Is there any game as mechanically broken as Final Fantasy 8?

[Quinton]

I used to grind to Level 100 by the first half of Disc 2. It never gave me a lick of trouble because I'd junction 100 insanely powerful spells to as many stats as possible.

Why did I level to 100? I couldn't friggin' tell you. But I did.

 

[Antrax]

I think it's because of the level scalling, right? It's possible to go directly to the last boss from the start and beat it without any levelling at all. At least, that's what I heard.

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Yeah, that and just how you level up. You had to increase minor skills before major ones to get the most out of it, if you didn't you would level up quickly but with fewer points and then the level scaling would level up and you'd be underpowered as a result. You could never level up and the world would stay are level 1 all the way through. It was just a sort of mess all around. Great game though.

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The enemy scaling also isn't always smooth. There are tables of enemy types set by level ranges so that next level up could push you from the top of one table to the bottom of the next, causing a difficulty spike that was seriously annoying

 

[Poltergust]

At least FFVIII is the "fun" kind of broken where if you know what you're doing you can become basically a god in no time flat and go through the game at a brisk pace.

FFII is also "broken" and is just so tedious in comparison. The Pixel Remaster could've done so much more to make it feel better to play, but as it stands now it's just a missed opportunity. I'm just going to cross-post from the Pixel Remaster thread about my major issues with the game:

I'm entering the Tower of Mysidia dungeon in FFII and I have to say I'm enjoying my time with it quite a bit less than with FFI.

A think a big feeling with that is the lack of a feeling of progression and the overall dungeon design. Dungeons are not fun in this game, which is a problem since there are so many of them and very few towns to break things up.

The Cave of Mysidia is the worst offender so far. Maze-like with lots of empty rooms that waste your time, and some fights take forever because despite spamming your best spells you still do pitiful damage, especially if it's an AoE.

Black Flans are probably the worst enemies I've come across in any FF game. They are weak to Fire and can only really be damaged by Fire (Holy can work but it's unlikely you'll have it even at level 4 by this point even if you were using it every turn since you purchased it). Instant KO spells like Break or Toad are completely ineffective for some inexplicable reason. I only have 1 Fire user and had to just make do with targeting each Black Flan one at a time (the fights with 5 of these at once are just the absolute worst), but since it was only Fire 6 it may not even one-shot them if I get a low damage roll. And despite spamming Fire for basically the entire dungeon, I didn't even level it up once. It's soooooooo grindy.

I'm planning on finishing the game since I've made it this far, but I was really hoping the more grindy aspects of the game would've been more carefully tuned in this version. It should be absolutely possible over the course of a normal playthrough to get at least a handful of spells to level 16 without needing to go out of your way to grind. It would make the game feel so much better to play. At the rate I'm going I have to wonder if any of my spells not named Cure will even reach the double-digits, and I've made every one of the main trio an attacker + spellcaster hybrid so I'm using spells nearly all the time.

EDIT: One more note. I think the spell system in this game had the potential to be good due to the sheer variety of spells you can get, but they just feel so weak and inconsistent. Outside of needing to grind up Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder out of necessity (because some encounters are nightmares without them), the following spells are really all that are needed in a given playthrough:

-Cure
-Life
-Esuna
-Basuna
-Blink
-Protect
-Shell
-Berserk
-Aura
-Osmose
-Haste
-Warp
-Teleport

The common thread linking all of these? They are all 100% reliable and usable basically everywhere. And besides Cure (which honestly will be high-leveled towards endgame anyways), absolutely none of these need to be leveled up past like 7 or 8 for them to reach their maximum utility.

This is such a small fraction of the spells you can use, though. I want to make good use of spells like Blind, Curse, Fog, or Slow, but since the accuracy for them is terrible even when at like level 7 I feel that my effort to do so is just wasted. It just doesn't feel good to cast a Blind 7 and see it entirely miss a group of eight enemies.

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[balohna]

My original FF8 save has me on an air ship at a boss fight I'm woefully unprepared for. It was my first Final Fantasy and maybe like my 5th JRPG (and I finished none of the others either). I think it's like a "load the save, trigger the fight, die" situation.

My problem was I would literally run from battles and when I did fight I would use GFs most of the time. I barely used the junction system at all. If there was some way to take advantage of being under leveled I certainly didn't know about it.

I recall being vaguely aware of how drawing magic worked and I would use it in the field, but it was hardly my focus.

I did really like the game though!

 

[JT60564]

Should also be said that the Classic Original FF1 was broken as well. Most of the spells (all cryptically named with only 4 characters) don't even do anything lol. Im sure the rereleases have since fixed it but I played the NES cart a couple years ago and…yeesh.

