Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 01:59 pm
FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered – Roleplaying Game Review
FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered is a Roleplaying game from SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd., first launched in 24th March 2021.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 381+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered Stand Out
・ This application requires approximately 2.55GB to download. Please be sure to allocate the necessary amount of time and space on your device before proceeding.
・ Only one download with a large amount of data will be required while progressing through the game.
・ Since it is a large application, it will take time to download. We strongly recommend connecting to Wi-Fi when downloading.
[Please read before playing]
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Entering or leaving vehicles such as cars and the Garden may occasionally get your character stuck between the vehicle and terrain features, or freeze the vehicle in place. This seems to happen more often when you leave your vehicle in close proximity to impassable terrain, or when you try to enter or leave your vehicle during certain scripted events. Currently, the only fix for this is to reload a previously saved game, so please make sure to save your progress often.
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Some locations may be difficult to navigate using the Speed Boost (x3). We advise you to turn off this feature in such cases.
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Make sure to check the FAQ section of our support page for solutions to common issues:
https://support.na.square-enix.com/main.php?la=1&id=442
We apologize for any inconvenience these issues may cause, and thank you again for your interest in our product.
■Summary
FINAL FANTASY VIII was first released on February 11, 1999. Beloved by fans, this title has garnered a great deal of popularity even compared to other installments in the FINAL FANTASY franchise, selling more than 9.6 million units worldwide. And now players can enjoy FINAL FANTASY VIII on their smartphone! With renewed character CG, the world of FINAL FANTASY VIII is now more beautiful than ever before.
This installment is a remaster of FINAL FANTASY VIII for PC. This application is a one-time purchase. There will be no additional charge incurred after downloading.
■Story
It is a time of war.
The Republic of Galbadia, under the influence of the sorceress Edea, mobilizes its great armies against the other nations of the world.
Squall and other members of SeeD, an elite mercenary force, join hands with Rinoa, a resistance fighter, to fight against Galbadia's tyrannical rule and to prevent Edea from fulfilling her ultimate goal.
■FINAL FANTASY VIII: Release Features
・Guardian Force（G.F.）
G.F. are summoned creatures in FFVIII used to protect the protagonists. Call upon them in battle to unleash their might and to increase their power alongside player characters. By junctioning G.F., players will be able to enjoy greater freedom in how they approach battles.
・Drawing
Obtain magic in FFVIII by drawing (extracting) it in battle. MP does not exist and players are limited to the number they have in their possession. Magic that has been extracted can be released on the spot or stocked for later use.
・ Junctioning
This system allows players to equip G.F. and stocked magic to characters in order to increase their power.
■ Additional Features
・ Battle Assist
Max out HP and ATB gauge during battle and activate Limit Breaks at any time.
・ No Encounters
Players can choose to turn Battle Encounters on or off.
・ 3x Speed
With the exception of certain cutscenes, players can choose to proceed through the game at 3x speed.
[Minimum Requirements]
iOS 13.0 or higher
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 31st January 2024
Recent improvements include:
Version 1.0.2 Released
[1.0.2 Changelog]
- Added support for latest OS version.
- Fixed issue where the Select button on certain controllers was unusable.
Download & Availability
FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get FINAL FANTASY VIII Remastered on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We love this game very much to us. It has the best battle system. Best story lovable characters. Best of all we get to play on our iPhone.
This game has a lot of customization and ways to play. The music and cutscenes are of high quality for its time. We would love to see an Anime based on this story.
One time we had them saved in thru backbone control how to merge game data from iOS to psp/ps5 controller.
No complaints. None. Just a total blast and great story. Sure some people dont like the nature of Ff8s gameplay. Its so unique, clever, yes you can exploit it the risks they took, the story they told, the artwork they made, the music they composed its just beautiful.
Seems great so far, enjoying a classic.
Thought there was a bug in the game at Rinoas house but it was a user error. Our apologies. Can finally continue the game :).
Spent money on one of our favorite games and we could not play it for over a month but you guys finally did an update and now it works great. Thanks Square Enix.
Try to add language Chinese.plz.
Im playing on an we phone and dont seem to be able to access the lower levels of the deep sea research center to fight ultimate weapon and get Eden gf. The save point didnt seem to spawn after defeating Bahamian either. Is this a bug or what? The pillar you climb down never appears.
Sometimes our phone gets very hot while playing games. Our phone is an iphone 14 plus. The ios version is 18.2.1. Why is our phone getting hot.
