Publisher: SquareSoft Developer: SquareSoft Release Date: 08/31/1999 Difficulty: Medium My Rating: 10 / 10

Character Evaluations My Party Members Squall Leonhart: Squall is the main character of the game. Whether you like him or not, you don't have the choice to switch him. Besides, I don�t think you want to. He is one of the strongest characters in the game. His final finishing Limit Break, Lion Heart, will be one of the most powerful attacks in the entire game. It is capable of inflicting a total damage from 120,000 to 230,000 HP. However, because the finishing attacks are randomly selected by the CPU. You won't be getting Lion Heart every time. Rinoa Heartilly: Rinoa has two different types of Limit Breaks, Angelo and Angel Wing. Angel Wing is not very useful for most battles because you will lose control of her. Angelo on the other hand, has two very helpful tricks, Invincible Moon and Wishing Star. Invincible Moon makes all of your party members invincible from any attacks or effects. Wishing Star is Rinoa�s most powerful offensive attack. It deals around 80,000 of HP at its maximum. Again, all of Angelo�s tricks are randomly selected. The odds of getting those two tricks every time are not very high. Zell Dincht: Zell is the most underrated character. His Limit Break can inflict as much damage as Squall�s Lion Heart. Let me explain how. Once you have selected Zell�s Limit Break, a timer will be shown. Your goal is to insert as many combinations of sequence as you can before the time runs out. How much time will be on the timer is randomly determined. The most amount of time you can get is 13 seconds. My record is 31 combinations. Each one of them deals around 7000 HP of damage. It's best if you don�t punch in any of the ending moves because they take longer to insert unless you just want to see the cool animation. However, ending moves are the only attacks that hit multiple targets. My Final Heaven can easily inflict a maximum of 9999 HP. Here are my favorite sequences of combinations: O, X ->, <- Up, Down <-, <-, O Up, Down ->, <- O, X <-, <-, O * L1, R1, L1, R1 * Up, Down * <-, <-, O * O, X * Note keep repeating these combinations Other Characters Irvine Kinneas: Irvine's Limit Break is more damaging than Rinoa�s. The only problem is it requires bullets. Rare bullets are not easy to obtain. You probably don�t want to waste them on regular enemies. Quistis Trepe: Quistis uses Blue Magic as her Limit Breaks. There are some extremely useful ones. Mighty Guard is the best defensive spell in the entire game. Shockwave Pulsar is the most damaging Blue Magic, but it's only a single hit. Selphie Tilmitt: Selphie actually has the best Limit Break of all, The End. It instantly kills all non-undead enemies on the screen includes Omega Weapon. However, your chances of witnessing this attack are very, very low. So, don�t count too much on it!

Strategies & Secrets Rosetta Stone This is one of the rarest and most useful items in the game. It teaches the Abilityx4 ability to a GF. Bahamut is the only GF that comes with this ability. You can obtain two more extra Rosetta Stones by completing two optional tasks. During your first time visiting Esthar, if you have already possessed GF Tonberry�s Familiar ability, Cheryl�s Shop will gently offer you a Rosetta Stone for free. You can find the second Rosetta Stone inside of Ultimecia�s Castle. Personally, I have never completed this because the stupid organ didn't worked. It was also the only side quest I did not accomplish in FF8. If you missed any of those two Rosetta Stones, don't worry, there are still other ways. The easiest way is to collect 100 Curse Spikes, which can be mugged from Tri-Face. If your GF Siren is at level 100, you will be allowed to convert 100 Curse Spikes into one Dark Matter (this item can also teach Quistis' final Blue Magic, Shockwave Pulsar) with the Tool-RF ability. You can then convert the Dark Matter into a Shaman Stone with the GF Abl Med-RF ability. Finally, convert the Shaman Stone into Rosetta Stone with again the GF Abl Med-RF ability. Perfect Junction Final Fantasy VIII offers the first-time junction system. This system might be complicated at first, but once you get a hang of it, it is quite simple. Below, I have provided a chart showing my perfect magic junction system. ---- ---- HP: Holy Esuna Ultima Str: Flare Spd: Triple Pain Full-life Vit: Meltdown Eva: Tornado Confuse Life Mag: Meteor Hit: Aura Death Shell Spr: Reflect Luck: Float Status & Elemental Offense: I never liked junctioning any magic onto the status or elemental offense. Mainly because I like attacking my own characters to reduce their HP, so they can perform their Limit Breaks. If I have any negative magic effects junctioned onto the status offense, the character who receives the damage from attacking will also receive the negative magic effect. I don't have magic junctioned onto the elemental offense is because you'll never know what type of element your next opponent will be. Monsters like Omega Weapon absorb all elements. By junctioning any magic onto the weapon will only heal the monsters. Status Defense: Death and Confuse annoy me the most. Get 100 of each of those two spells junctioned onto the status defense, and that character will be immune to them. Pain will make a character immune to Bio, Darkness, and Silence. Esuna will give 20% protection to almost every negative status. Elemental Defense: Ultima is too good of a spell to waste on a single attribute. Have it junctioned on element defense, the character will be immune