 

[Mr. Poolman]

The Last Remnant.

If you grind and level up your squads, you can literally make the game unbeatable on later stages since the games scales based on your performance.

 

[Cats]

We had no issues with this game as kids. Understanding junction was pretty straight forward as you clearly see when putting spells on your stats, they get bigger. Literally ignoring all the dialog and experimenting you can figure this out.

Also, FF8 is a great subversion on grinding. Junctioning/GFs gives you the strongest boost in stats. The only real battle grinding you need to do is AP farming for your GFs and drawing in certain battles/locations. It is exponentially less overall time spent grinding than if you were traditionally fighting battles to get to level 100. On top of that, you are praised, not penalized, to turn off random encounters with an ability you get within the first few hours of the game.

I appreciate it being quirky and weird, and the junctioning system is very fun. I think FF9 has the overall weakest gameplay systems of the PS1 titles because the ability system in that game is just another time sink on top of the leveling timesink (if you want to beat optional stuff).

 

[viskod]

Symphony of the Night.

 

[evrythngwastakn]

Becoming insanely OP early but playing tons of cards and getting end game spells is so fun tho

 

[PJTierney]

If you enjoyed snapping Final Fantasy VIII in half (I certainly did on repeat playthroughs) you'll love obliterating Final Fantasy VI.

Granted, it's more on glitches than mechanics but there's some wild stuff in this:

Final Fantasy VI

Let's Play Final Fantasy VI by Elephantgun

lparchive.org

 

[AuthenticM]

But I'll probably never play it again

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I recommend that you check out this popular mod for the game.

Also, bookmark this in-development mod, from the same author as FF7 New Threat.

 

[JT60564]

Becoming insanely OP early but playing tons of cards and getting end game spells is so fun tho

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I had a lot more fun playing the game by breaking it early, coupled with an emulator cheat where I would draw 100 every time lol. Not exactly the way the Devs meant it to be played, and it's not much of a challenge, but its still pretty fun.

Anyway, everyone knows the real challenge in FFVIII is completing the card collection when you have to play with those awful rules in certain areas. Fuck Random, fuck Same/Plus.

 

[Ralemont]

Suikoden V was a completely broken battle system. Characters had 2-3 Rune slots, and there were multiple types of passive attack boosting runes that stacked with each other and even were multiplicative.

Throwing all attack runes on your entire party meant the following:

Every random battle was over in a character auto-attack

Every boss battle was over in two character auto-attacks

The final boss took I think two character rounds where everyone auto-attacked

I don't even know what the attack animations look like for 99% of the enemies in that game because they never got a turn

 

[Fisty]

I would say it's exploitable, not broken. There is no reason you need to skip leveling early or anything if you're just interested in seeing the ending.

It is a LOT of fun to abuse junctions to avoid leveling, and then power level at the end with bonus stat gains, along with the exploitable gil mechanics... but tbh even Omega doesn't really require anything more than Triple, Aura, and Holy War x10

 

[Turbocharge]

Morrowind's alchemy system springs to mind. Create a potion to boost your intelligence. Drink it. Create another potion to boost your intelligence. It lasts longer and has a larger boost. Repeat as necessary.
Create a potion that increases your luck by 1000 points and lasts for hours. Nothing can hit you.
Create a potion that increases your strength by 1000 points and lasts for hours. You one-shot everything and can carry every item it the game.
Create a potion that increases your acrobatics by 1000 points and lasts for hours. See that mountain? You can climb jump over it.

It was very, very broken.

 

[El Crono]

Easy to abuse, yes, but I wouldn't say it's broken. Back when it was released I got a JP copy and managed just fine with the first info you could get from GameFaqs and other internet sites (before the system was fully studied).

I actually liked the level scaling system and wonder why it isn't implemented as the standard for many RPGs. It constantly gives you a challenge so no matter how much grinding you do you always need a strategy for bosses and even some common enemies, without the game being impossible to overcome. From what I'm reading The Last Remnant is the opposite case and the reason not many people like such a system.

 

[Basileus777]

OP seems ways to hung up on min/maxing stats. FF8 can be played completely normally without every struggling with any of these issues.

 

[Dosmo]

Doing a low-level run by equipping the "no random encounters" item ASAP made me wish there was a JRPG that played that way intentionally. Like a 20 hour game that was nothing but story and boss fights.

 

[Alpheus]

It's only ever really felt broken to me once I got access to Pain and Ultima. Even Malboros can't kill you cuz their breath will only berserk you and then you just auto them dead anyway. Or Ultima making elemental resists into absorbs for all elements.

