Final Fantasy cities #1 -Final Fantasy VIII

I think we should deal with what we thought of the game world for a different game each week as the game world and the cities are in my opinion, vital parts of any RPG.
(This is general as this series will deal with all the games so don’t move this!)

Final Fantasy VIII

Personally, I was very dissapointed with Final Fantasy’s game world.
An entire continent was wasted with the Esthar city, it was a pretty small and useless game area and the visual style did verge on the ridiculous.

But I shall deal with most of the cities now..

Balamb- I did like Balamb, the colours, the design and interiors of the houses and the seaside feel was brilliant but the size!
Balamb had like one street! I talking to someone and they told me their little boy was missing and were afraid he would be hit by a car. How exactly??
One little street! And considering Balamb was on its own continent, it should have been a bit more impressive.

7/10

Dollet- I really liked the visual style of this city. A mixture of modern (neon signs etc) with sort of early 20th century style buildings but where were the people??
Dollet is supposed to be quite a large town but there are about 6 people in total who are in the streets. It is almost a ghost town.

6/10

Timber
I thought this town was fairly good. It had a unique if somewhat confusing style and I liked how the trains went through it all the time but I felt that there were not enough enterable buildings and the ones you could enter were really quite small.

6/10

Deiling City
I sort of liked this city but it seemed to have something missing.
The roads were so wide and there was never much on either side of them and the shopping district was more like "stand beside unopenable doors and stare into mid-air district" It was sort of freaky.
Overall, I did think it was OK, especially when the mission to kill the sorceress got running. But overall, for a city that is supposed to be so central, there should have been more indication to how large it was.

6/10

Winhill
Now, I really lied this town especially in the Laguna flashback when it actually seemed to have some colour.
It felt like a perfect small country town and the style of the buildings is very quaint yet sophisticated. The interiors were also impressive.

8/10

Shumi Village
Whoever thought up the idea of a lush tropical town hundreds of meters underground inhabited by some slugs that turn into cats must have been taking something.
This town is nice and I like the way there is no music, only the tweets of birds. But once again, I feel it was very small and there were not many people to talk to either.
But I did like the style of it and the imaginativeness (word?!)

7/10

Fisherman’s Horizon
I quite liked this town, big and with a nice view. The camera angles did get confusing sometimes though but apart from that, I thought it was a good town if not particularly attractive. I don’t really understand why the whole place has not collapsed with rust yet though.

7/10

Esthar
I think the idea for Esthar was a bit crap really. I mean, you can walk over Esthar on the world map and encounter monsters.
1. Why are there monsters in this huge, densely populated high tech city.
2. How can I walk over this city? It is a city and you should not be able to walk over a city on the world map.
Apart from that, I thought Esthar city was too out there in its design.
Also, if it is so large, why are there so few people on its highways? Where is everyone and why is there only one city on that entire continent?

4/10

As for the game world? I felt it was too modern, a huge highway traversing the sea was a tad stupid I thought and actual roads on the ground also annoyed me. I felt the world map was not very adventurous and seemed to be a bit bland.
Overall, I would rate the game world

6/10

What do you think?

I think you shouldn’t post the same topic in two different sections.