Final Fantasy VIII/YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation: You'd have to be blind not to see that Squall is depressed, but it's not generally accepted that he's suicidal. But consider this: he does some idiotically dangerous things throughout the game, which most view as a result of his sheer determination, instinct towards heroism, and are generally viewed as awesome, but in Disc 3, he basically says he never intended to be a SeeD and he doesn't really like it. There's a very likely chance that in his subconscious he's more than willing to do things like jump down multiple stories to save friends and carry a girl on his back across a body of water the size of the Atlantic ocean because those actions will very likely result in his death.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Rinoa is beloved in Japan, but in the American fanbase she is something of a Base Breaker.
  • Which has more to do with the translation than anything else. In Japanese, Rinoa had a lot of cute dialogue that was unique to her, kind of like Selphie. In English, this was all removed instead of being adapted to any localized American form, and some new dialogue habits were added that may have been intended as cute, but ended up being anything but. For example, "not nice!" was replaced with "meany!" which isn't a very endearing thing to say when you're on the verge of tears and seventeen years old. Another example is one of the early scenes, in a forest near Galbadia garden and right before a dream sequence with Laguna, where Rinoa confronts Squall about his callousness. The English translation made her considerably more grating than in Japanese.
• Angst Dissonance: Squall became an introvert as a result of the fact that he grew up as an orphan, the only person he ever connected with left him at a young age, he was never adopted, spent most of his childhood raised in a mercenary academy, and had his memories suppressed by Guardian Forces so he never got to the point where he could come to terms with the trauma of it all.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: It's Final Fantasy, so it will naturally have awesome music.
• Damsel Scrappy: Rinoa, at least before she achieves her Game Breaker status.
• Die for Our Ship: Rinoa.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Seifer. The guy's a Jerkass for most of the game, but the fangirls love him anyway.
• Ear Worm: Shuffle and Boogie, the Triple Triad theme.
  • Also, Movin'. (Song has an unusually long intro - the real Ear Worm starts at about 2:00)
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Ward and Kiros. The interplay between Laguna, Ward and Kiros (which Word of God states was based in the real-life interactions of the Square staff) is particularly endearing (not to mention their normal, adult behaviour is totally in contrast with the main party). Many a gamer has let out shouts of delight when the main party passed out, since it meant that they were going to be treated to Crowning Moments of Awesome and Funny. Not to mention kick-ass battle music.
• Epileptic Trees: Ultimecia's power may have descended from Rinoa which could have happened as soon as one generation after Rinoa's death depending on how far into the future her timeline is. And that's before you even touch the "Rinoa is Ultimecia" theories.
• Evil Is Sexy: Ultimecia, at least until she transforms. Also, Edea, while possessed by Ultimecia.
• Fan Hater/Hate Dumb : The game gained some extra haters a few years down the line because The Spoony One released a series of videos trashing the hell out of it.
  • Squall has a special Hate Dumb of people who decry him as an Emo whiner. Nevermind that Squall actually keeps most of his angst to himself, which is part of his entire character arc, and he has perfectly understandable reasons for his viewpoints that he overcomes as the game progresses.
• Fan Nickname: 'Galbadia Missile Crisis' for a certain disc 2 event.
  • "Esthar Death Corps" for the black-and-green Esthar soldiers, so named because you have a chance of rolling soldiers that do nothing but cast Death on your party one by one.
  • "Grievermecia" for the Ultimecia-junctioned-to-Griever creature in the Final Battle; and "Finalmecia" for the one that comes after that one.
• Foe Yay: Numerous doujinshi, fanfics and fanarts are devoted to Seifer having this trope with either Squall or Zell. It should be noted though that the Foe part is heavily downplayed a lot in the doujinshi making it more a case of Ho Yay.
• Fridge Brilliance: A lot of the game's plot makes more sense in hindsight as you play through it. Cid talking about how it is Squall's destiny to lead SeeD? He said so because he knew it was true. Irvine not wanting to shoot Edea? He had a very good reason to but couldn't tell Squall.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: In-universe in disc 2: Selphie and Quistis "volunteering" Zell to stay behind and operate the others' only means of escape immediately becomes less funny when he winds up kneedeep in it later.
