Too Easy?

[-JJ-]

Heya, :D

I just got given this game for free from a friend'o'mine and it's the first
time iv'e been on this in a long time, since early high school, to be exact.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anybody thinks this is the easiest Final Fantasy
of the series? I Just arrived in Timber and Zell and Squall have 100 Quakes, Zell has
60 Meltdowns and Squall (I always rename him Leon :cool:), a few Tornadoes, I think the producers put in powerful magic waaay too early, I'm only a couple of hours in and Squall is level 20+ dealing about 2000 damage!

The reason behind this is Item Refinement, the producers should have thought about availability a bit more, Tents are available at the beginning of the game, as is siren, hence, Life/Recovery magic, thus 300 Curagas leading to about 3000-4000 HP!

Just a thought, Does anyone else think this game is too easy?

[Slothy]

Yep. Definitely one of the easier ones since the junction system is easy to exploit early on, even on a first play through. I suppose someone could argue that you could try to limit yourself deliberately to make things more challenging, but that would be a tricky line to walk in a game like this and not really worth the time to try and balance the junction yourself when it should have been balanced from the get go.

If it's bothering you that it's too easy you could probably look up some challenges somewhere to make it a bit harder though.

[Flying Arrow]

I think it's a shame that the most interesting aspect of the game is also the most unbalanced that keeps me from picking it up now and again. I love the Junction system, but it makes the game disgustingly easy. I think there's even a GF that grants an Encounter-None status effect. One could just activate that and fly through the game fighting only low-level bosses using huge junctions.

[Hollycat]

For sure, within 10 hours of starting I was dealing 7000+ damage with squall and rinoa, never had to use a GF even once after about 4 hours

[Depression Moon]

IX's the easiest to me. This is somewhere in the middle. I also will never get the complaints about the junction system. What bothers me most is that it's difficult to get some of the items needed for weapon reforging early on. On my first playthrough Zell never upgraded past Maverick.

[Dreddz]

FFVIII is by far the easiest FF. Probably too easy to really appreciate what Square were doing with the Junction system. Still, VIII has merits outside of its battle system which makes up for a lot.

[Mirage]

It's easier if you quickly figure out how to maximize your powers. The first time I played it, I don't think I found its difficulty very different from the other games in the series.

In the end, none of the FFs are really hard. Most character progression systems can easily be "exploited" when you know how to do it. FF5 is also really easy to me now, because I know which jobs are the strongest, which ability builds are the most useful, etc. Same with FF7, I now know exactly which materia to give to which characters, where to exp for the fastest possible leveling, etc.

I wouldn't really call it exploit, as much as I would call it players figuring out how things work.

[Slothy]

Same with FF7, I now know exactly which materia to give to which characters, where to exp for the fastest possible leveling, etc.

I wouldn't really call it exploit, as much as I would call it players figuring out how things work.

I'll certainly agree that just about every FF title ever is realy easy, but the problem with FFVIII is that unlike games like FFVI, FFVII, FFIX, etc. where the ungodly powerful stuff is at least locked behind a wall of having to gain enough experience/actually finding the right items/equipment/magical doodad/whatever else, you can unlock the abilities to gain access to rediculously powerful refinement abilities and stat junctions in under two hours in FFVIII. Your characters can literally be unkillable (barring actually trying to let them die) when you're only a fraction of the way through the game, and they only continue to get more powerful from there.

Other games generally had pretty easy battles as well if you didn't run from many fights, but they didn't give you the ability to become a nigh unstoppable killing machine in the first few hours. It may, in practical gameplay terms, be a fairly small distinction but at least other games made me feel like I had to pay attention, especially on the first play through where other games did a much better job of not making the exploits inherent in the system immediately obvious.

