History GameBreaker / FinalFantasy

* Any Esper which grants a +2 attack stat boost, particularly Zoneseeker and Bismarck; they can be obtained as early as the World of Balance. When properly utilized, your party will be several-dozen levels ahead of common mobs. Raiden grantd a hefty +2 strength bonus and, more damingly, he also teaches Quick, a Game Breaker in its own right. He also offers the only method in the game to secure guaranteed victories in the Coliseum, as described below.
* Step 1: Get the Ragnarok Esper/Paladin Shield. Step 2: Teach everyone Ultima. Step 3: Spam Ultima. Step 4: Complain on forums about every [=FF6=] character being the same.
** Ultima hits all enemies, ignores defense, cannot be blocked or reflected, is non-elemental, and has such huge power that it can easily hit the damage cap. The catch is it has a low learn rate, can only be taught by a couple of sources, and sets you back 80 MP -- though there are two ways to circumvent that problem (see below), Ultima will end most enemy encounters in one casting, and neuters all boss encounters.
* Quick. It allows your character two extra turns without any interruptions from enemies or allies. It costs 99 MP but, again, there's ways around that. When combined with the Soul of Thamasa, which grants Dualcast, this allows a character ''five'' spells castings in one turn. Combined with Ultima, that's five hits of 9999 damage. Or, if you prefer, a lone character can revive and fully-heal the entire party. Add the Celestriad mentioned below for extra fun.
* Even if you're not very knowledgeable about how Gau's rages work, most people know how potent the [[BoringButPractical Stray Cat rage]] is, and will use that as a general purpose rage, [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome often exclusively]]. It can be learned as soon as you get Gau and remains effective even in the end game, due to its special attack acting as a physical attack with ''4 times the power.''
* Osmose. For the cost of 1 MP, it absorbs MP from an enemy, and has enough power that it'll probably fully restore your MP in one shot. Furthermore, one of the Espers that teaches it does so at a high learn rate. Unless you're fighting undead enemies that are immune to it, Osmose renders MP-restoring items obsolete and trivializes high-MP spells, especially with the Economizer below.
* The Economizer/Celestriad. It's a Relic which lowers the cost of all magic, all abilities, all Espers/Eidolons, and all Lores to 1 MP. ''No exceptions.'' And it's farmable, too. The only downsides are the Relic slot it takes to equip, and that it's only dropped by the dreaded [[BossInMooksClothing Brachiosaur]].
** Unless you got a Murakumo from the Red Dragon, in which case you can give Gogo the Aegis Shield, Brigand's Glove, Safety Bit, and three Steal commands, then bet the Murakumo in the Coliseum. Gogo will fight a Galypdes, which they can steal a Celestriad from--and beating it will award a Holy Lance, which when bet at the Coliseum awards a Murakumo. Repeat until you have all the Celestriads you need, and then laugh maniacally as you disintegrate everything in your path with Quick-Dualcasted 1-MP Ultimas, disintegrating much of the World of Ruin's difficulty in the process.
* The Master's Scroll and Genji Glove combo allows a character to attack eight times at once. Give them a defense-ignoring weapon or two (or just train their Strength really high) and ''anything'' they hit will die in one turn as they hit the damage cap eight times in a row for 79,992 damage. Teach them Quick, and they can do it twice in a row for 159,984 damage. Even Kaiser Dragon and Omega Weapon won't last long against this onslaught. If Raiden is the only Esper ever used to train Edgar, and you sell all of his tools, he'll have a 100% success rate at the Colosseum using this method. It could be described as a prototype for Omnislash.

* In the SNES version, it was possible to kill any enemy, including most bosses, in a single stroke by casting Vanish and then casting Doom/Death or X-Zone/Banish. This was because the Invisibility status effect (which Vanish causes) makes it impossible for spells to "miss". And, for some strange reason, the game's code which reads "if attack is magical, and target is Invisible, attack always hits" is checked before any status immunities are checked. Thus, the instant death spells would always work, even if a target was supposed to be immune to them. This was fixed in the GBA version, though the combo still works on anything not immune to instant death (which is to be expected and far less game-breaking).

* Whip/Chain Whip and Deathsickle. When combined, it means that an enemy must be immune to both Paralysis ''and'' instant Death in order to pose a serious threat. A surprising number of enemies and bosses do not have those qualities. Have fun.
* If you're using a Summoner, you're playing the game on cruise control.
** If you're not spamming Samurai's Coin Toss Samurai + 4 Mimes using Mime until a boss dies, then you're spamming 4 mimes with Mimed Bahamut summons.
** The path of least resistance is Summoning Bahamut and then just Miming it. It renders all future boss fights frivolous, barring Shinryu and Omega. Syldra spam can be obtained much earlier and is sufficient for the main game.

** Dark Sigh (Eye Drop + Dragon Fang) Blinds and Confuses the target. Useful because it has a 100% hit rate if the target is not immune (like most Mixes), and even works on [[BonusBoss Shinryu]], who can be Berserked.

* Two-Handed doubles the Knight's offense; and so as the you can refrain from ever running away from battles, it opens up the Brave Blade in the third world for truly disgusting killing power, on the order of 7000-8000 damage per swing.
* Due to a bug, Aim; Mug and Rapid Fire never trigger the Flee effect of the Chicken Knife. And with the Ranger having such high Strength and Agility, the Chicken Knife + Rapid Fire + Hermes Sandals combo makes them an unstoppable killing machine. Ranger gets off two rounds of Rapid Fire before the enemy even gets a turn, dealing roughly 20,000 point s of damage. They, uh, rarely survive long enough to do anything. The endgame boss gauntlet fares little better and is carved up one after another. You really need to see the lategame Ranger in action, it is terrifying.
** Also related, putting the Double Lance in the right hand and the Chicken Knife in the left hand makes the game not check for the 25% Flee chance.

* Applying Reflect to the character wearing a Rabite's Foot translates to invulnerability, as they will dodge all physical attacks.

* When a girl changes jobs, her MP is converted based on percentages. So a small amount of MP stolen as a Thief can turn into a big pool of MP for a mage.
* Gunner with First Strike ([[ActionInitiative start battles with full ATB]]) using Scattershot/Scatterburst is the fastest way to clear most random encounters, even in the Via Infinito.

** Obtaining the Cat Nip accessory (all attacks deal 9,999 damage [[CriticalStatusBuff when user's HP is critical)]] was way easier than winning the Mascot Dressphere, and in the vanilla version, it steamrolled right over the Via Infinito bosses when paired with Trigger Happy, one of the first moves she learns in Chapter 1.
** Cactling Gun (Mascot Paine) hit for 99,999 damage easily if she chained it from Trigger Happy.
** In Chapters 1-3, it's possible to win the HopelessBossFight against Angra Mainyu: the simplest way was to start a NewGamePlus and use the Cat Nip accessory, along with a turbo controller. This did not affect Angra Mainyu's presence in later Chapters, but it left [[MoneySpider kill spoils]] every time.

* Equipping a Bangaa Dragoon (highest attack base stat and growth in the game) with the Gladiator's Ultima Sword (triple attck damage) and the Templar's Weapon Atk+ (guess) can kill literally anything. Yes, even the StoneWall Toughskins. Even the 999 defense Flans. It is even possible to one-shot the final boss with this.

* ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyBraveExvius''
* ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper''
* ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyTactics''
* ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyTacticsA2''

[[folder: Final Fantasy VIII]]
!! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII''
* The Junction System, combined with the game's DynamicDifficulty, 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 LevelGrinding and focuses on refining and junctioning high-end magic instead, the party's stats quickly outstrip those of their enemies.
** Playing the [[MiniGame 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 {{Bonus Boss}}es.
* Keeping a character at low HP allows them to execute their {{Limit Break}}s every turn:
** Selphie's ConfusionFu limit break includes two OneHitKill 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.
** 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 takes the damage UpToEleven despite shooting a little bit slower.
** Quistis's Degenerator limit break - available in disc 1 via item drop or card mod - is another OneHitKill 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.
** 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. [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill 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 Sped she can defeat any of the bosses, even Omega Weapon, on her own.
*** Also, if you caste 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" [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin 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 [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill 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 FanNickname "Armageddon Fist." It gets even worse with high Luck, which at high levels can make every other attack a CriticalHit.
** Squall + [[InfinityPlusOneSword Lionheart]] + 100 Triples junctioned to Speed + Aura + Haste = absolute carnage. The Lionheart LimitBreak 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. [[AlwaysAccurateAttack 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 Break}}s 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.
* 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 NoobCave''. 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 XXth place on the list.[[/note]]
* 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 fact that Squall can get his [[InfinityPlusOneSword Lionheart]] weapon extremely early after the school becomes mobile, and pretty easily with [[LuckBasedMission 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 GameBreaker 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 [[ShockAndAwe 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. [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal 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 DynamicDifficulty involves {{Guest Star Party Member}}s Seifer (in disc 1) and Edea (in disc 3). Letting the other party members get [=KOed=] and LevelGrinding 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 [[SummonMagic GFs]] are, as already demonstrated above, far more useful for their junction abilities than as actual summons, but there are exceptions:
** [[CoolTrain Doomtrain]]'s summon sequence attempts to hit the target with every status effect in the game. While most of these are [[UselessUsefulSpell ineffective]], Vit-0 almost always works, greatly increasing the amount of damage the party can dish out - and unlike most of the StandardStatusEffects, 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 Meltdown spell, which is 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 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 is only available after you get the GlobalAirship, alas.
* One of the biggest game breakers is sadly also a case of NoExportForYou. 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 ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' 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 LowLevelRun, 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.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy XII]]
!!''Videogame/FinalFantasyXII''
* Abusing a semi-exploit to spawn the rare monster Dustia repeatedly can bring your level to insane heights before you enter the Giza Plains. Most areas in ''FFXII'' are blocked off by BeefGate, and the Dustia trick can allow you to increase your power even further with steals and rare drops from monsters you have no right to be able to fight. Among the crazy pieces of equipment you can get:
** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY55Ji3ZhL8 Burning Bow]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDTvIvXWdxY&feature=related Kotetsu]] before Garamsythe.
** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URrMe1ogdW0 Arcturus]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRYYSZsO9L0&feature=related Shielded Armor]] before Raithwall's Tomb.
* You can get the most powerful weapon in the game, the Zodiac Spear, as soon as you get the Dawn Shard. That's less than a quarter of the way through the game. It does take a lot of level grinding to survive the trip to its location (and even then you have to flee your way through the areas because attempting to fight the enemies would not go well at all), but once you have the spear, the rest of the game becomes ridiculously easy until near the end.
* The Nihopalaoa, an accessory that when equipped causes all recovery items used by the character to have the opposite effect, can be this. Against several marks and bosses (an infamous example being Judge Bergan), throwing a remedy with it equipped will completely incapacitate the enemy by inflicting them with every single status effect they are vulnerable to, allowing you to hack and slash at them with no consequences. Against any mooks vulnerable to instant death, throwing a phoenix down will kill them instantly and has no chance of failing like an ordinary Death spell.
* Quickenings (the game's equivalent of Limit Breaks) can be this. You can easily get them early on and if you have at least three people in your party they can be used to insta-kill most bosses for a large chunk of the game, made worse by the fact that you can use them the moment the boss shows up rather than having special trigger conditions like limit breaks in previous games. On top of that, If you get access to all 3 Quickenings for a character, it TRIPLES their MP, allowing them to have a seemingly endless supply of spells.
* Masamune [[note]]One of the easier Rare weapons to obtain[[/note]] + Genji Gloves [[note]]If you have this, then you should also have the Masamune as well[[/note]] + Buffs = You pretty much made weapons obsolete.
* Reverse. Having it on an auto-cast Gambit means that any enemy that isn't Ultima will hit you with {{Healing Shiv}}s, and their attacks won't have any knockback. Combine it with Bubble, and even if a powerful enemy manages to sneak a hit in while Reverse's not running, the fighter can tank it easily and subsequent strikes will heal them back up to full anyway. After the spell becomes available, only three or four battles require a change in strategy, and even then only against bosses; {{mooks}} stand no chance.
* Bubble. If you can already kick ass with normal health, imagine how easy it gets with DOUBLE that.
* [[SaveScumming Autosaves]], full stop.
** Using them with Trial Mode allows for everything from stealing endgame weapons from mooks as early as ''Stage 3'', to finding rare items in chests to farm and sell/use.
*** The Seitengrat, the most powerful bow in the game, which offers 224 attack power and 75 evasion. Normally, there's a 1/10000 chance of acquiring it on the Air Deck of the Leisure Craft airship (1/100 that the ''invisible'' chest spawns in no set location on the Air Deck's upper level, 1/100 that it will contain the Seitengrat and not 10 gil). However, with the aforementioned autosaves, Someone found [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s97POHkYGo a method to farm them]] by manipulating the RNG.
** The Mina dagger. Obtained from spawning the pain-in-the-ass Larva Eater in the miserable Giruvegan and only has a 3% drop rate. The dagger has 102 attack, has the lowest cooldown rate in the game, and the instant KO effect triggers with astonishing consistency. Just make its wielder immune to confusion and you're set.
** The infamous BraggingRightsReward, Wyrmhero Blade, deserves to be mentioned. In the vanilla version of the game, one had to beat Yiazmat (which required a whole slew of other [[BonusBoss Bonus Bosses]] to be vanquished), Omega Mark XII (which is difficult to even ''find'', let alone fight) and completing a not-really-difficult but time-consuming fishing minigame to get. Here, you can steal it from Famfrit at floor 50 of Trial Mode, much sooner than in the vanilla game (even on a speedrun). Autosave means you can try immediately if you don't steal it. To top it off, the weapon was indirectly buffed by changes to the game mechanics: the inclusion of jobs, which doesn't limit the Wyrmhero Blade since it does not require a license, and removal of the damage cap, which allows the Wyrmhero Blade's power to be used to its full potential.
** For ''The Zodiac Age'', they changed Addle, Shear, Wither, and Expose to always work (though the attack can miss, if it hits, it works) on every enemy in the game. You can reduce anything's attack power to pitiful digits, even Bonus Boss Yiazmat and what not. Granted, some of the technicks are now a pain to find; but well worth the investment of time.
* The Cat-ear Hood originally gave a huge boost to Vitality and Speed. The Zodiac version changes it by converting LP gained to gil instead. You get a few hundred gil per enemy killed, even the weak enemies found in the Estersand and Westersand. Run around killing monsters for an hour and you'll make money a completely non issue. Killing rare game and hunt marks can get you several ''thousand'' gil for each kill. Since the item only stops LP gained for the person wearing it, it's very handy to have around if a character's license board is filled up or nearly done while you can still get LP for the rest of the party. On top of this, the character wearing the hood will take half damage from ice and wind attacks. The only downside is buying the accessory since it's 50,000 gil to purchase and you might not have the money for it at first, but the return investment is very worth it.
* Is MP an issue? The Turtleshell Choker has you covered by letting you cast spells with gil instead of MP. With a ton of gil at your disposal (which is quite easy to do), you can just laugh at enemies that try to sap your MP when you can spend your riches casting spells instead. Combine this with the Cat-ear Hood in the Zodiac version of the game and you effectively got a near infinite source to use magic from.
* The Zodiac Age remaster allowing everyone to have 2 jobs means that classes now have combination bonuses that were never intended in the original Zodiac version. For instance the Black Mage has access to the Staff of the Magi which boosts the damage of all holy-element spells by 50%, except that Black Mages never learn any holy spells. The Monk class on the other hand learns Holy so by dual-classing you now have a character that can cast an absurdly strong version of it. Other examples are combining Knight with Bushi so that heavy armor gives strength bonuses to increase katana damage even more, and Shikari combining with Breaker for the same reason with Ninja Swords.
** Want to maximize damage against the BonusBoss?, have a character equip both the Bushi and Shikari Jobs, and equip them with the Yagyu Darkblade from Shikari, and the Black Robes from Bushi, and you've just created Yiazmat's Kryptonite.
* If you know how to exploit the [=RNG=] in ''Zodiac Age'', you can reliably farm the Seitengrat, the game's InfinityPlusOneSword that puts the Zodiac Spear to shame (since it has no license requirement, and can be used by any class and character), and have one for each character.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy]]
!!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII''
* The Full ATB Skills can be outright devastating if used properly.
** Lightning's Army of One and Sazh's Cold Blood are both long strings of hits. Being a Ravager skill, each hit ramps up the chain gauge significantly... but switching to Commando once the animation starts will apply Commando's role bonus (namely, increased damage) to every hit. And using it on an enemy about to recover from stagger will prevent the stagger from running out, allowing the other two Commandos in a Cerberus paradigm to pull off around seven extremely high damaging Scourge or Smite attacks ''each''.
** Snow's Sovereign Fist and Fang's Highwind both deal a single, powerful hit that wipes out the enemy's chain gauge. That single hit can take out oretoise legs with ease, and for enemies that [[TurnsRed Turn Red]] after recovering from stagger instead of after an HP threshold ([[ThatOneBoss Rosch]]), the chain-depletion can be used to completely prevent their most troublesome mannerisms.
** Hope's Last Resort deals eight (surprisingly powerful) attacks to random targets. Although less useful than the above, it's also a chain-building Ravager skill that can be power-boosted by a well-timed Paradigm Shift. The enemies that come in large enough groups to spread out those hits usually can't take a Last Resort if Hope is part of a Cerberus, and solo enemies will [[MagicMissileStorm eat all eight shots]].
** Vanille's Death is... well, [[OneHitKill Death]]. 1% probability, plus another 1% for every negative ailment applied. However, a lot of enemies like Mission marks aren't invulnerable to it (including ''adamantoises'', so a stroke of luck or some patient SaveScumming can net you a lot of CP. And unlike previous entries, Death also deals a ''lot'' of damage if it doesn't land its instant kill, and it too can be power-boosted by switching Vanille to Commando at the right time.
* Sazh's version of Blitz can be this in the right circumstances. Unlike the standard Blitz, Sazh shoots bullets in a wide swath to hit multiple enemies at long range. However, if he isn't and instead is right up close to an enemy, most of the bullets can hit one enemy. Doing this, one Blitz can vastly outstrip two attacks in dps.
* While most buffs manage to be fairly useful, Haste stands out as being incomparably so, and will become a staple of every major battle you get in. Even better, [[ArtificialBrilliance the AI knows this]], and AI Synergists will prioritize using Haste before all other buffs.
* Poison on vulnerable targets, which chews away at an enemy's HP at ''1% of their max health a second'', considering the post-arrival on Pulse difficulty spike, poison is welcome for its effectiveness and in some situations can help you win encounters that you shouldn't be able to under other circumstances. [[spoiler:Even the ''final bosses''' first form, the Long Gui, or Vercingetorix isn't immune to it.]]

