| 1 | The, uh, [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Game Breakingly]] [[RunningGag popular]] ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series has more ways to shatter the difficulty curve than you can shake a sword at. 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. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'') controversial. |
| 2 | ---- |
| 3 | !!Works with their own pages: |
| 4 | [[index]] |
| 5 | * ''GameBreaker/CompilationOfFinalFantasyVII'' |
| 6 | * ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyVIII'' |
| 7 | * ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyXII'' |
| 8 | * ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyXIIITrilogy'' |
| 9 | * ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyTactics'' |
| 10 | * ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' |
| 11 | * ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyBraveExvius'' |
| 12 | * ''GameBreaker/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper'' |
| 13 | * ''GameBreaker/DissidiaFinalFantasyOperaOmnia'' |
| 14 | [[/index]] |
| 15 | |
| 16 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[folder: General]] |
| 19 | * The ATB system in general can be a game breaker if you know how to abuse it. If you put it on ''Wait'', input a few actions but keep one in some menu (items, magic, etc.), the action queue will empty out and then the next character will have their turn immediately. This is a great way to curve when the enemy gets its turn. Or you can simply pause the ATB while your characters are performing their attack animations, while leaving it running while the enemy performs theirs. |
| 20 | ** Not to mention actions that ignore the action queue and take place immediately, such as Quick turns in ''V'' and ''VI'' and {{Limit Break}}s in ''VII'' and ''VIII''. |
| 21 | ** This was specifically {{nerf}}ed in the DS remake of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', wherein the ATB pauses every time a player character performs their turn's action. |
| 22 | ** In ''VII'', effects that drain HP over time (like the Waterpolo's attacks) and things like Death Sentence are actually quite rapid and threatening on Active. And completely ineffectual if you play in Wait, or even Recommended. |
| 23 | * Enemy skills (or Blue Magic) from any given game tend to be abused due to their potent effects at the earliest they can be obtained. A lot of these however, do require some GuideDangIt. |
| 24 | ** [[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 [[ArmoredButFrail absurd defenses, but low HP]]. |
| 25 | ** Mighty Guard at the minimum gives the team physical and magic defense buffs. Normally the actual magic that applies these buffs can only single target and cost more MP to cast total than Mighty Guard. |
| 26 | ** White Wind always heals at the current or half max HP of the user, bypass Shell and Reflect checks, and may heal status effects. |
| 27 | ** Bad Breath will attempt to inflict every negative status ailment in the game. |
| 28 | ** A spell that does [[DesperationAttack more damage if the user has less HP]]. This can be something from the difference between current and max HP or just an insanely powerful attack. |
| 29 | ** L5 Death is ''guaranteed'' to work on enemies with a level that is a multiple of 5, including normally immune enemies and bosses in some of the games. In earlier games, it was very easy to manipulate the enemy's level, and in every game that let you do this it also bypassed normal death immunity. Other times those one mooks often go down with this spell from the start. |
| 30 | ** Goblin Punch costs 0MP, and usually deals average damage, but deals many times that if the caster and enemy are of equal level. The latter effect has obvious potential for chaos, but the former effect is extremely useful for getting around situations where something prevents you from using normal attacks. The most famous use of this is in ''V'', which provides you with a joke sword that has the highest attack power in the game in the Equip screen but is programmed to always do only 1 damage per hit; however, Goblin Punch is calculated to use your statistical attack power, allowing you to hit with the full force of the blade. |
| 31 | [[/folder]] |
| 32 | |
| 33 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy I'']] |
| 34 | !!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' |
| 35 | * 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. |
| 36 | * The Monk[=/=]Master class, especially if you stay two or three levels above the expected level. It's very possible that the Nunchaku were added to the game in an attempt to stop players from realizing how unbalanced the class was. The Monk is ''always'' more powerful when using his hands, since he's the only character in the game who dual-wields.[[note]]It should also be noted that this is only when a Monk[=/=]Master is part of a balanced team. Without a magic user or two in the party, you're screwed, especially if you're going for an all-Monk run.[[/note]] |
| 37 | ** 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. It's entirely possible to take out the final boss in just two or three rounds by having the rest of the party Haste (doubling the number of attacks) and Temper (increasing the individual attacks' power) the Monk while he '' literally'' [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu just punches out Cthulhu]]. |
| 38 | * Red Mage/Wizard in the GBA/PSP remakes. Even the huge nerf in HP isn't enough to prevent you from wanting at least 2 of these units in your party. They have access to full AOE spells as early as the third town, and you'll be relying on them for the entirety of the game to deal with the [[ZergRush huge hordes of regular enemies]] the game will throw at you. They also have access to the Temper spell, mentioned below. |
| 39 | * Certain equipment items can be used in battle to cast magic spells for free, infinitely. You can toss out multi-target attack spells or reuse Heal spells on your entire party. The latter can make healing between battles a rarity rather than regular procedure, especially since you can obtain ''three'' items that cast Heal. |
| 40 | ** The Healing Staff and Helm allow you unlimited uses of the Heal spell in battle, but there's something even stronger - the Dawn of Souls content the remakes added introduces the Rune Staff, which gifts you access to Healara, one step more powerful than Heal. Similarly, the regular -Ra level attack spell items (Mage's Staff for Fira, Gauntlets for Thundara, Black Robe for Blizzara) are shown up by the Lightbringer (Red Wizard exclusive sword, casts ''Holy'' when used in battle) and the Judgement Staff (Casts ''Flare'' when used in battle, and older players would know this spell to be [=NUKE=]). Find the right treasures in the new bonus dungeons, and the difficulty of the game will just melt away. |
| 41 | ** Special mention goes to the Giant's Gloves in remakes. The spell they cast for free is Saber, an enhanced version of the already-broken Temper spell that can only target the caster. Ordinarily, this would mean that only [[SquishyWizard Black Wizards]] could benefit from it, but the Giant's Gloves can be used by ''any class'', allowing Knights, Ninja, and Masters to reap the benefits, as well. The result is, well... see below. |
| 42 | * In any of the [[VideoGameRemake remade versions]], the Temper spell definitely counts (in the original, it straight-up doesn't work). 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 (number of attacks, and with it, damage), and the Giant's Gloves item, which increases accuracy along with attack 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 [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill one physical attack each]]. '''[[OneHitKill ONE]]'''. |
| 43 | ** Unlike Temper and Saber, the Haste spell ''does'' work properly in the original NES game, meaning that a lesser, but still effective, version of the above strategy is still viable. |
| 44 | * The [=RUSE=] (Blink) spell in the original NES game, which can be purchased for White Mages in Corneria, the first town. It raises the caster's evasion, it lasts the entire battle, and it can be stacked. Just two casts is all it takes to render the caster effectively immune to physical attacks. The Red Mage can't learn this level 1 White Magic spell until getting a class change to Red Wizard around midgame. It's considered to be the thing that makes all-White Mage runs feasible. Not to mention that [[MightyGlacier Knights]] can learn the spell, too. After a few casts, well... [[NoSell Any enemies aiming physical attacks at them might as well just skip their turns]]. |
| 45 | * While the change to Magic Points in the later remakes resulted in a massive rescaling of magic altogether to change the game's difficulty, the ''Pixel Remaster'' brought back the VancianMagic Spell Charges of the [=NES=] version - and kept the magic-restoring Ether items of ''Dawn of Souls'' onwards that restore ''all'' of a character's charge levels by one. Combine this with [[MoneyForNothing gil falling off in its individual value midway through the game]] and you can stockpile dozens to even the max 99 cap of Ethers for a paltry price and spam mob-nuking magic with impunity on one side and having a Red or White Mage/Wizard handle party-wide healing on the other for next to nothing. |
| 46 | [[/folder]] |
| 47 | |
| 48 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy II'']] |
| 49 | !!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' |
| 50 | * A dedicated player with nothing better to do can abuse the game's StatGrinding mechanics quite easily. Beat up your own party members, or prolong battles in order to gain more experience from early-game enemies. |
| 51 | ** Swap, which [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin switches the caster and target's HP and MP]], makes this process much easier: get into a battle against low-level enemies like Goblins or Leg Eaters (in the overworld or in Bafsk's sewers after the encounters change partway through the game), hit them with Swap, enjoy your almost certain HP/MP/Stamina/Magic (and often Spirit and sometimes Agility) level ups. The best part? Stamina and Magic affect how much HP and MP you get when they increase, respectively, so your growth is exponential. The only problems are a) getting Swap on everyone, since the tome is only sold in Mysidia and the enemies around there are really tough, and b) affording all the Inn stays and/or Cottages you'll need to recover your HP and MP after swapping it all away. Fortunately, Minwu comes with Swap, and after turning him into a walking god and sticking everyone else in the back row, it shouldn't be too hard to get to and from Mysidia. And as for money, he ''also'' comes with Teleport, which makes him very good at [[SequenceBreaking killing Captains in Fynn, which drop lots of valuable items...]] |
| 52 | * The Blood Sword, which deals damage equal to [hits]/16ths of the target's ''maximum'' HP. While this isn't especially effective against most ordinary enemies (although it is handy for punching through the defenses of the odd StoneWall) and it's [[SelfDamagingAttackBackfire actively counterproductive]] against undead foes, it can chew through bosses' HP pools way faster than was ever intended. As a bit of a counterbalance, you can only get one (except in the [=NES=] and [=PS1=] versions, which have a second one), and it's [[PermanentlyMissableContent missable]] if you don't [[GuideDangIt ask Paul about the Cyclone in the brief window between getting the keyword and entering the Cyclone itself.]] All these downsides, though, don't quite compare to being able to take down the Emperor in about three hits if you have a decently leveled sword-wielder and Haste. |
