It seems that they've went out of their way to make a game with the least recognizable Final Fantasy characteristics so far, where everything is second to the story and narrative, sometimes even resembling a Visual Novel. Lots of reading, character interactions, world building and plot.
The other unrelenting compromise that FF8 does is breaking away with many traditions of the series: chocobos and moogles have a very reduced importance; now we're talking about big cities, trains, highways, cars and heavy science fiction. Almost to no references to crystals, kingdoms or any sort of classic fantasy trope -- things that even FF7 incorporated in its cyberpunk themes.
Having that high Sci-Fi feel with intense and cult-like magic system creates one of -- if not, the -- most unique RPG I've ever played regarding its worldbuilding and aesthetics. You're part of a very mysterious and somewhat shady private combat academy, with classrooms, balls, teachers and all, and the story is way weirder and more surreal than I imagined at a first glance.
The mysteries start to pile up, and suddenly I've found myself obsessed with FF8, I just couldn't stop playing it, I wanted to know where things were headed and what was happening to these characters. Each revelation made me like the crew more, and while I was a bit off on some of the party members in the beginning, like Selphie and Zell, by the end, I've learnt to love them so much and everything fit well on the overarching story.
The pursue of breaking traditions continues on all its exploration and combat as well. For the most part of the game, you'll face the world as we would in real life, getting trains, renting cars, getting lost and looking at a map that is actually helpful, while receiving a salary that not always is enough. The "on rails" accusations are quite true: you traverse by train and that's it, until the third act. You've got to find the right place, station, guard or whatnot, but this game is way more linear than anything that came before, and takes a long time to open its world up to the player. but it happens, eventually.
The cities are immense and a maze on their own, but indeed they have a severe lack of interactivity -- while some shops can offer interesting stuff to some specific party members, most of the interactions you have with the city proper outside the main scenario are limited...
...Mostly because in Final Fantasy VIII, equipment, MP, traditional job systems, constant weapon changes, accessories: it is all gone. You won't buy rings and armor as you would before, nor abilities and new skills; everything is different and somewhat second to the plot: each character has a specific play style that somewhat resembles traditional FF jobs, but not always. You get new skills by "draining" them from the enemies, and any party member can use these drained magic. It is also possible to mix and match magic with your statuses and abilities, finally making you stronger. Your level is irrelevant, as every enemy of the game (including bosses) will stay in the same level as the party, and what decides what magic you can allocate to your character is what summons you have equipped, here called GFs -- this all is named the Junction System, and creates a game with challenging and iconic bosses (including an anxiety inducing last one) but even more forgettable random encounters.
Focusing on summons is a nice thing, and honestly reminded me a bit of the much more recent Persona series (3 onward), as I needed to gather new demons and summons all around the world to properly equip and strengthen my jovial party members. It is a game that forces the player to understand its systems, and that's not always well done, though: too many slow paced tutorials on mostly black and red UIs (for the first time, not blue!) tries to explain by telling and not showing. More than once I understood something about the game long after the tutorial because it never shows its complex (and very much required) systems in action.
The level scaling is hit or miss too: while absurdly modern -- something that other RPGs started doing in 2015 and FF8 did in 1999 -- makes grinding not necessary in the game (good), but I've never really felt more powerful (bad). It was a 35 ish hour game for me that I really didn't felt stronger by the end. The battles aren't the focus of the game, so it is not that much of a big deal. FF8 has a TON of side content as well, mostly on the middle of game, and I haven't done all of them, only 2 (of the 6 ish) long sidequests, and I'm sure that completing every side adventure would sooth this feeling of weakness that I had by the end, but it is still at the games fault as this was not something that I personally felt on other Final Fantasy games that doesn't have any kind of level scaling whatsoever.
The reason why many of the sidequests didn't excite me is that sometimes they may feel like chores. Everything is a bit harder to understand than it should, the environments are not always easy to see where to progress because, unlike FF7, there are no arrows showing where you can interact in the pre-rendered spaces. They have great rewards in new summons and monsters, but not much of a narrative reward, and the game focus so much on its story and characters that I've felt a bit underwhelmed by the side content.
It doesn't really matter, the length of the game was good for me (the remastered version having 3X time speed helps a lot), and while there were less dungeons and exploration within the main scenario than what I wanted, the trade off is having a more cinematic and cutscene heavy game that focus on its great story and characters. While FF8 makes a lot of mistakes, it also delivers striving successes, I couldn't recommend it enough.
As a kid, I couldn't really finish the first act of the game. I should've, though, because when the tutorials stop appearing and everything starts to make sense, this game shines, even with some faults.