to all elemental attacks. Add Full-life, Life, and Shell onto it, they provide a 90% absorption of any elemental attacks. Attribute Statuses: Hopefully you have been taking advantage of the Bonus abilities from GFs. If Holy does not boost a character's HP to the maximum, you might need to replace it with Full-life. Str (attacking power), Vit (defense), and Spd (speed) are the three most important attributes in FF8. Each character should also equip Str+60% (or +40%), Vit+60% (or +40%), and Spd+40% on the Character Abilities. This should help Str and Vit reach the maximum 255 and Spd around 150. Malboro This is probably the most annoying monster in the game. Although it's attacks aren't too damaging, it will cast Bad Breath, which causes almost all of the abnormal status effects to your party members. However, if you follow my Perfect Junction strategy above, Malboro won't be too much of trouble. In fact, it's even possible to win the battle without pressing a single button on the controller. Confuse and Pain will protect you from Confuse, Bio, Darkness, and Silence. Now you will only be affected by Sleep and Berserk. Those two effects are not as dangerous as others. If your vitality is at 255, none of Malboro�s other attacks will seriously harm you. After your party members gain conscious from Sleep, they will nonstop attack the monster physically. With each character's strength at 255, Malboro will soon go down. This method will work 99% of the times unless something goes terribly wrong. It would even be better if you switch Death and Esuna to Sleep and Berserk on status defense before you enter the battle. I�m just too lazy to do that. How can I defeat Malboro at low levels? I strongly suggest you don�t fight it at this point. If you really want to, make sure you have 100 Confuse and Pain (or Bio) junctioned onto all party members, or you won�t stand a chance. Adjust other magic junctions if necessary. Vit and HP are the most important attributes. If you have the GF Odin, there is a chance that it will show up in the beginning of the battle to grand you a lucky victory. Defeating Omega Weapon without Invincibility Omega Weapon is the toughest monster in Final Fantasy VIII. It has an attack called Terra Break that will wipe out your entire party. There are a variety of ways to defend this attack. The easiest way is by making your party invincible. Holy War, Holy War-trial, and Rinoa�s Invincible Moon all can do this job. Hero and Hero-trial can make one party member invincible. Below, I will list and explain all the other ways I have discovered to defend Omega Weapon�s Terra Break. Defend: This is the best way to block Terra Break. Use the command ability Defend. It reduces all physical damage attacks to 0 and cuts magical damage attacks by half. Terra Break is a physical attack. Both GF Brothers and GF Jumbo Cactuar have this ability. Mighty Guard: Quistis learns a Blue Magic called Mighty Guard. This is the strongest defensive spell in the game. To block Terra Break, you must cast this spell TWICE. The first time, it will cast Protect and Shell to the party. The second time, it will make the party floating in air. However, there's a chance it would miss the second time. Make sure all three of your characters are floating in air. If not, cast the spell again. Once you have successfully cast the spell, I will guarantee at least one party member will be standing after the Terra Break. GF Sacrificing: Before Omega Weapon unleashes the Terra Break, have each of your characters summon a GF. They will serve as body shields to take damage for you. This also means you will have to sacrifice three of your GFs for this attack. You can always revive them back after the battle. The End: Selphie's super rare Limit Break, The End, is capable of killing Omega Weapon in just one hit. If you are feeling extremely lucky, why not give it a try. Completing Disc 4 within 40 Minutes This is recommended for gamers who are already familiar with Ultimecia's castle. The 40-minutes starts from the time you gain control of your characters till the final blow that defeats Ultimecia. It does not include the beginning scene nor the ending. The ending itself is almost 30 minutes long. Requirements: Legitimate levels 10 Megalixirs 10 Aura Stones GF Diablos�s Enc-None ability Ability "Item" equipped for everyone Immune to fire elemental attacks Squall�s strength 200+; HP at critical range *Note you do not need to have the Lion Heart, but it sure will be nice if you do You won't encounter any random battles with Enc-None equipped. As soon as you gain control of your characters, head directly into the castle. Skip all dialogues. Once inside, run up the center stairs to face off with Sphinxaur/Spinxara. Just hold down the X button, you�ll quickly take it out. The first ability you need to unlock is Limit Break. Head straight to Tiamat and challenge him. He only has one attack, Dark Flare, which is fire elemental based. You shouldn�t worry about it if you are immune to fire elemental attacks. Squall�s Limit Break should finish the battle in couple rounds. After defeating Tiamat, unlock the ability Item. Now, you can take on Ultimecia. If Squall is not in the party when the battle starts, kill off your weakest member to bring him in. Once Squall is in, use a Megalixir to restore everyone�s HP. Then cast an Aura Stone on Squall and have him keep performing Limit Breaks. Also, make sure he doesn't die because you can't revive him back. If all go smooth, you should be able to compete everything in 40 minutes.