The music was great, the Triple Triad card game actually was fun and had depth, card and item crafting was excellent, the draw system required a totally different approach to battles, it had a unique atmosphere, an open world map that actually had secrets to explore and not just an illusion of freedom to frame the story, interesting unique characters compared to most RPGs… I could go on.
I made so many Reddit comments on threads where everyone was falling over themselves to talk about VII and IX, got routinely ignored, but never doubted VIII was worth defending.
It really is though.
The music was great, the Triple Triad card game actually was fun and had depth, card and item crafting was excellent, the draw system required a totally different approach to battles, it had a unique atmosphere, an open world map that actually had secrets to explore and not just an illusion of freedom to frame the story, interesting unique characters compared to most RPGs… I could go on.
I made so many Reddit comments on threads where everyone was falling over themselves to talk about VII and IX, got routinely ignored, but never doubted VIII was worth defending.