Video: Digital Foundry Takes A Look At Final Fantasy VIII Remastered

This remaster is utter garbage...

This is yust bad.

Will get it annyway massive fan Of the series.

I will do my plan B, get FF VIII PS1 version in physical to be played on my White PS2 Fat USA.

Some stuff I do like at higher resolution and some are not pretty at all. it becomes very plastic like... maybe a little update resolution instead 1080p or something like that

Considering the oft-alleged circumstances of this game's path to HD (taken with a grain of salt but admittedly fueled by the time it took despite Squeenix's penchant for ports and remasters), this "not up to scratch" might be lucky to look and run the way it already does for all we know.

@DenDen you are part of the reason why Squeenix don’t bother with their ports, because people will just give them a free pass

Why is it that Nintendo Life decided to stick with promoting this game as a "weird Final Fantasy" in every article about it? There's nothing weird about it, every Final Fantasy has an over the top anime story and a different battle system is introduced in each game (apart from the first 6, perhaps).
Stop it.

It's FF8, I dunno really what people are looking for here. The Remaster does a nice job upgrading the character models and the triple speed makes the dreaded draw mechanic less of a pain. I think it's perfectly fine.

FF VIII... oh this was when FF started becoming more self-conscious and always trying to be 'epic'.

@Justifier maybe grab a dictionary and compare the definitions for "weird" and "worst".

@Justifier ironic considering your avatar

No analogue controls.
No enhanced menus (like FFX HD).
No A.I.-upscaled backgrounds.
No graphical enhancements whatsoever apart from the character models.
15 FPS menus in battle.
No new, sorely needed translation.
This is literally just a modded version of the old PC port.
No, Square Enix, you are NOT getting my money for this one, even though it's my favourite game in the franchise.

It looks like I can certainly deal with this. I'm playing them in order, so these are still gonna be an upgrade from the ff7 visuals.

As long as the music is good I'm pretty happy.

@BlackenedHalo So if it’s not absolutely 100% perfect, it’s utter garbage?

The draw system doesn’t take any time. You can easily find a guide online on how to exploit it to your advantage. Put a few hours grind in just after Dollet and you can have Squall, Selphie and Zell at 3000hp putting out 3000 damage.

The core grind is playing cards, specifically getting the Zell card from Ma Dincht, the Quistis card from the Trepe fan in the cafeteria and card mod from Quetzalcoatl. And it helps that the card game is fun!

Also cheat and rank up your Seed exams to ran up your salary!

Still buying it.

@NicolausCamp I seriously dread seeing this outsell Dragon Quest 11 S. Especially after reading about FF8's 15FPS menus in beastike.
Even if the DQ11S is a slight visual downgrade from the PS4, at least it improved in both music and gameplay AND actually perform at perfect framerates from everything I could see from the demo, damnit.

Which show that they did everything so it would play nice on Switch and not just "run" on the console.

It seems wrong to call it a remaster when it has features missing from the original PS1 release. Saying that though, Other than the lack of analogue control nothing has really bothered me. I'm enjoying it a lot. I haven't played ff8 since it was originally released and back then the junction system didn't make much sense to me. It's still a really good game 20 years later, Despite the problems with this release. And it's just fun to break the game with card mods and junction system.

@BlackenedHalo Yes because Grandia HD was such a better port. Oh wait, not it's not.

Why would they spend so much time and effort on the battle models but do nothing with the ugly worldmap? Makes no sense.

The only thing I care about is that the game is amazing.

It looks and plays perfectly fine.

If they had just put all the female characters in more revealing clothes and added a little bounce most of you would be defending it right now.

Not really sure what people were expecting, considering this release doesn't have music bugs, it's actually releasing in a better state than 7 and 9 did. The improved models are a huge plus, but they do admittedly look a bit strange against the pre-rendered backgrounds and such. The only thing I find truly concerning is the lack of analog control. That is.... a very strange decision indeed. FF8 launched with analog support, so I don't get that at all.

I'm still going to wait a bit on this one. I was not terribly impressed with the porting work of 7 or 9 either, so I'm holding off to see if they make any notable patches to the game. Simply including analog controls would be a big plus for me. It's a shame because unlike most people, I actually really like FF8 and would love to play it in handheld mode.

Still better than the 2000 and 2013 release. Those didn't even use the original soundtrack without modding it, and no one should have to mod a game to get better music.

They should have remake it from scraps, so the game can look amazing.
Even if it is a lot of work to do but at least make the fans happy and be proud.

I find it funny how people assume it had to be perfect OR ELSE!! Buy it or don't, I don't care either way, just stop complaining about stuff while pretending you know what you're talking about.

This looks fine. I like the remaster better.

I bought it on PS4 and that was a mistake, it looks terrible on a TV. I should have bought on the Switch to play only in handheld mode.

why do the battle scenes need to run sub 30fps again? i find it hard to believe they couldnt find a way to make all aspects of the game run 30fps at the very least. its not a new game by any means and still uses old assets. its not like the hardware couldn't handle it.

@BlackenedHalo do try to remember the difference between a remaster and a remake. there are some disappointments here to be sure, but it isnt garbage. your entitlement is showing.