| 53 | * Magic spells [[EvolvingAttack level up]] if used in battle. While curative and damage spells grow more powerful, status-affecting spells grow more accurate. Since very few monsters resist the more oddball instant death spells like Toad or Exit (Teleport), if you spend some time with them, they'll go from constantly-missing waste of space to instant-win commands. And almost every boss and enemy is vulnerable to Toad, so... [[note]]Some soldiers outside the castle drop it, even if they are moderately powerful for that part of the game.[[/note]] Exit can also be leveled up easily, by just walking into a town and casting it, then going back into the town... |
| 54 | ** The Osmose spell. It's easy to level up, drains humongous amounts of MP from your foe, and never misses (not even on the final boss). One single Osmose cast and the final boss is completely drained of MP, leaving him only physical attacks. If you have one character on the front row with 99% evasion, you are effectively completely invulnerable and you might as well just keep the X button pressed and wait for the boss to die. The only downside is that you can't buy it anywhere, and outside of a chest in the Cave of Mysidia the only ways to get more are as a rare drop from Wizards, who are themselves rare encounters that only appear in dungeons that you can't return to once you finish them. Except in the PSP version, where you can find Wizards in the "Cyclone" floor of the Arcane Labyrinth and Osmose Tomes in chests in the "Soul" floor of the same dungeon. |
| 55 | *** In the NES version, Osmose was even more broken. It could drain MP from enemies that had no MP to begin with, because of how it worked: by dealing damage to the target's MP, and then adding the same number to the caster's current MP without ever checking if the target had any MP to begin with. This makes any dungeon after you obtain the spell very easy. |
| 56 | ** The Berserk spell. What it does is increase the physical attack of the target. What makes it gamebreaking is that the increase is completely ridiculous: about 50 per level per swing. At endgame, you can easily have level 10 in your weapon level and Berserk spell, even with little to no grinding. That means a single cast of Berserk can increase your physical attack by about 5000, and most endgame bosses have exactly that much HP. In addition, the Berserk tome is a fairly common drop from Magicians, which is an easy enemy that shows up early in the game. |
| 57 | ** The Teleport spell. In battle, it can kill enemies instantly, and at a high enough level, you can consistently get kills against many enemies. Even better, you can level it up outside of battle by entering a town/dungeon, casting Teleport, re-entering the town/dungeon, etc. The only downside is that it leaves the caster with low HP, but you can use Cure on him/her (which, in turn, allows ''that'' spell to level up as well). |
| 58 | ** Having trouble with physical attackers? Blink/Ruse is your friend. You can get through a lot of the game by having one character in front with Blink on them and everyone else in the back, as they'll have such a high evasion rate that enemies basically never hit them. And since evasion levels based on how often a character gets targeted for attacks, this means that character's natural evasion will go up, along with their Agility, which means their evasion will go even higher... |
| 59 | * The Life spell, since you can split cast it on your entire party. Also, casting it against [[ReviveKillsZombie large numbers of undead]] is a good way of leveling it, and makes [[GoddamnBats them]] a lot easier to deal with. |
| 60 | * The bare fist "weapon" skill upgrades the basic damage a character does barehanded to compensate for no purchaseable weapon upgrades in this category. It ends up making fists drastically overpowered quite early in the game (by way of comparison, an unarmed character with the maximum of 16 ranks in the 'barehanded' skill has about the same attack power as a character using an InfinityPlusOneSword with 16 in the corresponding skill). |
| 61 | * The ultimate weapons in the 20th Anniversary version give huge stat boosts, +99 for some of them, and of course have high attack power. The ''really'' game breaking ones are the ones that boost Stamina or Magic. The game's mechanics for HP and MP gain specifically increase them by the character's Stamina and Magic. So with 99 Magic and Stamina, the character will get 99 HP or MP the next time the stat levels up. Enjoying being able to smash into the MP cap in a few battles and pumping up your characters at least a thousand HP in that same time. |
| 62 | * The [[spoiler:Wild Rose]], the ultimate weapon for [[spoiler:Scott]] in ''Soul of Rebirth''. It maxes out (among other stats) [[spoiler:Scott]]'s Intelligence when equipped and casts '''Berserk XVI''' when used as an item, buffing your party's physical attack power to ridiculous levels. |
| 63 | * A secret minigame accessible in the Snowfields allows you to play a 16 card match-type game where you receive rewards based on how fast you match all cards and how many misses you get. With good memory and fast reflexes, you can score Ethers, Hi-Potions, Phoenix Downs and thousands of gil. Did we mention this game costs you nothing but time and can be played infinitely? What about the fact that each time you access the minigame, there are only 32 puzzles "solutions" the game will cycle through, in-order? Finally, getting the Toad spell up to Level 16 increases the Gil obtained, and changes the items won from restorative items to items that cast spells and incredibly powerful equipment. |
| 64 | * Ultima has a unique damage formula that grows more powerful the higher your total spell levels are. In the main story, it is held back by your generally low to mid-leveled spells and Spirit in the 30s to 40s by endgame without grinding. (Or in the NES version, by the fact that it's bugged and ''doesn't'' power up based on your other spell levels.) Soul of Rebirth, however, is a totally different story. Minwu has the same amount of spell levels at base, and he finds a weapon that instantly maxes his Spirit lying in a chest that is only guarded by Yamatano Orochi. Once he gets his grubby paws on a copy of Ultima with his name literally written on it, he begins slaughtering everything in his path, and the only challenge left in Soul of Rebirth is to keep him alive long enough to kill the final bosses. |
| 65 | [[/folder]] |
| 66 | |
| 67 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy III'']] |
| 68 | !!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'' |
| 69 | * The Famicom version had the {{Ninja}} and [[TheArchmage Sage]] jobs, which were essentially [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity +1 Jobs]] and were far and away the best physical and magical classes in the game, respectively. Unsurprisingly, both were {{Nerf}}ed down to the same power level as the other jobs in the DS remake. |
| 70 | * In the original versions, StatusEffects in general are completely overwhelming in mid-game on, due to the fact that not only do their base hit rates increase with skill level and spirit/intellect, but they also get tried multiple times (number of attempts increase with skill level and spirit/intellect as well), and they don't suffer any penalty from being multi-targeted. In addition, random enemies generally seem to lack resistance to any status ailments at all, resulting in them being hilariously accurate in general. By the time you reach Eureka or so, there isn't even any point in bothering with damaging spells, when it's much more reliable to completely lock down everything with Shade/Sleep, then 1HKO them with Mini or Toad. |
| 71 | * In the right context, the Knight's boosted damage reduction from defending in conjunction with their passive [[TakingTheBullet Cover]] skill, which causes them to take physical blows for any ally at critical HP, provided the Knight themself is ''not'' at critical HP. In short, the presence of a Knight with sufficient HP in the party grants everyone ''else'' access to a sort of CriticalStatusBuff that renders them effectively immune to physical attacks so long as the Knight's HP holds up, which isn't difficult to arrange. Knights are already one of the sturdiest classes in the game, and can become veritable [[StoneWall Stone Walls]] when decked out with strong armor and a shield or two. Get everybody but your Knight down to critical HP, deck that Knight out in the best armor available and a pair of shields to match, and stick them in the back row. While this isn't effective against spellcasting enemies, any enemies who ''don't'' use spells get completely shut down, and you only have to worry about keeping one party member's HP up. This strategy is particularly effective against the [[AsteroidsMonster Asteroids Monsters]] in the [[RuinsForRuinsSake Ancient Ruins]] and Cave of Shadows, who have no special abilities whatsoever beyond their dividing gimmick. Definitely veering into NotTheIntendedUse, since the game ''does'' include ''intended'' strategies for fighting those enemies, but it's quite fun watching your Knight step in and NoSell everything they do while the rest of your team unhurriedly mashes them into dust. |
| 72 | * The DS remake introduced a few: |
| 73 | ** The Onion Knight class... [[MagikarpPower with patience]]. |
| 74 | ** [[GuideDangIt Assuming you can find it]], the Ultima Weapon is easily this. In addition to having one of the best attack stats in the whole game, it gives a whopping +15 bonus to all of its wielder's stats. Needless to say, having it makes the endgame a ''lot'' easier. |
| 75 | ** The Blood Sword was another one that's available roughly mid-game. Give it to a high damage dealing character like a warrior and stick your best sword in the other hand. The amount healed scales off of damage done by both swords, not just the blood sword, so you will often times find yourself fully healing yourself each and every turn. This basically makes that character unkillable unless he gets hit with a move powerful enough to one shot him. |
| 76 | ** The Golem Staff can cast Break when used as an item. However, it has an added bonus when physically attacking with it - it causes gradual petrification. Gradual petrification is infrequently resisted against by random encounters, but it requires 3 hits to fully petrify enemies and kill them. However, equip 3 on two characters and any enemy will die in one round. This isn't great for bosses, but for regular enemies it is ridiculously useful, and due to only three enemies only being able to be on screen at one time [except for one fight] it effectively ends any random encounters in three rounds. |
| 77 | ** Job mastery items, which themselves are a GuideDangIt until you discover the above, can easily become this. Of particular note is the Red Mage's item: a piece of armor which has enormously high defense and grants +10 to all stats. Given that the Red Mage can also take both the aformentioned Ultima Weapon and the Excalibur (another powerful sword which grants +5 to all stats)...''ouch.'' |