[Hollycat]

This is the main reason I have stopped playing 8, its too easy.
Better ones for difficulty would be one of the dissidias on hard or most of ff 2 if you stick to the areas you are supposed to go to.
the part in 9 where zidane is in lindblum by himself is a major exploit for that one, in 6 there are several areas where there are weak monsters that give tons of exp and ap, in 4, you level up WAY too quickly and the only problem once you get to the moon is the red dragons, in 1 the whole game is easy, 10 once you get wakka to a certain point he becomes nigh unkillable, twelve, once basch gets a two handed sword its game over for everyone else, especially after you get the bravery skills and stuff, in CC you can level up several times in one fight, and so on. in KH games you just stick to the final dungeon, (except bbs) and so on.

[Polnareff]

I know I'll get laughed at but I actually find this game kind of challenging because I don't know where to begin to get all these junctions. (I should mention I'm not much of an FAQ user either)

Whereas with FFVII, FFVI, and FFIX (which IMO are the easiest games in the series) FAQs and such aren't needed to beat those easily. Especially VII. VII slaps you in the face with how terribly easy it is.

[Flying Arrow]

I'll certainly agree that just about every FF title ever is realy easy, but the problem with FFVIII is that unlike games like FFVI, FFVII, FFIX, etc. where the ungodly powerful stuff is at least locked behind a wall of having to gain enough experience/actually finding the right items/equipment/magical doodad/whatever else, you can unlock the abilities to gain access to rediculously powerful refinement abilities and stat junctions in under two hours in FFVIII. Your characters can literally be unkillable (barring actually trying to let them die) when you're only a fraction of the way through the game, and they only continue to get more powerful from there.

Other games generally had pretty easy battles as well if you didn't run from many fights, but they didn't give you the ability to become a nigh unstoppable killing machine in the first few hours. It may, in practical gameplay terms, be a fairly small distinction but at least other games made me feel like I had to pay attention, especially on the first play through where other games did a much better job of not making the exploits inherent in the system immediately obvious.

I generally agree. But on the other hand, VI, VII and IX are all a straight-forward form of easy. Go forward, equip what you find, maybe get a little clever with some set-ups, and you should be okay. With VIII, the player is required to have some extensive knowledge of the mechanics and some more esoteric abilities to break it the way most VIII veterans can. A first time through with no prior knowledge of the game would probably be harder for most players used to more traditional RPG mechanics.

Thing is, I really like FF8. I mean, I don't like some of the skimpy characterization and plot twists, but overall I think it's an enjoyable and unique game. Square really should have taken more care with balancing access to powerful items so early on. It makes re-plays kind of un-fun.


I know I'll get laughed at but I actually find this game kind of challenging because I don't know where to begin to get all these junctions. (I should mention I'm not much of an FAQ user either)

Yeah. I also think the presence of the internet kind of kills a lot of FF8's nuances. Since all the information is so readily available, players really don't have to figure anything out. I think a lot of players wouldn't be complaining about how easy the game is if they hadn't, at some point, been spoiled to where all the great stuff can be found.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm with Vivi22 on this, one person on this forum said that "VIII's difficulty curve was so easy all you had to do is lean on it and it will break". Very true words. ;)

I would also argue Flying Arrow, that VIII combines stat min/max brokenness with the straight forward kind. I mean later GFs just give you support skills like MAG 40% boost and STR 60% as normal abilities (I'm going to ignore the fact you can teach it to every summon if you really wanted to) which give HUGE stat bonuses that even crappy Junctioning can jump into BS territory. Not to mention some of the Limit Breaks are just plain overpowered, Squall's starts with a X-Fight ability and gets powerful group hitting finishers, Irvine can decimate bosses with high HP, and Rinoa gets crap like Invincible Moon and Wishing Star from items you can buy in shops. The game just hands you overpowered power ups like they were going out of business. None of this requires knowing the ins and outs of Junctioning, or refinement, or what cards to mod.

Not to mention the game gives an optimal switch for Junctions which lets the game do the messy work for you and all you have to do is decide if you want the character to be melee or a mage. With this option, its just a matter of having the patience to Draw a 100 spells or play with the Refinement option to get rid of the plethora of items just wasting space in your inventory.

