Final Fantasy 8’s director says he’d change the Junction battle system if it was remade

The director of Final Fantasy 8 says if he was ever in charge of a remake, he would change the game’s battle system.

Speaking to IGN ahead of the game’s 25th anniversary, Yoshinori Kitase was asked how he would improve the game should Square Enix ever decide to give it the same remake treatment as Final Fantasy 7.

Kitase replied that the game’s combat system – specifically its stat-focused Junction system – would be top of his list of proposed changes.

“I think you may remember we had the Junction system in Final Fantasy 8,” he explained, “and the thing about that system was the enemies levelled up in line with what the player’s level was.

“And obviously you had to then use the Junction system and how you customise that to overcome the challenge there.

“And I think it was a very difficult system for some people to get into. Depending on player skills, sometimes they just didn’t work out the best way of doing it.

“So I think I’d want to return to that and really rework the battle system on [Final Fantasy 8] and make it something where that level of difficulty and approachability for some fans was a lot better balanced. So I think that’s the thing I’d look at most if I was going to look at remaking it.”

Further reading

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A Final Fantasy 6 remake would take ‘twice as long’ as FF7, says producer

But Kitase acknowledges internal calls for the company to remake the classic entry

Kitase did stress, however, that a Final Fantasy 8 remake would be a huge undertaking, saying: “It’s such a massive investment of time and effort that we really have to think very hard about taking on any kind of project like that.”

Last month Kitase made similar comments about a potential Final Fantasy 6 remake, telling French YouTuber Julien Chièze that he believed such a project would take roughly twice as long as it has to remake Final Fantasy 7.