I liked FF8 MUCH more than FF9. You can cry about it and expouse all the ways FF9 is better as counterpoint, if you want. It's good to have subjective opinions, even though you're wrong.
Kuja was a decent villain. He was fun, but not as fun as Kefka and definitely more effeminate. I think that negatively impacted the eccentricity of the character
But then we find out that Vivi is a clone. Then we find out that Zidane is also a clone, of Kuja, made by the real villain, Garland, who resides in another dimension.
BUT WAIT! The
really real end villain isn't Garland, but Necron. You see it only once, in the last battle. Its only motive is to annihilate existence and return everything to nothingness, so there's even less exposition than we get with Ultimecia. At least one can postulate over Ultimecia's true goals as the ultimate, insane sorceress at the end of time; I personally like the theory that Rinoa eventually becomes Ultimecia, since it ties in well with the rest of the story.
FF8 had good pacing and realistic, slice-of-life characters that I'm sure a lot of us nerds related to back in the day. The soundtrack was good, and there were some memorable places, like Fisherman's Horizon. The cyberpunk atmosphere combined well with the anime-lite military high school motif for the first disc. The fight between Gardens kicked ass back in the day, too.
I very much enjoyed the whole "time distortion" mechanic that allowed us to play as Laguna, Ward, and Kiros. Not only was there a contemporary story, but we also got to play through the backstory. And you even got to use that mechanic on a few occasions to learn something that the other party used to progress. That's cool.
I enjoyed equipping magic more than socketing shitty gear just to learn the associated skills, too. And I prefer the QTE Limit Breaks over Trance Mode. Garand's Auction House in FF9 was cool, but tracking down all those

ing Moogles was a pain in the ass. Chocobo Forests were highly improved in FF9. Tetra Master got unnecessarily complicated thanks to number leveling, so I was more of a Triple Triad fan.
And honestly, I'm just not into anthro/SD shit. Freya was a rat person, Eiko was a purple fox thing, Quina was just a hot mess, and I don't know what the

Amarant was. But they definitely weren't things that interest me. The whole game felt more childish to me, whereas FF8 was at least in its adolescence. I'd take Selphie, Quistis, and Zell over many of FF's supporting casts.