History GameBreaker / FinalFantasy

* And by killing dinosaurs in a particular forest you could get Economizers, relics which reduce the cost of all spells to 1 MP. Even the ridiculously expensive spell Ultima that can take out the FinalBoss in a few hits.

** The Economizers, however, become less useful if you consider ''another'' game breaker, the Osmose spell, which drains [=MPs=] from enemies and works on virtually every enemy except the undead. It's essentially a free MP recharge. It does waste a turn, unlike the Economizer, but it doesn't take up a relic slot. With the Economiser, you can simply use Osmose to recharge your MP stock, should it somehow fall low.
* The Genji Glove (which allows dual wielding of any two weapons) can be paired with the Offering/Master's Scroll (four attacks for the price of one). Wield the strongest weapons with those relics and the final boss just becomes a challenge of getting the first attack off before he does his opening move. It's one of the few ways you can actually defeat Chupon in the arena.

* You may combine some of the above with Palidor. Wait until everyone's ATB gauge is full, then summon Palidor. While the animation's going, but before it's complete, have everyone choose to attack the enemy. Palidor will scoop them up, and each will do the jump attack, then immediately follow up with their second attack, so you can sneak in eight attacks (more if you're doing the Genji Glove/Offering combo on someone) in only a few seconds, while having your whole party offscreen--and thus invincible--for part of it, while the enemy can't interrupt you.

* In the DS and GBA versions, Zemus and Zeromus are vulnerable to healing. This essentially means you can take a Phoenix Down and toss it at him dealing max-damage.

* You want the ultimate way to farm gil? Once you have Call Shop, Haggle and Sell-High from Tonberry, 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! Wash, rinse, repeat, use the spoils to buy GF stat-boosting skill items, refine them into permanent stat boosts, [[EvilLaugh laugh evilly]].

* You want the ultimate way to farm gil? Once you have Call Shop, Haggle and Sell-High from Tonberry, 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! Wash, rinse, repeat, use the spoils to buy stat-boosting items, [[EvilLaugh laugh evilly]].

* Vincent's ultimate weapon deals damage based on the number of enemies he's killed with it. Kill [[PowersOfTwoMinusOne 65535]] enemies and it's an instant kill on anything. It can even one-shot [[SequentialBoss Sequential Bosses]] at their first stage, due to damage underflow miscalculations.

** To clarify: Trio of 9999 makes every single effect you use do 9999 damage or healing. Use it with Tidus' and Wakka's best Overdrives to get 6 and 12 hits of 9999 respectively. Conveniently, the 2nd to last boss (much more difficult than the AnticlimaxBoss that you fight after him) has 18,0000 hp, letting the combination of these three Overdrives kill him with no trouble.

* The Celestial Weapons. When fully upgraded, Nirvana and Onion Knight ignores Magic Resistance. Similarly, Caladbolg, World Champion, Spirit Lance, Godhand and Auron's weapon will all ignore Physical Defense. The weapons also increase or decrease the damage output of any character using it, depending on they remaining percentage of MP or HP respectively (the MR-ignoring ones depend on MP, while the PD-ignoring ones rely on HP). This allows [[spoiler:Yu Yevon]] to be one-hit killed by Tidus, as Tidus is always the first character to act during the final battle, even if you have others equipped with First Strike.

The ''FinalFantasy'' series has more ways to shatter the difficulty curve that you can barely shake a sword at it. These are rarely fixed up in [[VideoGameRemake remakes]], so some consider bonus content an attempt to give the broken material some pressure. This makes games that ''do'' fix up broken content (e.g. ''FinalFantasyXI'') somewhat controversial.

** This was specifically {{nerf}}ed in the DS remake of ''FinalFantasyIV'', wherein the ATB pauses every time somebody performs their turn's action.

* ''FinalFantasyIV'' DS included "Augments", which gives characters new abilities, many of which are the abilities old characters had. Some game-breaking combinations include giving White Mage Rosa Dualcast (cast twice in a turn) and Omnicasting (turn any spell into multitarget) to get Blink and Reflect on the entire party in a single turn, or Raising the entire team at once, or casting Holy on the entire enemy party, etc. Another is giving a character (usually Cecil) Draw Attacks (all single-hit moves hit that character), Counter, and Reach (full damage from the back row) and put them in the back row. There are quite a few others, like using Hide and Throw to deal damage while entirely unhittable.

* In ''FinalFantasyV'', Cover/Guard. The Cover ability allows a character to intercept a physical attack that would hit a low-HP character. Guard causes the user to not take damage from any physical attacks. By combining the two (or simply being a Knight, which does that for you), and having your other characters at low HP, you can beat many enemies without any risk of taking damage. Even bosses. Sure, the Guarding character won't be doing damage (unless they're also armed with the Counter ability), but that's what the other three characters are for. Use of this strategy is what makes a LowLevelRun of the game possible. Combined with another bug that allowed you to Berserk any enemy (in other words, force them to only use physical attacks), or simply by taking advantage of the fact that many bosses weren't even supposed to be immune to Berserk, one could make any enemy, even the [[BonusBoss bonus bosses]], laughably easy.

