C'mere ya damn newb!

[Slothy]

I'm not saying FFVI isn't broken. It absolutely is, but not to the same degree as FFVIII if you ask me. Sure Edgar and his auto-crossbow are practically an easy button for the average battle, but it does little to help with bosses and unless you spend a lot of time overleveling the boss battles provide more challenge than FFVIII once you utterly break it and become pretty much invincible for the rest of the game. FFVI really doesn't compare until you learn Vanish and Doom, and at least that was removed in FFVI Advance. VII isn't really broken at all without a fair amount of knowledge you won't have your first time through, but it didn't really matter because even if you didn't try to break it it was still pretty damn easy.

Not to get totally off topic or anything.

[|-THE redmage-|]

I don't remember FFV having a tutorial. Is it possible I missed it?

[Hollycat]

yes, it's in the first town, first building to the left

[Sephex]

I'm glad no one voted for the FFV one. It was so damn boring. My memory might be playing tricks on me, but some wizard dude blocked my path too. It was so damn traumatizing.

[Hollycat]

the poll forgot a game or two.

[Jiro]

Like where?

[Hollycat]

ff2. the first room. also, there is a second training room by the sage in ff1. although, it is more of a training feild.

[Tigmafuzz]

It doesn't matter, nobody would vote for it anyway. Mogster

[Wolf Kanno]

All Materia isn't that hard to come by, and I can break FFVIII completely in under 5 hours. I still say it's more broken than FFVI.

I'm jokin man, I <3 FFVI. Although VII's definitely not as breakable, FFVI is handed to you broken as soon as you get Edgar.

Coming from a guy who has admitted he has to run from every random encounter in the first few areas just to make the game's difficulty actually challenging...

No, you just look at VII with some special rose tinted glasses that makes it infallible in your eyes when what you really need is to take them off and take a look at reality. VII isn't as breakable as VI? The game that gives you limit breaks that can wipe out bosses in one round with careful planning, the game that gives you quite possibly the most overpowered set of blue magic in the series that makes most magic materia useless, the game that hands you ultimate weapons that allow your characters to do max damage all the time? The game that gave us KOTOR?

Were talking about the game where with a little luck and some smart use of an elemental materia, a fire materia, and an enemy skill materia; you can grab Beta the first time you meet the Midgard Zolom and now have the ability to one shot almost everything in the first disc. The game that allows you to simply dive into a random encounter before a boss fight, let's you skip your turn and fill your Limit break gauge as you go along so you can just unleash all of it into a boss and wipe it out. Where beating the final boss, even after raising his HP, still comes down to a matter of "how do I want him to die this time?". Not to mention all this game breaking is not restricted to a a handful of characters, the materia system and Ultimate weapons even allow worthless joke characters like Yuffie and Cait Sith to solo the final boss. I'd say VII's exploitation capability makes it neighbors with FFVI to be honest. At least I can choose to not use Edgar, whereas the game makes it bloody hard to avoid using Limit Breaks.

If you don't think VII isn't as breakable as games like VI and VIII then you obviously are either just a troll or just frankly unimaginative. Happy I'm back?

[Del Murder]

Well the difference is, getting Beta or stocking up your limit breaks requires planning and strategy. Edgar's crossbow comes automatically with them. Knights of the Round is one of the most breakable skills in a FF game ever, but it comes later in the game and requires a lot of work to get. Vanish and Doom don't require much work iirc.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yes, but Edgar's abilities are directly affected by his level so if you were not power-leveling in the game you would quickly discover that even as soon as you get him, he can't one shot a group of enemies. There are also several stretches of the game where he can't be in your party and there are places where his Tool commands are not very effective unless you seriously over-leveled like Vector (where every enemy has auto-protect and high Def. stats) or the Sealed Cave. Not to mention the difficulty jump between the game's first half and second half have the enemies getting a decent boost statistically that once again prevents him from taking out enemies in one round without some grinding. So while I can agree Edgar is definetly over-powered, he can't quite break the game as easily as people make him out to. Not to mention that using Edgar is the player's choice, if you think he's overpowered and breaks the game then stop whining and just kick him out of your party cause he's only required to be in your party for three short sections of the game, two of which are at the very beginning. Unlike say Cloud, who is easily overpowered compared to the rest of VII's cast and only leaves for a very short segment in Disc 2.

