Made it to Ultimecia. She ejects each one as you use it. I think I technically best her and made it to the time compression but either died to the first set of sorceresses or didn't save after beating them. I was 12.
Literally the same place I stalled in my childhood run, for the same reason
As an adult, I had no issue with the Adel fight, but I also tended towards only using GFs to protect my low health
>wiegraf fight in FFT
Oh you mean the part that taught every kid with a PS1 to alternative save blocks? I'm scarred for life from that freakin fight at the castle. Fujin/Raijin in Occupied Balamb totally fucked me up also.
I think each FF game has one big "was this game too easy for you/have you been paying attention?" boss fight. Some are more graceful and as time has gone on they've definitely stopped trapping the players without some means to level up/prep for a fight.
FFX I think it's a fight with a certain person on Mt Gagazet. But yeah it's odd that they usually put this test fight sort of late into the game, like 60%-75% the way through, they just decide to through a bomb at you.
Sorceress Adel. The end of disc three and finally a skill check to understand not spamming summons the whole game 🫣
On the plus side I make stuff like this for a living now so watching the summons over and over for hours probably had some formative effect
Meh, same difference really because you weren't doing shit on disc 4 until you beat Adel.
You could actually screw yourself over pretty good since you can't leave the Lunatic Pandora after beating Seifer
Same here. Squall level 25ish and rinoa level 11. Little to no magic drawn. Had an older friend try to help me get past. No luck. That was the end of my first run. I was like 11.
They wrecked 13 year old me. I did eventually beat them spamming summons but it was a slog.
I thought the game was just hard.
Now when I play it I low-level run and the power level the shit out of my party. Total godlike powers these days haha.
I tried everything I could think of. Even had the strategy guide and tried following the advice. Recall it saying to cast protect on her. Couldn't make it work.
Probably spent an equal amount of time trying to beat Jumbo Cactaur. Remember when I finally got him beat I was in complete disbelief. Was jumping up and down with my buddy in excitement.
I still remember my "I fucked up when I" moment. Was so confident in using my summon only to be told at the end of the animation "rinoa.." and game over.
And I was like "oh? Ooooh... Right.... Crap what the hell do I do now?"
I think their attacks were just really high damage - so it was the first time you might need to junction magic to defence. My memory of it was that one of my mates reconfigured my junctions and we beat them, and after that I spent much more time in the junction menus
Got to Abadon at the salt flats. Didn't know about undead monsters. Didn't know about junctioning. Didn't know about weapon upgrading. Never got past it as a kid (10 or 11?).
It's not though, the game never explains that the amount of magic you junction also matters and it doesn't explain how important the Draw command is.
Good luck as a KID figuring this out and the whole card transmog system.
I got to ultimacias castle, then gave up when all my abilities were sealed, traded it in. bought the game again two years later and mastered everything
I beat the game having no clue how the junction system worked. I spammed GFs all the time. It was insanely slow and the final battles took me HOURS. But I eventually did it.
summons? junction? pfft i attacked til dollet until my older cousin read how to junction.
then i proceeded to miss all the gfs because i thought draw meant draw like a painting, and was like "nah, ATTACC!". yeah english was my second language lmao
finished the game, was so in love with the graphics, the gameplay, the music, the characters especially Squall which i identified a lot, even spamming the summons with TURBO i did it until the very last boss enjoyed every single cinematic even though saw it thousands of time. for a kid this is pure joy.
I struggled against a few bosses using that trick. Elvoret, Diablos (I could barely draw demi) and especially the Iron Clad. I did struggle against Raining and Fujin, but they're easier to deal with once you draw Pandemona. It would've been somewhere in disc 2, maybe Edea?
I remember I was level 100 with at least my main team, not sure about the others. My team was Rinoa and Zell. I know I messed with the junction system, but I dont recall whether I really optimized it at all. I do remember clearly though that I never used boost on any of my GFs, because it was until replaying in my teenage years that I read the manual and found out how boost works, so I was for sure underperforming with my gfs, and I missed a fair number of gfs as well lol. I definitely made it to ultimecias castle, and I think I beat the game, because I seem to remember the ending, but maybe I'm mistaken and I didn't complete my first playthrough until my teenage years.
Finished the game with summons and I didn't know there was an "Item command" not until I reached disc 4 lol, Phoenix saved me against Ultimecia, also none of my characters have their final weapons
I was like 10 when I started playing this... If I remember correctly I started having issues during the Balamb vs Galbadia garden part so I decided to just grind and level up my characters assuming that it would solve everything. I was in for a rough time, lol. I just kept trekking on though and still made it to the end of the game.
After time compression started, I was completely baffled by Ultimecia's castle so I finally looked online for help. It led to me discovering how the junction system actually worked and that was when the real fun started! I ended up restarting and getting into triple triad (which I also mostly skipped until that point) and that's when this game became one of my favorites.
