Game Breaker / Final Fantasy VIII

• The Junction System, combined with the game's Dynamic Difficulty, makes it phenomenally easy to put together game breakers once you know how to use it effectively. Quezacotl's Card and Card Mod and the various GF item-refining abilities can be used to stock the characters up with magic to junction to and boost their stats. Card also prevents the party from earning XP for enemies thus transformed, keeping everyone's levels low; if the player avoids Level Grinding and focuses on refining and junctioning high-end magic instead, the party's stats quickly outstrip those of their enemies.
  • Playing the card game makes it even easier. Once you've gotten your first few unique GF cards in disc 1, as long as you take care to avoid spreading the Random rule it's possible to win most games simply by having a vastly powerful deck, which in turn enables you to win more powerful unique cards. All of these can then be modified into items that can be used for weapon upgrades, GF augmentation, and refining more magic. In particular, the Gilgamesh card (obtainable through a card game sidequest that's available starting in disc 2) and the Laguna card (obtainable in disc 3) can be refined into items which make either one character or the whole party completely invincible for a short period of time, in quantities sufficient to get you through the endgame and both Superbosses. It doesn't help that the rewards for refining cards are horribly imbalanced: while many of the turnouts for Level 6 and 7 (which aren't available until a good chunk of the game) are trash, some of the most overpowered turnouts come from low level cards available from the very beginning (such as a Mystery Fluid from the Level 1 Gayla card or a Windmill from the Level 3 Abyss Worm card).
  • For those who are just after Guardian Forces for Junctioning purposes, the best is, of all people, Cerberus. It has access to the majority of major stat junctions as standard (and the ones it doesn't have naturally can be easily bought in any Pet Shop) and has several useful abilities to markedly improve a character's efficiency (Auto-Haste, one of the few who learns Speed +% and Ability x 3) that can serve as an Anti-Frustration Feature (Alert prevents Back Attacks and Struck Firsts). You can completely outfit a character using it alone, saving up the rest of your GFs to use elsewhere.
• Keeping a character at low HP allows them to execute their Limit Breaks every turn:
  • Selphie's Confusion Fu limit break includes two One-Hit Kill spells, "Rapture" and "The End," the latter of which works even on bosses. Including the final boss. It doesn't come up often, but by exploiting some minor flaws in the game's programming it's possible to make it unable to perform the next character's action (the easiest way to do this on an original Playstation is to open the disc cover after selecting any action on another character and close it once you're done), allowing the player to keep rolling indefinitely until The End comes up.
    • For a non-cheating strategy, line up long attack animations to give Selphie time to cycle through her limit break. Eden alone gives you an extra 80 seconds.
  • Irvine's Shot limit break combined with the AP Ammo (Armor Piercing Ammunition) which goes straight through enemy defenses and can easily do max damage each shot. The best part about this is that AP Ammo shoots fast and easy to obtain, although Pulse Ammo increases the damage despite shooting a little bit slower.
  • Quistis's Degenerator limit break - available in disc 1 via item drop or card mod - is another One-Hit Kill that works on pretty much anything but bosses.
    • This gets even worse when you use this on really strong enemies like T-Rexaur, Snow Lion, or Ruby Dragon, which almost guarantees enough experience for an automatic level up with each victory.
    • Quistis's Shockwave Pulsar ability also takes the "Limit Break" term to an entirely new and literal level by finally allowing you to exceed the integer cap of 9999 damage per hit. (The Eden GF does as well.) The "Break Damage Limit" ability wouldn't be revisited again until Final Fantasy X.
  • If you make sure that the only offensive magic in Rinoa's list is Meteor, her Angel Wing limit break becomes ridiculous, especially when combined with speed exploits. In short, it reuses Meteor. Incessantly. Made even better by the fact that Rinoa can still stock non attack magic spells like Double, Triple, Haste and Aura and Junction them to her stats. With a maxed out Magic stat and high Speed she can defeat any of the bosses, even Omega Weapon, on her own.
