History GameBreaker / FinalFantasy

** The infaous Iai Strike build -- the Smiting Soul accessory gives your character a 2% chance to instantly deal Bravery damage equal to the opponent's Bravery when they connect. With a 99.9x Booster, this is a guarantee, and due to the level gap your opponent will definitely have 9999 Bravery, which just became yours. Even [[SNKBoss Feral Chaos]] can be killed in under a minute using this set-up.

* The Black Belt and Dark Knight in the 2021 UpdatedRerelease both have free attacks that hit all enemies on screen with the damage being tied to job level and weapons equipped. Since a high-job level Black Belt is stronger unarmed and its Kick is unaffected by rows, it can single-handedly win nearly every random battle up until finding the ''Invincible''. From then on, a Dark Kight can obtain weapons and start wrecking everything with its Bladeblitz.

* The Chemist class, which may at first appear to be impressively-useless due to the fact that you need to spend a good time discovering what the item combinations do, and also need to grind a lot of mixing items. But [[DifficultButAwesome if you do know, it's easily the most powerful class in the game]], if not the entire ''series'', to the point that a solo Chemist can go toe to toe with [[BonusBoss Omega and Shinryu]]... and ''win''.

** It does have one drawback, though: multi-form enemies won't die from it unless they're already in their final form, and Yojimbo's HP is low, so you won't get a chance to do it twice. To kill Yunalesca or Braska's Final Aeon with it, you're going to need to soften them up first. However, it works perfectly well on [[BonusBoss Penance]].

* A lot of creatures obtainable through Creature Creator are extremely powerful, but none more so than [[MeaningfulName Mushroom Cloud]]. More specifically, its Pernicious Powder attack, since it reduces ''all'' enemy stats to 1/6th, no exceptions. And absolutely '''''nothing''''' in the game is immune to it - not the final bosses, not [[BonusBoss Trema, not Almighty Shinra and not even Major Numerous]]!

** Psychic offers NighInvulnerability in the form of being able to absorb all elemental damage and even become literally Invincible outright using Excellence (or Physics and Magic Guard if you've yet to learn the command, though that'll take a toll on your MP pool for the time being).

* The Fighter/Warrior can equip basically everything, hits hard, is tougher than everyone else put together, and has access to healing magic later on. Though they don't quite hit the absurd damage values of the Black Belt/Monk, they more than make up for it in terms of both durability and usability from beginning to end. Most of the time, the Fighter is going to be carrying the rest of the party. Indeed, while all-one-class runs are normally a SelfImposedChallenge (four White Mages, four Thieves, etc), four Fighters is regarded as one of the more effective party layouts, bordering on easy mode (the only issue becomes grinding enough money to equip them...and grinding just makes them stronger anyway!). Even a solo run with the Fighter is considered the most doable of them all, to the point that speedruns favor a layout of two Fighters and the rest of the party being dead.

* The Lady Luck dressphere is focused around gambling-based abilities: most prominently its four Reels abilities, which let you spin roulette wheels to achieve various effects based on the type of reels spun and the results. The Reels stop and remain visible when the game is paused, allowing nearly guaranteed 777 results after only a few minutes of practice. The final Reels ability, Random Reels, has the special ability CONGRATS! as its 777 result, which Bribes all enemies for free and pays the party extra gil in addition to the normal experience and gil rewards as if they'd defeated the enemies. Aside from trivializing any encounter not immune to Bribe, CONGRATS! also allows the player to rack up enormous amounts of gil and rare items by knowing which enemies hand them over. The dressphere also provides doubled experience, gil, and item drops with its support abilities, making it ideal for grinding in every aspect.
* The UpdatedRerelease comes with the ability to capture fiends and recruit them to the party, allowing the player to use them in battle in place of the YRP members. In exchange for being uncontrollable, many fiends have high stats and abilities the girls can't acquire for themselves. Of these, the strongest is the Mushroom Cloud, which possesses its unique Pernicious Powder ability. Pernicious Powder cuts down on all of the victim's stats from their normal values and works on literally everything in the game, including every single BonusBoss.

** The Special Dresspheres each turn the girl wearing them into a OneManArmy with a vast array of special abilities and two supporting units, which are themselves immensely powerful, to replace the other two party members. The Special Dresspheres' only drawback being that all three are noticeably slower than normal classes, and using them means giving up the equipped Garment Grid's gate abilities and/or stat boosts.