* DualWielding + !X-Fight + !Magicsword. ''Eight'' attacks, each at half-damage, that were guaranteed to hit, ignored defense (which more than makes up for !X-Fight halving base damage), and could be imbued with most of the game's element types, including Holy, or several of the StandardStatusEffects. Or, if none of those were particularly necessary, Flare. And after the initial !Magicsword casting (itself cheapened relative to the original Black Magic cost), completely free. With the right class setup, the above could additionally be performed in response to any enemy's physical attack. Using Break as your element for "!Spellblade" is an OneHitKill on any enemy that doesn't have an explicit immunity to it, and higher levels of !Spellblade will also instantly kill non-boss enemies that are WEAK to an element(if it is immune to instant death, it takes QuadDamage instead). This particular combination proved so infamous for its sheer power that "Spellblade-Dual Wield-Rapid Fire!" is Bartz's ''LimitBreak'' in ''[=~Dissidia: Final Fantasy~=]''.

* Wind God Gau in ''FinalFantasyVI''. Gau can learn monster skills ("rages"), which when used cause Gau to randomly alternate between a regular attack and that skill at the cost of being uncontrollable for the rest of the battle. Wind God Gau combines the Stray Cat rage ("Catscratch"), which hits for 400% normal damage; the Merit Badge relic, which allows him to equip weapons (otherwise not possible); and the Tempest sword, which randomly casts a powerful Wind attack (boosted by Catscratch's power modifier) on the entire enemy party. It is also possible to steal a ''second'' Tempest sword from a certain boss, and equip Gau with ''both'' using the Genji Glove. This was corrected in the GBA [[VideoGameRemake remake]].

* In addition, the combination of the spells "Vanish" and "[[NeverSayDie Doom]]" (or Banish) in ''FinalFantasyVI'' resulted in a UselessUsefulSpell actually working. On everything, even {{Hopeless Boss Fight}}s. "True" gamers felt this was too easy. This was fixed in the GBA [[VideoGameRemake remake]] (it still works on monsters susceptible to instant death spells normally - Vanish ''does'' give magic a perfect success rate, after all - but not on ''everything''). Note that if X-Zone was used on BonusBoss Doom Gaze, you didn't get the rewards for killing him, as the proper scripts wouldn't execute (though it also wouldn't stop him from appearing as killing him normally does.)

!! FinalFantasyVII

!! FinalFantasyX

!! {{Final Fantasy X-2}}

* Although [[DifficultButAwesome hard to use]], [[FinalFantasyX Jecht]] still has two skills that let him disobey the rules of the game. The first is "Jecht Block", an instantaneous move that blocks any attack - the catch is that it actually does block ''any'' attack, even the ones that are supposed to pierce blocks can't get through. The second is his EX Mode, where Jecht is allowed to keep up his combo attacks even if the first attack misses[[hottip:* :Cecil's Dark Step and Paladin Arts (his class-change attacks), Squall's Fusillade and Mystic Flurry, and EX-Mode Gabranth's Enrage, Relentless Lunge, and Vortex of Judgment can all also be completed without the first attack connecting.]]. Normally a character only gets to keep their combo going if they land the first hit, but in EX Mode Jecht can keep his combos up as long as he wants. Factor in the fact his combos are the longest and strongest in the game, and all of them chain into HP attacks. Other characters EX mode don't quite compare to the Final Aeon, but some do come close.

* According to WordOfGod, [[FinalFantasyV Exdeath]] is designed to be this. Yet, he's so hard to use that he's not a reguarly used character in tournaments. Regardless, he's still a formidable foe in the right hands, being able to block plenty of attacks and counter them with his normally hard-to-use attacks. He tends to be held back by the fact that he's either useless or deadly, depending entirely on whether you're a master or not.
* To break the battle mode of ''Dissidia'', well--there are a few options, but [[FinalFantasyIX Zidane]] is perhaps most notable. The character is fast enough to just ''run away'' from most attacks without having to block or dodge, is small and thus on the hard side to hit, the majority of his bravery attacks combo easily ''and'' chain into either chase sequences (useful if the player is good at them) or the even-more-useful Meo Twister HP attacks. And his HP attacks--the homing, long-duration, guard-crushing charge Grand Lethal is well-loved, but Free Energy is just as useful for a different reason. Sure, the range is very short, but it tracks well, and the hitbox takes a little getting used to (it can miss if the opponent is too far or too close to Zidane), but it is pretty much ''the fastest'' HP attack in the game--the only one faster is Bartz' Goblin Punch, which he only has access to in [[SuperMode Ex Mode]]. With all of these, Zidane can absolutely destroy the story mode of the game, thus granting the player access to the things necessary to break the game in the other, above-described ways.

!! FinalFantasyTactics

!! FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance

!! FinalFantasyTacticsA2

* The Dragon Claw in FinalFantasyMysticQuest. It has a chance of causing every status effect in the game, and not a low chance; it ''failing'' to cause status effects was the exception, not the rule. This includes petrification, which is implemented identically to instant death. Which pretty much means that any normal enemy dies in one hit. And for the maybe 10% of enemies immune to petrification? You've just put them to sleep, or paralyzed them, or confused them. Feel free to pick them off while they are powerless to fight back.

