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I'm gonna do this point by point, just because I can.
Battle 1: Abilities/ character advancement
VII: Materia system. Materia ruled. It forced the player to really make decisions on how a certain character would go. Equip a lot of magic materia, and they become a great mage. Equip the double cut ability, and they attack awesomely. Or, you could really make a well balanced character, like yours truly always ended up with. Except Cloud. Damn awesome swords. It was also much harder to max out a character's stats, which made the game more challenging, yet not hard.
VIII: Junction system. My favorite system ever. The junction system allowed a character to serve one distinct purpose. It's much more focused than the materia system. There aren't many GREAT spells for junctioning, so you really need to focus on, at the most, two or three main stats, junctioning the best magic to them. Abuse the bonus abilities, or you won't be awesome at the game. As a plus, it only takes about 40 some hours to max out your stats with this method. Not shabby. i wasn't great on learning abilities from GF's, I thought it was kind of quick. Where you can learn an ability in a couple of battles, that's too quick for me. I want some challenge in my game.
Winner of battle 1
FFVIII: Junction system ruled in my humble opinion. But, materia was great too.
Battle 2: battle system/battle overall
VII: Awesome battle system. Characters take actions at a good pace. You're not a speed demon, yet you're not too slow to get annhilated in every battle. The limit breaks are a thing of beauty. It had a great balance of party supportive and damaging attacks. Limits come in good time as well. Once you're damaged enough, then you can unleash the hurt. .... or the cure... whatever you fancy.
VIII: Good battle system. Characters, however, can overpower enemies easily. Or vice-versa. Characters can become much too fast, and take enemies out that don't have a turn in. The limit break system makes every battle easy once you obtain some aura spells. Then the game is too easy.
Winner of Battle 2
FF VII: It flows much better methinks.
Battle 3: Story/characters/villains
VII: Cloud Strife was cool. A mercenary, he fought for anyone with money. A very cool persona. The only other character I really got into was Vincent. I love the dark past persona, it gives him such character. Sephiroth was a good villain. He didn't blow me away though. The story was kinda bland for my tastes. The revenge concept has been done over and over, in countless games and stories. I liked it, but it seemed too old. Plus, the Cloud-Sephiroth connection is bleh.
VIII: Squall is great. He's distant, and introverted. Squall doesn't want to save the world. Throughout the entire game, he doesn't want to save the world. He gets sucked into it. The love connection is better too. He doesn't really like Rinoa at first. She's only a client to him. Ultimecia was my favorite villain. I don't know why, she just tied everything together so well in the story.
Winner of battle 3
FFVIII: Favorite characters (Squall, Zell, and Selphie thank you very much), best villain, and I liked the story better.
Final fantasy VIII wins a close battle, 2 to 1.
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