** The only thing worse than the above skills is using them with other classes' moves. A ninja with two swords? Unnerving. A paladin wielding two swords, both of which are insanely powerful? Scary. A paladin wielding two of the aformentioned swords and toting Ultima Shot, arguably the most powerful human spell in the game? Freaking ''terrifying''.
* Ultima Blow is unnecessary if you get Sonic Boom, which deals normal damage to multiple enemies at a nice range. Paladins are also capable of equipping a combination of equipment - Nagrarok, Sequence, Peytral, and Ninja Tabi - that allows them to have a total movement range of eight squares, over twice what they ordinarily have and more than enough to cover half a map by themselves. In combination, this gives them the same attack range as a ''Gunner''.

* While expensive, you could use elemental rods as battle items to consume them, unleashing their power as -Aga level spells. This can allow early-game parties to blast away bosses with elemental weaknesses far faster than normal.

** The Monk gets fairly ridiculous in the GBA remake. A Fighter won't out-damage the Monk (or even come close to its damage output) until he gets the InfinityPlusOneSword, and even with said equipment, it's not by much. Plus, all the armor Monks need is a Ribbon since, thanks to how they work, going naked is equivalent of having the evasion of a Ninja, and they still have decent defense. Magic defense and status effects are pretty much their only (and biggest) concern, both of which are covered by the Ribbon.

* Deathstrike and Stonestrike are very handy weapon abilities that you can customize onto weapons with empty slots. They inflict stone and death on contact, respectively. While it will [[ContractualBossImmunity never work on a boss ever]], most normal enemies can be tagged by one or the other. Usually this is done with the capture weapons, which otherwise have low damage. You would think this would prevent capture, but deathed and stoned fiends are captured just fine, making the capturing sidequest a LOT easier.

Much like XI, XIV is an MMO, and thus also subject to debate and changes from patches.

** Black Mages in A Realm Reborn were on the powerful end, with defensive cooldowns that gave them the survivability of tanks when it mattered, and Flare, which could deal 2.5k-3k damage even when undergeared and if you knew what you were doing could be cast 3 times in succession (fittingly known as the Triple Flare strategy). They were the preferred caster throughout 2.0 content because of being the kings of aoe, which fit with the "speedrun" style players adopted on most dungeons.

* Your reward for completing the Main Scenario of Patch 5.3 is [[spoiler:G'raha Tia]] as an All-Rounder Trust ally, and he does not disappoint. Not only does he start at level 80 from the get go, he is also noticeably [[ArtificialBrilliance much more competent]] than your usual Trust allies. As a Tank, he knows when to use his defensive cooldowns properly, and is very easy to keep alive if you're a healer. As a Healer, he'll actually use Holy on a pack of mobs, and will use Glare as much as possible when healing isn't needed. As a DPS, he's competent enough to ''actually use [=AoE=] skills like Foul and Thunder IV'' on packs of mobs, when pretty much ''all'' the other Trust DPS don't even bother! Needless to say, having him makes Trust dungeons considerably more manageable for leveling your other jobs.

* The Paladin's "Guardian" ability was this in certain maps of the PVP mode Frontline, as the ability lets the Paladin take all damage for their target for ten seconds. While this does turn the Paladin into an easy target, it also meant that the guarded party member could capture objectives (like an Ovoo or a data totem) without getting interrupted by enemy attacks. Even then, the Paladin's LimitBreak in PVP makes them invincible for the same ten seconds, so it was a moot point about the Paladin's sudden squishiness if they used both abilities at the same time. Alternatively, the Paladin could just guard to make all damage they take drop significantly. The only way to break this combo was to force the Paladin to move away from their covered target, but there are very few abilities that force people to move, and even fewer ways to do it if the Paladin guards while covering someone, leaving it a strategy that was practically counter-proof in certain maps. It got so bad that patch 6.25 ended up reworking the Guardian ability specifically to remove this one-two punch by making it so that the ability no longer works on allies who are interacting with an object.