Hell the game even gets you a second shot at most of the GFs in the final dungeon if you missed some of them like Bahamut and Eden. Its not only the easiest, but its also the most easy to exploit once you get a grasp of the system and even that's not overly complex when you think about it.

For good exploiters, it only takes about 20-30 minutes to level up and acquire all the skills necessary to one shot Ifrit in the first dungeon by acquiring the ability to refine ice/water items, Mid-magic refine, Elemental Weapon Junction, and acquire a 100 Waters for strength and the 100 Blizzara spells to attach to Squall's weapon. In a normal FF, that half an hour of grinding would certainly make the boss easier but not something that would go down in a single attack. The scary thing, is that just having the 100 Water spells is enough to let you coast through most of the 1st Disc.

[Slothy]

With VIII, the player is required to have some extensive knowledge of the mechanics and some more esoteric abilities to break it the way most VIII veterans can.

To bend it over, ream it and make it call you daddy? Sure you need a bit more knowledge then you'll get in the first few hours of play time on a first run through the game. But even a beginner can learn very quickly they need to junction magic to get stronger, therefore more magic is better, therefore get abilities that let me get more magic. Once you learn life magic refinement, it doesn't take long to figure out those common enough tents give you the most powerful level cure spell which can readily junction to give you thousands of HP, or whatever else you want. Gaining access to that one ability is enough to break the early game and teach a beginner everything they need to know to keep it going straight through to the end.

I will absolutely not deny that games like FFVI, VII, and IX were much more straight forward and simple, but again, there's no way to completely and utterly break them within the first few hours of the story without doing an amount of leveling so utterly absurd that no one in their right mind would attempt it that early.

[Flying Arrow]

For some reason, I thought the stupidly overpowered stuff was a bit less obvious to acquire. Fair enough. You've convinced me.

What a shame, too. It's almost as if Square were afraid players wouldn't be able to handle the system, so they threw in OPed abilities left and right to "balance" it out. FFVIII could have been a really, really good game otherwise.

[Slothy]

Indeed. I actually think the Junction system was a cool idea that could have allowed for an unparalleled level of customization in the series, particularly for the time. What it really needed though was some more careful balancing of what is available when (ie: not being able to refine curaga easily in the first few hours), and probably could have benefited from getting rid of leveling altogether so that they'd know how powerful enemies are at any given point, and what the player has access to at that time so they could tailor the challenge a bit more.

[Hollycat]

another thing that makes this game unpleasant to me is the lack of enemy variety on the world map. You can fight the mirage (?) things almost everywhere, along with bite bug, falstacion, and other enemies you fight on island one

[-JJ-]

Yeah, there are many bad qualities of this game, but I can't deny the fun i have playing it,
It was a huge change, it's all Sci-Fi etc.

But I think you guys know what I mean, On FFVI I couldn't wait to unlock Flare, Ultima, Fire 3, Quake etc, On VII I loved Contain & Comet, IX when Beatrix hands Garnet a well... Garnet.

But all the best magic is just available to early, T-Rexies "Drop" Quake, Fasticilations "Drop" water, Those birds on the second continent actually "drop" Aero and Tornadoes and my personal favorite is card modification, being able to unlock Leon's best weapon on disk one just by winning 20 elnoyle cards is a joke, and so is the ability to unlock 10 meltdowns a Gayla.

But I guess if someone played the game a first time it would be more enjoyable, I never went on the net to find these "Exploits" I just like to know what each monster drops or carries, so I explore places like the training center and coastlines etc. But my first time I played, I was between 6-10, I got stuck at the missile base! :P

[Polnareff]

I know I'll get laughed at but I actually find this game kind of challenging because I don't know where to begin to get all these junctions. (I should mention I'm not much of an FAQ user either)

Yeah. I also think the presence of the internet kind of kills a lot of FF8's nuances. Since all the information is so readily available, players really don't have to figure anything out. I think a lot of players wouldn't be complaining about how easy the game is if they hadn't, at some point, been spoiled to where all the great stuff can be found.