!!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2''
* Although Full ATB Skills took a massive {{Nerf}}ing in the AF era, some good timing can still make them useful.
** Serah's [[RainOfArrows Ultima Arrow]] functions like Army of One and Cold Blood, except it has an area effect; if your enemies happen to be bunched together, all the better.
** Noel's Meteor Javelin takes the route of Sovereign Fist and Highwind, but deals ''four'' hits before wiping the gauge, which buys extra time for some Scourges and Smites.
* The most abuse-able accessory in the game is the Witch's Hat. While Kill: Libra is nice for common enemies (especially those with elemental absorptions), its other buff is Improved Potions. While in ''XIII'' the buff was useless, here it makes Potions a viable alternative to Cura and Curaja if you've got 2 or 3 Medics on the field. The best part is that the accessory only cost 25 points, so it can fit easily on any build.
** Its Durable upgrade grants Weak Spot, which boosts damage if your target is weak to it. While the cost is 45 points, the damage boost makes up for it.
* For monster passives, Siphon Boost II. It's supposed to double the effect of the auto-abilities Fearsiphon, Faultsiphon and Deathsiphon. However it also affects Attack: ATB Charge I/II as well. Combined with monsters with attacks that technically hit two or more times, such as the Sahagin monsters, Amodar and Omega, and their ATB gauge will be full almost instantly. The only problem is that the passive is only infusable from Fencers, a monster that appears twice in Academia 400 AF and doesn't respawn unless you lock the level from the Historia Crux.
* Getting Lightning's DLC episode as early as possible (and spoiling most of the ending in the progress if you don't skip the cutscenes) allows you get her as a monster ally at any point in the game if you 5-star both of her battles, which is pretty easy to do as the levels in her episode are independent from the main story and thus 5-starring her battles is just as easy or hard at the end of the game as it is at the very beginning. Pretty much all the DLC contents count as this, the Coliseum DLC alone allows you to get the best Ravager (Lightning), best Sentinel (Snow) and the best Saboteur (Jihl) monsters in the game, although in their case you at least need to be strong enough to beat them first.
** Not possible in the Steam version, at least in terms of spoiling the ending, as this version of the game is built so that the [=DLC=] unlocks automatically when and only when you first beat the game. That said, if you power through the main story, it's still great for the sidequests.
* The Sazh DLC. At the start, you are given 10,000 Casino coins and are told to go play. Bet them all on one of the card games, win and you might end up with around 50,000 coins. The kicker? These original 10,000 coins are free and Serah and Noel get to keep everything you win as Sazh, enabling you to buy out the entire casino as soon as you set foot there.
* Commandos:
** In Augusta Tower 200 AF, you can obtain a monster called a Dragoon. The Dragoon is an Early Peaker monster that takes Grade 2 materials, and only needs 28 to max out. If you max level it immediately, it ends up with a murderous Strength stat (usually around 600, at the time Noel is hitting 200-250) and a ton of HP. It'll last you through the rest of the main story and well into the postgame.
** The Tonberry is an excellent Commando, but that's not what makes it a game breaker. It's got a couple of passive abilities that are unique to it: Strength- and Magic +35%. No, you didn't read that wrong; that's a ''+35%''. Tonberries are high-order DemonicSpiders, but they're relatively cheap to level up, and with Battlemania and Monster Collector active, Bresha Ruins 300 AF will be overflowing with Tonberries to satisfy all your infusion needs.
** Valkyrie Lightning, if you have the ''Requiem of the Goddess'' DLC. Uncapped damage, extremely high Strength and Magic, Immovable MAX, and extremely fast attacking speed. For maximum game breaking potential, do ''Requiem'' as soon as you get access to the Historia Crux. Even at level 1, she still has over 600 Strength and Magic, and will spend most of the game slaughtering everything in your way.
** The ever lovable Chichu. With a very fast attack speed, high strength, Armor Breaker and a handful of Feeder abilities, he's hands down one of the best monsters in the game. For comparison: A max level Valkyrie Lightning kitted out with all the best abilities will do decent damage against {{Damage Sponge Boss}}es but be prepared for a long fight. A comparably maxed out Chichu will tear through the HP bars of those same bosses so fast it will make your head spin.
** Twilight Odin's magic animation speed leaves much to be desired (especially seeing as he has no ability to use physical attacks on launched enemies), and he's frickin' expensive to level up (read: ''269'' Crystals), but his Attack at max level is on par with if not surpassing that of Valkyrie Lightning above with the same material spread, and his HP well ''exceeds'' hers. His basic Attack uses the animation of Flourish of Steel; four hits per action lets him get good use out of Attack: ATB Charge, the combo string means enemy chain gauges take that much longer to run down, and infusing the unforgettable Siphon Boost II will let him swing Gagnrad endlessly. An innate 50% resistance to all statuses as well as Resistance: All Elements +20% and Critical: Tetradefense give him significant defensive prowess to go with his towering HP levels, and because of the way Eidolons work, he can't be launched '''or''' interrupted despite a lack of Immovable. Finally, Zantetsuken is one of very few Feral Links which can reach a maximum sync of 999%, meaning that he is one of the greatest forms of assistance in recruiting most of the others on this list. Oh, and he's a ''guaranteed recruit'', no LuckBasedMission required, and available in the base game instead of as DLC.
* Ravagers:
** One of the first monsters you get is the tiny little Nekton, which'll probably get replaced as soon as you get a more suitable Ravager, since its growth somewhat flatlines after a Crystraium upgrade. However if you stick with the little bugger you'll get a Ravager with 1,000+ Magic, a fast casting speed, all with a Feral Link that can cause Deshell, Fog, Pain and Slow, the last one uncastable by Saboteurs.
** Cloudburst and Debris, depending on your needs. While both get precious Fel- autoabilities that spike their already 1,200 Magic damage even higher, each one has different uses. The former's Feral Link casts the buffs Faith, Veil, Vigilance and Enfrost, two of which can't be cast by Serah and Noel. The latter resists all elemental damage, halves physical damage and has a Feral Link that hits all enemies hard and builds chain bonuses.
** The Spiceacilian is much like the Nekton; looks unassuming and takes a while to get going. But just like Nekton, it gets a respectable Magic stat to compliment its casting speed. Its Feral Link is even better, healing the party's health and casting Regen while also charging very quickly. It can substantially double as a Medic.
** Soldier Lightning, once again. She learns all of the physical Ravager moves and her Strength and Magic are and even 1,200. So teach her all of the Ravager spells and you get the most variable Ravager in the game. Oh, did we forget to mention that her Feral Link is the broken Army of One from ''XIII''?
* Sentinels:
** If one can get to Yaschas Massif 100 AF early, Bunkerbeast is the most economical Sentinel in the game. Its Feral Link casts Provoke on all enemies easily, and if you keep leveling it up its HP can easily go past the 10K mark.
** The Goblin Chieftain. It Feral Link casts Bravery, Protect, Shell, Veil and Vigilance while also healing wounded health. It essentially doubles as a Synergist and outclasses Wound Potions.
** Pluse Gladiator is widely considered the best Sentinel, hands down. It resists status ailments and wind damage by 90% and halves any other damage, all ''before'' working on passives.
* Saboteurs:
** While it takes some effort to get good, Celicerata can get debuffs on your enemies faster than any other monster, thanks to it lacking Wound.
** Jhil Naabat shines as a jack of all trades. Her skillset lies parralel to Serah's and Noel's, so if you avoid giving her any more abilities, she'll just focus on what she has. After that, she'll focus on casting Wound, which thanks to her passives and average casting speed can stun lock enemies, and thanks to her high magic can do considerable damage and chain nicely. All this versatility is emphasized with her Feral Link getting bonuses in regards to Serah and Noel's roles. Overall, she can apply rare debuffs and double as a makeshift Commando and Ravager.
* Synergists:
** Much like how Valkyrie Lightning can be gotten as soon as you hit the Historia Crux, the same can be said for Sazh. His starting skills are great in the early game, especially Item Collector. Leveling him can lead to a high HP, high Magic Synergist with all but a few -ga spells, Augment Maintenance II and Critical: Haste, thus making his skill set compliment Serah's and Noel's.
* Medics:
** The Cait Sith is one of the first two monsters you get, and will likely be permanently benched as soon as you unlock the Medic roles for Noel and Serah. However, after level 70, its Magic and HP skyrocket, usually ending up with around 900 Magic and 7000 HP. Add in a few good infusions, and suddenly nothing can outdamage your healing.
** The Cactuarama. It's [[GuideDangIt difficult to find]] and [[MagikarpPower a little underwhelming at first]], but its [[LimitBreak Feral Link]] is the only way to receive the [[AutoRevive Reraise]] buff. With the right infusions, Cactuarama is even more overpowering than a maxed-out Cait Sith.