* The Paladin's "Guardian" ability becomes this in certain maps of the PVP mode Frontline, as the ability lets the Paladin take all damage for their target for ten seconds. While this does turn the Paladin into an easy target, it also means that the guarded party member can capture objectives (like an Ovoo or a data totem) without getting interrupted by enemy attacks. Even then, the Paladin's LimitBreak in PVP makes them invincible for the same ten seconds, so it's a moot point about the Paladin's sudden squishiness if they use both abilities at the same time. Alternatively, the Paladin can just guard to make all damage they take drop significantly. The only way to break this combo was to force the Paladin to move away from their covered target, but there are very few abilities that force people to move, and even fewer ways to do it if the Paladin guards while covering someone. It got so bad that patch 6.25 ended up reworking the Guardian ability specifically to remove this one-two punch, as there was very little an enemy team could do about it.

* The Warrior's Raw Intuition becomes a seriously absurd skill when dealing with trash mobs. Alongside the damage reduction, it also heals the Warrior for a 400 potency heal for every weaponskill they land for 6 seconds. What it ''doesn't'' mention is that this heal applies ''per enemy hit,'' which means a Warrior whose HP gets whittled down rapidly by pulling a ton of trash mobs can casually pop Raw Intuition, use Overpower and Mythril Tempest, and ''instantly heal themselves back to full.'' And like the Gunbreaker's Heart of Corundum above, the cooldown is only 25 seconds. It gets even better at level 82, where it becomes Bloodwhetting, extending its duration by 2 more seconds, adding in more damage reduction and a small barrier to help mitigate more damage. The sheer self-sustain of the Warrior is so absurd, they can take on a boss even when the healer is dead and ''still win'' without dying. There's a reason they're called the "Blue Healer" in ''Endwalker.''
* The Paladin's "Guardian" ability becomes this in certain maps of the PVP mode Frontline, as the ability lets the Paladin take all damage for their target for ten seconds. While this does turn the Paladin into an easy target, it also means that the guarded party member can capture objectives (like an Ovoo or a data totem) without getting interrupted by enemy attacks. Even then, the Paladin's LimitBreak in PVP makes them invincible for the same ten seconds, so it's a moot point about the Paladin's sudden squishiness if they use both abilities at the same time. It got so bad that patch 6.25 ended up reworking the Guardian ability specifically to remove this one-two punch, as there was nothing an enemy team could do about it.

* The Warrior's Raw Intuition becomes a seriously absurd skill in ''Endwalker.'' Alongside the damage reduction, it also heals the Warrior for a 400 potency heal for every weaponskill they land for 6 seconds. What it ''doesn't'' mention is that this heal applies ''per enemy hit,'' which means a Warrior whose HP gets whittled down rapidly by pulling a ton of trash mobs can casually pop Raw Intuition, use Overpower and Mythril Tempest, and ''instantly heal themselves back to full.'' And like the Gunbreaker's Heart of Corundum above, the cooldown is only 25 seconds. It gets even better at level 82, where it becomes Bloodwhetting, extending its duration by 2 more seconds, adding in more damage reduction and a small barrier to help mitigate more damage. The sheer self-sustain of the Warrior is so absurd, they can take on a boss even when the healer is dead and ''still win'' without dying. There's a reason they're called the "Blue Healer" in ''Endwalker.''

** The Special Dresspheres each turn the girl wearing them into a OneManArmy with a vast array of special abilities and two supporting units to replace the other two party members that are themselves immensely powerful, the Special Dresspheres' only drawback being that all three are noticeably slower than normal classes, and using them means giving up the equipped Garment Grid's gate abilities.

* Yuna's Festivalist dressphere. Her Elemental Sandal skills can have her randomly cast either a 1st, 2nd, 3rd or a stronger version of the 3rd tier spell, at a time when you basically have no other access to anything but basic elemental magic. Unlocking the Sandal skills is pretty easy, as they only require 30 AP each, which then you can start getting the Flare and Ultima variants, well before you have access to them. And this dressphere is impossible to miss, as you get it practically a minute after the introduction mission by talking to Brother.

* Also, not too far into the game you get access to the accessory Bloodlust, which auto-berserks the wearer and greatly increases their strength, just about tripling their attack. This comes at the loss of a large amount of maximum health and being permanently poisoned, but the poison is no problem with the Alchemist Mega Potion reusage. Equip this on a Berserker class, which has naturally very high HP, access to automatic counterattacks and dodges, and Auto-Regen and use the other slot for an auto-Haste accessory; in nearly all battles you can just wait for your berserker to autoattack everyone to death in a matter of seconds. It only runs into slight problems against enemies completely immune to physical damage and enemies with attacks that will cut you to 1 HP, since the poison will often kill you shortly thereafter.

