Wanted to like it more than I did, I don't even mind the Junction as much as I thought I did. The story and pacing and just the undercooked world in general really bogs the whole experience down. Love how they just use early game enemies all the way up to the end because the level scaling is "definitely" enough to justify it and doesn't make encounters feel repetitive at all. I hope you like fighting the same Galbadian soldiers with the same Draws and the same item drops from the early-game over and over and over. I feel like they even knew when they included an easily accessible way to turn off encounters in the base game, fighting just isn't fun in VIII. You either murder everything in one hit because the scaling broke or you take ages to kill something even while spamming limit breaks because they had no idea how to balance the damage you do late game so encounters will just randomly have ridiculous HP.

The cast is one of the weakest in the series though I fuck with the character designs. Like man when I see the money they put into everything I just get sad that I can't get myself to enjoy the game more. It seems harsh to say its style over substance but I can't find a better way to put it, there's so many FMVs, so much animation on the characters for different scenes (they gave everyone fuckin tap dancing animations for ONE gag I cannot fault them for that) but I cannot get myself to feel invested in anything that happens in this game's world.