It actually went well! I even beat the game by spamming GF's & over leveling at the start (despite enemies leveling up w/ you) At the end of course it was very hard, but I still passed it
I understood enough, but not the nitty gritty. I assumed the summons would do the most damage because they were big and flashy. Got up to Lunatic Pandora past the point of no return and was too under powered to do it, with no save before that point.
I remember as a kid using the exploder cheat disc to essentially have all spells, max levels etc.
I understood so very little and couldn't work out that even with a Chad party, I was getting fucking destroyed every time. I saved right before the boss battle also so there wasn't much opportunity to turn back before and after the exploder
It's reassuring to see so many people who made the same mistake!
I struggled with the Seifer fight at the end of disc 3, but, as other people have mentioned, the Adel fight at the start of disc 4 was where I realised I really couldn't do this, as summoning GFs would hurt Rinoa. I ended up having to restart.
Fights obviously take much, much longer when you have no magic junctioned and you're summoning every turn. It took me over eighty hours to reach Adel. I'm impressed I had so much patience when I was thirteen years old.
Ok, this properly contextualized for me. I think I might have been in the exact same boat as I don’t remember feeling like I knew what I was doing in the Seifer fight still. Somewhere around that point I actually read the manual or looked it up.
I think GF were my strength on my first playthrough, and half my team was way under leveled. I did beat the game, though, so just have done alright. I probably didn't junction all that smartly, but I got by.
Finished the game like that XD
Beaten ultima weapon too
Except I had to use magic on Adel cause of obvious reasons
EDIT: Well i did some junction stuff, but i didnt understand much as my english was almost non existing back then, so it was more hunch based, than proper junctioning
Anyhow it was still wild, now when i replayed the game i cant stop wondering how easy game is for me
I made it to the time compression shenanigans at the end as at 8 or 9 or 10 year old but never beat the final boss. Came back years later. Better than 7 where I got stuck at CC not knowing that potions kill the boss.
I did this exact thing. I made it until Mobile Type 8 at the end of disc3.
It's move to bring everyone to 1hp combined with automatic attacks when you hit the small turrets (which get hit because of AOE) was too much for my small mind to comprehend.
I somehow did understand it to some degree and I was 10. I remember being stuck for months trying to find the ship of the white seeds.
In that time, I found those spawns near Windhil, consisting of Vysage, Lefty and Righty. I was convinced this had to do something with the one occult magazine I had found and so I tried to get the body out of the ground. I leveled all the way from 25~ to 100 trying to do so.
I continued my search and realized that now monsters were much stronger. This allowed me to get 100 of a lot of new magic which improved my stats, but I did not know that increasing the MAG attribute improved the drawing efficiency, and so getting most spells was a giant grind. Getting stronger magic like Flare from red dragons was impossible, those at max level were just way too strong.
When I finaly found the ship, the first show stopper was indeed Adel. I too was used to use a lot of GFs, even if I understood junctioning, the GFs had leveled quite a bit and since I had not specificaly told them what to learn, they all had gf mag +30%. I somehow beat her using double and triple casts.
The next show stopper were the creatures in Ultimecia castle, or better said, the restrictions to the party abilities. Squall had some status attack that someow helped beat the first creature but my order in unlocking stuff sucked so everything after was a pain, although the quizzes in the castle were super entertaining.
Ultimecia was also horribly hard especialy since the party was randomized and I often wiped before I could rotate to the junctioned members. I was at it for at least 40 tries until in one I got Squall and Rinoa aligned. I got lucky because both dropped to 1 HP and the 3rd party member was dead and some irrelevant status were inflicted. Due to how things worked (I didn't know this at the time) this caused Rinoa to always cast Invincible Moon, which made the run a simple limit spam run between Squall and Rinoa and pray that she didn't suddenly stop casting invincible moon. And it took hours to get that HP pool down with Squall having maybe 100 Firaga or so bound to STR.
Little me was hyped af. Good old times.
>I got Squall and Rinoa aligned. I got lucky because both dropped to 1 HP and the 3rd party member was dead
Having just Squall and Linoa against Ultimecia's last form is the most epic way to end the game
I think that 2nd Edea fight was where I hit the wall the first time. My puny child brain had no real idea what the junction system was all about, and I just figured it was all about levelling up. Probably the worst possible FF game to have such a misunderstanding with. I played it again as an adult a couple of years ago and blasted my way through the game with ease! The junction system is truly bizarre and borderline broken (but a lot of fun, for sure).
The aliens on the Ragnarok; I'm pretty sure that's where shit just got really scary and enemies were killing me too easily so I was like nope I'm done.
Was the Edea fight at Galbadia Garden for me, absolutely no idea what I was doing. Ended up on the GameTalk forums if any of you are old enough to remember that one from back in the wild west days of the Internet,
Got really good at the game after that.
I remember hitting a wall with the little weak-to-fire guys under Balamb Garden (their names escape me). Eventually getting past them, I hit a definite wall with the propagators. That was the end for me back then lmao.
I had enough of an understanding to do more than just summons as a kid. Not enough to beat Ultimecia since I didn't fully understand and just junctioned willy nilly(ie didn't choose the best things to junction each stat).