Lovi it love it love it we give it a 4.8 stars. One question though is if we wanted to start over from scratch how do we erase the saves from memory.
Great news that this was updated to work again with recent iOS released. Bad news is the sound seems to have some sort of delayed distortions so it sounds horrible.
Im glad to see that the app received a relatively quick update after it stopped working with iOS 17.2 and above. It now works great. If you have a controller, this is (to us) a five-star game, but the touch controls are just a bit awkward to us. FFVIII is a great game – one of the best in the series in our opinion, and being available for mobile is amazing to us. Thanks for the update, so we can keep playing.
Theres a glitch when laguna meets Julia for the first time; the whole game freezes. :(.
Why is the app so poorly optimized? No reason why it should be overheating any modern phone its a remaster of a PS1 GAME??? All these complaints in the reviews and not a single update to fix any of them in over a year.
Completely useless in a smart phone. Like Im actually going to keep this app open for 2 hours until we find another save point. Defeats the whole purpose of having it on a phone in the first place. Why are these not an obvious features.
Card game never loads,tried many saves.
We would love to tell you about the gameplay, however despite the familiar gorgeous graphics in the opening there was no sound. Cmon man.
No way this game is better than we remember the graphics on Mobile are crazy Dope .One of the best apps on Mobile in our opinion.
The only reason we have this game on our phone is for our 4.5 year old son. He LOVES the intro and the music and will see it and listen to it over and over. Initially, we would play it on the PS when he was 1.5 to get him to calm down so that we could change his clothes, diapers, or feed him since hes autistic. But we soon realized that that prevented us from watching anything else since he really liked and wanted it to be playing constantly. Now we got smart and we have the game downloaded on our phones and switches. A huge shout out and thank you to the game developer and composer since our son is big fan! Yall didnt know it but yall are lifesavers.
This is our childhood and what a nostalgic feeling for us to be able to play it again.
We were worried that we were gonna just be throwing away $20 because of some of these reviews here and just looking online. Although it seems all complaints were about a year old. We just got to Timber and so far Im not encountering a single issue. Iphone 11, no overheating, or freezing or automatic shut down. We also have this game on our PS4 but couldnt push ourselves to actually play it. Having it on our phone is a different story, Im outside a lot so its become our main game. Very happy with it, thanks.
We havent seen this game in decades, not sure if Ive ever even finished it. The mechanics made for iphone work flawlessly. The story for this game is memorable, and actually makes you want to play through. The card game is fun in its own. The efforts into the art direction and story from this game make it unique in its franchise. And as always the music is perfect.
We have nothing else to say except ignore those who have given reviews about lack of controller support as they are brining the rating of this game down. It has full controller support. We use the backbone one controller which is amazing and we recommend you get it to have a better experience with this game as well.
Game runs and works as expected. Havent had any issues. Works well with XBOX One controller. One minor quibble we wish the devs would fix is to get rid of the white home screen bar at the bottom of the screen (when on iPad Pro 5th gen).
The controls are solid. We really appreciate the MFI support. The game itself is great. Its not our favorite Final Fantasy but it is in our top three. Our only ask from the developer is to please allow us to change the image around the screen overlay to something else or even nothing.
Its one of our favorite final fantasy games, very under rated in our opinion. Now the update has put in controller support so its a no brainer to buy this if you like RPGs. Game is just as fun as we remember. Worth buying now.
They finally added controller support.
So glad to see this game finally added to iOS. Controller support is here! Could you also use machine learning to update the pre-rendered backgrounds into 4K? Plenty of people have shown its possible and it would be great to have an official version rather than resorting to patches. Time to start our no level up playthrough on mobile.
A final fantasy game with controller support. Perfect.
We have played quite a bit of the ff games and we figured Id buy this one we love it except for the frame rate . Thats our only issue with it, if youre offline it loads perfectly and runs perfectly but the moment you get back online it automatically runs slow and loads everything slower. If this could get fixed in an update soon thatd be great.
The icon, name and characters, not being in the middle, is driving us nuts.
Great port and its almost perfect, but only three cheats are offered. Please add the card game cheats and others that the PC version got. Thanks.
Game is amazing! Love playing it when we were younger and still love playing it now. Only problem with this version is that its glitchy. The sounds dont work and it sounds like theyre trying to catch up with the game. Its really annoying so if you guys could fix that, that would be awesome.
We have iCloud Drive enabled on our device and we just lost two hours of gameplay after exiting the game to recover an Ifrit we lost in a card game.
