I am half through Disc 2 of Final Fantasy VIII. It was a slow start and lots of boring training, but right now I have characters who are so powerful that I can beat "hard" bosses by only tapping the X button while reading on the web. The mechanics are a bit weird. I see them as an improvement over FF7, but an incomplete and untested improvement. I say the game is extremely unbalanced. Beyond that I cannot stop playing... I like the characters and I am very excited about the story that really took off in the end of Disc 1. I try to sleep now so I can get up early tomorrow to play some more