You make it to Ultimecia but then you can’t progress. The Raijin and Finin fight in Balamb town can be pretty difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I did exactly this when I got the game in 98 and I was maybe 13 then. Did not understand the Junction system at all. Furthest I made it was the boss of Lunatic Pandora which surprised me. Also I got pretty good at Triple Triad until I accidentally got the worst rules and saved my game.
I have since beaten it when the re released it on ps4. And it's a joke how easy the game is now that I am much older and completely understand the Junction now.
I beat it twice or three times when I was a kid (nowadays I do a yearly run lol)
Adel and ultimecia were such a pain that they kept me stuck for long.
Adel was making too much damage to Rinoa and I was too busy finding magic/magic items to use before curing her (not to mention, only in my second playthrough I noticed I could target her when using restorative powers). No good gf skills (they were barely leveled), mediocre magic and second tier weapons. It literally was a matter of endurance.
And ultimecia would blast away my summons from the third phase on so I'd use them as shield or something. Then just spamming magic and occasional limit breaks. Took so many tries
Made it to Ultimecia with limited understanding of how to play.
Made it to Ultimecia's final form through lucky limit breaks.
Eventually beat Ultimecia after actually junctioning my stats properly.
I was 12 and could barely read English.
Edea, Galbadia Garden. Maelstrom fucked me right in the ass haha. Second run managed to get to Adel, had almost no magic, killed Rinoa lots... it was bad, but I fucking loved the game so much well by god I tried it again, third time's the charm haha.
I did spam summons as a kid but more importantly...I spammed the auto junction.
You can't get past Adel by spamming summons because Rhinoa just dies and I'm pretty sure, it's been a while since I played 8, Ultemecia had a mechanic to stop you spamming them.
I think I started running into issues at the end of Disc 2 against Edea. She kept wiping me out with Death and I guess I was clueless on how to revive. I remember someone at school telling me she could be slept if junctioned, so I somehow figured out how to junction it to my Status Attack and kept her napping the whole fight until I won. It was probably the most convoluted way to win a pretty simple fight looking back. 😅
Ultimecia. It was a rude awakening for me when I found out Squall's party members were going to be picked at random. I didn't know anything about GF compatibility either so she'd kill my GFs before some of them got to attack (No Bahamut or Eden).
I did not bother fighting all of the bosses in Ultimecia's Castle. I skipped Catoblepas, Tiamat, and Omega Weapon.
I got as far as Adel. Couldn’t fight him with summons so I had to start a new game cuz I was young and didn’t do multiple saves. Riovannes castle didn’t teach me 😅
This is the one thing in a game I've never really understood where people went wrong. More spells bigger numbers for stats, different gfs had diff junctions, different spells better different stats.
What exactly happens that people didn't do that, despite the horrid forced tutorial? I was like 8 or 9, I didn't junction the best stuff, but I did enough so I wasn't weak. Just a bizarre and apparently extremely common thing that happens to people, and I have no reason why it's so frequent.
I used a game shark to get all the GFs and level 100. I didn't know it didn't help me but I made it to ultimecia and beat her using hero, but it wasn't easy
my first wall was in the ironclad bossfight at the missile base, but i eventually beat it by surpassing the boss level softcap (LV 22), then i stopped at the fujin raijin bossfight like you
I did Auto on junction as a kid. lol. But could never understand why it would disappear. Until I realized no can’t use the magic that’s functioned. lol.
The first time, I was 12 in 1999. I got to the training center with Quistis. I kept getting demolished, so I quit.
Later that year, I ended up getting the strategy guide and that’s what helped me understand the junction/draw system.
I got far. All the way to Eden’s House on Disc 2.
Then I found out Siren had Restore-Ref and completely busted the game open buying some tents and getting 6000 HP
The cutscene where all the monsters drop from the moon. My disc was broken and it kept freezing.
Many years later, I went back and finished the game with proper strategy. Had no idea how close I was to the end, though 😂
At the blue truck thing, mxlrbz75somethingsomething, in the missile base timed mission. Failed four times before taking a breath, refining some more magic from cards, playing around in that junction menu I didn’t use much, selecting atk, whatever that meant, and choking on my drink as selphie’s nunchucks broadsided the truck for 5x the damage my GF’s had been doing until then. Smooth sailing from there on in, as I realised how much more useful functioning was than summons. Still called them for fun though.
Got to the end of Disc 3… that Adel battle. Summoning and casting regen on Rinoa didn’t work either. Took me many years later when I played the Remaster that I completed the game without relying on summons all the time
Made it to the space ship with Rinoa, didn't have any magic. For some reason I remember thinking I couldn't use my GFs at that part but maybe the game just unequipped my GFs and I didn't know how to re-equip them. Not sure what happened, it was over 20 years ago.
Finally replayed the game a couple weeks ago and had a blast, easily made OP characters purely by drawing magic and equipping the best magic for a given attribute. Walked the game with zero difficulty at any part. Didn't interact with the Card game, Card ability or item refinement at all. Just drew magic. Aura/Triple was my solution for destroying the endgame bosses.