!!''VideoGame/LightningReturnsFinalFantasyXIII''
* The Cloud outfit for hard boss fights. When you fight bosses, and you have trouble, the easiest thing to do is just stagger them, then use Overclock to speed yourself up and slow them down, and then just reuse Heavy Slash, the locked ability mapped to the Triangle/Y button in the Cloud outfit. It has a passive ability that says when your enemy is staggered, it changes into the Slayer ability, which multiplies the damage output exponentially, and when you have your enemy slowed down with Overclock, you can reuse the attack. You can take out hard bosses like [[spoiler:Noel and Caius]] in mere SECONDS by doing this.
* [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX Yuna's Summoner Garb]]. Its locked ability is ''Elementa Lv.*'' and has a damage of ''x9.80''! This garb is so overpowered, you could practically go through the entire game only using this Garb and that Ability, without running into trouble. The only time it ''might'' begin to feel balanced out is when you encounter the FinalBoss.
* Under the right conditions, the time-stopping ability Chronostasis. Normally you're on a time limit, period, and this ability will stop time for one in-game hour as long as you have EP to spend. However, while small- and medium-sized enemies only give around 0.05 and 0.20 EP upon defeat on Normal, the large ones give 4, 2 or 1 EP depending on the difficulty level (your starting max being ''5''). In short, careful manipulation of Chronostasis and defeating large enemies [[labelnote:Example]]One in particular that is easy to farm, Gurangatch, an armadillon type found in The Dead Dunes and parts of Yusnaan rarely attacks and does okay damage for a 'large' enemy.[[/labelnote]] allows you to near-infinitely keep time stopped, turning what would otherwise be an ''entire day of exploration/quest progression into'' '''hours'''.
* It's possible to attain complete immunity to physical or magical attacks with the right Garb/Accessory setup. It ''does'' reduce that schema's offenses to near-zero, but tactical schema changes can render you NighInvulnerable to most enemies, and it has no effect on stagger buildup and preservation; even though you'll be doing single-digit damage per hit to most enemies, those schemata can be used to stagger most troublesome enemies with little to no risk.
* The Soldier of Peace garb changes any Heavy Slash equipped into the Artemis's Arrows ability, which is similar to the Slayer ability mentioned above... except that it [[ArmorPiercingAttack ignores a target's resistances]] and deals Stagger-level damage even if the enemy isn't staggered, allowing it to tear huge chunks out of the strongest enemies in the game. It's mitigated somewhat by having highly variable damage, and the garb starting battle with an empty ATB gauge.
* The Beat Down attack, combined with a weapon that has the Jump passive ability. Jump works much like the "Slayer" passive mentioned above, as it greatly increases the power of an attack under certain conditions. Unlike Slayer however, the condition is simply the 2nd strike of Beat Down, regardless of stagger. Beat Down is also a High Stagger rate attack, meaning versus any foe staggered via Physical attack, doing so becomes extremely easy. Have we mentioned yet that garb options which include Beat Down as a set ability often have passives such as Stagger Drain or Siphon?
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII]]
!! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''
* First of, this game offers the all-powerful Knights of the Round summon. Combine it with (almost) any of the game's support materia for massive fun. W-Summon makes it do a quarter of a million damage. MP Absorb makes it practically free to cast. HP Absorb plus Counter makes you completely invincible. With enough work you can build a whole character around it. If you know what you're doing in regards to Chocobo breeding, you can get it as soon as you acquire the ''Highwind'' midway through Disc 2. The only balance? It takes ''a full minute'' to watch every time it's cast. However, the Quadra Magic materia works with every other summon and magic to make it be cast four times over, albeit at reduced power each time.
* There's also the mechanics for learning limit breaks. Once you figure out how they work, it's really easy to find a good spot and just crank everyone's limit breaks up to the highest trainable level and watch the carnage.
** Not to mention the mechanics for actually acquiring limit breaks in the first place. Killing large groups of lower-powered enemies can unlock your characters' higher level limit breaks earlier than you would otherwise. When it comes to the limits that you can only unlock by using other limits, quipping characters with crappy armor, inflicting them with fury (which reduces accuracy, but doubles the rate that the limit gauge fills) and fighting enemies with high attack power (such as Capparwires in the forests in the Junon area, which also appear in large groups) causes them to suffer much higher damage than they normally would and allows you to learn the limits faster. This process can be sped up faster still once Aerith learns her Fury Brand limit, which automatically fills the rest of the party's limit bars.
** Speaking of Aerith, she is considered the single best party member [[spoiler:until her death at the end of Disc 1]] due to her extremely strong magic attack stat and her limit breaks. Her magic lets her use Summons and Enemy Skills with impunity, allowing her to obliterate waves of enemies and do major damage to enemies, and also have the ability to massively heal the party with curative magic. Her limits include the '''very useful''' Fury Brand, as described above, and Breath of the Earth, which cures the party of all debuffs. But the Gamebreaker part is once she hits her Tier 3 limits: Planet Protector and Pulse of Life. The latter completely heals the party, so in essence is a free Megalixer, but the former grants the Peerless buff to the party. Peerless makes the party immune to damage and status effects for a short time. And should you manage to find her Tier 4 limit Great Gospel, this does both of the Tier 3 limits simultaneously! And since you only need her to kill 160 enemies to get her Tier 3 limits, you could have her invincibility powers by the time you reach the first town!
* This game has one of the single greatest {{Game Breaker}}s for obtaining money in RPG history, considering the fact that all you have to do is master an "All" materia and sell it. A single star "All" materia sells for nothing, but a five star master "All" materia sells for 1,400,000 gil at ''any'' store which should provide enough money for ''the rest of the game.'' The real kicker is the fact that "All" is an extremely early and easy materia to find, as well as levels up considerably quicker than most other materia. On the downside you can only buy it in one place (Fort Condor), and at 20,000 gil it's the second most expensive buyable materia (behind Ultima, though this only has to be bought if you screw up the Corel huge Materia quest), but the downside pales in comparison to its pros. It gets better considering the fact that when you master a materia, you get a fresh one star copy of the five star materia allowing you to master it all over again, which means you can repeat the cycle as many times as you want, and considering that "All" is undoubtedly of the most essential and fundamental materia to master, it's a safe bet that you have a mastered "All" materia pretty soon in the game.
* Vincent's ultimate weapon deals damage based on the number of enemies he's killed with it. Kill [[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne 65535]] enemies and it's an instant kill on anything due to its damage formula overflowing so that it ends up doing negative damage, which triggers a failsafe script that instantly kills anything he hits with it. Due to this, it can even one-shot [[SequentialBoss Sequential Bosses]] at their first stage.
** to a lesser extent every ultimate weapon does this. They each have the ability to do 9999 damage, when most melee attacks will only do ~1000 damage when the gamer first gets hold of the easier weapons. These weapons all have methods that power them up, such as having high MP or HP, and are weaker when unpowered; but it's usually absurdly easy to satisfy these conditions so that you always hit for 9999 damage, invalidating all spells that don't do multi hits. Special note goes to Barret, Tifa, and the aforementioned Vincent, whose ultimate weapons stay at full power once powered up and can never grow weaker. And that's before equipping people with a mastered Double Cut materia [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill so they can attack four times in a single turn]].
* Like most Franchise/FinalFantasy games, the spells you learn from your enemies could be the most game-breaking of all:
** Beta is available ''very'' early on in the game, courtesy of the Midgar Zolom. If you're good or lucky, this nuclear chainsaw will cut through the rest of the first disc without any effort. It's three times more powerful than the second-strongest attack you'll have at that point.
** If the above is too much for you to handle, there's Matra Magic, which can be acquired right when you leave Midgar. While not as strong as Beta, it's non-elemental, hits all enemies and still hits hard, making it valuable all the way to disk 2.
** Once you get the buggy, you can learn the Aqualung ability, which does similar amounts of damage compared to Beta, but water-based, making it useful for killing anything that Beta wouldn't work on.
** White Wind, which can also be obtained really early in the game, is basically all of the healing materia in the game, except for revive, mashed together for ''less MP'' than any one of its weaker cousins. It recovers your teammates by however many health points the caster has, so if the caster has 9999 HP when they use this move, their allies both recover 9999 HP also. Just keep the caster's health high, and your team is in good shape. And as an added bonus, its status-restoring properties make it functionally an instant death spell when used against undead. The one downside is you need the Manipulate Materia to force the enemy to use it on you, but it is well worth the effort.
** Big Guard puts Barrier, [=MBarrier=], and Haste on your whole party (effectively halving all incoming damage and doubling party speed), in ''one turn'', for 56 MP. And it's insultingly easy to obtain, if you know where to get it.
** Trine, which has an absurdly low cost for the damage it does; for comparison, the summon Ramuh (which deals damage with exactly the same properties as Trine) does half the damage for double the cost. And Trine is powerful enough to wipe out entire swarms of mooks in a single shot until around the end of disc 2. You know, around the time it's possible to get W-Item and after the time it's possible to get Knights of the Round. The only downside is that you can only get it from three monsters in the entire game, two of which are bosses, and the third is in a dungeon that can't be revisited.
** Goblin Punch, which is incredibly easy to obtain if you know where to find it, and does an obscene amount of damage for 0 MP.
** Magic Hammer, which gives you 100 MP for the cost of...3 MP, effectively making it impossible for you to ever run out as long as you're willing to take turns casting the spell. And that MP is ''drained from the enemy target'', with nothing in the whole game immune to it - resulting in many spellcasting bosses becoming incapable of doing anything at all.
* The W-Item materia. It's supposed to just allow you to use two items in one turn, but thanks to a glitch it allows you to infinitely clone any item that you can use in battle...such as the normally rare Hero Drinks, which increase all your character's stats for that one battle. After using four of these, no boss in the game without Weapon in its name can stand up to you and the arena becomes a complete joke. Or Megalixirs, which in mass quantities completely remove the need for MP conservation, allowing you to replace the aforementioned Trine with uber attacks that until then had been AwesomeButImpractical due to MP cost. It even includes the greens you use to power up your Chocobos, allowing you to basically put your Chocobo on steroids and win everything.
* Like ''V'' above, Mime returns to screw the game up.
** Command Counter. When hit the character would Counter Attack with a mime of the last action your party performed. Naturally, this can lead you to miming a double summon of Knights of the Round and then on your actual turn repeating it. This was especially notable with enemies that dealt physical damage to all characters in the party because each one of them (if equipped with Command Counter+Mine), they would Mime the Mimed Knights of the Round. This reduced even the strongest enemy in the game to putty.
** Even worse: Barret with Ungarmax. After loading him up with a few Hero Drinks, let him do this, let the enemy attack him, and watch as Barret unleashes up to 144 attacks each worth about 5000+ damage apiece.
** A great place to use mime is in the arena, because you can actually mime limit breaks like Omnislash. So go in with a full limit break and just keep mime-ing. This is especially useful because you can then take some on the high scoring penalties and they will not affect you, like all green material breaking. This along with the hero drinks mentioned above makes the arena a joke.
* If a character's HP hits exactly 7777 on the dot, they will start automatically attacking enemies for 7777 damage. [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill 62 times.]] The [[IncredibleShrinkingMan Mini spell]], normally a UselessUsefulSpell, reduces all physical damage caused by one enemy to 1, but there's nothing stopping you from using it on your own characters. By using enough HP Plus materia for 9999 HP, the Demi spell (deals 1/4 max HP in damage) will leave you at 7499 HP - attack with the Mini-ed character 22 times, then use 3 of the lowest level healing potion to heal 100 HP each, and we have instant overkill of any non-BonusBoss enemy in the game. It helps that Emerald Weapon has an attack that deals 1111 damage for every materia on your characters - you can see where this is going.
** Go into [[BonusBoss Emerald WEAPON]] with 9999 HP and two materia on one character. Let Emerald use Aire Tam Storm, which inflicts 1111 damage for each Materia equipped. Instant Lucky 7s.
* A comparatively lesser one, but the Morph ability can be used like this. The morph ability does little damage, but if it kills an opponent the opponent will be morphed into a specific item, with each monster having a specific item it morphs into. The end game has a [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling sunken plane]] where every monster is absurdly powerful, but morphs into a stat boosting item. This by itself isn't too much of a game breaker, given the effort of cherry tapping the game's hardest foes to death is so extreme that you deserve the boost you get. That is until you explore the sunken plane a little and discover [[SecretCharacter Yuffie's]] [[InfinityPlusOneSword ultimate weapon]] which can do full damage attacks when using morph, making it absurdly easy to collect these stat boosting items. Then the game starts to get a bit more broken.
* On the [=PS4=] port, clicking R3 makes HP regenerate faster than the enemies can damage you, MP regenerate faster than you can use them, and the Break Meter fill up so fast that everyone can have a LimitBreak nearly every turn.
* Tifa's Powersoul is weak to begin with, but doubles her attack power if she's in critical health or in Death Sentence status. However, thanks to a programming oversight, the effect stacks, meaning her attack power is quadrupled if she's in both. When you first discover this effect on the first Disc, it's already broken - hit Tifa a couple of times, have an Enemy Skill user cast Death Sentence on her, and unleash her Slots to take the damage through the ceiling. On Disc 2, when you can get the Cursed Ring - an item which hugely boosts a character's stats in return for automatically putting them in Death Sentence at the start of battle - it becomes ''hilariously'' broken, and it's really easy to discover since Tifa is the party leader at the point when you can first obtain the ring. Messing around with the rest of her Materia can allow you to negate the problems with her sturdiness caused by this strategy - and you can load her up with Hero Drinks and have someone cast Berserk on her.
* The Regen spell. Unlike in every other game in the franchise, which regenerates a fixed small amount of health between turns, VII's Regen spell is always healing quite quickly while in effect.

