Another annoyance in today's RPG's...

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Well, not so much todays RPGs unless you count FF8 as a recent RPG...

Anyways, I noticed that my weapons have never been remodeled in my game and suck, so i decided to look at gameFAQs to see how to get some good ones. The instructions to do so are just rediculous. Without a guide, how in the world are people supposed to figure this crap out? I think it would be impossible.

I dont like it how RPGs today have these insane tricks that one needs to do to get the best stuff. Without a guide, noone would ever be able to do it. I games in the past there may have been hard stuff, but someone could figure it out with some playing around, in FF8 the battle scenes and transitions from one location to another take so long that i dont feel like wasting time experimenting. If i am driving around the world and think to myself, "hey, i'll go check out [some town half way around the world] and talk to [some guy]" it would take me a half an hour to an hour, and the guy will probably have nothing useful to say. The guides have you run around to 80 different places doing 100 different things, you cant tell me someone 'figured' this out.

I dont like using guides and RPG's nowadays almost force you to if you want good stuff. I've decided to take my crappy weapons and live with them. I will beat this game without anything good or kill myself trying. I can remodel to the next few steps but anything above that will be impossible for me since you need to 'mug items from 3 differnt monsters, refine this and trade that, and talk to him to get the thing to remodel the weapn.' forget it.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>To get the ultimate weapons you need to mug stuff that only appears in certain areas (like Adamantoise only appears on one area in the world map, energy crystals can only be stolen from an enemy in Esthar). I got 2nd best weapon for everyone the first time (which is pretty trivial to get) without doing anything special but to get ultimate weapon you pretty much need a guide. It's a real annoyance yes, which is why I download a guide before I play a RPG usually to save the time since I'm the type that has to have everything and I don't want to beat the game only to miss something that can't be obtained without playing again (which happens a lot in RPGs...)

I suppose it's necessary to satisfy people's ego of being *good* at RPG which really means either you wasted too much time to pick up the nearly nonexistent hints, or you found/bought a guide. Also such things help to allow you to write 212310 hours of gameplay on the back of the box, which impresses some people. Of course the sales of strategy guide is a significant part of a RPG's income now too.

It's kind of funny Fate, which I'm still playing (up to 90 hours now!), has a spoiler mode (Tiger Dojo) that tells you exactly what you need to do on every possible scenario. Of course, since the game is scripted, the game always know exactly how you died and where, so the 40 Tiger Dojos covers every possible way you could've died. But honestly, I don't think there's more than 40 worthwhile events, whether it's a secret, battle, or whatever, that require hints to beat in a RPG, so I don't see why they can't do something like that. For those worried about spoilers, you always have the option of not using it.</div>

[Eric]

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>You need Squall's Ultimate weapon to unlock his LionHeart Limit Break.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Anyways, as far as FF8 goes, you don't really need to worry.

You don't need to upgrade your weapons to finish the game. The status bonuses added by weapons are not nearly as significant as those added by junctioning magic, but they do help; if you're one of those players who likes to perfect their characters (for some odd reason) then you might want to go after the weapons, otherwise, focus on gathering magic and just upgrade your weapons when you happen to have the items for it. Either way, most of the weapons you get in the game can be obtained without even trying (provided that you've been fighting enemies, defeating them for items, or mugging/carding them). The only characters weapons which make a great amount of a difference are Squall's, and that is because each one has different limit-break abilities with it.

Acquiring Lion Heart requires the most work to acquire (it took me forever to find out how to get Pulse Ammo), but the limit-break that comes along with it also pretty much makes accomplishing all other tasks in the game a cake-walk.

As for FAQ's, I don't know, I never really read them (I find it to be a waste of time for the most part), all the information you need is right there in the game; they also take a lot of the fun out of discovering stuff on your own =)

I didn't find it overly difficult to just figure out everything on my own as far as items/refining/cards go. I'm willing to bet that I could explain things A HELL of a lot better than any of those people =)

Some simple explanation on things: Most of the stuff is just common sense, a Mesmorize Blade is an item you need for some weapons, it's easy to figure out that it can be found on the enemy called "Mesmorize" which is found near Trabia Garden and the Shumi Village, or you can just play card games until you get the mesmorize card and refine your card to mesmorize blades. Bombs = Bomb Fragmants, Oilboyle = fuel, Adamantoise = Turtle Shell, Ruby Dragon = Inferno Fang, Blood Soul = Zombie Powder, etc.... Looking for Screws, metal pipes, or any other kind of metalic objects? Go after robotic type enemies. Now it's a matter of looking at the Weapons Manuels and finding out what parts you need:

If you aren't sure about what monsters give what items, just collect cards, and use the card refine lists to find out what cards give you which items, and the monsters probably also have those items:

Squalls second best Gunblade next to the Lion Heart as an example, Punishment Sword:

The Manuel says: Chef's Knife, Star Fragment, Turtle Shell, and Screw:

Screws should be easy enough to figure out, they are among the first items you'll acquire in the game, and you usually get a ton of them. Geezards are where you'll find them most easily.

Turtle Shells, any kind of turtle enemy, Adamantoise.

Chef's Knife, check out Tonberry's, they are clearly carrying a Chef's knife and one attack they use is called Chef's knife, also I think their cards refine into Chef's Knife.

Star Fragment, this is probably not as apparent as the other three, but chances are by the title you would guess it is from a powerful monster possibly with some sort of cosmic ability (you can easily find out by checking monster catalogue under the card refinement section, but if you haven't done anything with cards then this isn't an option. Luckily if you have even done a bit, Iron Giant Cards are common enough, and they give you Star Fragments). Incidently, this is exactly the type of enemy you'll be looking for, there are a number of enemies which will have Star Fragments, any type of Dragon, T-Rexaurs, Iron Giants, and other powerful enemies.

Punishment will give you a boost to attack power as well as access to Blasting Zone Limit Break.</div>