| 78 | ** The Bard job, which was a supreme example of a JokeCharacter in the original, graduated to a ''[[LethalJokeCharacter lethal]]'' one in the remake. Their songs' effects last for two rounds and can be stacked, [[GuideDangIt though the game never bothers to tell you this]]. It is possible, for instance, to stack their defense-increasing song with a song that reduces all incoming damage by a fixed percentage. Both of these songs can stack with Protect, making your party borderline-invincible in all but a select few situations. |
| 79 | ** The Geomancer's Terrain skill. At high Job Levels it does damage nearly equal to (or in some cases, greater) than a Summoner and can be used every single turn for free. Even early on it is a great alternative to using a Black Mage, since even at low Job Levels it usually outperforms the second-tier elemental spells. The only downside is that the attack chosen is random (and a few of them are instant-death attacks, which means a wasted turn on bosses), but nearly all of them do the same amount of damage to most enemies. The exception is the rare attack Shadowflare, which will do ''thousands'' of damage even at Job Level 1 and will reach 9999 later on. Three Geomancers plus a White Mage/Devout can rip through most of the game with incredible ease, especially if you grind Job Levels early on. (Notably, the chance for Shadowflare increases drastically in the BonusDungeon Eureka, which contains the best weapons in the game.) |
| 80 | * Grinding job levels in the ''Pixel Remaster'' and the later ports of remake 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. |
| 81 | * 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 Knight can obtain weapons and start wrecking everything with its Bladeblitz. |
| 82 | * Also from the 2021 version, the Viking. For one, its DrawAggro ability was buffed to affect every enemy simultaneously to account for the larger enemy party size compared to the DS version, and is enough of a MightyGlacier to easily tank the hits. Second, it has insanely high HP growth compared to other jobs available at that point in the game, and due to the game's removal of the [[ScrappyMechanic Job Adjustment Period]], there's nothing stopping you from changing everyone to a Viking right before they level up to reap the added HP, then change them right back. |
| 83 | [[/folder]] |
| 84 | |
| 85 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy IV'' and ''The After Years'']] |
| 86 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' |
| 87 | * While the new [[InfinityPlusOneSword ultimate weapons]] introduced in the 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. |
| 88 | * ''VideoGame/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, or casting Berserk on the entire enemy party while also casting Blink on the entire player 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. |
| 89 | * If you master all the DS minigames, Rydia's Whytkin 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 Whyt 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. |
| 90 | * In the original version, NonActionGuy 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, thus essentially turning your Elixirs into Megalixirs from FFX or Phoenix Downs into Mega-Phoenix's, also from FFX. Unfortunately, the DS version is NOT one of the versions where you can put him back in your party later in the game. HOWEVER, all of his abilities are available as Augments [[GuideDangIt if you give him enough before he leaves the party]], so this still applies. |
| 91 | * In the DS version, Rosa's Pray ability became obscenely overpowering, restoring an amount of HP and MP based on the party's maximum. In every other version of the game, Pray restores a pitiful amount of HP and has a 50% amount of failing, but in the DS version, Pray works almost every time. |
| 92 | * The Steam version has a strange exploit with the Mini spell. If cast on the party outside of battle, it will also inflict them with the "Reversal" status that Dr. Lugae uses in his boss fight for one battle. This causes attacks to heal you and healing magic/items to hurt you. This can render any boss battle or tough encounter completely unable to harm the player. |
| 93 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears'' |
| 94 | * The Slow spell can be stacked multiple times, and most bosses aren't even immune to it. If you have a fast team buffed with haste, casting Slow on a boss 4 times will result in it rarely attack in the battle while you are able to move two, three, or even four turns in a row. |
| 95 | * Double Jump [[CombinationAttack Band attack]] is obtained very late in the game, and for a good reason - it's by far the most powerful 2-man Band attack, the characters needed are the LightningBruiser Kain and Ceodore, who can fit into pretty much any team composition that doesn't already have 3 front row characters, and best of all, the attack actually breaks the damage cap, which is otherwise done with [[AwesomeButImpractical 5-man Bands]], or by equipping a Limit Ring accessory which you can get only one of. The only caveat of this attack is that it requires Ceodore NOT to use his [[DeadlyUpgrade Awaken]] ability, since that makes Double Jump unusable for the rest of the battle. |
| 96 | * Speaking of 2-man Bands, [[BladeSpam Vibra Plus]] became one in iOS/Android/Steam versions, since the unique way it spreads the damage allows it to deal absurdly high damage to single enemies. Of course, that's provided you're willing to put a Limit Ring on one of the characters (which include Ceodore (again), along with yet another LightningBruiser in the form of Cecil) |
| 97 | [[/folder]] |
| 98 | |
| 99 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy V'']] |
| 100 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' |
| 101 | * While expensive, you could use elemental rods as battle items to consume them, unleashing their power as third level/-Aga level spells. This can allow early-game parties to blast away bosses with elemental weaknesses far faster than normal. |
| 102 | * The Mime and Freelancer classes automatically get every passive ability from any class you have mastered. There are many applications for this, but the most famous is to get a Mime or Freelancer Bartz who has [[DualWielding Dual-Wield]], Rapidfire (four attacks on random targets, each at half damage), and Spellblade (charge any swords you're wielding with certain Black or White spells; only need to cast once for the whole battle). The end result is that you can attack a boss ''eight times'' in one round, for four times the damage of attacking normally. Also, each attack can be charged with the boss's elemental weakness, or just souped-up with Flare, Bio, or Drain. How powerful was this combo? Powerful enough that it became Bartz's LimitBreak in ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy''. |
| 103 | * 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 9999 damage. Add the Knight's Doublehand ability to double your attack power and you've got a wrecking ball in a human suit. |
| 104 | * 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 [[{{Superboss}} Omega and Shinryu]]... and ''win''. |
| 105 | ** Succubus' Kiss. Combine a Maiden's Kiss and a Turtle Shell (which are always dropped by an early-game enemy) and you get an attack that deals 1,500+ damage at a point where every other class is struggling to deal 500. Lamia's Kiss does the same thing except for MP, letting you render magical bosses helpless with ease. |
| 106 | ** Death Potion. Getting your hands on Dark Matter is a pain, but if you ''can'' make it, it's a guaranteed instant death attack that works on quite a few bosses. |
| 107 | ** Dragon Defense applies Reflect, Shell, Protect, and Regen, making you immune to most magic, resistant to physical attacks, and regenerating health. |
| 108 | ** Samson's Might and Dragon Power increase the target's level by 10 or 20, respectively. Guess what variable's involved in almost every formula in the game? |
| 109 | ** Dragon Kiss might be the most broken Mix of all... it gives ''you'' [[ContractualBossImmunity Contractual Boss Immunities]]! |
| 110 | *** Alternatively, it can be used on enemies to give them the Dragon type. Normally, this would be bad, because of the aforementioned [[ContractualBossImmunity Contractual Boss Immunities]], but the [[LethalJokeWeapon Apollo Harp]] does ''x8 damage'' to dragons. |
| 111 | * 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 American and Japanese GBA releases -- timers do NOT reset. |
| 112 | * If you run away enough, the Chicken Knife becomes one of the strongest weapons in the game, with the caveat that it can randomly cause you to run away instead of attacking. Use a command that doesn't trigger special effects, like Aim or X-Strike, and you can get all of that power without worrying about running away. |
| 113 | * The Bone Mail 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 Mail's effect. Or use Drain Spellblade to attach drain to your attacks. |
| 114 | ** A more convoluted way to cheese with this exists: The Bone Mail wearer wields the Flame Lash (Sealed Weapon whip, has a fixed chance to cast Firaga when the Fight command is used) and wears a Reflect Ring, and the other party members use Hide. The zombified Bone Mail user will attack ''themselves'', and whenever Firaga is cast by the whip, the Reflect Ring will bounce it onto the enemy. This can result in some bosses being reduced to an auto-Reflecting, self-flagellating, undying zombie bouncing Firaga spells onto the opponent while the three other party members hide offscreen for a coffee break with popcorn. |
| 115 | * GoodBadBugs: The FinalBoss battle is scripted to some extent. When Exdeath takes enough damage, he transforms into [[EldritchAbomination Neo Exdeath]]. But there's one exception: in the GBA version, there's the new job "Cannoneer" with the skill "Combine". It basically allows the Cannoneer to combine bullets with any item for huge damage and random effects. If you use a certain combination against Exdeath AND the resulting damage is enough to kill him, it WILL kill him, [[SequenceBreaking skipping the whole fight against Neo Exdeath and going straight to the scene after that]]. |
| 116 | * 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). The GBA version patched it for that specific battle, but it can be used on other bosses. |
| 117 | * The Super Famicom version also has several underflow errors (in which a large negative number is incorrectly interpreted as a large positive number instead) that can be taken advantage of: equipping the thornlet (which drops magic power) on a berserker (the lowest magic attack of all classes) will cause everyone save Lenna to be able to take advantage of several damage formulas that are otherwise unimpressive. Additionally, using Ninja's to throw an "empty" item in the last slot of the inventory and then stealing a Coral Sword will cause that slot to fill up with 255 of the swords, which then can be sold for great profit. |
| 118 | ** The GBA version has a similar glitch using !Control and either !Throw, !Mix or !Combine to allow you to get 255 of specific items, up to letting you get 255 Hermes Sandals in World 1. |
| 119 | * In the SNES, [=PS1=] and GBA 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 mobile version patches it so that level spells check for the level at start of battle instead of level after modifying it. |
| 120 | * 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. This was unfortunately nerfed in the ''Pixel Remaster''. |