** 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 Copy Techniques Folio is hands-down the best item in the game. It allows you to copy any item twice, which doesn't seem that bad until you realise it can copy Dresspheres. Fusing two Dresspheres of the same type creates a Dressphere whose level is the sum of the levels of the Dresspheres you fused. By the time you get the Copy Techniques Folio, unless you massively screwed up at some point, you will most likely have a high-level powerful Dressphere like Berserker (say, level 25). Copy it with the Copy Techniques Folio and fuse the two level 25 Berserkers to get a level 50 Berserker, then do it again and get a level 99 Berserker. Say goodbye to any challenge for the rest of the game. The only balance is that the Copy Techniques Folio itself is a GuideDangIt to get and takes a fair bit of skill, luck and SaveScumming.

[[folder: Final Fantasy I]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy II]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy III]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy IV]]

!! VideoGame/FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears

[[folder: Final Fantasy V]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy VI]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy IX]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy X and [=X-2=]]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy XI]]
!!''Videogame/FinalFantasyXI''

[[folder: Final Fantasy XIV]]

[[folder:Final Fantasy XV]]

[[folder: Dissidia: Final Fantasy]]
!!''Videogame/DissidiaFinalFantasy'' (and ''Dissidia 012'')

[[folder: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]

[[folder: Final Fantasy [=Type-0=]]]

** The addition of Timed Events in late Februry 2017 added a new flavor of overpowered crap. The events are essentially hunts where you go to a set area to activate, and then murder whatever appears. Availability is based on the day of the month. The first-of-the-month event is a fight against ''100 Cactuars''. On their own, a single Cactuar has 5000 HP, gives 1500 XP, has access to 1000 Needles, and is extremely rare under normal circumstances. Here, you can breeze through them with a decently leveled party using magic and Techs, such as Gladio's Impulse. After about 10 minutes of fighting, you finish the mission, get your reward and your 150k XP for killing all the Cactuars. The Gamebreaking part? The mission is '''repeatable'''. Aside from the one time reward from completing it, you can kill the Cactuars as many times as you desire, getting 150k XP per run, Since they drop Mega-Potions after majority of kills, you don't need to worry much about your team's health, and with a decent rhythm, you can get an upwards of 800k XP per hour. Even better, you could then take all that XP to Altissia and bank it for 3x the XP, for maximum efficiency.

* Grinding job levels in the ''Pixel Remaster'' is ridiculously easy as job levels are tied to number of actions taken in battle: Go up against some easy foes, kill all but one, have everyone Defend, turn on auto-battle to quickly play through multiple rounds, and gain a job level after every battle.

* After each party member's individual [=DLCs=] were released, a patch for the main game let you play as Gladio, Prompto or Ignis just by unlocking the requisite ability for each at a relatively paltry cost. The result is utterly destroying the game's balance thanks to carrying over their episodic abilities: Gladio can use heavy weapons better than Noctis can and has a frankly broken and abusable parry system mechanic, Prompto turning the game into a third-person-shooter lets him dominate enemies from a safe distance and get free area-of-effect damage for only a cooldown cost, and Ignis is an absolute DPS ninja of destruction with elemental advantages to boot. And so long as they're in the party and fully able, you can swap ''for free until the end of the battle'' with no consequences or downsides whatsoever besides the lack of Warp. This breaks the battle system over its knee, since each character's episode was specifically designed for their mechanics for a reason.

** Patch 6.1 reworked the White Mage, reducing their assist potential from healing, but compensated by magnifying their sheer killpower by a ''TON.'' Not only is their Afflatus Misery more readily available to use, their Limit Break is the dreaded Afflatus Purgation, a HUGE fuck-off laser that heavily damages and stuns any unlucky shmuck caught in its path, allowing their party to gang up and finish them off, and also grants a potent HP regeneration buff to all allies within 30 yalms. Alternatively, it can also be used to snipe any retreating enemy with its ''absurd'' 40 yalm range. Did we mention Afflatus Purgation charges ''very'' quickly? Sure, their healing is considerably weaker now, but who needs healing when you can melt people's faces off with a ginormous laser beam?