• Game Breaker: Tons of them.
  • Junctioning the right spells to your characters' stats can double or triple their values. This, combined with the Dynamic Difficulty, means the majority of the game's enemies will never really threaten you, especially if the player opts to keep their own levels low.
  • Spamming your Summon Magic will see you through almost any random battle, particularly in the earlier stages of the game. A common Self-Imposed Challenge is to avoid using GFs in battles where Fridge Logic dictates that they'd cause too much collateral damage. The careful will also note that GFs aren't always the greatest solution for bosses, either, especially during the final boss, though you can get away with it in the first phase of it.
    By the way, spamming GFs makes your SeeD ranking go down, which lowers your income... Not that it matters much, since you can make infinite money by buying Tents and refining them into Mega-Potions, which cover the cost of the former along with a profit (and you later get an ability with lets you buy things for less AND sell them for more, driving up this income even further).
  • Limit Breaks, rather than using a charging meter, go back to their roots as Desperation Attacks by being more likely to become available when a character has low HP. This means you can deliberately keep your characters in the red; heck, the game even rewards you for playing this way by promoting you to higher SeeD rankings. Finally, the late-game "Aura" spell buffs a character with a close-to-100% Limit Break probability no matter what their HP.
  • Some of the Limit Breaks themselves fall into this. Zell has his infamous "Duel->Armageddon Fist" strategy^[1], Quistis' Degenerator is a guaranteed instant kill on any non-boss opponent and is available relatively early, and Selphie's "The End" can kill anything, including bosses, provided they aren't undead (although it has a non-trivial miss chance). With the Slots cheat, if the disc cover is open while you're choosing what spell to use, the enemy can't attack you, so you can cycle until you hit the spell you want and close the cover, making it even more broken. However, if you don't use the Slots cheat, it becomes Awesome but Impractical as the odds of it appearing are very low.
  • It is possible to get items that either makes one character or the whole team temporarily invincible. Through the use of the "Chocobo World" Mini Game (requires either the PC port or the PocketStation accessory) or an investment of time into Triple Triad, it is possible for the player to obtain 100 each of these items.
  • With enough determination, some luck with random drops, and a lot of card games, you can acquire the Infinity+1 Sword on Disc 1, which also gives Squall his ultimate Finishing Move. And did we mention that combining that with the junctioning stats above and the ease of activating Limit Breaks means you now have a main character that can smack a single enemy up to fifteen times (and that's just for the finisher) in one turn for 9999 damage each? Goodbye difficulty!
  • The item refinement system is the biggest of all to the truly patient, since it's possible to make a huge profit off refining tents into mega-potions and then buy the ingredients for stat+ items, allowing a player with a high resistance to boredom or macros to easily end up with perfect stats and tons of room for the neat junction abilities like auto-haste. It does take an eternity though, although it's not a concern with macros.
    • Combining the Junction system, refining, and limit breaks can allow Irvine to do 9999 damage per hit of his limit break, hitting 4-6 times per turn. On disc 2, the second you get him. (AP ammo (which ignores target defense) is refinable from Chef's knives, which are easily obtained from fairly common Tonberry cards, and STR boosting spells are easy to refine from common card items, so it's pretty easy to send Irvine's STR into the Stratosphere.)
  • Holy War. Refine ten of them off of one card. Go kill Omega.
  • Eden. Get a foe in Vitality 0 status via Meltdown or Doomtrain, then boost up the Eden Summon to Max. You can potentially do around 50,000 HP worth of damage in one shot.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: President Deling bears more than a slight resemblance to US President George W. Bush. And after defeating the fake president, the party discusses why he would come to Timber, and then talk about HD TV signals and online broadcasts. Someone at Square Enix was oddly prescient.