| 121 | * Similarly, if you want to use the Quick bug much sooner at the cost of it only working on bosses, you can spend enough time as Bards to learn Hide, hit a boss with Sap, and then make all four characters hide. There is literally nothing the enemy can do about this, all their attacks will miss, and their health is steadily (if slowly) depleting, ''while your characters are literally off-screen basically having a smoke break''. Of course, having all four party members hide will make you flee from battle, but since bosses can't be ran from... |
| 122 | * Iainuki, or Slash depending on the translation, is earned from mastering the Samurai and thus can be obtained as early as taking down Ronka Ruins and then grinding in Bal Castle. Cost-free? Check. Targets all enemies? Check. Ignores reflect status? Check. Hits undead enemies? Check. 85% chance of instant death on any enemy or boss that isn't heavy-type? ''You'd better believe that's a check.'' Give it to your entire party and, barring all the planets aligning during a leap year you ''will'' wipe out the entire enemy party in one turn. |
| 123 | * There are certain monsters who can be Caught and Released to use a special attack that hits all targets for 1/4th of their max HP in damage. Doesn't sound all that impressive, but it ignores that whole "ContractualBossImmunity" thing and works on ''everything,'' including bosses. Considering that you have a party of four, you can just have all four of them catch such monsters and possibly defeat a tough boss before they even get a turn. It is unfortunately affected by the damage Cap and elemental immunites, but even Neo Exdeath's parts can take four massive hits at once with this strategy - often to the tune of a little under 40,000 damage against targets with 50- to 60,000 HP. |
| 124 | [[/folder]] |
| 125 | |
| 126 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy VI'']] |
| 127 | !!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' |
| 128 | * Any Esper that gives a +2 attack stat, especially Zoneseeker and Bismarck, which can be obtained as early as the World of Balance section of the game. When properly utilized, will have your party attacking on par with a unit several dozen levels ahead. |
| 129 | ** Later on Raiden becomes an even bigger gamebreaker. Not only does he give a hefty +2 strength bonus, he also teaches Quick, a GameBreaker in its own right. He also provides the only method in the game to secure guaranteed victories in the Coliseum as described below. |
| 130 | * 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 with it is that it has a low learn rate from only a couple sources and costs 80 MP, but once you ''do'' learn it and use one of the two ways below to circumvent the MP problem, Ultima will end most enemy encounters in one casting, and anything that might survive probably won't last much longer. |
| 131 | * The magic spell Quick. It lets your character take two more turns without any other enemies or party members able to interrupt them. It costs 99 MP but again, there's ways around that. When combined with the Soul of Thamasa that grants Dualcast, this lets a character cast ''five spells'' 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. |
| 132 | * 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. Further, one of the Espers that teaches it does so at a high learn rate. Unless you're fighting undead enemies immune to it, Osmose pretty much solves your party's need for MP-restoring items and eliminates the drawback of high-MP spells. |
| 133 | * The Economizer, renamed as Celestriad in later versions. A Relic that saps the MP cost of all magic and Lores to 1. 'nuff said. And it's farmable too! The only downside only the dreaded [[BossInMooksClothing Brachiosaur]] drops it, but only 87.5% of the time, and the Brachiosaur itself appears very rarely too, but once you have even just one... |
| 134 | ** 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, and 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 1-MP Ultimas. |
| 135 | * The Offering (later translations: Master's Scroll) and Genji Glove combination allows a character to attack eight times at once. Get 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 attack a total of eight times dealing 9999 damage with each hit, including the final boss. Teach them Quick and they can do it twice in a row every turn. Even Kaiser Dragon and Omega Weapon won't last long against such power. |
| 136 | ** 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. |
| 137 | * The game is designed assuming that you are always using the maximum number of characters available, but using fewer characters when you have the option makes the game much easier. This is because XP is divided between party members. With only one or two characters as opposed to four, the smaller party will gain XP much faster than intended and quickly reach the level where they can one shot every encounter. And since the game periodically bumps up characters to the party average, all of your unused characters will eventually end up at a much higher level than they would have been if you had actually used them in battle. Using, for example, only Sabin and Celes trivializes almost the entire game. |
| 138 | * In the SNES version, it was possible to kill any enemy, including bosses (except for [[FinalBoss the game-ending boss]]), by casting Vanish on said enemy and then casting Doom (now Death) or X-Zone (now 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" takes priority over any status immunities. 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). |
| 139 | * Gau is this throughout most of the game [[GuideDangIt if you know]] [[MagikarpPower which Rages are worth getting]] and [[SituationalSword where to use them]]. Used right, he's capable of [[OneHitKill one-]] or two-shotting many bosses and carrying the rest of the party through what would otherwise be ThatOneLevel with no problem. |
| 140 | ** In the endgame, the aptly nicknamed Wind God Gau. Equip him with the Offering, Merit Award, and Cyan's Tempest, and use the Stray Cat Rage. Gau will attack four times each turn, possibly at 8x normal power for each attack, ''and'' has a chance of casting Wind Slash each attack to hit all enemies, Wind Slash also having 8x normal power. This trick no longer works in the GBA re-release, as Gau and Gogo can no longer use the Merit Award that lets them equip the Tempest. |
| 141 | ** In the World of Balance, with a little manipulation of the travel routes in the Serpent Trench, you can add an enemy formation with an Aspik to the Veldt. It can be mimicked with the Rage command to cast Giga Volt, a monster version of the ''Thundaga'' spell, giving Gau a ''massive'' damage boost, as many Imperial enemies and monsters on the Floating Continent are weak to Thunder attacks. |
| 142 | ** If you want to play a little more defensively, have Gau Rage Magic Urn instead of Stray Cat to get immunity to everything in the book except non-elemental magic, and his 50% chance of casting Curaga on himself will fix any damage that gets dealt. |
| 143 | ** The Intagir rage works very similarly to Magic Pot, except it also makes Gau completely immune to anything physical the enemy can throw at him via Auto-Invisible. As long as you are not playing the SNES version (due to [[GoodBadBugs Vanish-Doom Bug]] making his status immunities worse than useless) and make him unable to use [[StupidSacrifice Transfusion]] by inflicting Silence beforehand, you can make Gau almost completely unkillable! And better yet, you can get this rage as soon as you can get the airship in World of Balance, provided you can actually defeat [[BossInMooksClothing Intagir]] in the first place. |
| 144 | ** Or you can have him Rage Rafflesia/Nightshade, whose Charm spell acts as a Confuse status that cannot be cured, and no boss in the game is immune to it, not even Kefka. Did we mention that Gogo can also use Rage, for double the gamebreaking fun? Because they can! |
| 145 | ** Even if you [[PermanentlyMissableContent missed]] Rafflesia/Nightshade, there is another rage that can do just as well - Fiend Dragon/Doom Drgn. Its ability is Northern Cross, which inflicts Freeze - basically Sleep/Stop that lasts twice as long, is removed with fire magic and, like Rafflesia's Charm, works on absolutely everything. Sadly, it's also LastDiscMagic, since Fiend Dragons are only encountered in the final dungeon. |
| 146 | * A bug in the SNES version causes the [=MBlock=] (Magic Evasion) stat to determine a character's chances of blocking both physical attacks and magical attacks. A lot of weapons and relics increase [=MBlock=], making it fairly simple to raise [=MBlock=] to 127%, at which point any attack, magical or physical, that can be blocked probably will. |
| 147 | * Some characters can have their Defense stat raised all the way to 255, when physical blows will do a single point of damage in the front row. In the back row, it does ''zero''. Give such a character the Paladin Shield, the Ribbon, and a set of Marvel Shoes, and you've got a character so tough that [[NighInvulnerable there are very, very few ways to get rid of them]]. |
| 148 | * The GBA version onward allows you to save your game after beating the FinalBoss and pick up after. It so happens that two enemies in the final battle have the Ultima Weapon and the Ragnarok (which are traded for the actual InfinityPlusOneSword of the game, Lightbringer, at the colosseum) as steals, meaning you can farm the best weapons in the game for an infinite supply of them. |
| 149 | * Dragoon Boots + Dragon Horn + Holy Lance turns Edgar or Mog into a bouncing engine of destruction capable of dealing obscene amounts of damage to multiple targets from the back row. Not that defense matters much since they'll be spending most of the battle offscreen and unable to be targeted. |
| 150 | * On the Lete River, there's a sequence where the player can loop around endlessly, fighting enemies. Your party includes Banon, who can cast Cure 2 on the party for no MP cost. Set the cursor to memory to keep him casting it, get a Turbo-fire controller, and watch as your party fights enemies again and again to slowly power level with little player involvement and risk. The age of emulators make it even easier with speed-up commands to level grind hours worth of battles in a couple of minutes. Strictly speaking for MinMaxing, this is a terrible idea as it limits the stat boosts your party will get later in the game once you get Espers, but if you don't care about that, having everyone at level 20 or so will make the game up to at least the Floating Continent a snap. |
| 151 | ** In the SNES version, whenever you get a party wipe you instantly go back to the last place you saved with all your levels intact for whoever you had in your party at the time who is still there. This means you can save in the Narshe mines when Terra, Wedge, and Biggs invade it, progress from there without saving as far as you can, then whenever you lose or just let yourself die to get to a certain level, and you could end up with say level 20 Terra at the start of the game. Plus, since the level of party members is determined by the level of the highest level party member when they first join, this also means you can just focus on leveling up Terra to level your entire party up to about the same level all at the same time much faster than trying to do so normally. Doesn't work in the [=PS1=] version due to different save mechanics. |
