Too Easy?

[-JJ-]

Heya,

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 ), 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.