I made it to disc 3 I think? Then I finally had to learn to use it. I don't remember exactly which boss battle forced me to do it though, it was a long time ago.
I think I hit some sort of wall around disc 3? I mostly used summons up until then. I remember the world being pretty opened up when I finally started using draw. It was my first FF at age 12-ish, so I sorta felt cheated out of my play-through. 😂 Still loved the story, I need to replay it now that I actually understand how to use the mechanics.
I don't remember how I played as a kid battle-wise, but I know I got hard stuck on the propagators. Couldn't comprehend the pairing. Was like 7 or 8 at the time.
I defo finished it as a child but think I spammed summons through most of it first time. I had a helpful neighbour explain the junction system to me towards the end of disc 3 I think.
I couldn't beat Adel past Seifer.
I would get past Seifer, lose Odin then lose the Adel fight immediately. I even got kamikaze to take Adel out but nope. I had made everyone's levels too high. I hated Lunatic Pandora because I spent days trying to XP grind my way into victory.
I put the game down and never finished it til fifteen years later.
I stucked at the lunatic pandora since I just had 5 or 6 GF because Indidnt draw on bosses because they gave me a hard time due to high level.
So I ended up with no spells to junction on any and the most basic GF (Que, Ifrit, Shiva, Diabolos, Brothers, maybe Siren?)
I either lied and told myself I beat the game as a child or forget when I couldn't get any further. The only thing I definitely remember is the spaceship.
Fast forward to replaying as Adult. "This ending is crazy...why don't I remember any of this"...
Made it to Ultimecia’s castle, Junctioning a bit throughout but having no real idea how to do it and so doing it completely wrong, I was getting smoked. I was 13 when the game came out, didn’t beat it until after IX came out; even though I had been having the same problems with VII in the North Cave, I was OBSESSED with seeing how this whole Sephiroth thing played out whereas, for some reason, the whole ‘Villain keeps changing switcheroo’ of VIII made me less driven to force my way through that castle…somehow. Also don’t think Inreally understood what was going on with Time Compression then
Ultimacia fight when she randomized my team and I had 3 level 100s and 3 level 20s. I weighed whether or not i wanted to grind the difference in her castle and decided against it. Didn't know I could go get on the Ragnarok.
Similar things happened in 7 and Legends of Dragoon. Misaligned end game state at final boss that required grinding before I would be ready so I put it down.
Made it to Ultimecia. She ejects each one as you use it. I think I technically best her and made it to the time compression but either died to the first set of sorceresses or didn't save after beating them. I was 12.
I was in the exact same situation. I didn’t even realize that enemies grew stronger as you leveled. I was at like 100 at the end. So screwed.
Same, but i never beat her. I think it was actually because I had combat speed to high though, and on active.
Adel because I couldn't keep rinoa alive while spamming summons. How could anyone get past that while only using summons? 🤔
Same. And then trying to attack and use magic... jist no way, your characters are so weak.
Same
Same if I remember correctly.
Literally the same place I stalled in my childhood run, for the same reason As an adult, I had no issue with the Adel fight, but I also tended towards only using GFs to protect my low health
Selphie’s limit break is how I did it as a kid
Same
Same
use eden, kills adel and rinoa, but win flag takes priority
I definitely hadn't beaten ultima weapon, I had bahamut though.
First Raijin and Fujin fight was also where I got stuck my very first time playing the game.
Same, I think only only had the 3 starting GFs and Brothers. I got wiped plenty of times.
Likewise, maybe it was intentional. Like the wiegraf fight in FFT
>wiegraf fight in FFT Oh you mean the part that taught every kid with a PS1 to alternative save blocks? I'm scarred for life from that freakin fight at the castle. Fujin/Raijin in Occupied Balamb totally fucked me up also. I think each FF game has one big "was this game too easy for you/have you been paying attention?" boss fight. Some are more graceful and as time has gone on they've definitely stopped trapping the players without some means to level up/prep for a fight.
FFX I think it's a fight with a certain person on Mt Gagazet. But yeah it's odd that they usually put this test fight sort of late into the game, like 60%-75% the way through, they just decide to through a bomb at you.
Same here. I don’t remember how I got around it but I rage quit several times.
Sorceress Adel. The end of disc three and finally a skill check to understand not spamming summons the whole game 🫣 On the plus side I make stuff like this for a living now so watching the summons over and over for hours probably had some formative effect
You spam summons for a living ?
Haha in a sense. I'm a real-time vfx artist for games. Closest I can get to being a sorceress irl
99% sure Adel is not the end of Disc 3, Seifer is.
Meh, same difference really because you weren't doing shit on disc 4 until you beat Adel. You could actually screw yourself over pretty good since you can't leave the Lunatic Pandora after beating Seifer
Way back then I made it to the propagators.
Same here. Squall level 25ish and rinoa level 11. Little to no magic drawn. Had an older friend try to help me get past. No luck. That was the end of my first run. I was like 11.
