Bad.
Its combat system, for example, is sublime, but bulbous and outdated, like a top-of-the-line laserdisc player. (Games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 4, not to mention Final Fantasy 12 and 13, have alternately detonated and rebuilt the turn-based combat idea.) The game is sumptuously visual in places, like the ragged ghettos of Midgar or the low-poly euphoria of the Golden Saucer—but in most others traffics in underthought, generic scrims, looking like the child’s play-act it wants so desperately to be more than. Its story is told in leaps and vaults, all helicopter chases and propulsive forward motion—for the first ten hours, that is, and translated throughout with the quality of a fan anime today. It is loaded with casual racism, a jokey attitude (in one passage) toward sexual slavery, and its characters are, without exception, idiots. A friend of mine asked me recently, upon replaying it, who my favorite character was. After a minute of anguished reflection, I concluded, “Sephiroth looks cool?”
And it peaks early: you won’t even realize you’ve already passed its emotional centerpiece when you have, her corpse floating to the bottom of a sky-blue sea, but you’ve still got another 40 hours, kid. You are expected to keep playing in part to see what new graphical wonder awaits around the next corner, which is not a particularly good recipe for longevity. These lovingly created cutscenes have aged poorly, as you might imagine, but their scope remains impressive: a monster surging up out of the ocean, a spaceship soaring into a meteor in deep space, a main character being silently impaled while praying in a toy castle. If the fields full of combat and villages full of story form a gradually expanding cycle that composes the game’s runtime, then these videos are the carrot dangled before the player to keep her pedaling. Endure this cave, the game teases, and you might get to look at something cool.
This all felt amazing and essential at the time, but looking at it now, it seems superficial, and not a little mundane. Sort of like, well—adolescence itself.
Everyone creams their pants over FF7 but to me FF8 is definitely the better of the three games released for PS1. The story was more rich, it was more difficult, the graphics quality was better, the minigames were more complex, the magic system was significantly better and more involved, the stats and abilities system (through the use of GF's and magic) was significantly more involved, the combat system allowed for more involvement and control and all in all it just played better.
Besides being first on the PS1 and thus having more of a nostalgia factor, FF7 doesn't deserve its place above FF8.
I will try to explain a little
It's actualy not a really big number of people, but it's for different reasons.
First: Squall.
Some people simple hate Squall, and that is because Squall starts the game acting like a Jerk. Quistis even try to share her feelings with hin and he say: go talk to a wall.
That's bad, but the game knows it. Thats exact the game concept to make hin change from that to a man who cares for his friends and even love.
But first impressions... You know.
And some people thinks Squall is like an Emo. Even if he never acts like one. He never show his feelings, he never acts as depressed "except when Rinoa...", he just don't want people around him and don't want to care or bother for others. And that is pretty common actualy.
Second: The system.
Some people thinks its hard, some people think its easy and boring.
Soo... theres a problem here. How is that possible?
Some people simple don't undestand the system. And i'm not talking about the juctioning magic to stats, i'm talking about everything. All different types of abilities, Seed Rank, GF development, elemental junction, effects junction. You can customize everything on 6 characters and all GFs. Thats a bunch of things. Some people just didn't care, leveled up and hit a wall without enough magic or the right Abilities.
Then we have people who understand the system, but farm cards and itens and or draws nonstop when its not needed. They know magic boost your stats, elements and resistences an them focus on faming until have 100 on everything. Then after this different type of griding they say its easy, boring and broken. And thinks they needed to do it.
---
And there are some people "1 on this forum until now, thanks god" who don't even played the game, but watched Spoony and give it credit. It's actualy a pretty funny guy, i'm still waiting for the XIII-2 review.
But he don't even know that is possible to escape X-ATM092 and was drawing scan from an Bite Bug during an entire video to prove his point.