We havent seen this game in decades, not sure if Ive ever even finished it. The mechanics made for iphone work flawlessly. The story for this game is memorable, and actually makes you want to play through. The card game is fun in its own. The efforts into the art direction and story from this game make it unique in its franchise. And as always the music is perfect. Update: starting 12/2023 this game isnt working. Itll hang and stutter. It seems when you go back to ios home screen and reopen the running app itll work until game center signs in again. Then itll start skipping frames and sound will cut out.
We have never had any issues with this and all of a sudden the sound got quirky and Ive uninstalled and reinstalled it a few times and it wont even load past the squareenix screen. It just freezes. Is this going to be fixed soon??? We were just about to board the train and head to Timber.
One frame takes longer than a mgs4 cutscenes we've only made it to the title screen with "load" and without skipping freezes the game.
Hello this is our first time writing a review we love this game and been wanting to replay it again but Ive been having problems with the game. We press the screen and its like freezing in the logo of square enix and going on the dotemu part its loading a frame per 10 seconds. We deleted it and downloaded again we dont know whats the problem. Ive tried on our iPad, our iPhone 12 Pro Max and 14 pro max. And still same problem is there any way for this to be fixed.
Has two horrible borders on the side. Outside of that excellent game. They could had spruced up the environment with more graphics.
UPDATE: 2021-09-01 Gamepad support has finally arrived! Updating our rating and this review as promised. Im playing the game on an iPad Pro and displaying on an external monitor via HDMI. The graphics have some rough edges but considering the original game source we are happy with it. **** we truly cant understand why a game like this would be released without gamepad support. In our opinion it ruins the entire experience and makes the cost of the game not worth it. Ive read that gamepad support is supposed to come in a future update but that is never a guarantee. If gamepad support was important to the development team porting the game then it would have been included in the initial release. Square Enix has done this before the Dragon Quest games are a perfect example to this day theres no gamepad support for the Dragon Quest games and we worry that it either wont come for FF VIII or it wont come soon enough. If gamepad support arrives we will definitely update our review but until then we really feel it destroys the entire value proposition of the game. The same game is available on Nintendo Switch so if you really want this game now and gamepad support is important to you then consider not buying it here yet.
This app isnt working. It goes black after the tap to start screen and wont load further at all. You guys need to fix this already.
We were looking forward to playing our favorite FF game. However it won't go beyond the tap to start page. IPad Air 4th gen on iPadOS 17.2.
We have a iPhone 14 pro, updated to iOS 17, and the game is so laggy and stutters. We tried to start a new game and accept button takes 5 seconds to finish. We thought this worked on our phone pre iOS 17. Update, if you put in airplane mode, it works. Please fix.
We love Final Fantasy 8 along with many others but its not fun when you cant play it without worrying if your phone is going to over heat. Hope this issue can be fixed iPhone 11 Pro Max.
This is by far our favorite final fantasy out of all of them. It also happens to be the first we have ever played. As stoked as we were to be playing it again on our phone, it is seriously under developed as a remake. Upgraded graphics, and playing it on our phone as opposed to an old console is great, but emulators have been allowing that for years, and with much better playability due to game hacking within the emulators. It wasnt until we moved to IPhone that we lost the ability to play it on the phone. Adding a new game plus feature seems like it would be an easy feature to add to stand out above and beyond emulators. We dont normally hack games, but we have spent 100s of hours playing this game to have all cards, weapons, level stats, gf and abilities, and rare items. New game plus would make it so we dont have to do that every time we want to play through again.
Black screen after title screen.
This game is only playable for the first hour and then when you get to the train puzzle the button mapping will cause a game over every time because it isnt accurate enough.
The only reason Im still forcing ourselves to play this is the premium price we had to pay for it. If it was a free app we would uninstall and forget it. The controls are so clunky and the only thing that makes it bearable is the sped up option and no random battles for traveling. Im okay with the junction system it seems interesting but the story is meh and the gameplay/controls are garbage. Ive loved every other final fantasy Ive ever played and thought Id give this one a try but that was clearly a mistake.
The blurry backgrounds completely break the game for us. Its called AI upscaling. Since you guys are too incompetent or lazy to figure it out just pay a 14 year old modder to do it for you. Should have just ported the 2013 steam version over to mobile.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.2
- Size: 2,444.48 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content and Nudity
- Developer: SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.
Last updated: 31st January 2024 | Genre: Roleplaying | Developer: SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.