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Final Fantasy VIII Fainaru Fantajī Eito (ファイナルファンタジーVIII) is a 1999 role-playing video game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) for Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Windows-based personal computers as a part of the Final Fantasy series. The game's story focuses on a group of young mercenaries who are drawn into an international conflict, and seek to protect the world from a sorceress manipulating the war for her own purposes.

Thirteen weeks after its release, Final Fantasy VIII had earned more than US$50 million in sales, making it the fastest selling Final Fantasy title. Additionally, Final Fantasy VIII was voted the 22nd-best game of all time by readers of the Japanese magazine Famitsu.

Final Fantasy VIII is a departure from many traditional standards of the Final Fantasy series. It is the first game in the series to consistently use realistically proportioned characters, the first to feature a vocal piece as its theme music, and one of the only titles to deviate from the series' traditional means of increasing a character's power. In addition, it does not have a Magic Point-based system for spellcasting. (more...)