Yeah, this is what I meant to say.

Without the internet or a strategy guide, you're not gonna know where to get all this magic so quickly.

This is why I kinda struggled with the game. I knew about the Junction system but I didn't know where to find the higher-leveled stuff.

Meanwhile you can play other FF games and have them be extremely easy without having to spoil it with a guide.

EDIT: This isn't to say EVERYONE spoiled it with a guide, but the vast majority did and spread their knowledge onward. There were people like JJ though who legitimately kept track of monster drops and tried to see what worked.

[Loony BoB]

Yes, I would agree that VIII is the easiest of the series.

EDIT: And it's not merely the junction system. Card Mod means you can turn the Laguna card into 100 Hero Potions, capable of making your players invulnerable for a period of time. You can effectively spend the entire final dungeon using these things. It's ridiculous. The moment I found you could draw magic on the world map, I looked for those islands.

EDIT: And you don't need the internet to randomly roam the world's islands and thus discover the Islands closest to Heaven and Hell. Once you've done that, junctioning is a breeze.

[DMKA]

I must not know how you guys play the game. I've never found it terribly easy compared to the others.

I've always found X to be the easiest.

[Jiro]

The last time I played through was by far the easiest (and coincidentally the first time I finished it). Abusing Card Mod at the end makes it a cake walk. I spent the whole final boss fight invincible.

[Loony BoB]

Ditto. Aura, invincible and extremely low health. ;D

[Skyblade]

As long as we're listing off things that make the game super easy... Limit Breaks.

As if Junctions didn't make you powerful enough, should you manage to be weakened to the point where death becomes a possibility, you get nigh unlimited access to moves that can destroy anything in the game with basically one hit.


And, sorry, the Junction system is broken and unbalanced. No matter how you play, it becomes obvious almost immediately that more magic leads to stronger stats, and better magic leads to stats that are stronger still. Even without refinement, picking up 100 of most spells you encounter overpowers you, and the moment you discover item refinement, you will encounter ways to get your characters to have endgame stats on Disc 1.

As a side note, if anyone wants to see a similar system, but actually well done and balanced, pick up a Golden Sun game.

[Kyros]

I never used items ever. It's already super easy when you have your charas junctioned for max stats, so much speed that haste doesnt make you faster, absorb all elements, and immune/high resist vs all status effects. Ive never even used devour either since it isnt necessary, but if you use it then your stats are easier to max in the event you havent junctioned for that already. That being said this game is still one of my favorites based on the story and some of the boss fights can still give you problems if you dont do everything right.

[Mo-Nercy]

Even if you're playing the game without a strong knowledge of the Junction system, FF8's still pretty easy. I remember on my first playthrough, I was rather impatient with drawing but I liked Triple Triad a lot. I just junctioned magic to the HP and Str stats and pretty much ignored everything else. Because I wasn't fussed about modding rare cards, I got Lionheart early. I worked out there's no point teaching Angelo anything else besides Invincible Moon. I found out about Armageddon Fist somehow. Fast Ammo was easy to come across through card modding. And Selphie could Full-Cure whenever I felt my "constant critical health" strategy was getting a bit risky against a particular opponent.

oh and Degenerator.

[Jessweeee♪]

Yeah, FFVIII is so much fun to just crack wide open and exploit every little thing. I had a hard time with it playing for the first time at eight years old though xD

[*Laurelindo*]

If you know how to use this system then you will never, ever, need to use GFs a single time, even Ifrit can be killed in seconds just by attacking with Squall and throwing Blizzard spells with Quistis.
In fact the hardest part of that boss fight is to time it so you get exactly 0:07 seconds or less when you finish it if you are aiming for a perfect SeeD report.

The Draw system is also rather ridiculous - but fun!
I love when the enemies have spells like Haste, Regen and Triple so I can buff my characters for free.