!! ''VideoGame/CrisisCore''
* The Costly Punch; deals 9999 damage each hit regardless of stats or level for the cost of just a few HP! Made worse if you equip the accessory "Brutal" that ups the damage limit to 99999. That is, unless you get you HP above your current maximum after a certain threshold, then Costly Punch will do [[EpicFail ZERO]] damage.
** Two words: Gil Toss. Combo it together with the infinite SP and Gil cheat and you effectively cheese the BonusBoss, which has 10 million HP, with the proper setup in around 5 minutes as you are dealing the maximum damage limit of 99999 several times per toss. Who says you can't solve problems just by throwing money at it?
* With enough time spent using Materia Fusion (expedited significantly if you know what you're doing), you can get Zack's stats to absolute perfect levels, and with the right equipment, make consistently perfect use of them.
** And that same Costly Punch can be upgraded to raise your max HP to 1099% of its natural value, provided you have an accessory to break the HP limit.
** Well, increasing stat bonus of your materia is the only way to max your stats, although even without it, Brutal and Costly Punch allows you to [[OneHitKill One Hit Kill]] any boss in story mode. On the other hand, you can't even think about killing strongest boss in side missions if you don't have Costly Punch and Brutal and haven't maxed at least some of your stats. After all, she has ''only'' 10 million HP (she can heal herself too), not to mention her deadly attacks.
* For multiple enemies, where Costly Punch becomes less than effective due to its attack delay, Darkness can be an excellent substitute. It's basically like Costly Punch, only it costs a lot more HP to use - but it's an area of effect attack with a very wide area of effect, and very high damage output, particularly if it's mastered. It also raises your max HP by a considerable amount when equipped, which helps with the cost of using it.
* Vital Slash, a materia that allows you to do a critical attack that is much more powerful than a normal critical attack. Level it up and it does 9,999 damage pretty much every time, with just a couple seconds' delay. Equip an item or materia that gives Endure, and you can basically just brush off most attacks and smash tougher enemies' faces into the floor in about a second and a half. And if you equip the aforementioned accessory to raise the damage limit...
* There is a very popular method of economics exploitation which ensures that you will never run out of Gil and SP, which in turn gives players the resources to maximize Zack's stats:
** When you have access to the Minerva Mission (9-6-6), equip Brigand's Gloves and a Steal/Mug Materia, and enter the battle. Brigand's Gloves make sure that you'll steal with a 100% success rate. The very first thing you'll want to do is steal from Minerva, which should be no problem if it is your very first command. '''99''' Phoenix Downs are now yours. Watch how [[BonusBoss Minerva]] slaughters you, and return at the Save Point.
** Sell the Phoenix Downs for nearly 500000 Gil at any Shop.
** Repeat the process until you've gotten a few millions.
** Go to Net Shop Shade (you should have it, since you have access to Minerva as well; It's in a chest in Mission 9-5-4). Buy yourself a load of Dualcast Materia. For one run (500000 Gil), you can buy 16, nearly 17 of these.
** Go to Materia in your menu and convert these 16 Dualcasts into nearly 290000 SP! It turns into 18040 SP per Materia, so it's quite efficient! Money is no issue either, so it's infinite Gil and SP for you!
*** If you want to maximize the value, buy the Silence Materia instead. It costs 1000 Gil and is worth 1010 SP. The only downside to this is that it more tedious as it will no doubt overload your inventory.

!! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIIRemake''
* With the right setup, Barret becomes the most efficient spellcaster in the game, especially as a support+white mage with Big Bertha and the accessory that boosts healing by 25%. Have him cast Haste on himself and his shots keep his ATB gauge for Pray and Magnified Barrier spells full in seconds.
* The Magnify materia; similar to the All materia in the original game, when it is connected to any spellcasting materia, the associated spell can target all enemies / all allies on the screen simultaneously. It's so overpowered that the entire game only has one. It's slightly a MagikarpPower at first though as spells cast with it only have about 20% of their normal potency at rank one. By rank 3 it's 60% though which is really close enough, and even at 20% potency, spells meant to stagger enemies will still be effective.
* Cloud's Counterstance skill. It allows Cloud to counter an attack made towards him by striking and ignoring being stunned from hit, and momentarily stuns the enemy. Not only does it only cost one ATB bar, but it also will work on almost every single enemy in the game, meaning Cloud can easily overpower most enemies using it. Combine it with an elemental materia, and Cloud can stun an enemy momentarily, deal strong damage, and help build the stagger gauge quickly. It makes fights on Hard mode much easier as a result.
* The Elemental materia at level 2 or 3 allows you to respectively nullify or absorb a linked element when inserted into a character's armor. When going up against a boss or strong enemy that uses them, this turns what can be a difficult encounter into an easy victory.
* Warding materia when mastered grants immunity to a linked status effect, such as poison, sleep, or instant death. This is more situational but in certain circumstances completely eliminates enemy mechanics.
* The Deadly Dodge materia. When leveled up, it allows the user to deal slight AOE damage after dodging an attack. On paper it sounds weak, but it can easily combined with the Elemental materia to allow the player to cheese certain fights. In particular, Barret wielding both an Elemental materia and Deadly Dodge materia can clear waves of enemies with the Big Bertha, and this can work on bosses too. It's like casting a spell with Magnify, except you are just dodging and not using MP!
* Aerith's Ray of Judgement skill. It costs two bars and has a brief wind-up, but once it goes off, it's a blast of raw magical power that hits the enemy quickly and hard. What makes it so powerful is its power when used on a staggered enemy; it's one of two skills that raise the enemies' stagger percent meter, but unlike Tifa who can only do so using her uppercut, Aerith's can be used to rapidly increase the meter. Combined with Tifa, and you can quickly get the stagger percent incredibly high, all while Aerith is doing enough damage to make it worthwhile.

