How do I play this game "properly"?

[Sprocket]

All over the internet I see people talking about how overpowered you can become early on and how the game is a cakewalk if you know how to abuse its systems. My question is... how?

[Languafe]

Without getting into too many details (and I haven't played in a while - just randomly browsing forums as I'm considering replaying it myself), it's mostly related to the various "refine" GF abilities, as well as the Card Mod GF ability. If you unlock these early, you can quite easily gain access to very powerful spells that when junctioned to your characters just make them clearly more powerful than intended. Most Final Fantasy games have this "problem" in one way or another; if you grind way more than you have to, the game will get quite easy.

So to try answering the question in your post's title: avoid using guides that will help you completely crush the game, refrain from excessive grinding, and try to unlock GF abilities in any order you feel makes sense rather than going straight for the overpowered ones.

Or, try to just play the game for fun and immerse yourself in the world and the story rather than spending time mindlessly doing repetitive boring chores to artificially boost your characters.

[Vic 2.0]

It's fundamentally just like any other Final Fantasy game, in that if you "grind" to make your character stronger, the game becomes "too easy". The only difference with FF8 is that instead of level-grinding you can grind by drawing 100 of every spell you come across (and of course Junction them to your stats). Level-grinding won't work since the enemies scale with you.

So basically if you just play straight through, maybe drawing a few spells here or there, the gameplay should be pretty balanced. I have a playthrough on YouTube in which I didn't draw ANY spells (only got spells through refining the items I got in battle) and it proved to be pretty challenging, particularly toward the end.

[Xengre]

As stated its the Card Mod and Item Mod abilities from GFs that allow you to obtain powerful items and magic boosting you to extreme stats even at the start of the game. It is also this method that can lead to special cards producing 10 or 100 of powrful consumable items like Holy Wars (which grant timed invincibility in combat) or Aura items (infinite timed limit break spam while at high HP), etc.

Stuff to look out for early...

Ifrit Card - (don't morph it, required to get Rinoa's card from her father at a point in the game, Google for specifics because you have to get it back a certain way later). It is also a very powerful card early on for dueling and winning. Ideally you want at least 2, arguably 3 powerful cards to easily win most duels and due to the value of most named cards when morphed this makes it hard to keep good cards and Ifrit is one of the ones that isn't super value but good to keep and use for card games (you don't tend to need more than 3 good cards if you know how to play, and actively having some bad cards can help you win much more easily by sacrificing them appropriately and then retaking to protect them).

Siren GF (missable, can't be gotten again until near end of game from optional super boss) - Draw from the flying boss at the top of radio tower during Seed Exam.

Diablos card - Like ifrit card superb for the mini-game. Not worth morphing demi isn't that great for junctioning. To get this beat Diablos GF and acquire it... which is possible by using the item (Magic Lamp iirc) that Headmaster Cid gives you as you are leaving Garden on the way to take the train to Timber (after Seed Test and results).

In the cafeteria the Trepie's in the back often have several nice cards (Elnoyle or w/e if you want to really grind for the best stuff but kinda time consuming). You can get T-Rex cards which can be changed into Earthquake via Diablos Time-mod (massive quantities of HP early on, like jumping from 200 and 400 to somewhere around 3-4k IIRC). Tomberry card with, iirc Siren's life mod to create Death magic. 100 junctioned to Status-attack-J (Siren has this ability) causes 100% chance of instant death so long as they aren't heavily resistant (nothing really is) to it or outright immune to it (unlike most FF games where most enemies are immune to death or the odds of success are very low nearly everything but bosses die to it in FF8 making it god-tier).

Zell's Card - From his mother just before getting on train with Zell in party. YES it can be rare so it may require like 10-30 duels with her. Worth it. It can be used to create the item Hyper Wrist which gives the character +60% Str stat when equipped making it really broken with Triples/Flare/Tornados and such for virtually the max Str stat possible).

Quistis' card - Makes Samantha Souls (3x) which using Diablos Time mod morphs into x60 Triples per Samantha Soul. This lets one character have x100 Triple and a second x80 Triple resulting in two characters with absurd strength. You can't get more until much later in the game, or with pretty intense farm efforts. Later on Triple can be moved to speed junction when you have the junction available and it is the best junction for speed in the game.