Also, breaking a game usually does involve some form of planning. For me, Edgar breaks the game as soon as the player tries to get the Chainsaw as early as possible which involves taking a side quest. The other issue here with the VII examples I gave is that they are not difficult to do. Hell, getting KotoR is just time consuming, it's not even difficult, or challenging to do and you get Quad Magic and other overpowered materia as well for doing it. Finding White Wind and Mighty Guard is easy since the enemies that use them will usually use it in the first freaking round when you encounter them and VII's versions of these spells are way overpowered allowing the player to bypass having to use a Cure, Esuna, Barrier, and Time Materias, and you can have two characters using these spells before Disc 1 is over. Not to mention Aqualung, Trine, and Beta themselves are more cost effective -aga replacements, that can all be obtained before you even reach the Temple of the Ancients. You're probably still going to be using -ra spells at that point if you stick to regular magic materia. Getting the Ultimate Weapons for a good chunk of your party begins as soon as you get Cloud back and that about half way through Disc 2. Exploiting Limit Breaks themselves is pretty easy when the game hands you an item that raises the amount the gauge fills in battle and the minor drawback it gives is irrelevant, especially since you can just nuke them with magic or a summon and it still doesn't change the fact most bosses don't survive taking 3 limit breaks in row. As for getting Beta, the only planning part is figuring out how to kill Zolom and get the spell. All the materials needed to survive the spell are already in your inventory by the time you reach him. None of this changes that I've given you three good examples on how to make VII a cakewalk

I haven't even brought up the fact that VII has the same ultimate problem as VI, which is that all it takes is being 2-3 levels over the recommended level requirement for your characters to be able to kill most enemies with a single physical attack or one attack spell for most of the game. Not to mention both games are pretty easy to level in.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

My favorite of all time has to be FFVII's Sector 7 beginner's hall. Aside from IX's help section, this is the only one I really remember. The reason it is my favorite though is simply due to it making me laugh a lot when I played through it. Such lines as "Finger!? The hell!?" or "Make sure you look for something called Secret" with no other explanation made it pretty memorable. It was just a fun place.

[VeloZer0]

The only problem with this is you assume that the player magically has some knowledge of what all the learn able enemy skills in the game are.
In order to get Beta you would have to:
1) fight the monster that the game explicitly told you to avoid (highly probable)
2) survive long enough for it to use Beta (decent chance of this not happening to an inexperienced player)
3) commit to leveling enough to kill the Midgar Zolem (highly unlikely)
4) have enemy skill materia on the character that isn't knocked out of battle (66% chance) I don't remember if you can learn them or not if your character is killed
This is all a very im-plausible scenario for someone who did not know of Beta's existence as an enemy skill.

I draw a line between break-ability and unbalanced-ness. Unbalanced-ness refers to things that players will likely be doing on a first playthrough without consulting outside resources. Break-ability is the ability to break the game when you know what you are doing. I consider unbalanced-ness a mark against the game, but break-ability is forgivable in many circumstances.

[Wolf Kanno]

You're assuming the player is inexperienced with playing RPGs in general though, this isn't 97 anymore and the JRPG genre has been mainstream for well over a decade so I don't think it's highly unlikely that levels will be an issue since most players tend to grind levels out of habit nowadays. Second, you're also assuming they are not using a guide of some kind at all in an era where Gamefaqs is every gamers close companion and is as simple as turning on your phone to look up. I'm even just going to assume they simply have a list of Enemy Skills spells, and nothing more, not even how to get them just the name of the spell and the critter that uses it, but like I said, most of these creatures will use the spell in the first two rounds if you don't go all gung-ho on it, and just nuke it with a summon or just mash the X button. I did say it required a little luck but seriously, a few attempts to obtain a Disc 1 Nuke is not much of a hassle for total dominance. Though the easy way to win, is to just poison him with Bio and just spam potions and cure to outlast him.

My whole point was simply to show that VII has it's fair share of break-ability and is not somehow "magically" not as breakable than other games in the series in this regard. I don't even consider the break-ability to be a mark against it, though the end game is pretty sad but it's not like a majority of the series isn't in the same boat with that problem. Though I still argue Lv. 3/4 Limit Breaks are pretty unbalanced and account to as "I win" buttons that can easily be exploited by even a rank novice. Just learning how to obtain them is enough to allow even the most inept player to just grind for a bit and reach Disc 1 godhood. Honestly, FFIV is probably the only game in the series that is remotely balanced in terms of not giving the player an overwhelming advantage.