[Mo-Nercy]

In fact the hardest part of that boss fight is to time it so you get exactly 0:07 seconds or less when you finish it if you are aiming for a perfect SeeD report.
The timer continues to tick down during the EXP screen. So if you defeat Ifrit with, say, 30 seconds to go. Just wait at the EXP screen for 30 seconds, or longer to be safe, and you'll get a perfect score for that particular part of the report (I think it's Judgement)

Another exploit! Gotta love FF8.

[gtrman79]

I know I'll get laughed at but I actually find this game kind of challenging because I don't know where to begin to get all these junctions. (I should mention I'm not much of an FAQ user either)

Whereas with FFVII, FFVI, and FFIX (which IMO are the easiest games in the series) FAQs and such aren't needed to beat those easily. Especially VII. VII slaps you in the face with how terribly easy it is.

I agree with this. I quit FF8 about 7 yrs ago cause I was getting frustrated on the difficulty cause I was used to basic RPG style. Well I happened to come across my save on an old mem card and I got it transferred to my PS3. I started back on it to finish it. I got 41 hours and am at the end of the 3rd disc. Shows you my turtle pace. But then I was used to FF1 for NES and Dragon Warrior, too. Just thought I would pop in to put my 2 cents.

[Mirage]

All games are easy when you know what to do, and getting lots of spells early on is just the same as overleveling in other games. FF7 isn't exactly hard either if you're level 40 by the end of the 1st disc.

-edit- oh lol, i didn't even realize that i had said almost the exact same earlier in the thread.

[Ultima Shadow]

1: Allow all junctioning except stat-junctioning.

2: Repeat: allow abilities to be junctioned, but don't junction magic to any actual stats.

3: ??????

4: Profit!

[Mirage]

Yeah. I also think the presence of the internet kind of kills a lot of FF8's nuances. Since all the information is so readily available, players really don't have to figure anything out. I think a lot of players wouldn't be complaining about how easy the game is if they hadn't, at some point, been spoiled to where all the great stuff can be found.

Yeah, this is what I meant to say.

Without the internet or a strategy guide, you're not gonna know where to get all this magic so quickly.

This is why I kinda struggled with the game. I knew about the Junction system but I didn't know where to find the higher-leveled stuff.
A very good point. When I first played FF8, the game was new, and my internet access was limited (it was in 1999 after all). The information about easy refinement of curaga from balamb wasn't widespread, neither was most the other stuff either, like where to get really good cards early on that refined into powerful magic. That's why, at least for me, the game had a normal difficulty curve the first time I played it. That's also why I try to keep away from gameplay mechanics conversations about games I haven't played before either. I like figuring things out on my own, that's half the fun for me.

I remember my brother and I printing out tons and tons of final fantasy information while at school and compiling it into an encyclopedia for use whenever we needed it later :p. Even if that is totally impractical by today's standards, I sort of miss that time :(. We were really passionate about it.

[Jessweeee♪]

It took me a while to figure out the magic thing. The first time I played it I was very very young and just didn't "get" RPGs and stats and stuff. I just kind of whacked at things and spammed GFs. I made it to the missle base, where I got stuck fighting the tank. I never got past it because my brother accidentally pushed the TV too far and it fell onto our PS1, smashing it and the disc to pieces. Then in middle school a friend gave me his copy and I got as far as the end of disc two without even learning any magic refining abilities (I thought they were useless!) or even realizing that you could draw GFs from some bosses. Needless to say Edea gave me some trouble, and somehow I ended up overwriting that save file by accident before I could beat her. Then I started again and got as far as fighting Fujin and Raijin on the Lunatic Pandora, but got stuck there because while I did figure out refining magic, it didn't occur to me to get items from cards so I didn't have a whole lot. And I was still using Auto-Junction. But then I overwrote that file because my brother was playing and asked me to save the game for him, but he didn't switch our memory cards out ;_;

But I started a fourth time, and then I was like "huh, Triple Triad is actually pretty fun if you keep the rules from getting out of hand oh wow I can turn these cards into some pretty cool stuff WHOOAAA DINO BONES GIVE ME 20 QUAKES EACH AND THIS CARD GIVES ME 100 OF THEM?!" It wasn't until I decided I wanted the Lionheart that I went looking for help and stumbled upon this lovely website :p

And yes, I did finally get to finish it the fourth time!