Tornado can be farmed from Abyss Worm cards early, or a bit later from Abyss Worm monster and this flying one (forget name) at moderate levels. It is even better than Earthquake for HP but I forget who has the card and IIRC the card is somewhat rare anyways making it not the most worthwhile one to farm for amount you need. Honestly, Earthquake easily suffices until you get further and can get more or just get Flare later.

Curaga (also good for HP or other stats) from Tent via Life mod on Siren. Conversion rate is extremely affordable as long as you did okay on seed test or pass a couple seed exams early (in the menu you can take seed tests to boost income, they are the only way to boost income so the earlier you do it the better).

You can get Meltdown's early too which are the best for Vitality, reduces physical damage taken, aside from Full-Life (better for element def cause it can make all elements heal you... when done right) and Ultima (same as Full-Life reason, also so hard to farm its basically the last spell anyone maxes IF they ever actually even max it) from Gayla cards and is the easiest to get of the three. It is also, hands down, the single most broken spell in the game as it only needs 1 cast per boss to nullify ALL of their defense to 0 for the entire battle (thus you can replace them if you use too many without much impact to stats very very easily). This allows your characters to easily hit for maximum physical damage (or even Zell's shortest combo limit breaks with high str and his ultimate weapon 9999 damage making one of his limit breaks 1-shot ANYTHING even Omega weapon and doing about 5-15x the dmg of anyone else's). Meltdown is a beast. Gayla is one of the earliest cards available and easy to farm.

Diablos also has Mug and Darkside IIRC which are both useful (Darkside hits very hard, Mug is needed to get rare stuff early like making Squalls Ultimate weapon in disc 1).

Lion Heart (Squall's ultimate weapon) can be made in even disc 1 granting access not only to the special damage modifier (ff8 weapons have modifiers and basically it requires their ultimate weapon to hit 9999 damage even if their str stat is already capped). This also lets Squall get Lion Heart (and the other two limit breaks if you haven't already got them). Lion Heart limit break is kind a big deal because of how easy it is to get and reliable it is to use (there are other comparable limit breaks, tho they are all "technically" inferior to Zell's but honestly Zell's requires pushing too many buttons as far as I'm concerned lol) which is basically able to do like 250,000 damage almost even with fairly subpar stats (thanks to its insane damage and having the ultimate weapon to even use it). Its honestly broken OP. If you are familiar with Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 imagine him using his last limit break, Omnislash twice in one attack...

Also, heads up Squall can't miss. Ever. Blind doesn't work on him and enemies can't evade him so don't put anything in hit for him. It would be pointless. Thus casting blind on Squall actually helps elevate his limit break (they have tiers, lower hp and more negative status effects elevate them to a higher tier resulting in more frequent appearance of limit break when spamming skip turn or taking a turn and stronger versions... higher threat tiers = more hits/etc., tho typically having low hp is more than sufficient to wreck face with limit breaks on any character).

Really, you don't need much more than this to faceroll the game.

[NBOX21]

Limit breaks can also break the game when used effectively. Just bring a character's HP down to yellow numbers and there's a good chance you'll be able to use a limit break. Just keep pressing the switch character button over and over during battle until an arrow shows up next to Attack, then press right to use your limit break, and you can do this as many times as you want in battle.

[bongerman85]

the card game is KEY... i cant stress this enough, modding cards and playing the game will get u late game magic early, beyond that avoid anything using a gf for summon, the only time i use gfs is during the first fight with edea in deling, since if u constantly summon carbuncle she will spend almost the entire battle dispelling ur reflect slower than u can recast it with carbuncle rendering her arsenal almost useless, draw needed magic then off her, otherwise u should be focusing entirely on junctions... as last player said abuse the distress mechanic for limit breaks lower health means more frequent and powerful limits for random limit summoners...

ur gfs are there to buff the characters... focus on boosting everything toon related. GF's are useless against the final boss' last form.

[Mhblis]

There are 2 youtube guides that take you through step by step.

"Just search ff8 how powerful can you become."

