For a long while now, there has been a lonely little gap in the Final Fantasy folder on my iPhone. I could sit there and count the numbers up: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… 9. Where are you, Final Fantasy VIII? Did Selphie take a wrong turn at Galbadia? Was Squall’s ambivalence so great that he could not get out of bed? Did they all just forget somehow? The 20th anniversary year came and went. A remaster appeared on consoles and computers. And that gap still persisted.
Well, until now anyway. What a lovely little surprise! Final Fantasy VIII Remastered ($20.99) is now available for both iOS and Android in their respective stores! The normal price will be $20.99, but there’s a launch discount until April 4th that lets you snag the game for a mere $16.99. It’s a big fella, so make sure you have plenty of room on your device. By the looks of it, controller support and cloud saves are not ready to go yet, but they are to be added in a future update.
Every Final Fantasy seems to get its turn being the black sheep of the series, but Final Fantasy VIII has a lot of unconventional systems that went misunderstood by many for a long while. Its reputation seems to have been rehabilitated somewhat in recent years, which is nice to see. It certainly has some of the most epic moments of the series, and the gameplay systems are thoughtful if not always well-balanced.
This remaster improves the visuals while adding in a bunch of quality-of-life features like being able to speed up gameplay. It’s a great way to experience this classic. I’ll likely be dusting off my review hat to handle this one, but if you want to charge in all willy-nilly, the game is now available to purchase. Go ahead… fill that gap in your folder. And maybe your heart?
SE's mobile ports are incredibly expensive.
I can't believe this day has finally come. Unfortunately I'm disappointed it looks like it's similar to FF7's "emulator" port rather than the redone UI for touch screens like the FF9 port. Sigh.
The story goes that Square lost all the source code to VIII years ago. This is why the remaster took so long. The developers had to rip the backgrounds out of the PC version of the game as these were the highest quality available. Otherwise they’d have had to redraw the entire game from scratch which was never going to happen.
Is this not the retouched version from the Switch? With updated character models?
Yes it is!
Easily my favourite FF game. The world building is second to none in the series. You really get a sense of scale with VIII missing from other entries of the series. The politics, countries and illusion the cities are populated by thousands of people is not lost.
And now I can play it anywhere!
My favorite too!
I was so happy to see this out finally so I snapped it up despite the fact I have it one every platform possible including 3 copies of the PS1 version. I am actually really liking how it plays on mobile