| 152 | * Phantom/Bum Rush. Sabin's ultimate blitz that is normally gained after reaching a certain very high level can be obtained as soon as you recruit Sabin in the World of Ruin. The only prerequisite is to visit a certain shack in the woods after recruiting Sabin. Regardless of any character level. |
| 153 | * The Fixed Dice. They are Setzer's InfinityMinusOneSword, but what makes them into a game-breaker is, like Phantom/Bum Rush, the fact that you can acquire them as soon as you have the Falcon. They are located in an early chest in Kefka's Tower, accessible as soon as the Falcon is acquired, they are ranged (they can be used from the back row at no penalty), and they ignore all normal damage calculations due to their own unique mechanic. This means Setzer will routinely deal several thousand HP as damage per turn with even moderate RNG luck no matter where in the game you are. However, then you factor in that this circumvents the Master's Scroll damage penalty. With the Master's Scroll equipped, Setzer becomes your top DPS character in the game ''and it isn't even close''. |
| 154 | [[/folder]] |
| 155 | |
| 156 | |
| 157 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy IX'']] |
| 158 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' |
| 159 | * Synthesis allows one of the easiest Infinite Gil tricks in the franchise. The Cotton Robe item sells for more than the combined cost of the ingredients and synthesis, for a 600 gil profit. With a maximum 99 Cotton Robes per round, that's 59,400 profit. And then we get into the equipment you actually plan to ''use''... |
| 160 | * Partially due to the fact that the battle system maxed out at doing one hit of 9999 damage and a maximum boss HP of [[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne 65535]], you can use skills and abilities like Soul Blade (with Masamune equipped, anything vulnerable to Death spells WILL die in 10 seconds 100% of the time), a time based Auto-Regen (Especially when combined with Boosted summon spells). Hell, the Ability system as a whole will let your characters do a bunch of boosts at the same time, including, but not limited to, Auto-Life, Auto-Regen, Auto-Haste, Auto-Reflect, Auto-Potion, Long Reach, Various magic/attack boosts, etc... Once you get to a high enough level, you'll be regening back to full power as fast as they can damage you, if they manage to hit you at all. |
| 161 | ** Alternately, you can use the Ability system to make yourself immune to most monsters' status attacks. Status effects like Heat, Venom and Confuse are pretty bad... unless you've got Body Temp, Antibody and Clear Headed equipped all at once to make yourself immune to them. In other games, you'd have to equip a Ribbon or some other powerful Accessory to get this much protection, but you can do it for your entire party if you're willing to teach everyone all the abilities, which is actually very easy. |
| 162 | * Thievery, Dragon's Crest, and Frog Drop. All three of them are defense-ignoring attacks that can hit the damage cap if fully powered up (by stealing things, killing dragons, and [[ThatOneSidequest catching frogs]], respectively). On top of that, they have low MP requirements, and Frog Drop in particular is available early in the game. You're unlikely to fully power up Frog Drop until near the end of the game, but that's alright because many of Quina's Blue Magic spells are game breakers in their own right. |
| 163 | * Many of Quina's Blue Magic spells. Bad Breath (inflicts virtually every status ailment in the game on the target), Level 5 Death (instakills any monster with a level that's a multiple of 5, most notably everything in [[ThatOneLevel the Desert Palace]] and [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling Grand Dragons]], Night (tries to put all allies and enemies to sleep, which can be exploited if everyone equips the sleep-nullifying ability Insomniac), Magic Hammer (reduces a target's MP), Mighty Guard (halves physical and magical damage for the entire party), Limit Glove (inflicts 9999 damage to a target if Quina's HP is 1... easier than you'd think to guarantee, and can one-shot just about everything for the first half of the game), Angel's Snack (consumes four Remedies from the inventory to heal everyone of every negative status ailment at once), White Wind (heals everyone by 1/3 of Quina's max HP)... whether it's attacking, defending or healing, at full or low HP, Quina is easily a top tier character, even without his/her maxed out Frog Drop. |
| 164 | * Vivi's Doomsday ability, which does lots of Shadow damage to all allies and enemies (combined with the party equipped with armor or accessories that negate, or better yet, absorb Shadow element) against any enemy that doesn't negate or absorb Shadow element. |
| 165 | * Steiner's Shock ability, which does max damage to practically anything it hits regardless of their stats. |
| 166 | * 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, which restores a little bit of HP and MP for a small amount of his own MP. 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. |
| 167 | * 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 particularly powerful during the one point in the game in which magic doesn't work. Amarant's spells aren't classified as magic and he also gets a revive spell, so combining revive and Chakra can make it possible to survive the random encounters without any white mage or other healing items... so long as Amarant isn't targeted by the instant-death abilities. |
| 168 | * Eidolons with Boost and the corresponding items maxed out in your inventory will generally do at or around 9999 HP of damage (especially with Elemental bonuses) while simultaneously taking long enough to allow your characters to heal to full. |
| 169 | ** Another straight up version of this is Atomos. Atomos under boost has its calculations reconfigured to deal damage on a percentage equal to how many Amethysts the player has in their possession. With a full stock of Amethyst, Atomos deals damage to all enemies equal to their maximum HP or 9999 on all enemies if they have greater than 10,000 HP. Atomos can trivialize a game easily, with its only balance being useless against bosses. |
| 170 | * [=ReflectX2=] + Carbuncle + casting high level reflectable spell on your own party = the only real way to break 9999 damage in one attack in the entire game. |
| 171 | ** That, and Steiner's "Charge!", which makes every character at critical health attack with their basic attack without using up their turn. |
| 172 | * 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. Even enemy spell animations are long enough that you can recover off their damage before they can kill you with another one. How broken is this status? Enough that White Magic, otherwise a mandatory part of the genre, becomes obsolete and outclassed, meaning you can go pure offense. |
| 173 | ** Freya can also abuse Auto-Regen at will by simply using her Jump attack. This is especially effective if she is in Trance mode as she remains off-screen for the duration of the Trance and can regenerate health while totally invulnerable to attack. She can also use Dragon Crest, which is powered by the number of dragons slain by the party. When maxed out, Crest will do 9999 damage every time for only 16MP. So long as Freya is protected from status effects, rotating Jump and Dragon Crest is a fairly easy way to kill almost any boss in the game. |
| 174 | * The Spirit stat if you boost it high enough. With a high Spirit stat, bad status effects will miss against you more often and will only affect you briefly if it does hit you. Good status effects you cast on yourself will last much longer, making effects like Haste and Regen becoming godly. |
| 175 | * The Steam version of the game has several game boosters that are intentionally game breaking for players that need an easier time or just want to see the story without the fluff in between. However, the turbo mode cheat breaks the game in one particular way: while everything gets sped up (except for the loading and most CG cutscenes), the in game clock runs at normal speed. This means certain events that are timed can be completed with plenty of time remaining and it makes getting the Excalibur II a lot easier to obtain (especially if you enable the cheat that disables random encounters). Not only that, but farming items and raising Choco's beak level in the Hot Cold mini game becomes effortless and fast thanks to the timer not being affected by the cheat. |
| 176 | * The "Chocobo Hot and Cold" sidequest. If done early enough, it can grant extremely powerful items way before they would be available otherwise, while only taking a few hours of grinding. |
| 177 | * The status effect Mini can completely cripple enemies by making their physical attacks do only a fraction of the damage they normally do. Not only does Mini never wear off unless the spell is cast on them again, some bosses can also be shrunk! |
| 178 | [[/folder]] |
| 179 | |
| 180 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy X'' and ''[=X-2=]'']] |
| 181 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' |
| 182 | * Valefor's Sonic Wings. It does damage, as well as inflicts Delay. This mean it moves the monster it hits down in the turn list. Many enemies can be delayed ''indefinitely'' with Sonic Wings, and very few non boss enemies are actually immune to it. Even when it's not infinite delay, it's often long enough to get the kill. And Yuna nearly ALWAYS goes first if she's out. Before the monsters. It costs no resources to summon. And Valefor swaps in for her turn instantly when summoned, so she goes before the monster as well. Sure you rob others of their exp, but when you really need to not use your resources... |
| 183 | * Rikku's LimitBreak lets her combine two items to create a spell. Game breaking spells include Trio of 9999, Quartet of 9, Chaos Grenade, Calamity Bomb, Final Elixir, Hyper Mighty Guard... "No Sphere Grid" runs rely on Trio of 9999. Trio of 9999 makes every single effect you use do 9999 damage or healing. Use it with Tidus's and Wakka's best Overdrives to get 6 and 12 hits of 9999 respectively. Conveniently, the final challenge of the game (Technically the second-to-last boss, since the actual final enemy is a PostFinalBoss) has 180,000 hp, letting the combination of these three Overdrives kill him with no trouble. And even if you don't have Tidus's and Wakka's best Overdrives, just about any attack that hits a decent amount of times (Lulu's Overdrive with weaker spells or certain items, for example) is usually enough to hand many regular enemies and bosses their asses. Finally, Trio of 9999 doesn't just apply to damage, it also applies to ''healing.'' Potion? 9999 HP. Cure spell? 9999. Pray? 9999. Say hello to ridiculously cheap healing. |
| 184 | * [[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 exaggerated 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. |
| 185 | ** The main character Tidus also has this capability. However, he can become even more broken once you get his Blitz Ace overdrive. Combine a high-speed Tidus with piercing damage weapons, and increase his strength and speed to preposterous levels (Auron's sphere grid area) and the fast enemies that Wakka cannot hit turns into mush. Take his Caladbolg weapon at full strength and watch even bosses fall literally in ten seconds ''or less''. |
| 186 | *** 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 Jecht Shot 2 knocks out three of them. |
