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Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VIII

>Sphere Grid

SPHERE GRID BASICS

The Sphere Grid becomes accessible after Rikku explains how to use it in a short tutorial. Each character who joins the party has a pre-designated starting point on the grid. While each of the character has his or her own section, you can remove the locks between the different sections by using the appropriate key spheres. Thus character advancement is limitless.
While in the Sphere Grid, press the SELECT button to zoom out from the current characters position to see his or her relation to the other characters. Press R2 and L2 to change the viewing angle of the grid you desire.

ABILITY POINTS AND SPHERE LEVELS

As the party defeats enemies, everyone involved in the battle recieves Ability Points, or AP. When enough AP is collected the character achieves a Sphere Level. This is why it is essential to switch every party member intoa boss fight for at least one turn, since so much AP is at stake.
Each Sphere level enables a character to move one node forward on the Sphere Grid, or up to four nodes backward if desired. Open the Sphere grid and press . After selecting the Move command, the number of nodes you can move in any direction is highlighted. Move to the position desired and press again, and then confirm that you would like to remain at the selected position. You can change you mind and cancel out before deciding. Moving forward is essential to activate new sphere nodes and gaining new abilities.

SPHERE NODES

After moving a character's marker to a new location on the Sphere Grid, press again. Select the Use command, and a window listing the available spheres opens. Use the spheres that you've collected to activate nodes in the vicinity. You can active nodes that the marker is positioned on or an adjacent node.

SPHERES

By opening treasure chests, defeating enemies and bribing monsters, you can accquire spheres for use on the Sphere Grid. There are five types of spheres.

RED SPHERES: The most common type, often won from common enemies. Power Spheres enable you to increase a character's HP, Strength, and Defense. Mana Spheres increase MP, Magic, and Magic Defense. Speed Spheres increase Agiltiy, Evasion and Accuracty. Ability Spheres teach the character new skills or special abilities. Fortune Spheres enable the character to activate Luck nodes, but they are the hardest red spheres to come by.

YELLOW SPHERES: The rarest type of spheres, these enable one character to acquire abilities already acquired by another character. Characters can learn special abilities, skills, white magic, and black magic spells that have already been learned by others.

BLACK SPHERES: These could be considered the most importatnt spheres to acquire, because they remove locks that block proress on the Sphere Grid. The appropriate level key sphere is required to open a particular lock. The higher the level, the harder the key sphere is to come by. All of the characters will eventually run into Lv. 3 and Lv. 4 Locks in thier area of the Sphere Grid.

PURPLE SPHERES: These spheres enable you to turn an empty sphere node into an attribute increase of some sort. The increase is highter that the typical attribute node. For example you use an MP sphere to fill an empty node, the node will increase the characters MP by 40 points rather than the usual 20. You should consider using MP and HP spheres on Magic users like Yuna and Lulu to compensate for their general lack of HP nodes ont thier grides and to make spell casting easier. Consider using the Luck Spheres on Rikku, so that her Steal and Mug abilities are improved. Also, try to use them whenever two are more characters are near each other, so that more than one character can immediately benefit from the new node.

BLUE SPHERES: These enable you to move a character's marker to another point on the Sphere Grid, even if the character does not have any Sphere Level's to expend. A Return Sphere let's the character return to any node that they have previously activated. A Friend Sphere lets a character move to any other character's location on the grid. A Teleport Sphere lets a character move to any node activated by any other character.