Lol… I know what you mean, sometimes I feel like an early Christian who's about to be thrown into the Lion’s Den for having liked this game so much.

Compared to other PS1 Final Fantasy games, I think this one is a breath of fresh air every time I play it. Sure the characters could be annoying, but they were realistic and among the best supporting cast I’d seen in the series at the time. I thoroughly enjoyed the draw-junction battle system and still continue to do to this day. The storyline was excellent, in fact it’s among the best in my opinion. It was well written, extremely well thought out with it’s Time Quazality Effect Theory and well scripted. Like I said, for me it’s always a breath of fresh air to play.

it's not the best, but it's far from crap. A perfectly playable game, just don't expect to be blown away.

Final Fantasy VIII is a very good game, it has a good battle and levelling system which makes it enjoyable to play through. The settings and enviroments are also very nice, and made a change from previous ones by almost entirely dropping the fantasy themes and going for straight up sci-fi. The music's also top notch, with a good number of listenable tunes. However, like many I feel that the story and characters are pretty poor, they're quite unlikable for the most part. So how does it stack up to other F.F.'s for me? I'd say VIII is;

Worse than: IX and XII

On a par with: IV and VII

Better than: V, VI and X.

i really found this the poorest game in the series..
the storyline was rubbish, only one character background.
not like in X

A'yo, FF8 will always be the best in my book no matter what...

Lol, of course it is...