• Ho Yay: Arguably, Zell clinging to Squall in gratitude after Squall rescues him at the D-District prison.
  • Also, Kiros with Laguna. There's even one instance when he said that his life lacks excitement without him.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Every time the skill Devour is successfully used.
• Porting Disaster: The PC version was buggy as hell. Additionally, the game seemed unable to read more than a few button presses per second, meaning that the Button Mashing Boost skill was next to worthless. However, the PC version also included "Chocobo World", a minigame which allowed players to build their own Disc One Nuke (with enough grinding, anyway). The Playstation version only allowed this with the use of an obscure peripheral that never made it to the US. Additionally, it was, at least to some, infinitely better than the port of Final Fantasy VII.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Junction System has the steepest learning curve of any equipment system in a Final Fantasy title. The drab visual design of the menus does not help.
  • The Draw System is easily exploitable, and grinding for spells is slow and painful.
  • Triple Triad has a few rules which are disliked for various reasons. Since rules change and spread depending on where in the world you play, many players find themselves pulling their hair out dealing with scrappy rules catching on, or else going to great lengths to stop rules from spreading at all.
    • There's the Random rule, which automatically selects 5 random cards for your hand, instead of allowing you to select cards manually. Fortunately, if you make a habit of throwing away or converting weak cards when you get them, it ceases to be an issue.
    • The Same and Plus rules increase the complexity of the game greatly, and can allow either player to turn their opponent's overwhelming advantage into a crushing defeat at the last second. Then again, there are people who love these rules for those exact reasons.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Triple Triad. Also, obtaining all the extra GFs.
• Strangled by the Red String: Squall's attachment to Rinoa is a subject of debate among fans, as, depending on which party members the player selects during certain plot events and/or sidequests, the Character Development that builds up their relationship may or may not be witnessed during a given playthrough.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The traditional magic system was replaced with the Draw System, equipment was eschewed in favor of Junctioning spells directly to a character's statistics, and enemies leveled up with the party. Meanwhile, the characters were more realistically proportioned, and the world took on a more sci-fi feel.
  
  Not coincidentally, the game seemed to be much better received in Europe, where it was only the second Final Fantasy game released (and the first one played by many gamers) and where it wasn't so much encumbered by the reputation of VII or even the series at large.
• That One Attack:
  • Ultima Weapon, as well as Edea in the second fight against her, both have a Level 5 Death Spell that can take out the party in one shot. Mobile Type 8 in the Lunatic Pandora has an attack called "Corona" which reduces the entire party to one hit point apiece.
  • Omega Weapon has Those Two Attacks, one which deals exactly 9998 damage (which means a character must have the highest possible HP to survive - and then they're left with 1 HP) and another, which will kill everyone unless they have invincibility or the "Defend" command.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The game leaves a lot of the motivations of its villains implied at best rather than exploring them in depth; Seifer's "romantic dream" of being the knight to a sorceress, though mentioned on several occasions and presented as the main means by which Ultimecia manipulates him, isn't described in detail, and Ultimecia's reasons for wanting to compress time are left almost entirely up to the player's interpretation of a few lines delivered at the end of the final boss fight.
• Toy Ship: Young Irvine and young Selphie during the orphanage flashback.
• True Art Is Angsty: Some people hate the positive ending.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Surprisingly for a Final Fantasy game, the androgyny is kept to a minimum, but there is still some.
  • Adel the sorceress has the body of a male underwear model.
• Vindicated by History: With legendary Hype Backlash that developed for Final Fantasy VII, (and Squall's further appearance in different titles), FFVIII has started to be viewed in a more positive light then it once was in the past.
• Wangst: While Squall is guilty of it, unlike most examples of this, he doesn't burden others with his problems or invite anyone to a pity party. Rather, his wangst is internal, and like his other feelings, he Cannot Spit It Out.
• The Woobie: Ellone. Just ask Laguna.

1. ↑ Zell's best Duel move is to simply chain together the two starter moves as fast as he can, doing far more damage than a "proper" Duel combo would