The Shrine

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Hey, thanks a pantload, Square, for making me rely on junctioning magic to my stats, only so the last boss can randomly <b><i>eliminate my magic spells!</b></i>

I think I may hate Final Fantasy VIII more than I hate VI now. The story may have been way fucking stupid in VI, but at least I could never get pissed at the very magic/battle system it used. All this stupid time compression bullshit in Final Fantasy VIII can easily contend with the shit I had to watch in VI, and to top everything off, the junction system is slowly driving me into a spiraling madness from which there is NO FUCKING ESCAPE. Aaaahhhh! I hate this game with the passion of a thousand suns! I will cast it into the fires of Mount Doom and then, when it tries to rear up out of the lava for its last dying breath, I will pull my pants down and <b><i>piss on it!</b></i>

--Lee S.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Oh, and I love the way one of my characters just dies and gets taken away before I can do a DAMN THING.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Apocalyse does a lot less damage than Shockwave Pulsar, but you probably lost a lot of vital stat junctions by the time you get to the last form.

You can always try to stop her from drawing Apocalyse too. A quick limit break usually kills the other part.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I guess so. Shockwave Pulsar always seemed like a real wuss of a spell, because it never did much to me that I couldn't cure immediately, but Apocalypse was taking out guys will full health. Does Apocalypse do some elemental damage I don't know about?</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I'm not sure if maybe something got changed in the PC version to make this game harder or not, but Ultimecia always takes my junctioned magic in roughly this order:

Strength, HP, Magic, Spirit, Vitality

And she does this no matter HOW many spells I cram in their magic inventory. Believe me, my characters are chock full of crap like Fire, Thunder, Scan, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Death, Blizzard, etc. just to entice that bitch to take some of my worthless shit that I don't want to use. But she never does. At least, not until the <i>good</i> stuff is gone.

--Lee S.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>I don't see what's so hard about the junction system.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>Whichever spells junction the best to certain stats you're going to want 100 of, so you go out of your way to get them, either by mindlessly drawing them from certain monsters or going out of your way to find certain items to refine them from.

It also tends to make casting magic relatively pointless. A lot of the really powerful spells get junctioned to some stat that you really feel dependent on, so you're always leery of casting it because that begins to deplete your 100 spell supply.

I find the whole fucking thing just very annoying.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I imagine by the time you get to Ultimiecia you've lost your important junctions. Shockwave Pulsar is supposed to do more damage than Apocalyse.

I think Shell reduces damage from Apoc, but I'm not certain... I usually just recast Mighty Guard anyway.

From my experience the spell you get stripped away is random on the PSX version, which is why it helps to have a lot of dummy spells.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>The only spells I cast are Aura, Haste/Shell/Protect (if Mighty Guard didn't get the right stats), and Full-Life (if the guy with Revive dies). None of these are linked to anything important (Aura gets beaten by Meteor).

Well, sometimes I open up with a Triple just for the heck of it. Triple is junctioned to speed which is probably the most important stats, but losing one Triple isn't going to kill you.

Getting the spells themselves can be annoying. You just have to know which spells are worth the time drawing/refining and which ones are not. For example if you drew 100 Reflect in Centra Ruins while as Laguna, then you don't have to worry about anything else that's good at Spirit for the rest of the game. If you get 100 Meltdown in another one of Laguna's scenarios, you don't have to worry about Vitality. Draw Full-Life from Tonberry King and you're set for HP, etc...</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>While I've mercifully managed to block most of the game out of memory, I believe my path to victory was paved with BEATING HER SEMEN-GLAZED COUNTENANCE IN WITH SQUALL'S GUNBLADE FISTS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I had to freakin CHEAT to beat that bitch! Then I sold the game for about $30 or so.</div>