** [[DeathOfAThousandCuts 1000 Needles]] does exactly 1000 HP of damage, no matter what. This is useful if you either come across this early on (and survive getting hit) or if you face an enemy that has absurd defenses.

** On Disk 3, fly to the Island Closest to Heaven and the Island Closest to Hell, equip the "Encounter None" ability 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.

* In any of the [[VideoGameRemake remade versions]], the Temper spell definitely counts. All it does is increase the physical attack strength of the character it's cast on, which doesn't seem huge...until you realize these boosts ''stack'' with repeated castings. Then you add in the Haste spell, which doubles their Speed (# of attacks, and with it, damage), and the Giant's Gloves item, which increases accuracy thus ensuring that your attacker will never miss (and to add insult to injury, will simultaneously cast an additional Temper). Using this strategy, it is possible to take out all of the four Fiends with one physical attack each. ONE.

* DualWielding + !X-Fight + !Magicsword. ''Eight'' attacks, each at slightly reduced damage, that were guaranteed to hit, and could be imbued with any element, including Holy, or any of several StandardStatusEffects. Or, if none of those were particularly necessary, Flare. And after the initial !Magicsword casting (itself cheapened relative to the original Black Magic cost), completely free. With the right class setup, the above could additionally be performed in response to any enemy's physical attack. You may also equip the Blood Sword as one of your weapons. The Blood Sword absorbs the enemy's HP when you attack with it, but has an abysmal hit rate. However, since every attack with X-Fight is guaranteed to hit, this usually restores your health to full as well as damaging the enemies. The Blood Sword also ignores the half-damage aspect of !X-Fight. This is because the Blood Sword is considered a magic attack (!X-Fight is only supposed to be used with physical attacks, after all). So, you're getting 4 full-powered Blood Sword attacks, plus 4 half-damage hits from your second weapon (if applicable). Basically, this bumps the damage of a single !X-Fight up to SIX times your normal damage instead of a "mere" 2x. Makes every mid-game fight (and most of the end-game ones) a complete and total joke unless you're facing undead. And using Break as your element for "!Spellblade" is an OneHitKill on any enemy that doesn't have an explicit immunity to it. This particular combination proved so infamous for its sheer power that "Spellblade-Dual Wield-Rapid Fire!" is Bartz's ''LimitBreak'' in ''[=~Dissidia: Final Fantasy~=]''.

* DualWielding + !X-Fight + !Magicsword. ''Eight'' attacks, each at slightly reduced damage, that were guaranteed to hit, and could be imbued with any element, including Holy, or any of several StandardStatusEffects. Or, if none of those were particularly necessary, Flare. And after the initial !Magicsword casting (itself cheapened relative to the original Black Magic cost), completely free. With the right class setup, the above could additionally be performed in response to any enemy's physical attack. You may also equip the Blood Sword as one of your weapons. The Blood Sword absorbs the enemy's HP when you attack with it, but has an abysmal hit rate. However, since every attack with X-Fight is guaranteed to hit, this usually restores your health to full as well as damaging the enemies. The Blood Sword also ignores the half-damage aspect of !X-Fight. This is because the Blood Sword is considered a magic attack (!X-Fight is only supposed to be used with physical attacks, after all). So, you're getting 4 full-powered Blood Sword attacks, plus 4 half-damage hits from your second weapon (if applicable). Basically, this bumps the damage of a single !X-Fight up to SIX times your normal damage instead of a "mere" 2x. Makes every mid-game fight (and most of the end-game ones) a complete and total joke unless you're facing undead. And using Break as your element for "!Spellblade" is an OneHitKill on any enemy that doesn't have an explicit immunity to it. This particular combination proved so infamous for its sheer power that "Rapid-Fire Dual Wield Spell Blades" is Bartz's ''LimitBreak'' in ''[=~Dissidia: Final Fantasy~=]''.

* Buy 100 Tents for 100,000 g. Refine them into 25 Hi-Potions with Carbuncle's Med-RF skill. Sell 25 Hi-Potions for 125,000 g. Wash, rinse, repeat, use the spoils to buy stat-boosting items, [[EvilLaugh laugh evilly]].

** 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. [[/folder]]

* In the original version, Edward was solely meant as a JokeCharacter and as such, he was the most useless character of them all. However, with every re-release, Edward's usability has increased, to the point where he, in the DS version, is the closest thing you get to a god, once he's level 50 or above, due to the fact that he learns a crap-load of very useful abilities, and he will automatically hide when he's HP critical, thus avoiding status effects and damage similar to Kain when he uses Jump. When Edward's turn comes up, you can easily manage to actually force an elixir down his throat without a problem, thus giving him full HP and MP. He also has a certain ability called Salve which allows him to use any healing item on the entire team, but only expending one, thus essentially turning your Elixirs into Megalixirs from FFX or Phoenix Downs into Mega-Phoenix's, also from FFX.