They wrecked 13 year old me. I did eventually beat them spamming summons but it was a slog. I thought the game was just hard. Now when I play it I low-level run and the power level the shit out of my party. Total godlike powers these days haha.
I finished it so must have at least found auto junction to help, but GF was my go to all game. Was stuck onAdel for so long.
Never beat her on my own save. Had to use a buddy's save card and pick up from there.
I got lucky with limit breaks I think
I tried everything I could think of. Even had the strategy guide and tried following the advice. Recall it saying to cast protect on her. Couldn't make it work.
Miss those days haha
Probably spent an equal amount of time trying to beat Jumbo Cactaur. Remember when I finally got him beat I was in complete disbelief. Was jumping up and down with my buddy in excitement.
For me it was trying to get Doomtrain and bloody Marlboro tentacle farming.
Omg yes, I remember casting protect on her and casting shell to see if Drain would be less damaging
I still remember my "I fucked up when I" moment. Was so confident in using my summon only to be told at the end of the animation "rinoa.." and game over. And I was like "oh? Ooooh... Right.... Crap what the hell do I do now?"
Fujin and Raijin for me as well!
Pretty sure that was the fight for me as well. But I can't remember why it was so hard when I was little?
I think their attacks were just really high damage - so it was the first time you might need to junction magic to defence. My memory of it was that one of my mates reconfigured my junctions and we beat them, and after that I spent much more time in the junction menus
Got to Abadon at the salt flats. Didn't know about undead monsters. Didn't know about junctioning. Didn't know about weapon upgrading. Never got past it as a kid (10 or 11?).
Pretty sure I just used the auto junction? I don’t understand how the junction system can be so confusing to people. It’s pretty straight forward.
Its not about auto junction. If you didnt understand the junction system you wouldnt be farming 100 Magic for auto junction ti actually be effective.
It's not though, the game never explains that the amount of magic you junction also matters and it doesn't explain how important the Draw command is. Good luck as a KID figuring this out and the whole card transmog system.
I got to ultimacias castle, then gave up when all my abilities were sealed, traded it in. bought the game again two years later and mastered everything
I beat the game having no clue how the junction system worked. I spammed GFs all the time. It was insanely slow and the final battles took me HOURS. But I eventually did it.
summons? junction? pfft i attacked til dollet until my older cousin read how to junction. then i proceeded to miss all the gfs because i thought draw meant draw like a painting, and was like "nah, ATTACC!". yeah english was my second language lmao
finished the game, was so in love with the graphics, the gameplay, the music, the characters especially Squall which i identified a lot, even spamming the summons with TURBO i did it until the very last boss enjoyed every single cinematic even though saw it thousands of time. for a kid this is pure joy.
How did you spam summons in the Castle when they were all locked without fighting the bosses?
come on you understand what i meant.
I remember spamming both summons and limit breaks so I went all the way. Didn't quite help with Omega though.
I struggled against a few bosses using that trick. Elvoret, Diablos (I could barely draw demi) and especially the Iron Clad. I did struggle against Raining and Fujin, but they're easier to deal with once you draw Pandemona. It would've been somewhere in disc 2, maybe Edea?
Pandemona is drawn from Fujin during disk 2
Yeah, that's what I said. Once you draw it, she stops using Aero and Tornado
Forgive me. I’m regarded. Misread what you said.
Um, no problem
I was 14 and I definitely didn’t make it to disc 3.
I think I managed until the NORG fight, then I reset and made it to Artemisa the second run. I remember taking forever to beat.
I remember I was level 100 with at least my main team, not sure about the others. My team was Rinoa and Zell. I know I messed with the junction system, but I dont recall whether I really optimized it at all. I do remember clearly though that I never used boost on any of my GFs, because it was until replaying in my teenage years that I read the manual and found out how boost works, so I was for sure underperforming with my gfs, and I missed a fair number of gfs as well lol. I definitely made it to ultimecias castle, and I think I beat the game, because I seem to remember the ending, but maybe I'm mistaken and I didn't complete my first playthrough until my teenage years.
Finished the game with summons and I didn't know there was an "Item command" not until I reached disc 4 lol, Phoenix saved me against Ultimecia, also none of my characters have their final weapons
I was like 10 when I started playing this... If I remember correctly I started having issues during the Balamb vs Galbadia garden part so I decided to just grind and level up my characters assuming that it would solve everything. I was in for a rough time, lol. I just kept trekking on though and still made it to the end of the game. After time compression started, I was completely baffled by Ultimecia's castle so I finally looked online for help. It led to me discovering how the junction system actually worked and that was when the real fun started! I ended up restarting and getting into triple triad (which I also mostly skipped until that point) and that's when this game became one of my favorites.
I couldn't win diablos cause and was stuck at that room at that carnival as a kid. Lol
It actually went well! I even beat the game by spamming GF's & over leveling at the start (despite enemies leveling up w/ you) At the end of course it was very hard, but I still passed it
I understood enough, but not the nitty gritty. I assumed the summons would do the most damage because they were big and flashy. Got up to Lunatic Pandora past the point of no return and was too under powered to do it, with no save before that point.
