FFVIII Crystal

FFVIII Crystal is a gameplay mod designed to give a new way to play Final Fantasy VIII by making each playable character more distinct, strengthening and redesigning enemies, and adding new content.

Junctioning has been de-emphasized in favor of more meaningful stat gains from leveling and each character is assigned a GF with abilities tailored to them. New enemies have been added and existing ones have been reworked with new abilities and gimmicks. New sidequests have been added and existing ones are more meaningful, sometimes rewarding items that teach abilities that can't be found anywhere else. The mod's difficulty level is intended to make fights challenging and engaging without being too harsh.

The 2013-Steam and Remastered versions are 99% the same, though the Remastered versions have some differences in the strength and function of some abilities.

(Some screenshots include graphical mods made by MCINDUS and Fated Courage and are not included with FFVIII Crystal.)

There is currently an issue with Demaster, the tool needed to play the FF8 Remastered version of Crystal on PC, that causes crashes in D-District Prison. You can get it around it by moving ff8_demaster.dll out of the FF8 Remastered folder to disable Demaster, getting past the affected scene, and putting the dll back. You can also pack FFVIII Crystal's archives into main.zzz directly using zzzDeArchive to use the mod without Demaster. This issue has been fixed in the latest version of Demaster.