Yoshinori Kitase, the producer of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, has revealed that a Final Fantasy VIII Remake — if it were to ever happen — would see him make major changes to the combat system.

Speaking with IGN, Kitase-san, who directed FFVIII, revealed that the game’s notorious Junction system proved somewhat difficult for players to grasp, which replaced the materia seen in the game’s predecessor. Instead, players would draw magic from enemies and junction a specific summon beast to their character, which then allow them to boost their stats and other key abilities.

I think you may remember we had the Junction system in Final Fantasy 8. And the thing about that system was the enemies levelled up in line with what the player’s level was. And obviously you had to then use the Junction system and how you customise that to overcome the challenge there. And I think it was a very difficult system for some people to get into. Depending on player skills, sometimes they just didn’t work out the best way of doing it.

So I think I’d want to return to that and really rework the battle system on [Final Fantasy 8] and make it something where that level of difficulty and approachability for some fans was a lot better balanced. So I think that’s the thing I’d look at most if I was going to look at remaking it.

Final Fantasy VIII was released for the PSOne back in 1999, and has been remastered for modern platforms with a number of quality-of-life improvements.

Posted: Feb 12, 2024 8:49 pm
Related Forum: PlayStation Forum

Source: https://www.psu.com/news/a-final-fantasy-viii-remake-would-see-changes-to-the-battle-system-says-director/