| 187 | * While the Aeons are {{Crutch Character}}s overall, the secret SummonMagic "Anima" does the best at breaking that mold. It has incredibly high innate attack power and is one of the few Aeons with innate "Break Damage Limit." Without too much grinding, it can reach the point where it does 70,000 damage per LimitBreak. That's enough to OneHitKO the first phase of the FinalBoss. |
| 188 | * The [[InfinityPlusOneSword Celestial Weapons]]. A few of them grant the One MP Cost ability which reduces the cost of all spells to [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin one MP]]. That includes spells like Flare, Holy and Ultima. Lulu's also gets Magic Booster, which significantly increases her magic damage, at the cost of more MP. But all that means is that her overwhelming spells will now cost two MP instead of one, which is still insignificant compared to their power. |
| 189 | ** Balanced out by the fact that some of the Crests and Sigils you need to unlock their full potential are ridiculously difficult to obtain. As if [[GuideDangIt figuring out ''how'' to get some of them without the help of a walkthrough wasn't hard enough]]. |
| 190 | ** 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 pretty much guarantees victory over any team. |
| 191 | ** Honestly, Yuna's Nirvana is also really, really effective and by ''far'' the easiest weapon to get, if you know where to look. If you don't have time to blow on blitzball or butterflies, her weapon is the best time investment in a regular FFX playthrough. All you have to do to fully upgrade it is collect all the aeons, which are, as detailed below, game-breakers in themselves. Combine the Nirvana's One MP Cost and Break Damage Limit with the Black Magic Spheres or Teleport Spheres - whichever is most convenient - and you have a mage who can cast all White Magic including Holy and high-level Black Magic of your choice, including Ultima, all for One MP. Ultima and Holy both break the damage limit almost as soon as you obtain them. Oh, and then when Yuna gets bored, she can summon Anima, The Magus Sisters or, if you're [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney filthy rich]], Yojimbo. Yuna goes from a white mage who pops in from time to time to heal the characters to the only mage you will ever need. |
| 192 | ** Tidus's Caladbolg is, although very difficult to fully upgrade, can become extremely powerful and ''fast'' once you move Tidus into Auron's Sphere Grid. With this, Tidus probably has the second highest evasion (next to Rikku) with high speed and extremely damaging attacks that could turn [[ThatOneBoss Braska's Final Aeon]] into mincemeat within three ''normal'' attacks. Actually, there are a few combinations that makes Tidus unstoppable in different ways: If Tidus has completed Wakka's sphere grid area in addition to his own, you'll get an agile fighter who can easily take out the flying enemies without needing to rely on magic or Wakka's blitzball attacks. Send Tidus into Auron's grid and you'll get someone who can beat up the toughest enemies who cannot even take a turn. |
| 193 | ** Auron's Masamune is fairly easy to obtain and upgrade, and unlike all other Celestial Weapons, it does ''more'' damage the lower Auron's HP is, rather than less. At 1 HP, Auron will do a ridiculous 216% damage with his physical attacks, so he'll likely hit the damage cap long before any other characters do. Also, its abilities seem to be tailor-made to synergize with Auron using Sentinel (a skill that lets the user take a physical attack in place of another character, for half damage). Masamune has First Strike (so Auron can use Sentinel at the start of a battle) and Counter-Attack (so he'll counter every physical attack with one of his own, which will likely benefit from Masamune's damage boost). |
| 194 | * 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. |
| 195 | ** 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 [[{{Superboss}} Penance]]. |
| 196 | * Mindy of the Magus Sisters summon has the Passado attack, which does 15 high-damage hits. As anyone who has played their share of ''Final Fantasy'' games, multi-hit attacks have the potential to be incredibly powerful, and Passado is no exception. Thanks to the Magus Sisters naturally having Break Damage Limit (which increases the damage cap of one hit from 9999 to 99,999, key term being "'''one''' hit"), if you max out Mindy's Strength to 255, she can inflict 15 hits of 99999 on almost any enemy in the game that isn't a total StoneWall. 15 hits of 99,999 HP per hit = 1,499,985 HP of damage inflicted. And unlike other high-damage multi-hit attacks, it's not an Overdrive; in fact, the Magus Sisters' Overdrive, being a single-hit attack (or 6 hits in the European and "International" versions), is '''nothing''' compared to Passado. |
| 197 | ** Similar to the Magus Sisters' Passado, Anima's Overdrive attack, Oblivion, chains 16 hits (European/Internation version ONLY - it only hits once in other versions), which can also go up to 99,999 damage, giving a total of 1,599,984 damage. With both Anima's and Yuna's Overdrive gauges full, Yuna can Grand Summon Anima, which allows two Oblivions ''in a row'', dealing a maximum of ''3,199,968'' damage. The only real problem is that Anima is difficult to get and involves a certain amount of GuideDangIt. |
| 198 | * Quick Hit is an ability that lets you do a normal attack, but has a near instant recovery time, allowing that character to effectively take another turn before the enemy does. If the entire party reusing Quick Hit, the enemy party will likely die before their turn even comes up. Combine this by casting Hastega on the party and you will probably never see the enemy's turn ever show up in the turn list. Quick Hit only costs 8 MP to use (32 in the international version), but if you are using weapons with Half MP Cost or MP Cost to One, it's trivial. |
| 199 | * Doublecast. It allows the user to cast two black magic spells in a single turn (but for the cost of both spells), and it just so happens to lie in Lulu's section of the Sphere Grid (it is behind a few high-level Lock Spheres, but by the time you're powerful enough to make Doublecast actually worth it, you'll have the necessary spheres to reach it). In the International/European Version comes with the Expert Spehere Grid, in which Doublecast ''isn't even behind a single lock, and lies naturally at the end of Lulu's path'', with Ultima nearby. |
| 200 | ** 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'' twice ''in a single turn for virtually ''no cost''. Throw in Auto-Haste and Auto-Phoenix/Potion should things go awry. |
| 201 | ** Or, you can bring in Rikku to use Twin Stars/Three Stars/Freedom/Freedom X to bring your MP cost to 0, and then doublecast Ultima to your heart's content. This is the easiest way to defeat Jumbo Flan without Zanmato. |
| 202 | ** Another detail that makes Doublecast even more powerful: High level magic makes your turn take longer to come; casting Flare would bump you back in the turn order. Doublecasting wouldn't. |
| 203 | * 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, allowing players to coast through those pesky RandomEncounters especially in longer or larger areas. 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. |
| 204 | * The Provoke skill, a DrawAggro ability which causes an enemy to target only the user for the rest of the battle so long as that user stays in the active party and alive. It also locks the AI into using one specific attack. For certain monsters, this completely trivializes the battle. Most notable is the "Defender" boss at the end of the Calm Lands. It's locked into a PercentDamageAttack that halves the target's HP, ''rounded down''. This means it can '''never kill'''. You will almost certainly have Provoke on Tidus by this time, as it's low on his TechTree. |
| 205 | * For Blitzball game breakers: |
| 206 | ** The Jecht Shot. For 120 HP, Tidus gets a +5 to his Shoot stat and completely ignores up to two defenders; position him right and that's all there'll be in the first place, and if there's three or even four, Tidus has enough Endurance to take a tackle or two on a breakthrough. Thus it's up to the goalie alone to catch the superpowered blitzball coming at them, as Tidus has a very high Shoot even without the +5 from Jecht Shot. For a lot of Blitzball games, the only strategy you'll need is "pass the ball to Tidus, swim to the goal, fire the Jecht Shot." |
| 207 | ** Nap Shot. If it hits the goalie, and he or she does not have Anti-Nap, it has a chance of knocking them asleep. This means when the ball comes towards them, they get no chance to catch it one time. Get past the defenders and it's an instant goal. Combine with the Jecht Shot and double-digit score CurbStompBattle victories become trivial. |
| 208 | ** The character of Brother, ''especially'' if you wait to play Blitzball until you can recruit him. Not only does he have [[MasterOfAll high stats across the board]], but they rise very quickly as he gains experience. The real game breaker though is how amazingly fast he swims, and an exploitable weakness in the other team's AI. See, in Blitzball, if the character who has the ball gets within a certain range of a member of the other team, the member of the other team will automatically follow them. Brother is so fast that they won't actually be able to catch up, but they will still keep following him. Taking advantage of this, Brother can easily lure the ''entire'' opposing team into following him, then pass the ball to an open member of his own team for an uncontested shot. [[https://youtu.be/rMegysxgzeQ?t=2m58s Here's a short demonstration]]. Just watch those purple arrows that represent the other team following him around, and it works even better if you use the various formations learned as your team levels up to make sure your team is staying in an aggressive position near the other team's goal. For the first 50-60 levels Brother will easily outclass everyone in the league. After that point he starts to plateau and they catch up to him, but by that point you should have long since been able to get everything you need from playing Blitzball. |
| 209 | ** Drain Tackle III on defense. The Drain Tackle series of moves, as can be inferred from the name, take away HP from their opponents when they connect. The first two levels of the move take away only a pittance of HP and have only a moderate chance of success (unless one of the parties is poisoned). The third level, however, will always connect unless the target has Tackle Slip, and it takes away 500 HP. It's absurdly easy to simply trail a foe and spam Drain Tackle III until their HP completely depletes, at which point their shooting and passing stats are halved and they can't use their own special techniques (while HP does slowly regenerate, it's distinctly slow). Once this happens to all opponents, it's comically easy to run roughshod over the entire team, stealing the ball when they have it and just pelting the other team even with normal shots (let alone moves like Jecht Shot or Nap Shot) to run up double-digit victories. |
| 210 | * [[GuideDangit Meeting the right conditions]] causes Wantz to appear as a permanent merchant in the late game. He sells weapons and armor with four blank customization slots. While they're obviously not Celestial gear, grinding the right resources allows you to create some amazing support equipment, such as stacking Auto- abilities, including the immensely powerful Auto-(buff) (bestows permanent Protect/Shell/Haste/etc) and Auto-Phoenix (if an ally dies, ignore the turn queue to immediately use a Phoenix Down if you have one). |