[Roogle]

The main issue with the difficulty of the game is the sheer number of options that the player can utilize from the outset of the game. I remember having an easy time with this game up until the end of it because all I needed to do was spam the Guardian Force command. Maybe if it had a more linear type of statistical system it would have fared better in the difficulty department. I think that, with time, most of the Final Fantasy games tend towards the easy side because of the sheer amount of people that understand its mechanics inside and out shortly after the release of the game. There are occasionally breakthroughs that occur to this day when certain aspects of battle mechanics or programming of the game open up with discussion.

[Raian the Fallen]

I find the main game to be quite easy, especially if you take your time and walk around the dungeons to find everything.

I just got Ragnarok, and Squall is level 80. And the only grinding I did was to find items needed to forge weapons.

The card game can get really out of hand at times, though. The random, same, and direct rules make the game almost unplayable for me, since I usually always end up losing a rare card by accident.

[Mirage]

All card rules except random are fine with me :p.

I think "same wall", "plus", and "same" just add more thinking to it. Of course, same wall is brilliant because the walls count as A and usually you have several cards with A on them and the AI usually has only one at most.

Direct trading rules are pretty annoying though. You can usually influence things to avoid it from becoming common.

[Raian the Fallen]

All card rules except random are fine with me :p.
Seriously? Random is the only rule I can actually tolerate.

[Mirage]

You can tolerate not being able to choose your deck? You're crazy.

[Raian the Fallen]

You can tolerate not being able to choose your deck? You're crazy.
It's not very fun, but I can still whoop the other guy's ass easily.

I still prefer being able to choose my own deck.

[Jiro]

When you refine all cards except awesome ones, Random is less of a problem. It still sucks major balls though.

I was always too absent minded and got nailed by Same/Plus. Same Wall wasn't a problem usually.

[Carl the Llama]

When you refine all cards except awesome ones, Random is less of a problem. It still sucks major balls though.

I was always too absent minded and got nailed by Same/Plus. Same Wall wasn't a problem usually.

Ya see this was what I tried to do once, but the problem starts when you have to many or not enough cards to refine them.

[Raian the Fallen]

If you play for cards that refine into awesome items (Windmill, for instance) early in the game, you can pick up 100 Tornados, which junction nicely to Strength.

[Jiro]

You can also use the Card function to limit the amount of exp you receive, which means that all the enemies will be weak while you're Card Modding etc to give yourself insane stats :monster:

[Raian the Fallen]

You can also use the Card function to limit the amount of exp you receive, which means that all the enemies will be weak while you're Card Modding etc to give yourself insane stats :monster:
Seriously? How?

[Jiro]

If you Card enemies in battle, you don't gain experience points. You still gain AP, thankfully. So if you never gain experience, the enemies don't scale up in level either, and all the cards you're gaining can be refined using GF abilities to pump up your stats phenomenally without increasing the abilities of the monsters. The problem with this is that you will soon be too strong and will kill enemies before you can Card them :p

[Bolivar]

I don't know, guys... I used to be all "oh, well you can spend time grinding in other FFs and it's the same!!!" back in the day when people just drew all day long, but nowadays??? You guys are doing all kinds of item refining, carding, and enemy locating. I guess in this thread you've already established that all this stuff takes little time, most of it happens along the way, but...