@Alucard83 it IS 1080p. they just didnt update the textures or the environment along with the models to match.

@companyoflosers honestly if Square Enix could have figured a mean to get a fluid and stable 30FPS for Dragon Quest 11 S on Switch, then the least they could have done is improve the FPS for these even lower tech ports or something .

Unless it's the old code/animation that prevent the higher FPS but even then it's not a good look.

Seeing how smooth DQ11S play on Switch, I dread to imagine it being outsold by this even with the price difference.

Especially when Dragon Quest gave us stuff like a whopping 5-10h demos ontop of content in the full version you can't even find on PS4.

lol So many plebs complaining about the quality of the game, and here I am 15 hours in farming for mats for the ultimate weapons. I’ve gotten more game time out of this than most games lately - and that’s including Diablo III and MK11 on my Switch.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

@youneedtocalmdow It doesn't look fine, it's ugly and the framerates are not acceptable for a PS1 game running on modern hardware.

@kensredemption That's all fine but this is a remaster meaning that you could be playing the original game on many other systems.

People aren't criticizing the game, they are criticizing the remaster.

The fact that this game wasn't originally promised for Switch in the first place but got released for it anyways earns a buy in my book. I remember in the direct they only promised us FF7, FF9, FFX/X-2, the Crystal Chronicles Remastered, World of FF Maxima, FFXV: Pocket Edition, and FF Chocobo's Dungeon so to get FF8 now is a great addition. Wouldn't surprised me if they remastered Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions for Switch next since that already got a PSP and mobile releases.

I love this video for many reasons, but one of the biggest is mentioning the frame rate for windows and menus in the game. Even if a game runs at 15, 20, or 30 fps it is still very worthwhile to make menus and pause menus and item or action selection windows in a game run at 60fps. It is simply more responsive, more satisfying, and makes a game feel higher quality. Frame rate is each aspect affects the overall perception a player has a of a game and it's presentation values.

It looks and plays just fine given the treatment VII and IX received. Not the FF VIII port of your dreams, neither “the worst version to date, totally unplayable”.

But people still act like they’re starting World War III.

@garfreek Soundtrack is my favorite. Stuck with me for 20 years. One of the best.

It's my favorite FF ever, so I dont care about the downsides. It continues to be the game with the best story, the best music, the best characters, the most robust character growth system in the series, and I finally have it in a Nintendo system ♡♡♡ now I only need FFV remake, remaster or port to be completely happy!

Glad they didnt do a physical that I would have bought now

I've been really enjoying playing final fantasy 9 for the very first time on my PS1. The graphics, while dated, have a certain charm, with all the pre-rendered backgrounds and whatnot. In the remasters of the PS1 games, the characters juts kinda stick out like a sore thumb against the super blurry upscaled backgrounds. I'll get my hands on the original FFVIII some time instead.

FF12 on the switch looks fantastic though. They did a good job on that one,,

@RazumikhinPG It's not a weird FF game it's just bad.

@Yalaa Tell that to the person writing this articles, not me.

It actually seems a lot better than the FF9 port:

• better typeface
• closer to original menus
• no ugly grey sidebars

For handheld play I think it compares favorably to playing the PS1 version on the PSVita. The Vita seems to have better sound though.

well you are not paying 60 for it either. If we all buy this anyway maybe SE will know to remaster this version next year

@aetios I think I prefer the PS1 version of FF9. But I am playing the FF8 remaster at the moment.

This is a $19.99 "remaster", clearly its not SE priority and resources dedicated to this project were limited. I think it looks very good for a $19 work in a VERY big game. People it´s almost impossible to please nowdays.

This is a Good port of a Great game! By far the best Final Fantasy game. Great Story and Music and Fun! Idiot millennials always complain about nonsense! Ignore their comments! This is a great game!

@Crono1973 I've had no issues with either.

I'm sure people are getting "headaches" or feeling violated by the "ugly" graphics. No one made you play it. There are other versions to buy.

@youneedtocalmdow I see so since no one was forced to buy it, negative opinions should be silenced?

@Crono1973 there's a difference between negative and ridiculous. Acting as though they should have done more for this game than they did for 7 or 9 is ridiculous.

People expect way too much. If they had done more and charged more everyone would whine about price and it being a 20 year old game. It literally doesn't matter what they do, someone will complain.

@youneedtocalmdow Pretty sure the backgrounds were improved in both 7 and 9. Also, why is it ridiculous to expect them to improve with time? Is it really so hard to add analog control to a game that had it 20 years ago?

If you want an excellent HD remake of a PS1-era Final Fantasy game, I recommend checking the Final Fantasy VII remake next year, though it looks like it is currently a PS4 exclusive.

Seriously though, it is nice. The game looks beautiful, the revamped battle system seems to work well, and it has voice acting in cutscenes.

@Crono1973 Have you played the VII and IX ports? The backgrounds seem to have gotten the same filtering/blurring treatment that VIII got. I find the contrast between the character models and the backgrounds to be a bit less jarring in VIII than it is in IX though, and VIII doesn't have the awful mobile-style menus or ugly sidebars that the IX port has.

Incidentally, as I understand it, the FFVIII port is "remastered" in the sense that it was recreated in Unity.