An interesting change, but understandable considering the meshing of the amount of magic you have with how high your stats are. After getting used to it, this system doesn't seem that bad, but I would still prefer learned magic. As I mentioned earlier, the story line is quite linear. I would almost say that the confined spaces and options as to how you progress are limited to what used to be only in crucial cut scenes. There aren't many choices to make in the game that will truly affect what your characters will be doing.
Verbal queues are about it and have little to do with what actually goes on.
Graphics, Sounds, etc. I advise against buying Final Fantasy VIII unless you have a compatible 3D accelerator. While the box lists requirements for the software rendered mode, the software graphics engine does the game no justice in either image quality or frame-rate. The graphics of Final Fantasy VIII are much improved over those of Final Fantasy VII, giving more polygons to main characters and having even more integration of high quality computer generated movies. Luckily, Square Soft thought to integrate the power of today's latest graphics boards and improve the graphics over its console counterpart.