I DON'T DO NONE OF THIS CRAP!!! I play the game. I don't play Triple Triad, I spend little time drawing, I go for a nice mix of abilities instead of refinement immediately... I don't do the SeeD tests, so tents aren't as abundant as you all make them out to be. They're expensive! And yes, somewhere along the second disk I have an insane amount of HP because Curagas do eventually come easy, but... I don't know... If you spend 20-30 min.s grinding in other FFs you can definitely coast enough to make FFVIII's breakability redundant but not substantively different, it's just an added feeling of accomplishment from finding an awesome thing that's hidden in the game for pro players like ya'll, right???

...Right!?

[Wolf Kanno]

So... basically the game is challenging to you cause you don't play it competently...;)

You can do that to any of the games in the series as well. The issue here is that the game is just highly exploitable. In most FFs you either need to level grind like hell or just access some end-game game breaking item to get the same level of brokenness in VIII. The problem here is that by the end of Disc 1 its easy to actually have a party competent enough to beat the game. Outside of grinding to level 60+ you can't do that effectively in the rest of the FF series, and its sure as hell is going to take much much longer in those games to achive this because VIII has the enemy leveling system and also has a static level requirement for your party. So its actually easy and quick to power level a party and get access to spells like Holy and Flare before the first Disc is over. This is just one way to exploit the game, their is also item refinement, card modding, hell whether you power level or purposely keep your levels low, its still and easy game thanks to the enemy leveling system. Outside of purposely playing stupid, you cannot make this game any less easy.

[Bolivar]

Holy and Flare by the end of Disc 1? Geez... what are you guys doing to get that, what abilities do you need to do it, how do you find the original source of it, and how long does it all take??? That's just insane.

[Carl the Llama]

Holy and Flare by the end of Disc 1? Geez... what are you guys doing to get that, what abilities do you need to do it, how do you find the original source of it, and how long does it all take??? That's just insane.

Holy and Flare by the end of disk 1 is a piece of cake, just level your party to 30 and then use the magical lamp to fight Diabolos, from level 30 onwards he has both the spells.

[Jiro]

The thing about VIII is that you don't even need Holy and Flare to kick ass. You can win on either end of the spectrum - higher levels early so you can access the powerful spells, or low levels forever to keep the enemies shit. I played through dead in the centre of the two strategies and only saw a game over because I fell asleep in a boss battle one time :p

[Slothy]

The information about easy refinement of curaga from balamb wasn't widespread, neither was most the other stuff either, like where to get really good cards early on that refined into powerful magic.

See, I actually don't fully agree with you here. No, information wasn't as easy to come by on the internet, unless you had heard of and made full use of Gamefaqs, but it didn't really have to be. Getting Curaga early breaks the game by itself. Other more obvious strategies include things like refining low level magics into higher level magics. A bit more time consuming, but still pretty quick to do as you go along in the game and easy enough to discover on your own. As soon as I understood that junctioning spells increased stats (something which you'll understand as soon as they finish telling you) and that GF's could provide abilities to refine higher level magic from lower level magic, cards, and items (something that's hard to miss if you look at their abilities), I made a beeline for as many of those abilities and stat junctions as I could. And it only takes until the point that you get the ability to refine items for you to stumble on Curaga, because no FF player worth their salt goes anywhere without at least a few tents.

I could see not catching onto this stuff if the player is very young and/or just doesn't understand the game mechanics right away, but even a very minimal amount of understanding of the game can lead a player to stumble upon these things very early. And like I said, once you've found the secret to early Curaga, you've basically hit the point where the game will never challenge you again because not only are you basically unkillable then, but you only get stronger the longer the game goes on.

[Raian the Fallen]

The information about easy refinement of curaga from balamb wasn't widespread, neither was most the other stuff either, like where to get really good cards early on that refined into powerful magic.
I found out about Curaga as soon as I learned Siren's curative magic refine ability.

All I did was look through the items I could refine, and noticed that a Tent refines into Curaga. Tents aren't exactly rare, so I walked a bit to get a salary, then refined 100 Curagas for each party member.

[Jessweeee♪]

Holy and Flare by the end of Disc 1? Geez... what are you guys doing to get that, what abilities do you need to do it, how do you find the original source of it, and how long does it all take??? That's just insane.

