🔗 Share this article

The FF franchise boasts countless iconic places. From Elfheim in the very first Final Fantasy, Midgar in Final Fantasy 7, to Limsa Lominsa in Final Fantasy 14, every one has earned a cherished place in players' hearts, and they celebrate the distinctive quirks that make these locales so unique. However, if one setting that merits more recognition than the others, it is certainly Balamb Garden from Final Fantasy 8, not just because of its elegant design, but also for being a incredibly bizarre school.

An Pure Movie Moment

Before, let's highlight the obvious. Balamb Garden morphing into an airship and fleeing from a rocket attack was absolute cinema. This place was not just intended to be a academy for mercenaries. It is a moving base that enables them to create new tactics and move, depending on the demands of those in command. I easily view it as one of the best airship concepts in the franchise, along with Final Fantasy 10's Fahrenheit and some of the Final Fantasy 12 military airships.

This transformation of Balamb Garden into an airship remains one of the more unforgettable moments in gaming history.

The Initial Glimpse of a Brooding Home

When we start playing Final Fantasy 8 and see Quistis escorting Squall out of the medical wing, we get our initial glimpse of the place this brooding-looking teenager calls home. A panoramic shot starts from the floor of the school and ascends to focus on the awe-inspiring magnitude of the building. Balamb Garden has a design that feels futuristic, but also somehow heavenly. The curvy structures evoke a specifically late ‘90s vision of how the tomorrow would look. On the other hand, because of the gilded features on the building and the long trails of light coming from the enormous glowing halo on top of the school, Balamb Garden looks like a massive angel. It was created to be a serene place — excessively peaceful for an academy that transforms teenagers into mercenaries.

An Memorable Melody

Complementing the serenity that the aesthetic of Balamb Garden suggests, we have the school’s background music. One of the dearest memories I have from childhood is strolling around the main area of Balamb Garden, watching those fish statues spraying water, and listening to the gentle theme song. The problem is that it keeps playing in your head indefinitely. Once it returns to my mind, I’m forced to look up on YouTube for a 3-hour-long “Balamb Garden” song video. The only way to get it out of playing inside my head is to have enough of it.

• Lullaby tune that sticks in your mind
• Main area with water features
• Nostalgic feelings for countless players

The Intriguing Institution

Balamb Garden is compelling as a setting as well as an organization. First, it accepts kids from 5 to fifteen years old to turn them into mercenaries, but it looks like a massive church. There are a lot of military schools in RPGs, like in Trails of Cold Steel, but none look less militaristic than Balamb Garden.

A Ironic Philosophy

When you use the Balamb Garden Network via one of the in-game terminals, you learn that the slogan of the academy is “Work hard, study hard, and play hard.” I’m sorry, but I never have the sense that those teenagers training to be mercenaries are “playing hard” — only Zell. However, considering that the facility, where students encounter living monsters they can kill, is the sole place in the whole school accessible at any time during the day, maybe that’s what they intend by “playing.” While training is the key part of a student’s life in Balamb Garden, their food is awful, since students are eating so many hot dogs that the faculty have no other response to say besides “No more hot dogs today.”

Rigid Regulations

Students are governed by a strict set of rules, which, for one, we should anticipate from a military school, but conversely seems oddly humorous. First, there’s not a dress code in the school, but they can’t leave their rooms in the nights, unless it’s for training. A student may be dismissed if they fall behind in their curriculum, for violent acts, and for… “sexual promiscuity.” It might not look like it, but Balamb Garden is really concerned about its students’ sex life. The school formally advises that students “take time to think things through before starting a relationship.” (After all, the true threat of being a student of Balamb Garden is romantic relationships, not fighting with gunblades and cutting each other's faces like Squall and Seifer were doing in the opening cutscene.)

Greater Than Only Good Looks

From the delicate advanced design of the building to the paradoxes and dubious practices of the academy, there are numerous aspects of Balamb Garden to appreciate. Many of us like to tease Squall, but Balamb Garden serves to remind us that there’s greater depth to Final Fantasy 8 than simply surface appeal.