Enlarge / Artist’s conception of my face when I realized people are still creating new gaming fansites in 2024.

It has never been easier to share your thoughts online. Anyone with a smartphone is mere seconds away from spinning up a new account on any number of popular social media platforms and screaming their opinions into the void. Then your casual, tossed-off thoughts are served up to The Algorithm, which decides whether it’s briefly pushed in front of the gathered masses or almost instantly forgotten to the ephemeral tide of the endless scroll.

So there’s something intensely charming about Final Fantasy VIII is the Best (FF8itB), a new highly personal fanblog focused on the red-headed stepchild of Square’s early 3D RPG output. After a single weekend, the site is already an incredibly entertaining mess that evokes the best parts of a largely defunct and much more personal era of the Internet.

Final Fantasy VIII? Really?

Over the years, Final Fantasy VIII has developed a pretty bad reputation among the community of hardcore Japanese-RPG fans. It’s not hard to find detailed, borderline-irate takedowns of everything from the game’s cheesy storyline to its overcomplicated junction system to a hidden enemy auto-leveling mechanic that makes it hard to feel truly powerful.