Why Final Fantasy 8 is better than 7.

So, here's my issue. People always rave about Final Fantasy 7 being the best FF game, but I think 8 was better in almost every way. Yeah, Sephiroth was a badass, but you can't rate a game because the antagonist is cool. The DRAW/Junction system in FF8 was much more versatile than FF7's materia system. The love story between Rinoa and Squall was much more interesting than Cloud and Arieth. Also, Rinoa lives? Yeah, she was in a coma for 3 disks, but that just shows how much of a romantic Squall is. The fact that you can critical hit with a button click is amazing, too, because you can do extra damage until Squall does 9999 base dmg without the critical hit. Lionheart was WAY cooler than omnislash, and you go out into space on the 4th disk. The Guardian Force (GF) system was much cooler than the summon system because you could use your summons to absorb DMG and you could boost their attack.

The flashback dreams with Laguna, Kiros and Ward were really interesting and they tied back into the story very well.

My only issue with FF8 is the fact that all the main characters were in the same orphanage as kids and they ended up fighting evil together later on. They call that mechanical coincidence because it's possible but not probable unless you design the story that way. They could have done without that. Or at least have Squall and Ellone from the orphanage and no one else. I mean, you mean Zell's mom in disk 1/2 and then find out Zell is an orphan later on.

All in all, I honestly think FF8 is better than FF7. I think FF7's fanbase is mostly Final Fantasy fan boys that think 7 is the best because everyone else is saying it. Beat both of them, then state your opinion. What do you think?

I appreciated FF7 more after playing Final Fantasy: Crisis Core for the PSP, I will admit, but I still think FF8 is a better overall game.

FF7 was still a great game, too, don't get me wrong. I just find it weird that die hard fans of FF7 argue that it's way better of a game than FF8 because they think Cloud and Sephiroth are cool. They are really cool characters, and FF advent children added more depth to them, but I'm talking about an overall gaming experience here.

What do you guys think? Agree? Disagree? Don't care? Post away!

- Umed Abdullah