[[/folder]]

* Whip/Chain Whip and Deathsickle. When combined, it means that an enemy must be immune to both Paralysis ''and'' instant Death in order to pose a serious threat. A surprising number of enemies do not have those qualities. Have fun.

* The GBA remake adds the Gladiator's "Finisher" ability, which, at the job's maximum level, has a 3/4 chance of either delivering a critical hit or an elemental-based hit that automatically hits for a huge amount of damage. Add the Knight's Doublehand ability to double your attack power and you've got a wrecking ball in a human suit.

** Dark Sigh (Eye Drop + Dragon Fang) Blinds and Confuses the target. Useful because it has a 100% hit rate if the target is not immune (like most Mixes)

* The Return spell. If you have someone with Time Magic and just 1 measly MP, you can do the whole battle over again. Everything gets reset, including countdown timers and MP:(i.e. The spell is effectively free.), to however the battle started. This makes stealing unique rare items and figuring out any PuzzleBoss just a matter of keeping the Time Mage alive and patience. Note that this is bugged in the North America GBA release -- timers do NOT reset.

* Due to a bug, Aim and Rapid Fire never trigger the Flee effect of the Chicken Knife. And with the Ranger having such high Strength and Agility, the Chicken Knife + Rapid Fire + Hermes Sandals combo makes them an unstoppable killing machine. Ranger gets off two rounds of Rapid Fire before the enemy even gets a turn, dealing roughly 20,000 point s of damage. They, uh, rarely survive long enough to do anything. The endgame boss gauntlet fares little better and is carved up one after another. You really need to see the lategame Ranger in action, it is terrifying.
* The Bone Armor is very powerful armor, but makes the character harmed by healing magic. There are two ways to get around this. White Wind heals everyone a fixed number (the caster's HP) which overwrites the Bone Armor's effect. Or use MagicSword to attach drain to your attacks.

* In the Super Famicom version and [=PS1=] port, this is done by using the Kiss of Blessing on Exdeath (Holy Water and Maiden's Kiss using the Chemist's Mix command).

* In all versions of the game, even Heavy-flagged bosses aren't safe from the Blue Mage's arsenal of Level Whatever spells. Cue manipulating boss levels until they are a multiple of 5, and then casting Level 5 Death. The popular way is to use level-increasing Mixes to get them to the virtual level cap of 255, which is a multiple of 5...

* The ability Auto-Regen gives you back health not based on turns but rather on an actual amount of time. Hence making sure summons were on full animation rather would give you more health than the quicker "part animation". The full Ark, for instance, could get you from 1hp to about 5,000hp, if not more.

* The Master's Scroll and Genji Glove combo allows a character to attack eight times at once. Give them a defense-ignoring weapon or two (or just train their Strength really high) and ''anything'' they hit will die in one turn as they hit the damage cap eight times in a row for 79,992 damage. Teach them Quick, and they can do it twice in a row for 159,984 damage. Even Kaiser Dragon and Omega Weapon won't last long against this onslaught. If Raiden is the only Esper ever used to train Edgar, and you sell all of his tools, he'll have a 100% success rate at the Colosseum using this method.

* Quick. It allows your character two extra turns without any interruptions from enemies or allies. It costs 99 MP but, again, there's ways around that. When combined with the Soul of Thamasa, which grants Dualcast, this allows a character ''five'' spells castings in one turn. Combined with Ultima, that's five hits of 9999 damage. Or, if you prefer, a lone character can revive and fully-heal the entire party.

* Amarant in general counts for this due to his high attack strength, his solid stats, and his versatile move set. He can cause direct damage, cast status effects, restore party members' health and magic points, and can even revive them all by himself.
** The best part about Amarant is his first move "Chakra" restores a little bit of health and magic for a small amount of his own magic which means that when he uses the move on himself, the move pays for itself. Even better is the fact that later on, he can learn an ability to strengthen "Chakra".
* The "Chakra" ability is a mini-breaker when combined with Zidane's "Sacrifice" ability. Sacrifice kills Zidane, but refills everyone's health and mana to full. It's powerful, but limited because it can only be used once, in theory. However, with just two "chakra" used on Zidane it's possible to refill enough mana to allow Zidane to use Sacrifice again. Thus every character can be boosted to full powery ever 3-4 turns by reviving Zidane, using two chakra, and re-sacrificing him over and over. So long as your healers can revive and heal Zidane well enough that he doesn't die before committing sacrifice, you're invincible. This isn't as powerful later in the game, due to other game-breakers existing, but this trick can be used from the moment Amarant is available.
** This trick is particular powerful during the one point in the game in which magic doesn't work. Amarant's spells arent classified as magic and he also gets a revive spell, so combining revive and chakra can allow surviving the random encounters without any white mage or other healing items... so long as Amarant isn't targeted by the instant-death abilities.

** Special mention goes to Wakka's "World Champion" weapon since it's one of the most powerful (if not THE most powerful) and the easiest weapons to get both the Jupiter Crest and the Jupiter Sigil for, considering that all you have to do to get the sigil is play a lot of blitzball and it will eventually be a prize for winning. This leads to another GameBreaker in blitzball with Tidus' Jecht Shot to easily overwhelm your opponents, and once you got all of Tidus' key moves, you had a chance of winning the Jecht Shot 2 which takes the original Jecht Shot UpToEleven and pretty much guarantees victory over any team.

* If you know how to manipulate it, Yojimbo's skill "Zanmato". It's not a LimitBreak, but it is an [[OneHitKill instant death]] to any enemy in the game. Period. No enemy is actually immune to Zanmato, so...if you have a decent supply of Gil and enough time, you can rampage through the game pretty easily off of that one attack.

** It's ''still'' ripe for abuse though, but not to the same extent as in the vanilla version. Combine it with the Thief Dressphere, which has innate double-strike as its regular attack, as well as access to the "First Strike" auto-ability after learning it, then find some way to lower her to critical HP so that she'll be slicing off almost 20,000 HP at the start of each battle. On a NewGamePlus, you can reduce Chac (one of the DegradedBoss encounters from Via Infinito) to a joke by loading up three Thieves with Cat Nip and Speed Bracers and them putting them in critical HP status before the fight. Then just sit back and watch them take Chac apart--who of course never gets a turn because of the stagger effect with every melee Thief attack.

** Before that, the Black Mage Dressphere in general trivialises floors, being able to hit with a powerful magic spell (Firaga for Yuna, Thundaga for Rikku and Blizzaga for Paine) from up to three squares away. The problem of running out of MP can be solved by equipping Dark Knight and Gun Mage in addition to Black Mage, which creates the auto-ability "MP Heal Over Time" (and eventually the accessory Waxing Moonstone), which causes you to recover 1 MP every few turns. Note that, in this game, pretty much every action (changing equipment, attacking, even taking a step) counts as a turn, so your MP will usually recharge faster than you can use it. It's very easy to get all the aforementioned Dresspheres before even reaching the ''fifth'' floor, after which they will stick with you for a good long while.
** The "Evade Traps" auto-ability (Songstress + Thief + Psychic) and corresponding Stealth Cape accessory, which allows you to walk over traps without activating them. Considering that traps are the most annoying and detrimental thing about this game (being that they're invisible until you step on them, unless you have the "Detect All Traps" auto-ability), being immune to them makes the game a lot easier.

