This game is hard D:

[Freya]

This is my first playing of this game. I just recently started it. What I have to say so far is WTF?!

This game is hard. I never die this much on any rpg. I also don't like how you get summons early. It feels like I never have to do anything but use those guys cause they do the most damage and there is no restriction. YET it's still hard. It's as if you have to use them. Which then I think is kinda stupid that you put in the whole gunblade mechanics and such and then all you do is use those.

So I think this game is kinda hard. Opinions, comments, questions?

Anything I should know to do that I could miss since i'm new to this game?

[Sir Bahamut]

I remember playing the game for the first time and having the same experience. I used GF's all the time and relied on them all up till the final boss fight basically. And if you play that way then it IS hard, no doubt.

What I'd recommend is that you really try to sit down the Junction system and work out how it works. Actively draw lots of magic and junction it in efficient ways. Once you start doing that then suddenly simply using a regular Attack will become really effective, and limit breaks will become so effective you won't ever want to summon a GF ever again.

If you really know the Junction system and know some other tricks then the game can be made absurdly easy pretty much immediately when you start.

[blackmage_nuke]

I use to play with summons as my main force but i couldnt get past the second diskand had to start again.

The enemies scale based on your level so its better to stay at low levels and get most of your strength from drawing magic + junctioning.

[crazybayman]

2 things to make the game dead easy:
- learn the Card command
- draw magic early on as much as possible.

Even when you encounter those bite bug and caterchipillars in the beginning just outside of Balamb Garden - draw all the magic you can. Then junction the magic to boost your stats. Pay attention to the tutorials from Quistis on junctioning, they help. It is good to be somewhat selective when drawing magic as fire, ice, thunder and cure boosts your stats better than scan.

Once you learn the card command, card everything you fight instead of defeating it. That way you gain AP so your GFs can keep learning abilities for junctioning, yet you don't get exp and level up. When you don't level up, neither do the enemies in the game. Your stats will be boosted much more with junctioned magic than levelling up, and you will be far more powerful than most enemies. So back to carding, in order to card something you have to attack it until most of its HP is gone. Then the card command will work.

Then learn the card mod ability, which allows you to change your acquired cards to items and tools, which in turn can be refined into magic. Of course you have to learn each magic refinement command first, but these can be learned early on as well, so learn these abilities as soon as possible.

Try this, and the game will be easy. Even Edea at the end of the first disc will be a joke, and don't forget to draw whatever magic she has that you don't!

[Flying Mullet]

I think a lot of people find the game hard the first time they play it because Square took such a radical departure from the normal "fight battles, get stronger than enemies" approach. Not only does an enemy's power scale with you, but you won't become much more powerful unless you learn how to junction properly.

[Slothy]

Once you learn the card command, card everything you fight instead of defeating it. That way you gain AP so your GFs can keep learning abilities for junctioning, yet you don't get exp and level up.

Even without doing that this game is dead easy.

Step 1: draw 100 of every spell you can
Step 2: Junction those 100 spells to your stats
Step 3: Learn more stat junction abilities
Step 4: Learn the refinement abilities that let you refine spells from items and more powerful spells from weaker ones

Congratulations, you just broke the battle system. And you haven't even learned encounter none and spent time drawing from the islands closest to Heaven and Hell yet.

[Flying Mullet]

And you haven't even learned encounter none and spent time drawing from the islands closest to Heaven and Hell yet.

Drawing powerful spells from those islands is so tedious.

[Marshall Banana]

Once you learn the card command, card everything you fight instead of defeating it. That way you gain AP so your GFs can keep learning abilities for junctioning, yet you don't get exp and level up.

Even without doing that this game is dead easy.

Step 1: draw 100 of every spell you can
Step 2: Junction those 100 spells to your stats
Step 3: Learn more stat junction abilities
Step 4: Learn the refinement abilities that let you refine spells from items and more powerful spells from weaker ones

Congratulations, you just broke the battle system. And you haven't even learned encounter none and spent time drawing from the islands closest to Heaven and Hell yet.

Magic drawing can be ignored by playing Triple Triad for a few hours, then using Card Mod.

[Freya]

OMG what's this card stuff you're talking about D:

Yeah I don't like having to steal magic from things.

[Rantz]

When you leave Garden for the first time, you receive the GF Quezacotl. He can learn the Card ability, and after learning that, the Card Mod ability. The Card ability, once equipped, lets you turn enemies into cards if their HP is low enough (generally lower than 50%, but the success rate will be higher the lower their HP is). The Card Mod ability lets you turn cards into useful items, many of which can be further refined into great spells for junctioning by using other GFs' refining abilities (early on, examples include Shiva's I Mag-RF, Quezacotl's T Mag-RF and Ifrit's F Mag-RG, but you'll learn plenty more later on).

If you'd rather earn cards by playing them, talk to a guy on the bridge on the 2nd floor of Balamb Garden (I think he's there randomly so leave and come back if he isn't there) to recieve a few cards to start with. It'll be a bit hard in the beginning, but it quickly gets easier as you gain better cards.

[Slothy]

And you haven't even learned encounter none and spent time drawing from the islands closest to Heaven and Hell yet.

Drawing powerful spells from those islands is so tedious.

It takes a while, but only because you need to wait for the draw points to recharge. Have one person draw all of them while walking around with encounter none equipped and you'll have an unstoppable killing machine with so little effort it's sickening. It really is ridiculous how with even a small amount of understanding of the junction system you can break the game.

