I loved IX, myself. I'm not entirely sure what it is I find appealing about it, apart from the brilliant visuals, the set character skills (which helped define them), and the way abilities worked.
I also loved how they worked summons into the story. It always bugged me how the big villains spent ages finding/building ways to destroy the world when every person in your party could instantly summon a f*ck-of big dragon, a creature with a black hole for a mouth, the god of lightning, a space train, or even the devil, all to kill each goblin you came across.
VIII, in my opinion, had some nice ideas, but adding them ruined what could have been a good game. A junctioning system that allows you to boost specific stats? Cool, but we're going to make it take hours to get what you need to do so. Magic? No, you can't use that, you need it to boost your previously mentioned stats. Summons? They're going to be pointlessly long winded animations so that you won't want to use them after seeing them once. Yes, this means your characters will do nothing but basic attacks for hours at a time, but hey, you have a card game that ultimately gives you nothing! Oh, and did I mention that all the enemies in the game level up as you do except for the final boss who is f*cking hardcore, meaning you'll have to cram hours and hours of tedious levelling in at the end?
The story was kinda badly thought out too. Squall&co must have dropped their character development down one of the massive plotholes, because they had to fudge something dramatic in there to try and make it interesting. What did they fudge in there, you say? Oh, just that they all grew up at the same orphanage together when they were kids, except that none of them remember apart from one guy who never thought to bring it up, despite the fact that the big-bad was running said orphanage. No, I'm sure the bad guy won't reveal that little fact just before you kill them in order to throw you off.
