Change To The Game If It Ever Got Remade

What a cop out. The draw system was incredibly boring, and made no sense lore wise. You would come into a new area, see new sights and new monsters.... and immediately have to sit there and draw from them all for the first 30 mins if you wanted efficient stats. It was pace killing and made leveling next to useless, even detrimental in many ways. None of the characters had any individuality and you could just swap off your junctions and have the same stats for a different character. He was desperately trying to break free from some RPG and FF gameplay tropes, and he ended up making a terrible alternative to the standard FF battle system, much like FF2 (Japanese version) and FF13 did. This is the classic "the audience doesn't understand the artform" nonsense to try to make yourself look like some kind of savant that was way ahead of your time. I love 8 but lets not pretend that was a good battle system and that much of the story doesn't need a rewrite to help explain motives and actually make some characters identities and reasonings clearer. Don't bother with a remake if you are too proud to admit the massive problems your original game has.

Not only are Square devs completely out touch with the market but they also have no ambition. I sometimes imagine them as all just very tired old men falling asleep around the boardroom.

On this specifically he’s talking about the junction system being too difficult. Maybe for 10 year olds? For the rest of us, the problem with the battle system is that it is totally broken and easily exploited.

Given their track record they aren’t going to be happy until you can play through battles by just holding one button.

Look at how fighting games approach this. They give optional detailed tutorials with simplified button presses which make them approachable but sacrifice absolutely no depth at all. All the progression and learning and experience are still satisfying. I’ve just completely given up on Square. They need a massive staff clear out. Fresh blood.

FF8 has too many junk main characters, like Selphie, Squall, red herring Seifer, and even Rinoa. Who are barely there tropes if anything. Meanwhile Laguna and his crew, were ten times more interesting characters. Rumor was that Laguna's story was supposed to be the main story but they wanted an angsty teen group instead tacked on instead.

Kill off 1/2 of Act one and Two, and flesh out Leguna's group way more, including the war press coverage. Have the orphanage and memory loss cleaned up and or given more meaning. Quistis is actually a cool and interesting character that started off great, but then .... well nothing.

FF8 reminds me of Xenogears, both amazing stories and great games, but Xenogears was unfinished and FF8 was two stories in one, and not in a good way. Almost perfect games if just given a chance.

FF8 ended up being way better than FF7

i wouldn't know much, just played how it is.

but i would buy it if it got a "remake" treatment on the pc.

The junction system wasn't difficult at all. In fact, it was easy to exploit very early on in the game.