Magic drawing can be ignored by playing Triple Triad for a few hours, then using Card Mod.

I figured since they were new to the game I'd teach them the most straight forward way to break it. Sure there are more efficient methods, but they'll probably learn them in time anyway.

[line_genrou]

First off,try reading through those tutorials again.Seems like you skipped them.
Second,when you learn from the tutorials,if you are in the beginning of the game,draw magic from enemies and juction the magic spells you have to your stats to increase them.That makes your physical attacks,HP,magic power and immunity increase,so you don't have to rely on GF's so much.

Personally,my first playthrough was a mess,I only relied on GFs,I didn't get the junction system and my game was pretty much stuck in some parts and kinda boring just using GFs all the time.On disk 4,when time started compressing I pretty much quit because I knew I was weak and I couldn't defeat Ultimecia.I started all over again.

My second playthrough,when I figured it out the junction system,went smoothly.It's pretty easy,really.Just know how to junction,level up so your GFs can learn abillities and that's it.The thing is,in this game you don't have to level up to increase your stats,just junction.
So you can be level 15 and make 5000 of physical damage.

There are abillities that your GFs can learn so you can refine useless itens you win in battle,to magic spells.So you don't have to draw constantly from enemies.

[LunarWeaver]

If your GF has learned Boost you can hold select (I think it is) and mash one of the buttons to make their attack stronger during their summon animation. I don't know if someone mentioned that. I tend to scan /lazyasshole

You can go into the menu somewhere, I actually think it's in the tutorial section at the bottom, and take a SeeD test. When you answer correctly, it increases the amount of money you get when Gil magically pops up every so often. Just go here as a cheat sheet. Get Siren to learn her Refine ability. Buy a bunch of Tents with your huge money you earned from taking the SeeD test. Refine the Tents into Curaga. Junction the Curaga to HP. Now your characters have massive amounts of his points. This can be done early on.

If your HP is in the yellow zone, they can initiate a Limit Break. If it doesn't pop up, just smash triangle until it does. Squall's is pretty mothersmurfing fierce. Honestly, if you have huge trouble, you can purposefully keep him low and just limit break everyone.


I tend to use their Refine abilities to get myself junctioned. It turns items into magic that you can then junction to stats. I hate Draw and my princess self does not have the goddamn patience to draw smurfing 100 spells from anything :mymelontd: Maybe now and then, especially important ones from bosses, but bleh.

Okay. Now just put the best strongest magic you have on STR to increase their attack. If you get a strong enough magic slapped on your STR stat, you can just hit attack over and over and ignore GF altogether.

People use the Card trick because it means GF learn abilities but the enemies don't level, thus putting you far above them in power. It's kind of cheap, but oh well.

Running on roads eliminate random encounters.

imho Selphie's Limit Break sucks unless you're willing to use a trick that takes too long. Quistis' takes too much effort for me. Rinoa's can be good but it takes a tight set-up. I suppose what I'm saying here is use party members with penises. But again, tbf it's imho.

[Kyros]

I hardly ever turn anything in to cards in this game unless I need their card to card mod into an item. The ability really isnt that necessary since you can keep up and surpass enemies fine w/o having to worry about your lv. My last playthrough everyone absorbed every element in the game, was immune to all (or a huge majority of) status effects, had max hp and str w/ a supercrappy spell on hp (like fire or blizzard) and mid-lv spell on str, and Rinoa had 200-230 in every stat she didnt have maxxed. Junctioning is pretty much the only reason Ive found people dont like this game b/c it makes it too easy if you know what youre doing with only a few exceptions. Once you are able to get that junctions that let your stats grow higher every lv its even more retarded.

Also, I used GFs (including Eden) hardly ever. I used Shiva to beat Ifrit to make the 10 min time limit easier to beat, and I used Quezacotl vs the guy on top of the communication tower (I think). After that I pretty much never summon for the rest of the game unless its for fun (cactuar for best summon animation ever imo) or if I dont feel like casting meltdown on a boss so I use doomtrain to drop its vitality to 0 and hope for it being susceptible to some other random status effect. BTW every boss in the entire game is susceptible to the 0 vit status effect from meltdown/doomtrain once you get those, which means you cut through them in 5 sec.

Another note, I used items for the first time ever on my 203843240th playthrough a couple weeks ago. I'll admit I was just getting tired of omega weapon so I used 1 war trial and that was that. :x imo items are overall pretty useless in this game unless outside of battle for for GF abilities like magic refinement or modding or w/e

[Bolivar]

STOP! Don't use the Card ability, don't draw 100 magics of everything, they take too long and take all of the fun out of the pacing of the story and the game in general.

When you find a new spell, have each member draw once or twice and exchange all of that magic to one user, find which stat junction will benefit the most from it, and move on. This way, you can draw and junction a decent variety and quantity of magic just by playing the regular battles as you go along.

Most importantly is the pay attention to the magic you're getting and learn to effectively use it in different areas. Some enemies will be susceptible to elements and status ailments, and you should learn when to do that with the spell Scan (or trail and error).

Finally, Demi, or Gravity, is the most important spell in the game. A lot of the time the enemies will have much higher HP than you hit for, and it's a great way to drastically reduce that. If you use double or triple on it then you have the best combination in the game.

Dude, FFVIII is all about the story, you should be enjoying the story and its pacing instead of running around performing meaningless tasks all for the sake of breaking the game. Keep up the pace as you go along but don't try to get bogged down in mundane tasks.