Nostalgia creates some massive rose-tinted glasses.

I’ve used to love FFVIII as a teenager and decided to buy it again for the Switch last year, but I legit couldn’t progress more than a ten-minute-interval without either cringeing at the characters or being angry about them in some way. Why are they all so edgy? Why are their decisions always so incredibly stupid? I eventually realized that the characters are basically what a 12 year old would consider to be cool adults when in reality they’re absolutely immature in every aspect.

I really really tried to complete at least one playthrough again in the hopes that it would eventually get better, but snapped when the oh-so-mighty martial arts character, who had been showing off his melee skills in every effing cutscene, flat-out forgot that he has been fighting literal demons with his bare hands for the entire effing game only to realize AFTER a multiple day long imprisonment that he could just slap the guards around without having to get a weapon first. FFS how do you forget such a thing for longer than a week?!

I guess the same kinda applies to FFVII because everyone I know who had played the game when it initially released still thinks it’s THE best FF game to date and they’re usually very very vocal about that opinion, and everyone who didn’t play it “back in the day” just couldn’t understand what was so great about it. I’m in the latter group BTW. I’m all for letting people enjoy what they want and I won’t try to ruin anyone’s fun with a game they like, but I am convinced that a huge portion of that hype is nothing more than nostalgia.