** The infamous BraggingRightsReward, Wyrmhero Blade, deserves to be mentioned. In the vanilla version of the game, one had to beat Yiazmat (which required a whole slew of other [[BonusBoss Bonus Bosses]] to be vanquished), Omega Mark XII (which is difficult to even ''find'', let alone fight) and completing a not really difficult but time spanning Fishing Minigame to get. Here, you can steal it from Famfrit at floor 50 of Trial Mode, much sooner than in vanilla game even if you speedran it. Autosave means you can try immediately if you don't steal it. To top it off, the weapon was indirectly buffed by changes of game mechanics: inclusion of jobs, to which the weapon is not limited since it does not require a license, and removal of damage cap, which would hinder the weapon due to its power, and consequently now can attain its maximum damage rate.

* The Cat-ear Hood originally gave a huge boost to Vitality and Speed. The Zodiac version changes it by converting LP gained to gil instead. You get a few hundred gil per enemy killed, even the weak enemies found in the Estersands and Westersands. Run around killing monsters for an hour and you'll make money a completely non issue. Killing rare game and hunt marks can get you several ''thousand'' gil for each kill. Since the item only stops LP gained for the person wearing it, it's very handy to have around if a character's license board is filled up or nearly done while you can still get LP for the rest of the party. On top of this, the character wearing the hood will take half damage from ice and wind attacks. The only downside is buying the accessory since it's 50,000 gil to purchase and you might not have the money for it at first, but the return investment is very worth it.

* Poison on vulnerable targets, which chews away at an enemy's HP at ''1% of their max health a second'', considering the post-arrival on Pulse difficulty spike, poison is welcome for its effectiveness and in some situations can help you win encounters that you shouldn't be able to under other circumstances. [[spoiler: Even the ''final bosses''' first form, the Long Gui, or Vercingetorix isn't immune to it.]]

* The Cloud outfit for hard boss fights. When you fight bosses, and you have trouble, the easiest thing to do is just stagger them, then use Overclock to speed yourself up and slow them down, and then just reuse Heavy Slash, the locked ability mapped to the Triangle/Y button in the Cloud outfit. It has a passive ability that says when your enemy is staggered, it changes into the Slayer ability, which multiplies the damage output exponentially, and when you have your enemy slowed down with Overclock, you can reuse the attack. You can take out hard bosses like [[spoiler: Noel and Caius]] in mere SECONDS by doing this.

* In all versions of the game, even Heavy-flagged bosses aren't safe from the Blue Mage's arsenal of Level Whatever spells. Cue manipulating boss levels until they are a multiple of 5, and then casting Level 5 Death....

* Certain Grids grant you status immunities or convert enemy spells into HP. (X)-Eater abilities are overpowered in Chapter 1, and YRP can speed the process along by [[HealingShiv casting low-level Black magic on themselves]]. Fire Eater is disproportionately useful.

* With Black Mage mastered and Minerva's Plate or Black Tome equipped, two Black Mages can cast Ultima with almost no casting time. (The effects won't stack, so wearing Minerva's Plate with a Black Tome is a waste of a slot.) Throw in MP Mambo and they can spam Ultimas for free.

** With just a single Berserker, Elder Drakes and (non-Oversouled) Lacertas are a joke. With Tetrastrike (2x damage on enemy with weakness to Fire/Ice/Water/Thunder) or Omnistrike (same but with Holy/Gravity added), and it's a guaranteed 9,999 HP per hit.

* In some cases, an "Oversouled" fiend turns into a GlassCannon, resulting in them actually being ''easier'' to kill. For instance, an Oversouled Mega Tonberry will not spam Chef's Knife every turn. You'll still have to deal with Chac's annoying Stony Glare, but Heaven's Cataract isn't in her Oversouled movelist. She sticks mainly to weak melee attacks, and also likes destroying your Softs and Remedies...one at a time.

** Lady Lucj can still cheese Cat Nip in the remaster. It requires a Minerva Plate, Cat Nip, and the 4x Dice attack. As she is throwing her dice, another girl attacks her, lowering her HP to critical. The buff triggers and the 4 dice result in 40,000 damage (9,999 per hit). Then someone throws a potion and repeats everything. If Lady Luck dies, another girl combos a Life spell or Phoenix Down with the potion.

* If you follow the right procedures, you can bring O'aka onto the airship with you. He'll sell a bunch of items to you, and your purchases will go to paying off his debt. Pay it off by chapter 3 of the game and you'll turn him into the world's worst merchant. How does he make this transformation? He sells his wares at 10% market price. For example, potions for 5 gil each. He's standing directly across from Barkeep, who buys things at 50% market price. This is how you farm infinite Gil in Chapter 1. Buy 99 of the cheapest item at rock-bottom prices and then flip them at a huge markup. Buy a stack of potions and sell 'em Barkeep for 12 gil each. Buy for 5, sell for 12. What's that, a 140% profit? By buying everything you can from O'aka, you can make 26730 gil with each trip. Rinse and repeat, and you'll have no excuse to run out of money ever again.
** Assuming you have the patience to rack up 100k gil just from grinding or fighting in the Fiend Arena before taking on any missions outside O'aka's, you can then turn around two steps to sell those items for 230% of what you paid for them. Since Phoenix Downs are the most valuable item O'aka sells you at this point, at around 7300 gil profit per round of sales, this the best in the early game and provides the opportunity (again assuming you have enough patience to bank hundreds of thousands of gil 7k at a time) to max out your captured fiends' HP and MP, at a ridiculously early point.

** You can workaround the Cat Nip {{nerf}} still with another expolit in Lady Luck: Equip her with a Minerva Plate, Cat Nip, and use the Four Dice attack. As she is throwing the dice, have another character attack her, reducing her HP to critical level. Once it does, the special auto-ability triggers and the four dice will result in 9,999 damage per hit. Then, throw a healing item at her and repeat the steps. If the Lady Luck dies, you can always just throw her a Phoenix Down or cast Life on her then use a healing item afterwards.

* If you follow the right procedures, you can bring O'aka onto the airship with you. He'll sell a bunch of items to you, and your purchases will go to paying off his debt. Pay it off by chapter 3 of the game and you'll turn him into the world's worst merchant. How does he make this transformation? He sells his wares for drastically lowered prices. For example, potions for 5 gil each. Buy a stack of potions and sell 'em to the Hypello just across the room. You can sell to the Hypello for 12 gil each. Buy for 5, sell for 12. What's that, a 140% profit? By buying everything you can from O'aka, you can make 26730 gil with each trip. Rinse and repeat, and you'll have no excuse to run out of money ever again.

* Prior to the re-release, the most powerful item was Cat Nip, which allows the wearer to inflict 9,999 damage with ''any'' attack so long as [[CriticalStatusBuff she's in critical health]]. And seeing as this applies to multi-hitting attacks, one could say that this accessory wasn't balanced at all. Even White Mage was a strong candidate for Cat Nip when casting [[HolyHandGrenade Holy]].
** Every ''Final Fantasy'' fan knows about the Trigger Happy exploit due to its infamy in the Via Infinito. It combines the SpamAttack Yuna learns at the beginning of the game with Cat Nip [[DeathOfAThousandCuts to remove 9,999 HP with each hit, up to a maximum of 20 or more hits]], [[UpToEleven even more so if you hooked her up with Haste]]. It got revised in the International and HD Remsater version to inflict Berserk on the user, so this combination is no longer possible.

* ''Last Mission'' has the Founder, an extremely powerful enemy who appears to punish you for taking too long to complete a floor. However, with a certain strategy, it's possible to safely steal items from him, and some of the items you can get from him are very powerful and rare. Special mention goes to two accessories, which can ''only'' be gotten this way: the Valkyrie Nails, which triples the chance of a critical hit, and the Triple Tiara, which makes any normal attack hit ''three times'' automatically. Combine both accessories and use a Dressphere with a powerful physical attack like Samurai or Berserker and even bosses perish in seconds. The best part? Triple Tiara is a ''guaranteed'' steal from the Founder on floor 44 (out of 80).