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Tessian. I'll try to explain to you the Final Fantasy 8 junction system as best as I can along with some other features of the game....

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 1:09 am
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>There are several elements that need to be taken into account for this system.

Magic: can be acquired a couple of different ways; you can draw it from enemies and refine it from items or cards. Any character can have between 0 and 100 points, so for example if you have 10 points of magic, you can cast the spell 10 times. The main use of the magic in this game is that it can be junctioned to increase your stats. The amount of magic and the type of magic will generally judge how much your stats increase; For example, 100 points of Thunder junctioned to your Strength stat will be less effective than 100 points of Thundera (Thunder 2) junctioned to it, 10 points of Thunder would be less effective than 100 points.

Guardian Forces: Are like Espers in Final Fantasy III, but they serve many more purposes (much more than any other summon creatures in any other game). They can be equipped on, and they kind of work like armour or relics in this case. They begin with relatively few skills, and like characters in Final Fantasy Tactics, you can pick a skill for it to learn, and it will gather AP each battle and learn those skills once the designated amount of ability points is reached (For example, Ifrit might want to learn the skill Strength +20% which requires 60 AP I think. Each battle you get some AP for winning, and when Ifrit has acquired the designated amount of AP, he learns the ability, then you go choose the next one); you can also get scrolls which when used will give your GF (Guardian Force) an ability for free, for example, if you have an STR junction Scroll, you can use it on any of your GF's to give it the STR junction ability.

There are many different abilities that GF's can learn, they include Magic junction abilities (which I will explain in a moment), Enhancement abilities, and usable abilities:

Magic junction abilities allow you to junction magic to your character to increase his/her statistics (as kind of explained above). Some of the basic ones are Str junction, Vit junction, and HP junction. HP Junction will allow you to junction magic to your character to increase HP, Vit junction will allow you to junction magic to your character to increase their vitality (which is a stat that defends against physical damage), Str junction allows magic to be junctioned to your character to increase strength. You can pick and choose what magic you want to be junctioned to each stat; so when you junction Ultima to strength, for example, all of your Ultima magic points will be used to increase your strength rating.

Enhancement abilities include such things as Str +40%, Encounter None, status attack, etc... Each character has a few slots which they can equip these abilities with (so you can only have a few equipped at a time). An example of this would be HP +80% which when equipped to your character, increases HP by 80% (Str +40% works in the same way).

Usable abilities include (among many others) Item, Defend, Draw, Recover, Revive: You equip these on to your characters (in another section different from the one used to equip Enhancement abilities. This section allows for 4 things to be equipped on for each character (so if you played Final Fantasy III, it is like Gogo). These are the abilities that you select in battle to fight with. Different GF's have different abilities, so one might have Mad Rush for example which can be used in battle (essentially when used it casts Haste, Beserk, and protection on all your characters), another might have treatment, another revive, so in this way GF's kind of act like the job classes in Final Fantasy Tactics.

You can equip as many GF's to your characters as you want, but it is wise to spread them out because you don't want to have only one useful character.

In a nutshell, essentially junctioning magic to yourself is equipping magic to enhance your stats, it is like armour and relics in previous FF games, only a lot more elaborate. Instead of just having a right arm, left arm, head, and body to have things equipped to, you have Strength, vitality, spirit, status defense, speed, etc.... and then you also have enhancement abilities and usable skills to be equipped on as well.


Another interesting thing about Final Fantasy 8 are Magazines: You gain magazines throughout the game by buying or finding them, these allow you to learn new Limit Break moves, teach you how to build new weapons (you don't buy your weapons, you make them, you require certain items to make each weapon, and you also require the magazine for it. So if you wanted the Lion Heart Gunblade for example, you would first require the magazine which it is listed in, and then you would require all the necessary parts to build it. You can acquire items through battle or by buying them, there are dozens upon dozens of different types of items (screws, pulse ammo, antidotes, tents, adamantine, etc...).

Lastly is the Triple Triad game, a card game which you can play to win cards, cards can be collected or refined into items and items in turn can be refined into magic. But it's late, I'll explain this later.</div>

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 5:09 am
by Don
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Seeing there's almost no use for money in that game, you might as well use the money to buy all the magazines when you get to Esthar. Also it's trivial to make money to doing some buy, refine, then sell things (like remedy -> mega potions or something like that).</div>

With all the the recent talk and the fact that i got to the end of the game but never finished it, i too have started to replay it.

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 9:27 am
by Flip
<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>And i remember a lot more then i though i would. Certain dialogues, scenes and the battle system is all familiar. I do remember loving this game, I am surprised at myself for not finishing it, there must have been some other game on the horizon or something. I'm a sucker for love stories and the plot in this FF is great. I've only replayed 4 hours but i am already sucked in. Out of all my RPG titles i never finished this one or FF9... seems odd. I'll defenitely play FF9 again after this.</div>

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:11 am
by Tessian
<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>geez, that's a lot to swallow. I appreciate it</div>

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:23 am
by G-man Joe
<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>Hehe....And all along I thought you were spitter. There's some on yer chin, BTW.</div>

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:56 am
by Kupek
<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Like most systems in an RPG, it'll become more intuitive as you use it.</div>

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 2:43 pm
by Eric
<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>You, are soooo nasty.</div>

PostPosted:Mon Mar 15, 2004 2:56 pm
by G-man Joe
<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>Dude, I know you joke the same way in real life. =8^)</div>

PostPosted:Wed Mar 17, 2004 7:10 pm
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>It's an incredibly complex system compared to other Final Fantasy titles, once you know it, you can focus on the fun stuff int he gameplay, and also on the highly entertaining dialogue. I love the story of the game to, it's by far my favourite of the series.</div>

PostPosted:Wed Mar 17, 2004 10:47 pm
by Don
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Auto junction str solves 99% of all your needs. The only changes you need to make is what elemental defense junctions to have, and what status attack junctions (Pain or Death)</div>

PostPosted:Thu Mar 18, 2004 12:46 am
by Andrew, Killer Bee
<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: justify; '>You know, I don't remember FFVIII that well. All I remember is getting about halfway through the game and then keeping the gun dude (Irvine?)'s hp at like 50 so he'd limit break every turn or so, then using armor-piercing shot. Won every battle except bosses in about 20 seconds.</div>

PostPosted:Thu Mar 18, 2004 1:32 am
by Tortolia
<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Don's right. Aside from tweaking which fun status effect you put on your foes the auto works fine.</div>

PostPosted:Thu Mar 18, 2004 1:45 am
by Eric
<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>Ultima % Life on Elemental Def. works wonders</div>

PostPosted:Thu Mar 18, 2004 2:57 am
by Tortolia
<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Squall or Quistis worked better for that, since you didn't have to worry about ammo or actually doing anything (Lionheart = Degenerator = what enemies?)</div>

PostPosted:Thu Mar 18, 2004 4:42 pm
by Don
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Ultima on elemental defense is kind of a waste. Most of the big attacks are non elemental anyway, though you can hit 9999 pretty easily with just Meteor on str + Meltdown.</div>

PostPosted:Fri Mar 19, 2004 10:47 am
by Julius Seeker
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I normally junction it to strength, some characters with all the % bonuses don't require 100 points of Ultima, it makes things easier since it is a rarer spell.</div>

PostPosted:Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:51 pm
by Don
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Use encounter-none for the enemies, and Degenerator for anything except bosses. No point to fight random battles in that game really since you should level up at the Island Closest to Hell/Heaven anyway.</div>