    • Also, if you cast Aura on everyone and have Rinoa use Angelo for her limit break after she's learned all of her moves, there's a chance that she will use "Invincible Moon" which makes your entire party invincible for three turns, and aura will provide them the ability to endlessly reuse their limit breaks as long as it's in effect. This is more than enough to go through most part of the game, and it gets even better if Squall does Lionheart and Rinoa does Wishing Star in the process.
  • With a good strength junction and decent finger speed, Zell can pretty much destroy anything simply by alternating the two most basic moves of his limit break over and over again, a trick useful and popular enough to earn the Fan Nickname "Armageddon Fist." It gets even worse with high Luck, which at high levels can make every other attack a Critical Hit.
  • Squall + Lionheart + 100 Triples junctioned to Speed + Aura + Haste = absolute carnage. The Lionheart Limit Break alone is a game breaker in itself, dealing multiple slashes dealing 9999 damage per slash. Most bosses can't hold up against this.
  • The risk of leaving characters at low HP is easily offset by another absurdly simple junction setup: set Squall with the Cover and Counter abilities and junction 100 Drain spells to Status-Attack-J. Leave the other two party members' HP as low as you like; Squall will take the hits for them and immediately counterattack, replenishing his own HP with every hit. And he always hits.
    • Better yet, give him the Defend and Darkside commands as well. Activate Defend at the start of battle, and Squall will take every physical attack for zero damage, then retaliate. And if you feel like ending the battle quickly, Darkside will triple his damage output while Drain-attack renders the HP loss trivial.
  • Finally, another thing that makes reusing Limit Breaks even more convenient is the fact that the game recalculates the chance to perform one every time you press Triangle to switch characters, even if there aren't any other characters available. It's also surprisingly easy to avoid skipping over an opportunity to use one even if you mash the button repeatedly, both because the command window expands horizontally when one's available for anyone whose limit name is longer than 6 characters and because there's a noticeable pause before the game allows you to switch characters again once the window pops up if a limit is available.
• Some spells are very powerful considering how early you can acquire them.
  • The first out-of-place spell in the game is Water, easily refinable from Fish Fins looted from enemies on the beach near Balamb Garden. Water is the 14th-best STR junction in the game, and you can get your hands on it before the Noob Cave. At that point you'll get to fight monsters that have 1st-level elemental spells, which (for comparison) are tied for 21st place in STR. ...Out of 25.^note Yes, there are 49 junctionable spells. Spells which all provide the same numerical boost are being treated as sharing X Xth place on the list.
  • The Pain spell counts as this mainly because it causes Poison, Darkness, and Silence all at the same time. Junctioning 100 Pain spells to your attack pretty much guarantees that all but the strongest enemies in the game will be rendered completely weakened for the remainder of the battle, considering that most enemies and even some bosses are vulnerable to at least one if not all of Pain's status effects. You can also junction 100 Pain spells into your defense, making you immune to Poison, Darkness, and Silence which are fairly status effects from the enemies, even early on. This is even better considering that all you need is the "Status Magic Refine", an ability received from several GF's including Diablos who's found very early on, along with very common items called Curse Spikes. You can make 10 Pain spells for one curse spike, and with enough curse spikes, you can easily set up each of your party members with 100 Pain spells.
  • The Meltdown spell, which is (theorically, see below) available once you reach Trabia, will inflict Vit-0 on any and all enemies in the game, including the bosses, including Omega Weapon, 99.9% of the time. It hardly ever fails. Combine this with Aura (another potential gamebreaker that allows the use of Limit Breaks regardless of health), and you too can experience the fun of reusing Renzokuken on enemies who are literally defenseless. Meltdown is not only available from a level 1 card in Triple Triad, meaning that every NPC in the game has a chance of dropping the applicable item... it's also the highest Vitality junction in the game, meaning that every party member quickly becomes a brick wall.