| 211 | |
| 212 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2'' |
| 213 | * 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 EXP, gil, and item drops with its support abilities, making it ideal for grinding in every aspect. |
| 214 | * 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 {{Superboss}}. |
| 215 | * Exploiting Fiend Arena can break the game's difficulty in half: |
| 216 | ** It 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. |
| 217 | ** You can level up creatures and [=YRP=] much faster than in vanilla game thanks to abundance of higher-level enemies in Cups and Battle Simulator. This allows you to boost your creatures to take on harder cups to snag accessories much sooner than you're expected. If you're really persistent, you can even get Mascot in ''first chapter''. Other useful stuffs obtainable in first chapter includes Minerva's Plate (which, while locks out experience gain, it allows creature to use Flare, speeds up and powers up magic, and all of that stacks with Magic Booster; just capture Red Element and put this on it), Speed Bracer and Defense Bracer. |
| 218 | ** Battle Simulator allows you to fight any team that you fought in tournament. Some of these fights allow you to farm many valuable items and gil. For example Machina Panzer gives 10k gil per fight along with Crystal Bangle (that you can feed to your creatures to boost their HP to obscene levels) and is not particularly hard to beat. Much faster than O'Aka's exploit, especially with mastered Lady Luck x3. |
| 219 | ** You can access the Battle Simulator at the very beginning of the game, meaning it's very possible to do all of these and get [=YRP=] to level 99 before ever leaving the Celsius for the first time. |
| 220 | * Prior to the UpdatedRerelease, the most powerful accessory was the Cat Nip, which caused all damage inflicted by a character to become 9999 as long as the character was in critical health. This accessory was ripe for abuse with [[DeathOfAThousandCuts Trigger Happy]], so much so that Cat Nip was revised in the rerelease to inflict Berserk on the holder so that the combination would be impossible. It's still possible to use the combination with quick fingers, but only once, severely reducing its potential...unless you combine it with the Thief dressphere, which has a two-hit regular attack and access to the "First Strike" passive ability, thus getting a free turn at the start of each battle when learned. |
| 221 | * The [[SuperMode Special Dresspheres]], as well as the Psychic and Mascot Dresspheres, are all PurposelyOverpowered. |
| 222 | ** 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 Dresspheres, and using them means giving up the equipped Garment Grid's gate abilities and/or stat boosts. |
| 223 | ** The Mascot offers access to abilities almost as strong as those of the Special Dresspheres (maybe even more so, depending on the player), including entire ability sets of two other Dresspheres per girl. |
| 224 | ** Psychic offers NighInvulnerability in the form of being able to absorb nearly all elemental damage and even become literally Invincible outright by 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). |
| 225 | * The Alchemist class is the strongest healer in the game, far outstripping the White Mage, thanks to its ability to pull an infinite number of Mega Potions, Ethers, and Elixirs out of nothing (albeit for a horrendously large AP cost to learn) through Stash. More importantly though, it gets Mix as a standard ability that it can use at any time. ''Most'' of the broken Mix options from Rikku's [[LimitBreak Overdrive]] back in ''Final Fantasy X'', are removed in the sequel... and replaced with [[InvincibilityPowerUp Miracle Drink]]. The cost of one Dark Matter to use it is trivial for a player who's previously used CONGRATS! on Paragon and received thirty of them. |
| 226 | * 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. |
| 227 | * 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 and you'll turn him into the world's worst merchant: He sells his wares at 10% market price, allowing you to resell the items to the Barkeep in order to make a profit. |
| 228 | * 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 HP and being permanently poisoned, but the poison is no problem with the Alchemist Mega Potion reuse. 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 auto-attack 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. |
| 229 | * The Ragnarok accessory reduces all MP cost of skills to zero, allowing you to reuse any skill with impunity. While it's more of an InfinityPlusOneSword, as you can only get it in the final chapter through meeting certain conditions, said conditions, [[GuideDangIt once figured out]], are pretty simple to fulfill as they don't require fighting enemies (other than the usual RandomEncounters) or solving difficult puzzles. |
| 230 | * 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 [[{{Superboss}} Trema, not Almighty Shinra and not even Major Numerous]]! |
| 231 | * In the PC port of Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remaster, you can hit the ''Esc button'' on the keyboard for a "master menu" at any time to pause the game, even at places where the developers disabled the regular pausing to prevent players from "cheating" the timed challenges such as the ''Tower Calibrating'' and the ''Sphere Break''. |
| 232 | ** There is also the Auto-Save feature (the game saves whenever you change screens). Lost that Sphere Break match to Shinra? Turn off the game while still on the "Sphere Break board" and try again without having to fight with the previously opponent. |
| 233 | * ''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). |
| 234 | ** Before that, the Black Mage Dressphere in general trivializes 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. |
| 235 | ** 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. |
| 236 | ** 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 realize 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. |
| 237 | [[/folder]] |
| 238 | |
| 239 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy XI'']] |
| 240 | !!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' |
| 241 | With ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'' being a {{MMORPG}}, what counts as a GameBreaker is always a source of heated debate and often changed as the metagame evolved and new patches were brought in to {{Nerf}} the most obvious ones. Here are some of the more famous ones over the game's history: |
| 242 | * Up until mid-2005, the game had an unnatural, objective bias towards ranged weapons. Damage was fixed and not subject to the random number generator, only being reduced at a near-insignificant rate by the enemy's VIT. What this meant was a shot that did 180 damage to leveling fodder did 175 to a top-tier monster. This is before one even looks at the Ranger class, which was painfully unfair. Ranged Accuracy and Attack gear was both really cheap and plentiful, with even the cheap stuff giving way better results than hard-to-get endgame gear for the other jobs. The flat curve of power and total lack of diminishing returns made it very strong in practically every situation. Rangers also got a couple tiers of a Ranged Accuracy-enhancing passive trait (which, as if to mock the other jobs, also affected melee), Barrage (fires five successive shots while giving full TP for each hit), and could lay down constant 1800+ damage Sidewinders when the most other jobs could hope for with their weapon skills was ~1100. The sheer number of other unintended benefits to the job were staggering and endgame consisted pretty much of "throw more Rangers at it". |
| 243 | * Colibri. No one will ''ever'' fight a monster that parrots spells cast on it back at the party, steals the tank's food, and has a single-target [[LimitBreak TP]]-killing move, right? Why, you can't even debuff it! Let's make its whole region grant an XP bonus to make up for it. (Never mind that if you don't cast on it, a colibri is essentially a mage-type mob with no spells -- all of the [[SquishyWizard Squishy]] with none of the [[SquishyWizard Wizard]]. Did I mention that the region not only has an XP bonus, but very short respawn times? Needless to say, colibri [[BrokenBase are a rich source of flame wars]].) |
| 244 | * The "avatarburn" party style. Get a bunch of [[SummonMagic Summoners]], a couple of maximum-level characters, a low-level sync target, and a [[TheGambler Corsair]]. Have the high-level characters get half a zone's worth of low-level mobs angry at them. Sync the actual party down to the sync target's level. Have the Corsair put up Corsair's Roll to increase the XP returns. Have the Summoners summon nearly anything, then hit [[EleventhHourSuperpower Astral Flow]] targetting the swarm of monsters on the high-level characters. ''Gain '''tens of thousands of XP''' in seconds.'' Have the Corsair use [[EleventhHourSuperpower Wild Card]] to attempt to reset the party's [[EleventhHourSuperpower two-hours]], ''potentially allowing you to repeat the process'' once things respawn. Note that the Corsair, while useful, is technically optional; you can do this really well with just the summoners, allowing more people to leech off of the instant XP at a time. |
| 245 | * On a similar note, "manaburn" parties were popular for a while as well. The basic tactic was the same: five Black Mages and one character for pulling (either a Bard or a Red Mage for MP Regen). Designated puller attracts a monster, all Black Mages reuse their highest level spells at once. |
| 246 | * Dark Knights have an ability Soul Eater, which for a set period of time would consume 10% of their health per hit and deal that much as damage. You could combine this with their 2-hour ability Blood Weapon, which healed any damage dealt, to essentially use it for free. Powerful, but not broken and on a lengthy cooldown. Until they got a Kraken Club in their hand, which dealt pitifully low damage, but with an effect of swinging 2~8 times per swing. Load up on health, haste and accuracy and you have a single character that can deal the majority of an endgame boss's health over the course of 30 seconds. Later Square Enix began giving bosses a rising resistance to the damage bonus of Soul Eater. |
| 247 | [[/folder]] |
| 248 | |
| 249 | |
| 250 | |
| 251 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy XIV'']] |
| 252 | !!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' |
| 253 | Much like ''XI'', ''XIV'' is an MMO, and thus also subject to debate and changes from patches. |
| 254 | ---- |