I honestly wouldnt recommend doing it. Very tedious and sucks all the fun out of the game.

[Shibubs]

You play it properly by not relying on guides or other people.
That's how you play it properly.

[Vic 2.0]

Originally posted by Nyanko-Sensei:

You play it properly by not relying on guides or other people.
That's how you play it properly.

Exactly. And playing it how you want without complaining about the natural consequences (e.g., people who draw 100 of every type of spell then say "The game's poorly balanced because look how overpowered I am!")

[Halliwax]

If you're using cards and refinement abilities properly, only a few times ever will you draw 100 of a spell. It's slow and the spells available to draw are usually weak. Triple is an exception, one of the best spells in the game and pretty hard to find, worth drawing as much as you can out of Odin.

[Vic 2.0]

Well regardless of how you do it, don't complain if you go out of your way to make your character overpowered, was my point.

[Unseen]

If you wanna run over the game just use squall, irvine and zell (original boys game before 15 lol) they are easily the strongest limits. Just keep one at low health with protect (preferably irvine with AP ammo as its less random than squall) and just spam limits. Easier when you get the aura spell, with double or triple best spells in the game along with meltdown. Meltdowns a spell you'll wanna get asap as it lowers the defense of ANY enemy even bosses (i think there might be some resistances tho).

[Xengre]

Originally posted by Vic 2.0:

Well regardless of how you do it, don't complain if you go out of your way to make your character overpowered, was my point.

To be fair infinite limit breaks, starting out with Omnislash + being able to get another Omnislash ability, plus nearly every character has an Omnislash type limit break, and Rinoa has a literally spammable infinite limit break that can have 100% uptime if you very obviously don't learn other limit breaks... not to mention status attack junction Death which is doable a number of ways very early even for a completely blind new player are all quite... broken. The game is, inherently, very busted with regards to the combat. There will be very few fights even a mediocre blind player will struggle with (like Bahamut/Research facility or Omega Weapon).

[Unseen]

But along the way its not so easy and the system is complex enough to be challenging. Also the last boss and her 4 forms isn't a push over. Imo she's one of the more challenging end bosses next to zeromus. Think about it, in every FF almost the last boss is pathetic. Sephs pathetic, Vayne's so pathetic you gotta go easy on him just to see his moves, Kefkas so pathetic you can kill him in one turn. And so on...

Which FF villain requires as much pounding and basically a half hour to and hours worth of playtime just to beat her? Granted bhunivelze is a strong boss but who else? Just zeromus as he really was a grind, but the rest, including chaos and up, are push overs.

8's not as easy as people say. Death doesn't effect the last boss. Nothing does but continued damage spamming including mass limits.

[bongerman85]

the last boss fight, music is epic. think thats why the devs ground her hp up

[Vic 2.0]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Originally posted by Vic 2.0:

Well regardless of how you do it, don't complain if you go out of your way to make your character overpowered, was my point.

To be fair infinite limit breaks, starting out with Omnislash + being able to get another Omnislash ability, plus nearly every character has an Omnislash type limit break, and Rinoa has a literally spammable infinite limit break that can have 100% uptime if you very obviously don't learn other limit breaks... not to mention status attack junction Death which is doable a number of ways very early even for a completely blind new player are all quite... broken. The game is, inherently, very busted with regards to the combat. There will be very few fights even a mediocre blind player will struggle with (like Bahamut/Research facility or Omega Weapon).

1. You have to accept the risk of dying to keep Squall at low enough HP for his Renzokuken ability to come up every time. It also costs time to play the game that way (same for the complaint that you can "just overuse the GFs").
2. You have to know how and where to find the Death spells and make it a point to collect and assign them (and of course will need more than just a few). This is rewarding strategic thinking, something more RPG games should do.

So again if you go out of your way to make it easier, that's on you, not the game. If you simply play it normally it does present quite a challenge. Particularly if you don't even draw spells much/at all in battle.

Besides which, it's time to admit that absolutely none of the traditional RPGs were "challenging" if you account for the fact that you could just run around in a circle somewhere holding down the action button to level up your characters before proceeding, something this game didn't do (right or wrong).