* Quick freezes game-time and lets your character perform two actions without interruption. Sap drains HP in real-time, and nothing resists it (because it is ''horrendously'' slow; something like 7.5 damage per second). Using Sap as your first action, and then [[WinsByDoingAbsolutelyNothing never taking your second action]], will turn anything into a {{Marathon|Boss}} ZeroEffortBoss.

* The Fiend Arena hands out certain accessories for clearing certain Fiend Tales, which can be done before even first leaving the Celsius. The best among these is the Mortal Shock, gained by completing Flak Python's tale and is otherwise not available until much later in the game. Very few random encounters at this point are immune to the Deathtouch status it provides, trivializing many otherwise difficult early fights.

* [[LightningBruiser Wakka]] in his entirety is this considering that he has the second highest attack stat next to Auron, and the highest accuracy in the game, meaning he can easily hit airborne enemies and bosses that the other characters have trouble hitting. He starts as a GlassCannon until he finishes his section of the sphere grid and moves into [[MightyGlacier Auron's]] which means that his attack builds up ''even higher'', and his defense is significantly increased. Combined with the fact that he's probably the first character to learn negative status moves, and he gets even more broken. At the end of the game this is taken UpToEleven if he has his World Champion weapon activated at its full power, and also because he can be recruited for blitzball where he becomes a GameBreaker in this as well after his stats are raised enough.]

*** In Blitzball, Tidus's Jecht Shot (after winning the mini-game) can count as broken with its long range and high power. It even beats up two defenders along the way. And [[UpToEleven Jecht Shot 2]] knocks out three of them.

** 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're using the Expert Sphere Grid, you may notice that Yuna's path runs straight into the end of Lulu's. Combine this with Yuna's Nirvana (the game-breaking potential of which has already been covered above), and you have a single dedicated mage with ''godly'' attack power and speed (Yuna's natural speed stat surpasses even '' [[LightningBruiser Tidus]]''), who can hit all enemies with Ultima'' [[UpToEleven twice]] ''in a single turn for virtually ''no cost''. Throw in Auto-Haste and Auto-Phoenix/Potion should things go awry.

* If you master all the DS minigames, Rydia's whitkin becomes the gamebreaker by maxing all his stats. Then combining with augments and the right skills you can finish any enemy in the game trivially. An easy "any enemy" strategy is to equip Whitkin with Flare as his only attack option and give him the augments to allow him to cast through walls. If his stats are maxed, Rydia will summon him and he'll get off 3 maxed power flares, doing ''far'' more than 9999 damage collectively - easily beating out Bahamut's damage cap - and all for the low low price of 50 mp. No wonder people cried foul when Whyt got removed on the Android/iOS/Steam versions.

* While the new [[InfinityPlusOneSword ultimate weapons]] introduced in GBA version are powerful to the point of being broken in general, Abel's Lance, Kain's ultimate weapon, stands out. This is due to the fact that every time Abel's Lance lands an attack it has a chance to cast [[BlowYouAway Tornado]] that ''ignores immunities'' and drops '''everything''' [[HPToOne to single digits]]. While getting it is by no means easy (since it involves a DuelBoss that is ''hard''), once you get it any semblance of difficulty from the rest of Lunar Ruins is pretty much gone with the wind, since if a boss is too problematic? Abel's Lance them until Tornado triggers, after which they are one hit away from death.

** Patch 6.1 reworked the White Mage, reducing their assist potential from healing, but compensated by magnifying their sheer killpower by a ''TON.'' Not only is their Afflatus Misery more readily available to use, they now have Afflatus Purgation as a Limit Break, which is a HUGE fuck-off laser that heavily damages and stuns any unlucky shmuck caught in its path, allowing their party to gang up and finish them off. Alternatively, it can also be used to snipe any retreating enemy with its ''absurd'' 40 yalm range. Did we mention Afflatus Purgation charges ''very'' quickly? Sure, their healing is considerably weaker now, but who needs healing when you can melt people's faces off with a ginormous laser beam?

* The fan mod weapons on the PC version are both this and a DiscOneNuke. Quite a number of them have the damage capabilities of the Royal Arms, but without the recoil damage, and can be equipped immediately after you start the game, turning you into a GlassCannon that can tear through everything (including hunts that are upwards of ten levels higher than you).