• The fact that Squall can get his Lionheart weapon extremely early after the school becomes mobile, and pretty easily with a little bit of luck in item stealing. The majority of the item he needs can be made from cards, won in battles, or stolen from enemies pretty easily early on, but the one thing he needs is 12 Pulse Ammo (which are another Game-Breaker for Irvine) that's usually found in the later half of the game, unless you take the school to one of the southern islands, and search in the barren terrain area until you find an electric creature called a Blitz, and hope you can steal a Power Generator from it. The Power Generator is the Blitz's rare item hold, which means that you can only steal it instead of winning it after the battle, and enemies only have one item at a time, which means you might have to mug a lot of Blitzes before you find a Power Generator. Once you find the Power Generator and have the right ability, you can convert it into 20 Pulse Ammo, which means that assuming you have the other necessary items, Squall can get his Lionheart weapon, and leave 8 Pulse Ammo for Irvine making this a complete win-win situation.
  • Who said you needed to wait until the school becomes mobile? The Lionheart can be forged as early as Disc 1, provided you have the right items. Particularly patient players can obtain 20 Elnoyle cards from various people (Cid, Zell's mom, Quistis's fans...) and convert them into Energy Crystals, which then can be converted into Pulse Ammo, all that on the first CD. This takes a lot of time, but it's relatively easy, provided you're patient enough; Plus, you'll most likely get other rare cards along the way, which can be refined into other cool items.
• On Disc 3, fly to the Island Closest to Heaven and the Island Closest to Hell, equip the "Encounter None" ability received from Diablos on someone in your party, and keep drawing magic from the hidden draw points. It takes a while to recharge after each draw, but after a while you'll be able to give each member of your party 100 of the best magic spells in the game like Meteor, Flare, and Ultima to junction however you want to raise your stats to godly levels.
  • The fun doesn't stop there. Junction 100 Ultima spells to your magic defense, and you will be immune to all elemental magic, which means that only high level magic like Meteor, Flare, and Ultima can hurt you. This makes the final dungeon considerably easier, especially since 7 out of the 8 bosses use regular elemental magic, and are weakened substantially because of it. The other boss has non-elemental magic, but has low enough HP to defeat it before it can really damage you if you maxed out everyone's high level magic with the trick described above and junctioned those spells to your stats to make everything go quicker.
• Another way of abusing the Dynamic Difficulty involves Guest Star Party Members Seifer (in disc 1) and Edea (in disc 3). Letting the other party members get KOed and Level Grinding with the guest party member can, if you're willing to grind that much, leave a comparatively low-level party with level 99 GFs and high-end spells like Firaga with no effect on the party's average level once the guest character leaves.
• Any GF that eventually gains an ability that has the word "Bonus" in it, like Ifrit who gets "Strength Bonus", Siren who gets "Magic Bonus", Leviathan who gets "Spirit Bonus", Carbunkle who gets "Vitality Bonus", Brothers who get "Health Points Bonus", or Cactuar who starts out with all of them mainly because learning these abilities early on from low levels and keeping these GF's attached to your party members will give them significant and permanent boosts in their stats that will last them for the rest of the entire game.
  • Special mention to Ifrit who you get extremely early after you start the game, and can get "Strength Bonus" to boost you from really low levels onward.
• In general the GFs are, as already demonstrated above, far more useful for their junction abilities than as actual summons, but there are exceptions:
  • Doomtrain's summon sequence attempts to hit the target with every status effect in the game. While most of these are ineffective, Vit-0 almost always works, greatly increasing the amount of damage the party can dish out - and unlike most of the Status Effects, it doesn't wear off during combat.
  • Bahamut's long summon sequence, which gives you plenty of time to boost his power to maximum, and he has a non-elemental attack which means that it can't be blocked or absorbed by other enemies.
  • Eden's absurdly long summon sequence gives the player ample time to abuse the Boost option. Max your compatibility so you can summon it up within a couple of seconds and watch it completely ignore the damage cap by about 40,000+ points to all enemies.
• The fact that you can use SeeD exams at any point after you graduate early on to raise Squall's SeeD rank to maximum as early as level 30, if not sooner should you have a decent rank from your graduation, pretty much guarantees that you will receive an absurd amount of money early on, since your salary and rate of payment are directly based on your SeeD rank level. Being a high-level SeeD member definitely has its advantages.
