Director Reflects on 25 Years of Final Fantasy 8 and Reveals Changes for Today

Final Fantasy 8 will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2024 after being released in 1999. Although a remake like Final Fantasy 7 is unlikely, the director revealed in an interview what changes he would make to the game.

Final Fantasy 8 wouldn't be released like this today

As with other installments in the series, Final Fantasy 8 focuses on a deep story, with the combat system playing an important role. The junction system in particular, emphasizes director Yoshinori Kitase in an interview, is extensive and sometimes difficult to understand. It adjusts the enemy strength to the player level, which Kitase says it does for some players makes it difficult to find the optimal strategy (Source: IGN).

In a hypothetical remake of Final Fantasy 8, he would want to overhaul the combat system to achieve a better balance between difficulty and accessibility for players. However, a remake similar to Final Fantasy 7 is unlikely. Kitase emphasizes that for this invested an enormous amount of time and work would have to be. Square Enix would therefore have to carefully consider whether it wanted to take on such a project.

Final Fantasy 8 offers an extensive story:

Fans can rely on Final Fantasy 8 Remastered

While it's not a remake, Square Enix released one in 2019 with Final Fantasy 8 Remastered edited version of the game. In this version, the studio is promoting graphical improvements as well as a number of options that allow you to customize the gaming experience.

Fans were grateful for the revamped characters and gave the game a “mostly positive” rating on Steam. Nevertheless, in the end, many expressed a certain disappointment about the overall situation changed too little in the game had – an opinion that was also reflected in our test at the time:

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