[kitroebuck]

Ya'll are talking about my game again. The most efficient way is to immediately learn Card and Card Mod from Quetzacotl (I think that's how they spell it) and Ice Mod from Shiva. Just fight fish on the beach until you get them. The fish drop fins, five of which can be modded to 100 Waters, which can be junctioned to strength right away. Beat Ifrit in the fire cave and get his card. Use Ifrit's card to get Quistis' card from a guy in the cafeteria. Between those two cards it should be easy to beat anyone you play, at least until the rules change. Run around playing cards whenever you feel like it. You can get Zell's card from his mom, and Seifer's from Cid after the Dollet mission. Keep your five strongest cards and mod all the rest. This should keep you well stocked with magic. You'll never have to spend time drawing.

From there, it's a matter of preference. If you use the Card ability on all the enemies, you will be able to build yourself up with magic without gaining experience. Since the enemies' levels scale with you, the rest of the game should be pretty trivial. Alternately, you can do what mauve did: junction Curaga (modded from tents) to your HP, take enough damage so you're in a state of permanent crisis, and Renzokuken the hell out of everything. The fights will still be trivial, but the enemies will level up, and higher level enemies have better drops and better magic to draw.

If you do want to draw, by the way, be sure to junction something good to your magic stat. Higher magic lets you draw more at once.

So that's a couple of ways to break the game. I don't really agree with the term "break", though. All these exploits are part of the system; figuring them out IS the game. I don't think they make the game broken, just easy. The clue that they're in there by intention is that the second form of the final boss has an attack that does ALL the damage (9999 to all party members.) The only ways to survive it involve some pretty wacky behavior that wouldn't occur to you if you were playing the game like, well, any other final fantasy.

Come to think of it, I don't really think any game is "broken." Play to win guys.

[kitroebuck]

Yeah, I was overstating it a bit. I'm sure some games can be broken. It's just that, in the case of FF8 and a lot of other games I've heard described as broken, what we're talking about is high-level play. Just because getting deep into the game's systems makes the combat trivial doesn't mean there's no depth. You're still making meaningful choices, you're just making them outside of combat. It's like playing on the executive level. If you set it up right, the details take care of themselves.

Anyway, on topic, FF8 did this nice thing with dialogue where you could just overhear conversations from people you pass by. Funnily, this allows you to more effectively roleplay Squall, since he's not going to actually go up and talk to those people.

[kitroebuck]

I... don't disagree. Except for Selphie. Selphie is interesting. If only for the scene at the missile base when, having been locked in with the missiles about to strike, she resigns herself to death and wonders if Squall is going to take over the Garden Festival for her, and then she's like "who am I kidding?" That's cute.

Rinoa is pretty bad, yeah, but Quistis. I don't get Quistis at all.