Holy and Flare by the end of disk 1 is a piece of cake, just level your party to 30 and then use the magical lamp to fight Diabolos, from level 30 onwards he has both the spells.

I did not know this! I love how every time we have this thread I learn something new.

[Carl the Llama]

This game (or at least one aspect of it) isn't easy: The fight against the Malboro, that guy is so amazingly hard for the unprepared person its ridiculous it goes something like this: fight begins malboro: Bad Breath - Party stand around and do nothing - malboro massacrer, seriously without the right protective spells junctioned to status defence your wide open for a can of whoop ass.

[APolaris]

The hardest playthrough of FF8 I ever ran was one in which I deliberately leveled to 100 before having any Bonus abilities. The early bosses (Seifer, Edea, etc.) were absurdly easy because they have level caps, but the later game got quite tough. Even with good junctioning magic (such as Tornado for HP, Flare/Meteor for Strength, Meltdown for Vitality, Triple for Magic, Reflect/Curaga for Spirit, Haste for Speed, etc.) it still took more ability slots than usual to max important stats, slots I prefer to use on good abilities like Auto-Protect. Meanwhile I was also dealing with monsters at their toughest. Ruby Dragons with high HP using Breath for the entire game are a pretty serious threat if you have three living party members. You have to kill one off just to draw Meteor from them.

As for strong on disc 1... that's not even very tough. Heck, I've had the Lionheart on disc 1, albeit by robbing myself of long-term stats via gaining levels early. 100 Holy is a snap compared to that and you don't even need a single level gained. Just by playing Triple Triad (which is quite addicting if you use Diff trading rule) you can get Holy Stones from refining Krysta. For that matter, you can amass Meltdown from the very, very common Gayla card and Tornado from the almost equally common Abyss Worm.

I will admit, however, to agreeing that when it comes to FF8, enjoying the story, particularly Laguna's backstory which IMO is the high point storywise of the FF series, and enjoying the soundtrack are much more important than the gameplay, even more so than in the rest of the FF games.

[Big D]

For me, FFVIII was a big challenge the first time through. It didn't start getting easier till I learned more about the junction system and started exploiting the stat boosts.

Now, whenever I play I get Card Mod, Enc None and the magic refinement abilities as early as possible. This combination means my characters keep their levels in the single digits, since Card Mod doesn't award any EXP while still giving you AP for each victory. A low-level team means low-level monsters, so you can then easily gain phenomenal stats using Junctioning and magic refinement. It's quite a lot of work for the first few hours of the game, but the rest of it is a walkover, with easy fights and no random encounters.

But then, no-one knows about Junction exploitation on their first play through, unless they've been peeking online. I sure as hell didn't know about it when I first played the game back in '99, before I had an internet connection.

[Jiro]

The first time I played FF8, I just used draw a few times and auto junctioned magic and left it like that. The majority of my magic was coming from draw points, and I would stock up a few times whenever I encountered something new. I started getting my ass handed to me, so then I tried levelling up... bad idea :p It was only when I was stuck against a rock and a hard place that fiddling with the junctions occurred to me and saved me a world of trouble. It's not always obvious at first glance though!

[APolaris]

I think on my first playthrough in ~2003, I had Water on strength, Demi on magic, and Curaga on HP from early disc 1 all the way into disc 2 (lol). For some reason I leveled up Squall, Rinoa and Irvine a lot after Selphie's little base mission (60+), got Pain & Flare, then figured out those were good for strength, magic, and status-defense. The end result was that those 3 characters got stuck way behind the others in base stats at the endgame, with Squall actually having a lower base strength than Zell and needing STR + 60% to reach 255 (I think he reached the 240s with just 40%). Although I did get 600 Triples between Cerberus and Odin, and figured out how good they were for magic/drawing stuff, for some reason I didn't get Tornados until disc 3 despite finding the desert well before then. End result: crap file, but at least I figured out which junctions were good for which stats before my second file.