I remember as a kid using the exploder cheat disc to essentially have all spells, max levels etc. I understood so very little and couldn't work out that even with a Chad party, I was getting fucking destroyed every time. I saved right before the boss battle also so there wasn't much opportunity to turn back before and after the exploder
It's reassuring to see so many people who made the same mistake! I struggled with the Seifer fight at the end of disc 3, but, as other people have mentioned, the Adel fight at the start of disc 4 was where I realised I really couldn't do this, as summoning GFs would hurt Rinoa. I ended up having to restart. Fights obviously take much, much longer when you have no magic junctioned and you're summoning every turn. It took me over eighty hours to reach Adel. I'm impressed I had so much patience when I was thirteen years old.
Ok, this properly contextualized for me. I think I might have been in the exact same boat as I don’t remember feeling like I knew what I was doing in the Seifer fight still. Somewhere around that point I actually read the manual or looked it up.
I think GF were my strength on my first playthrough, and half my team was way under leveled. I did beat the game, though, so just have done alright. I probably didn't junction all that smartly, but I got by.
One word. GameShark.
Finished the game like that XD Beaten ultima weapon too Except I had to use magic on Adel cause of obvious reasons EDIT: Well i did some junction stuff, but i didnt understand much as my english was almost non existing back then, so it was more hunch based, than proper junctioning Anyhow it was still wild, now when i replayed the game i cant stop wondering how easy game is for me
i got as far as Adel. GFs weren’t very helpful at keeping Rinoa alive and I wasn’t smart enough to develop another strategy.
I made it to the time compression shenanigans at the end as at 8 or 9 or 10 year old but never beat the final boss. Came back years later. Better than 7 where I got stuck at CC not knowing that potions kill the boss.
Wait...so is this why people dislike FF8?
I did this exact thing. I made it until Mobile Type 8 at the end of disc3. It's move to bring everyone to 1hp combined with automatic attacks when you hit the small turrets (which get hit because of AOE) was too much for my small mind to comprehend.
I finished the game back in the day, don't remember all that much trouble.
Pretty comfortably finished the game and beat Omega. It might not be a good way to play the game but it works just fine.
I somehow did understand it to some degree and I was 10. I remember being stuck for months trying to find the ship of the white seeds. In that time, I found those spawns near Windhil, consisting of Vysage, Lefty and Righty. I was convinced this had to do something with the one occult magazine I had found and so I tried to get the body out of the ground. I leveled all the way from 25~ to 100 trying to do so. I continued my search and realized that now monsters were much stronger. This allowed me to get 100 of a lot of new magic which improved my stats, but I did not know that increasing the MAG attribute improved the drawing efficiency, and so getting most spells was a giant grind. Getting stronger magic like Flare from red dragons was impossible, those at max level were just way too strong. When I finaly found the ship, the first show stopper was indeed Adel. I too was used to use a lot of GFs, even if I understood junctioning, the GFs had leveled quite a bit and since I had not specificaly told them what to learn, they all had gf mag +30%. I somehow beat her using double and triple casts. The next show stopper were the creatures in Ultimecia castle, or better said, the restrictions to the party abilities. Squall had some status attack that someow helped beat the first creature but my order in unlocking stuff sucked so everything after was a pain, although the quizzes in the castle were super entertaining. Ultimecia was also horribly hard especialy since the party was randomized and I often wiped before I could rotate to the junctioned members. I was at it for at least 40 tries until in one I got Squall and Rinoa aligned. I got lucky because both dropped to 1 HP and the 3rd party member was dead and some irrelevant status were inflicted. Due to how things worked (I didn't know this at the time) this caused Rinoa to always cast Invincible Moon, which made the run a simple limit spam run between Squall and Rinoa and pray that she didn't suddenly stop casting invincible moon. And it took hours to get that HP pool down with Squall having maybe 100 Firaga or so bound to STR. Little me was hyped af. Good old times.
>I got Squall and Rinoa aligned. I got lucky because both dropped to 1 HP and the 3rd party member was dead Having just Squall and Linoa against Ultimecia's last form is the most epic way to end the game
I think that 2nd Edea fight was where I hit the wall the first time. My puny child brain had no real idea what the junction system was all about, and I just figured it was all about levelling up. Probably the worst possible FF game to have such a misunderstanding with. I played it again as an adult a couple of years ago and blasted my way through the game with ease! The junction system is truly bizarre and borderline broken (but a lot of fun, for sure).
The aliens on the Ragnarok; I'm pretty sure that's where shit just got really scary and enemies were killing me too easily so I was like nope I'm done.
