In order to flesh out the world of Final Fantasy VIII, many of the classes presented in the Palladium Fantasy books are usable with very few changes. The most important change are the classes' starting equipment. The world of Final Fantasy VIII is a mix of fairly modern technology and old weapons and the classes should reflect that.
The easiest way to change the equipment of the classes is to provide access to the magical weapons and armor available from the Galbadia Garden. For this change, simply replace any non-magical weapons with magical equivalent (most low level characters should only start with Simple Magical Weapons). However, since the world of Final Fantasy VIII has modern weapons, it makes sense for the characters to have access to these weapons as well. For example, if a soldier can choose to start with two weapons, one or both could be modern weapons. Finally, the easiest way to represent a character, especially a soldier from a modern civilization like Esthar, is to create such a character using the educational rules provided in Heroes Unlimited. Such a character would have no exceptional powers (so they would not choose a power category from Heroes Unlimited), but they would be an accurate depiction of a typical soldier.
A note about races. Aside from the RCCs presented in this section, there are no races from Palladium Fantasy in the world of Final Fantasy VIII. For example, there are no Elves, Dwarves, or Orcs in this world. While there are some intelligent races, such as the Shumi, Humans are by far the most common race on the planet.