• You want the ultimate way to farm gil? All you need is Carbuncle, the GF you get at the end of Disc 1, and its "RecovMed-RF" skill. This allows you to buy 4 Tents for 4,000 G, refine them into a single Mega-Potion, and sell it for 5,000 G. Building up a lot of money this way is time-consuming, but your bank account is limited by nothing except your patience.
  • Some great junctions are hidden behind store-bought items. Siren's L Mag-RF can be used on another 60 Tents to get 600 Curagas, which is actually one of the best junctioning spells in the game, providing the 12th-strongest HP boost, 5th-strongest VIT and 4th-strongest SPR. Then get Diablos' ST Mag-RF. This unlocks the 11th-strongest MAG booster, "Break," from Softs at a 1-to-3 ratio, and "Bio" from Antidotes at a 1-to-1 ratio for the 11th-best STR boost available, just behind the 3rd-level Elementga spells. Keep in mind you can get your hands on these spells after completing the first dungeon of Disc 2.
  • Once you have Call Shop, Haggle and Sell-High from Tonberry, the money-making gets more efficient. Buy 100 Tents and Cottages from Esthar Shop!!! for 210,000 gil. Refine them into 75 Mega Potions with Med-RF skill. Sell 75 Mega Potions for 562,500 gil, giving you a 352,500 profit! Use the spoils to buy GF stat-boosting skill items, refine them into permanent stat boosts. Tonberry becomes available as soon as Garden becomes mobile.
• One of the biggest game breakers is sadly also a case of No Export for You. There was a special minigame for the Pocketstation, released only in Japan. Play it for about a day or so (it actually plays itself after a while) and then transport the items you've won back to the main game. Congrats, you can now have Dark Matters, a Moomba attack that does 9999 damage all the time, and other super hard to find items as early as disc 2! The best part is that this was also the only way in the game to get the Ribbon item, which prevents all status effects. Uh-oh, here comes the Malboro—nope, he's just a chump now. Luckily the NA release of FF8 still maintains the minigame files, so if you can import a pocketstation you're good to go.
  • The otherwise problematic port of Final Fantasy VIII for the PC is the exception here: the US/International versions of the game included an executable file with Chocobo World. This was one of the only reasons to even bother with the PC version.
• Refining Laguna's card yields 100 Hero Potions, which confer invincibility on a party member.
  • If you beat the CC Group on Disc 2 or 3 you can take this further. Any rare cards, including Level 10 cards, that you modify will show up in their inventory when you meet them on the Ragnarok on Disc 4. This allows you to refine any card you want and replace it to your hearts content. The Hero Potions can be turned into Holy Wars Trials. Several minutes of card playing can net you 100 of these easily.
• If your average party level is above 30 and you have learned the Mug ability, you can easily steal the rare and valuable Laser Cannon from Elastoid creatures during the second Laguna sequence on Disc 1. This item is one of the few that refines into Pulse Ammo for Squall's ultimate weapon, but more importantly it teaches Quistis the Homing Laser limit break. At this stage in the game, it is likely to be one of the most powerful attacks available against bosses and is second only to her ultimate limit break, Shockwave Pulsar. The only other way to get a Laser Cannon is a rare drop by the Belhelmel, as this area is not revisited until much later in the game on Disc 3.
• The 2019 remasters build in a couple of new ones.
  • Click the right thumb stick, and the party auto-heal and are in a permanent Limit Break state. They are still vulnerable to status effects and one-hit kills, but it's a big help for big fights.
  • If you want a Low-Level Run, then click both thumb sticks to turn off random encounters without having to grind it out of a GF and use up an ability slot.
• A not well known one, but very interesting exploit, is the fact that Omega Weapon can be rendered defenseless if you use potions on it. Due the fact that its coding does not know how to respond, ends up with it being locked in a Cycle of Hurting while you beat the tar out of it.
  • Here's the exploit in action