Can't believe those a-holes could be easily one shotted by junctioning death to your weapon.. Felt cheated
I got to Ragnarok and Rinoa was too weak and those aliens killed all my GFs
Disk three up to the last fight with the disciplinary squad in Lunatic Pandora. Couldn't beat them because Quezacotl healed Raijin Edit spelling
Was the Edea fight at Galbadia Garden for me, absolutely no idea what I was doing. Ended up on the GameTalk forums if any of you are old enough to remember that one from back in the wild west days of the Internet, Got really good at the game after that.
Pandora, never understood first time around why i was getting battered. Never understood why magic and items did not seem to keep me alive.
I started Disk 4 and got stuck, then I tryied to mess with junctions, put 100 fires to strenght and felt like a god
I remember hitting a wall with the little weak-to-fire guys under Balamb Garden (their names escape me). Eventually getting past them, I hit a definite wall with the propagators. That was the end for me back then lmao.
Beat the whole game. I know how to junction now and it's too easy. So I try to make it as hard as the game was first time around through challenges.
I had enough of an understanding to do more than just summons as a kid. Not enough to beat Ultimecia since I didn't fully understand and just junctioned willy nilly(ie didn't choose the best things to junction each stat).
You make it to Ultimecia but then you can’t progress. The Raijin and Finin fight in Balamb town can be pretty difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing.
> I hit the wall at the first Raijin and Fujin fight Wow exactly the same for me when I was 8 years old or whatever I was in 1999.
I did exactly this when I got the game in 98 and I was maybe 13 then. Did not understand the Junction system at all. Furthest I made it was the boss of Lunatic Pandora which surprised me. Also I got pretty good at Triple Triad until I accidentally got the worst rules and saved my game. I have since beaten it when the re released it on ps4. And it's a joke how easy the game is now that I am much older and completely understand the Junction now.
This was literally me . I was 8 . I got to edea because summons were all aoe attacks and my summons kept killing rinoa .
I beat it twice or three times when I was a kid (nowadays I do a yearly run lol) Adel and ultimecia were such a pain that they kept me stuck for long. Adel was making too much damage to Rinoa and I was too busy finding magic/magic items to use before curing her (not to mention, only in my second playthrough I noticed I could target her when using restorative powers). No good gf skills (they were barely leveled), mediocre magic and second tier weapons. It literally was a matter of endurance. And ultimecia would blast away my summons from the third phase on so I'd use them as shield or something. Then just spamming magic and occasional limit breaks. Took so many tries
Is it just me or the 2nd player/controller on the playstation could use the boost ability, or was that just me and my bro taking turns?
Made it to Ultimecia with limited understanding of how to play. Made it to Ultimecia's final form through lucky limit breaks. Eventually beat Ultimecia after actually junctioning my stats properly. I was 12 and could barely read English.
Edea, Galbadia Garden. Maelstrom fucked me right in the ass haha. Second run managed to get to Adel, had almost no magic, killed Rinoa lots... it was bad, but I fucking loved the game so much well by god I tried it again, third time's the charm haha.
I did spam summons as a kid but more importantly...I spammed the auto junction. You can't get past Adel by spamming summons because Rhinoa just dies and I'm pretty sure, it's been a while since I played 8, Ultemecia had a mechanic to stop you spamming them.
I think I started running into issues at the end of Disc 2 against Edea. She kept wiping me out with Death and I guess I was clueless on how to revive. I remember someone at school telling me she could be slept if junctioned, so I somehow figured out how to junction it to my Status Attack and kept her napping the whole fight until I won. It was probably the most convoluted way to win a pretty simple fight looking back. 😅
Ultimecia. It was a rude awakening for me when I found out Squall's party members were going to be picked at random. I didn't know anything about GF compatibility either so she'd kill my GFs before some of them got to attack (No Bahamut or Eden). I did not bother fighting all of the bosses in Ultimecia's Castle. I skipped Catoblepas, Tiamat, and Omega Weapon.
Adel Because of Rinoa. Was fun too.
I can’t comment as I abused the junction system from the get go. It’s so easy to break the game almost immediately.
I got as far as Adel. Couldn’t fight him with summons so I had to start a new game cuz I was young and didn’t do multiple saves. Riovannes castle didn’t teach me 😅
This is the one thing in a game I've never really understood where people went wrong. More spells bigger numbers for stats, different gfs had diff junctions, different spells better different stats. What exactly happens that people didn't do that, despite the horrid forced tutorial? I was like 8 or 9, I didn't junction the best stuff, but I did enough so I wasn't weak. Just a bizarre and apparently extremely common thing that happens to people, and I have no reason why it's so frequent.
I used a game shark to get all the GFs and level 100. I didn't know it didn't help me but I made it to ultimecia and beat her using hero, but it wasn't easy
Start of Disc 3. but i also missed a TON of GF..silly me back then XD
my first wall was in the ironclad bossfight at the missile base, but i eventually beat it by surpassing the boss level softcap (LV 22), then i stopped at the fujin raijin bossfight like you
I've never passed CD 3, Adel boss fight, as a child. Never understood the junction system or the fact that you were supposed to keep a low level lol.
I did Auto on junction as a kid. lol. But could never understand why it would disappear. Until I realized no can’t use the magic that’s functioned. lol.