They're just stupidly rare and only really farmable in the Heaven and Hell Islands.

I also leveled on most of my playthroughs as you don't need any level up bonuses if you can junction the right spell to cap it. But again lots of drawing and refinement needed to hit those caps. Idk I'm weird but I enjoyed it.

 

[Hzsn724]

I thought it was way too easy. Junctioning magic to stats made me super op early on. Grinding just made it that much easier.

Beyond that the GFs make it a cakewalk (hero drinks from the Laguna card mod trick..)

By far the easiest FF platinum out there.

 

[Kito]

I wonder if FFVIII released on a console where patching was a thing, if the mechanics would have been altered/fixed?

 

[DealWithIt]

My memory is that ffx-2 gets trivialized by it's own mechanics at some point. Gunners do like 100k per turn.

 

[AndrewDean84]

I respected FF8 more for being different.

 

[AndrewDean84]

Symphony of the Night.

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What about it?

 

[bounchfx]

Beat the game as a kid back in 1999 with no interwebs.

Never thought much about the game in terms of difficulty.

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same
loved it as a teenager, i could customize so much it felt so neat. didn't do anything funky or overpowered, just put stuff in wherever, difficulty never was a problem outside of the bosses that were supposed to be the hardest in the game

 

[Fugo]

Rinoa with Ultima*100 junctioned to luck and Aura cast > she will get the party invincibility limit every other turn. I was proud of finding that one all by myself back then

 

[Dust]

FF8 is not difficult and leveling is perfectly fine outside some min-max playthrough. The problem with FF8 is that you can become broken INSANELY fast even by accident with junction and how magic quantity works with drawing points.

 

[Warrior of Light]

If you play the game like you would any other JRPG, it's actually pretty challenging. The final boss can easily be one of the hardest in the entire series. But it can also be fun even if you understand the system well enough to break it - which cannot be said for Final Fantasy II.

Also...

 

[Axon]

Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls to not have a completely broken levelling system, so Im not so sure.

 

[Weiss]

Final Fantasy VIII would have been better if the Guardian Forces functioned similarly to the gameplay of classic Persona, where your characters and Personae individually level up and the latter are more important since they get better stats and learn new spells. So you could assign Ifrit to Squall and it'd give him a lot of Strength bonuses and Fire magic to slot him into a particular role, but then you could hand Ifrit over to Zell and he could take over if the need arose.

FFVIII as it exists is a game that goes out of its way to drop existing RPG ideas and then not meaningfully make up for them. "Kill monster for EXP" is timeless but no we gotta screw that up, I guess.

 

[JT60564]

Also...

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I wouldn't be surprised if Square playtesting showed people thought FFT was too challenging, so they threw in TG Cid as a quick solution.

 

[rustyra24]

Diablo kicked my ass because I had leveled. I had to get creative to beat him.

Final Fantasy Tactics has the same problem. I maxed leveled and the random encounter maps have stronger monsters than the end game boss.

Screw Red Chocobos.

 

[viskod]

What about it?

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It's mechanically broken.

 

[AndrewDean84]

It's mechanically broken.

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How so? I just beat it for at least the 10th time (first time on iOS). Seemed pretty straight forward to me with no mechanical issues.

 

[SilentSoldier]

Before my PS1 crapped out on me during my first playthrough of FF8, I had no idea how to fully utilize the junction system and I hated the card game so I never collected anything to mod. Once I got a replacement PS1 and had to restart, I was a little bit better about using it (not the level scaling though). Got caught by a Malboro and was KO'd after Bad Breath made everyone Beserk'd and poisoned cause of the scaling. Then I got item refine to magic and proceeded to break the game.

 

[Ferrio]

I never had any issues with FF8's difficulty or level scaling. I didn't use card mods etc, did just fine and became OP fairly quickly. When I read the title I thought broken as "This game is so easy to make trivial", didn't expect the swerve in the OP.

I always got the impression that people that didn't understand junction were playing the game when they were really young and just spammed GFs. It's magic you treat like armor.... that's it. What's difficult to understand, and why would you ignore it. You wouldn't ignore putting on armor or changing your weapon.

12-year old me managed simply by reading the in-game tutorial, it is overblown.

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Exactly.

 

[EVA UNIT 01]

Fave ff
I can show you how to exploit this thing beyond belief I love it so much.
Disc 1 lionheart baby no encounters

 

[viskod]

How so? I just beat it for at least the 10th time (first time on iOS). Seemed pretty straight forward to me with no mechanical issues.

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If you've played it 10 times then you should know about the billion and one ways the difficulty curve plummets off a cliff and Alucard is a walking final boss that everyone needs to stay the fuck out of the way from.

