Finished Final Fantasy VIII today. Teenage me would be so happy. I mentioned it before, but I had the game as a kid, but my disc 2 got scratched right before fighting Cerberus and Seifer/Edea, so I never finished it. Now that I have, I'm glad I did. I certainly see all the problems the game has, but at the same time it had plenty of interesting things going on that kept my attention. Gameplay wise, I hate the junction system. I feel like it does explain it all fine, but finessing it is a whole other beast. I also didn't see anywhere that it tells you there is a maximum number of different magics you can stock, and how to remove them. I had to look that up in order to start gathering the best to max out my characters. I appreciate how detailed the system is, but I just simply did not want to manage with the micro management of it, so I turned on baby mode for a good chunk of the game just so I could see all of the story. I did enjoy what was there. My biggest complaint there was the same I had with FFXV, in that pieces of the story simply seem to be missing. Not sure if there's extended lore for this game, if there is I'd love to see it.
Best part of the whole game: Triple Triad (the card game) and the cutscenes. I have a soft spot in my heart for those PS1 era cutscenes, and the final ones did not disappoint.
Think I'm going to play a few shorter games in between BoI runs, then play FFVII. This may come as a shocker, but this is one of the few I never played myself. I've watched friends and people on Youtube play it, but I've never experienced it myself. When it came out, everyone was talking about it, so being a "rebellious" teenager, I decided not to conform to what everyone else was doing. I also want to play the remake, and I feel it would be an injustice to not play the original first.