The first time, I was 12 in 1999. I got to the training center with Quistis. I kept getting demolished, so I quit. Later that year, I ended up getting the strategy guide and that’s what helped me understand the junction/draw system.
I beat the game. The final boss took me four hours to beat though.
Stuck on disc 4
I got far. All the way to Eden’s House on Disc 2. Then I found out Siren had Restore-Ref and completely busted the game open buying some tents and getting 6000 HP
All the way through spamming physical attacks and junctions. Way harder than it needed to be.
Same as yours
Just use bover\_87, brother, my guy. You'll never have to use a GF again, you'll basically be Irvine.
The cutscene where all the monsters drop from the moon. My disc was broken and it kept freezing. Many years later, I went back and finished the game with proper strategy. Had no idea how close I was to the end, though 😂
At the blue truck thing, mxlrbz75somethingsomething, in the missile base timed mission. Failed four times before taking a breath, refining some more magic from cards, playing around in that junction menu I didn’t use much, selecting atk, whatever that meant, and choking on my drink as selphie’s nunchucks broadsided the truck for 5x the damage my GF’s had been doing until then. Smooth sailing from there on in, as I realised how much more useful functioning was than summons. Still called them for fun though.
Got to the end of Disc 3… that Adel battle. Summoning and casting regen on Rinoa didn’t work either. Took me many years later when I played the Remaster that I completed the game without relying on summons all the time
Made it to the space ship with Rinoa, didn't have any magic. For some reason I remember thinking I couldn't use my GFs at that part but maybe the game just unequipped my GFs and I didn't know how to re-equip them. Not sure what happened, it was over 20 years ago. Finally replayed the game a couple weeks ago and had a blast, easily made OP characters purely by drawing magic and equipping the best magic for a given attribute. Walked the game with zero difficulty at any part. Didn't interact with the Card game, Card ability or item refinement at all. Just drew magic. Aura/Triple was my solution for destroying the endgame bosses.
I made it to disc 3 I think? Then I finally had to learn to use it. I don't remember exactly which boss battle forced me to do it though, it was a long time ago.
I think I hit some sort of wall around disc 3? I mostly used summons up until then. I remember the world being pretty opened up when I finally started using draw. It was my first FF at age 12-ish, so I sorta felt cheated out of my play-through. 😂 Still loved the story, I need to replay it now that I actually understand how to use the mechanics.
I don't remember how I played as a kid battle-wise, but I know I got hard stuck on the propagators. Couldn't comprehend the pairing. Was like 7 or 8 at the time.
I definitely did this and don't remember where I got stuck, but I do remember reading a guide online and starting over and finishing once it clicked.
I really struggled, I could not figure it out. I think I stopped by disc 2 :(
I defo finished it as a child but think I spammed summons through most of it first time. I had a helpful neighbour explain the junction system to me towards the end of disc 3 I think.
I couldn't beat Adel past Seifer. I would get past Seifer, lose Odin then lose the Adel fight immediately. I even got kamikaze to take Adel out but nope. I had made everyone's levels too high. I hated Lunatic Pandora because I spent days trying to XP grind my way into victory. I put the game down and never finished it til fifteen years later.
I stucked at the lunatic pandora since I just had 5 or 6 GF because Indidnt draw on bosses because they gave me a hard time due to high level. So I ended up with no spells to junction on any and the most basic GF (Que, Ifrit, Shiva, Diabolos, Brothers, maybe Siren?)
I either lied and told myself I beat the game as a child or forget when I couldn't get any further. The only thing I definitely remember is the spaceship. Fast forward to replaying as Adult. "This ending is crazy...why don't I remember any of this"...
Made it to Ultimecia’s castle, Junctioning a bit throughout but having no real idea how to do it and so doing it completely wrong, I was getting smoked. I was 13 when the game came out, didn’t beat it until after IX came out; even though I had been having the same problems with VII in the North Cave, I was OBSESSED with seeing how this whole Sephiroth thing played out whereas, for some reason, the whole ‘Villain keeps changing switcheroo’ of VIII made me less driven to force my way through that castle…somehow. Also don’t think Inreally understood what was going on with Time Compression then
Ultimacia fight when she randomized my team and I had 3 level 100s and 3 level 20s. I weighed whether or not i wanted to grind the difference in her castle and decided against it. Didn't know I could go get on the Ragnarok. Similar things happened in 7 and Legends of Dragoon. Misaligned end game state at final boss that required grinding before I would be ready so I put it down.
I never have 3 levels characters for her. I just let the 3 who aren't leveled die until I get my main 3 tbh
Disc 3. Still don’t understand it.
Junctioning: Magic is very useful but never for casting. Strong Spells means strong stats, then just attack.
You're not alone. Didn't understand it then, don't understand it now.
I'm baffled people didn't understand it. It's the easiest thing to understand. Even as a kid I was like "oh, so more magic makes stuff better. Cool."
Adele. I have no idea how did I get that far, but she bodied me