 

[Zeal543]

The original FF6 is very broken, certain characters don't even work properly, the evasion stat straight up does nothing, etc.

 

[Deleted member 1102]

The hate/critism for the Junction system is really overblown imo, once you figure it out it's a complete cakewalk and I respect the hell out of the game for going against the norm as much as it did.

 

[Druffmaul]

I sometimes forget my first playthrough of FFVIII. I was a vet, I'd played IV, VI, and VII, so when a tutorial would pop up I'd go "Yeah yeah blah blah blah I know how to play FF thanks" and pay zero attention. I totally over relied on GFs, and by the time I got toward the end of disc 3 I was thinking I might not be able to finish the game. I had NO idea how exploitable the systems were. I had no idea how to defend against elemental attacks. I thought the final dungeon bosses and the final boss were like the most inconceivably fiendishly difficult bosses in the history of JRPGs. lol what a scrub.

 

[Eppcetera]

While I agree that the mechanics are heavily flawed in Final Fantasy VIII, I don't think that Pankratous really touches on the game's more problematic issues.

But I'll probably never play it again (unless I could just use cheats to get max stats) because the levelling up and junction mechanics are so fucked. If you don't know what you're doing from the very beginning of the game, so you start fighting things and levelling up, you're fucking yourself out of getting better stats later on.

In fact the best way to get strong in the game is to avoid levelling up at all costs (never fight anything) so you can then take advantage of the totally fucked junction system later on. On the other hand you can also get easily jacked as hell at the start of the game, enough to cover the main story anyway, without having to worry about any challenge in the main game whatsoever.

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Levelling up doesn't do that much to screw over the player. There are some GF abilities that grant +1 to a stat when a character levels up, but these bonuses are inconsequential. For one, it's possible to farm items that boost stats through item refinement (and this is really the only way to max stats, since the GF stat-boost abilities won't get a stat up to 255). For another, stats can be sufficiently raised to beat any enemy by simply junctioning magic.

Enemies scale with the player, but levelling up does not make bosses or random encounters all that much harder. The problem with Final Fantasy VIII's difficulty is that the only thing that really matters is junctioning magic to stats, and the game does not do a good job of conveying how important the Junction system is (it has some godawful tutorials near the start that are boring and not very engaging).

So, Final Fantasy VIII can be hard to players who don't figure out the Junction system. That's a problem, but the problems continue after the player figures out the system. First, the game is unbelievably easy for anyone who understands how to junction magic effectively. Second, the Junction system involves either spending endless numbers of turns in battle drawing magic (which is boring and one of the most frequent complaints I see levied against the game), or the player has to play an endless number of card games to get items that can be refined into magic (which I think is a more fun way to grind, but it's still grinding). Third, once the player has magic, the Junction system discourages the player from casting magic, since doing so will reduce the characters' stats.

I think there's a fair bit of fun to be had with the Junction system, but it has some issues that could have been ironed out in a sequel, except that Square totally abandoned the system and hasn't done anything like it since.

 

[Larrikin]

Oblivion for similar reasons.

 

[Skulldead]

The hate/critism for the Junction system is really overblown imo, once you figure it out it's a complete cakewalk

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i think this is the problem, give such a complex and really customisable system should came with a challenging game, the game is too easy when you understand the system just a little.

 

[Larrikin]

not the point of messiness like VIII but FFIX has the hidden stats for leveling system that's based on the equipment you wear... i still to this day dont know how it works for the best stats

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I completed a FF9 Excalibur 2 Perfect Game playthrough, tl;dr Get to the final dungeon in under 12 hours so you can get Excalibur 2 while getting every missable item in maximum quantities and leveling up as little as possible to maximize stats through equipment.

Basically each piece of equipment adds a stat bonus to your character on level up. There's no way to completely max all stats so you have to choose which 'type' of perfect you want for each character. Basically, you'll get to the end of the game, equip the right gear for X levels, swap gear for Y levels and repeat until you reach 99. If you do this correctly, your stats will be at theoretical maximums. You can also change how you level up if you simply want the highest total value to your stats (i.e adding the numbers of strength, magic, speed etc together) or if you want to focus each character on their strengths (i.e magic for mages, strength for attackers)

There's no way to know or plan any of this in a standard playthrough though.

 

[Deleted member 1102]

i think this is the problem, give such a complex and really customisable system should came with a challenging game, the game is too easy when you understand the system just a little.

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Well, whether that's an issue depends on the player imo. I have no problem with an easier game given I'm playing them for the story, not the gameplay or challenge.