| 255 | * The Thaumaturge class, full stop. Upon release, Punishing Barbs lasted for twenty seconds dealing full unblockable counter damage to anything, even if the player actually RESISTED or BLOCKED the attack (so you could take 50 damage and deal 300 in the counter) and the only damage cap it had was the player's actual hit points, easily increased by pumping out VIT. Also, the Firm Conviction trait reduced physical damage for around 80% while casting spells and lasted a few seconds, essentially making Thaumaturges the best tankers in the game as all they needed to do was reuse cure (which also generated insane hate) to keep receiving drastically reduced damage WHILE healing themselves. Then, said abilities were nerfed.....only it wasn't enough. Damage over time spells (Thaumaturges' main offensive abilities) completely ignore all defenses when applied, which means that unlike everything else in the game, their damage potential is not reduced when fightning stronger enemies or notorious monsters, making these spells the main damage source on these fights. The Shadowsear spell also ignores defense, allowing a Thaumaturge to deal 1.000+ damage in seconds if combined with Chainspell for a double casting. Not to mention Thaumaturges are better than Conjurers when using conjury abilities because of their superior Area-of-effect range, to the point the whole community pretty much agrees that the only reason to level Conjurer to 50 is to use its spells as a Thaumaturge. Did I mention that the 'best' conjurer ability, Chainspell is not class-locked while Shadowsear is Thaumaturge-only? |
| 256 | ** To add insult to the injury, there's a little ability called "Emulate", which allows Thaumaturges to copy enemies' elemental resistances...and a good deal of the monsters in the game are resistant to the same element their regular attack is based. The result? Thaumaturges are the only class able to solo all notorious monsters currently in the game. Expect merciless nerfing as soon as the battle system revamping kicks in. |
| 257 | ** Black Mages in ''A Realm Rebor''n 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. |
| 258 | * White mages in 2.0 for similar reasons. Normally you would invest all of your stat points in Mind as a white mage, but they gained a skill called Cleric Stance, which swapped their Mind and Intelligence so they entered an offense mode. They also happen to have some surprisingly high-potency DPS spells, with stone II dealing more damage than Summoner's basic attack, and Holy dealing as much damage as Flare with an aoe stun and being reusable. In Heavensward, Holy was weakened. |
| 259 | ** As of 4.0, White Mage attack spells use Mind instead of Intelligence, leaving Cleric Stance an offensive cooldown ability that increases your damage by 5% for 15 seconds. So what you're left is something like a White Mage with stance dancing (the term when a White Mage constantly needed to toggle Cleric Stance on and off) that's automatic, which helps White Mage players ''a lot.'' |
| 260 | * Warriors are edging on this in Heavensward. They gain a skill called Raw Intuition, which for 20 seconds makes them auto-parry all attacks from the front, and makes all attacks from behind and the sides crit. This can already be nullified by using the skill Awareness, which renders tanks immune to critical hits, but the "crits from sides and flank" applies to heals as well. So a scholar can do Emergency Tactics into Adloquium to heal the warrior for around 12k (probably a full heal or close), then a second adloquium to Deployment tactics to give every ally in range of the warrior an 8k shield. It may be a niche abuse case but time will tell if its an issue. |
| 261 | * Like Warrior, another class is so powerful that [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome no self-respecting raid static would go without it]]: The Scholar. They have 3 abilities so powerful that when Astrologian, a class that was meant to compete with both Scholar and White Mage in their respective roles was introduced, it became stuck in the Scholar's shadow. |
| 262 | ** The first is their Galvanize StatusBuff, which can nullify damage equal to the amount of HP their spells heal, which can be twice the amount healed if they land a CriticalHit with it. |
| 263 | ** The 2nd is their Faerie, who acts as a secondary healer and is unaffected by Cleric Stance, so she can do all the healing while the Scholar deals more damage. |
| 264 | ** The 3rd and most powerful ability? Deployment Tactics, a Heavensward ability that allows them to give nearby party members the same Galvanize effect as the target. Which means that when a scholar is healing a tank (especially the aforementioned Warrior), with a Critical Hit Aldoloqium can use this skill to defend the rest of the party from attacks that equal a Tank's health with ease. |
| 265 | * In the hands of a skilled user, the Paladin can turn the tides of many encounters should the healer fall. Being a StoneWall oriented tank, the Paladin can pop defensive cooldowns to increase survivability. In addition, they also have an action that create a shield around nearby party members if they get healed. But you may wonder if the healer fell, how can they exploit this? By using Clemency, a healing spell, on themselves. On top of that, the Paladin also gets healed by a fair amount of they use Clemency on another player. And since they have an attack that restores MP rapidly, they can bank enough MP in a short time to have Clemency at the ready. This can turn an "oh bugger" moment into an epic save. |
| 266 | * Your reward for completing the Main Scenario of Patch 5.3 is the Crystal Exarch 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. |
| 267 | * A well-played White Mage in PVP is TheDreaded. Their Dia spell amplifies the enemy's damage taken by 10%, resulting in faster kills, giving them the best utility out of all the healers. It's also ''instant cast and spammable.'' They have the widest healing range with spells like Assize and Afflatus Rapture, letting them tag multiple allies at once for easy assists. They also happen to have very good damage output with their Glare and Afflatus Misery, letting them score some kills once in a while. A White Mage on their own is a pain to face. A White Mage with Battle High V? '''COMPLETELY TERRIFYING.''' |
| 268 | ** 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 that ''also'' heals everyone? |
| 269 | * The Gunbreaker's Heart of Corundum, learned at level 82, is shaping up to be this. It's a targeted 15% damage reduction to yourself or an ally for 8 seconds, and it comes with 2 additional effects. The first is Clarity of Corundum, an extra 15% damage reduction for 4 seconds, and the second is Catharsis of Corundum, a buff that triggers when you or the ally fall below 50% HP, and heals you for a ''very'' strong 900 potency. The cherry on top is that its cooldown is ''only 25 seconds.'' This makes the Gunbreaker much more capable of tanking some serious damage while still dishing it out in return. |
| 270 | * The Warrior's Raw Intuition becomes absurd 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 six seconds. 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 HP. 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 two 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 strong that they can take on a boss even when the healer is dead without going down. There's a reason they're called the "Blue Healer" in ''Endwalker.'' |
| 271 | * 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. It was a strategy that was practically counter-proof without other Limit Breaks to make a Paladin's guard drop (like a Warrior's or a Monk's). This got so bad that patch 6.25 ended up reworking the Guardian ability so that it no longer works on allies who are interacting with an object, specifically to remove this one-two punch. |
| 272 | [[/folder]] |
| 273 | |
| 274 | [[folder:''Final Fantasy XV'']] |
| 275 | !!''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' |
| 276 | * The inventory system ''itself'' is already a game-breaker, because unlike previous games in the series, opening your inventory in ''XV'' completely pauses the action, allowing you to use healing items whenever you want and without penalty. Where this becomes game-breaking however, is in how it overlaps with the game's death system. Due to the inclusion of a "Danger" state that is activated when one's health is depleted (which also makes you temporarily invulnerable to all enemy attacks), it is nearly impossible to actually enter the "Death" state as long as you have an adequate supply of healing items. Even if you do enter the "Death" state however, you are still given another few moments of invulnerability to use a Phoenix Down, which will restore you to full health. This level of safety net is a titanic AntiFrustrationFeature for those unaccustomed to action [=RPGs=], but it also means that how fast you take enemies down is directly proportionate to your skill level; relying too much on healing items will cripple your budget for weapons, and selling treasures or ingredients to make up for it will deprive you of magic catalysts or cooking bonuses, respectively. It's entirely possible for a sufficiently skilled player to have their first Game Over screen happen when [[CaptainCrash trying to land the Regalia Type-F]]. |
| 277 | * Expericast magic, which gives you massive amounts of free bonus EXP after a fight in which you cast it. It stacks its effect with each use, and you can create TONS if you have the right items. Furthermore, it stacks with other experience boosters like food, making it possible to gain 50-100% additional returns, making it very easy to jump multiple levels, even for higher leveled players. It's also easy to make, using currencies such as Rare Coins and Debased Coins as materials, which are uncommon items that can be picked up at a decently high rate. |
| 278 | ** The Mummy Bass is a superfish added in the ''Royal Edition''. It's extremely difficult to catch even with maxed-out Fishing and the best equipment, but if you catch it you get the Mummy Bass Guts, which adds Expericast 20 and 5 extra casts to whatever spell it's part of. Add in the passive ability to double the items rewarded by fishing, and you only need to catch two Mummy Bass to get your hands on an Expericast 80 spell with two dozen charges. |
| 279 | * Magic in general can be this, even with the limited casts and dangerous friendly fire. With the minor expenditure of 120 AP to buy Powercraft and Extra Powercraft (increase the potency of crafted spells by 10 and 30 points respectively), you can potentially craft spells that hit for 9999 damage, and can hit entire groups of enemies at a point in the game where your weapons will be doing a few hundred points of damage to single targets. If you want to take the time to grind out another 1600 AP, throw in Super Powercraft (increase potency by 50) for 555 AP and Ultimate Powercraft (by 100) for 999 AP for extra stompage, which is best exemplified by using Maxicast (removes the 9999 damage limit on thrown spells). |
| 280 | * Ignis's Overwhelm is easily the best technique in the game. Overwhelm consists of Ignis ordering everyone to attack a single target, resulting in roughly 16 or 20 hits total if the target can tank the hits. This provides a very cheap way to get around the damage cap that costs 99 AP to get for an individual character's technique. In addition, because the game gives everyone involved invincibility frames, this means that the entire party won't take damage or be interrupted during Overwhelm. This is also the technique that takes the longest to finish, making it prime stalling material while you wait for your [[GameBreaker magic]] to recharge. Finally, this tech only costs two bars! With all the technique rate boosting abilities unlocked, it will take less than ten seconds for a player to get the bars needed to cast this tech. Keep a handful of Megalixirs on hand in case your party members reach danger state during the 5 seconds it takes for you to use the tech again, and any target will fall with ease. |
| 281 | ** For even more fun, if Noctis has the Bow of the Clever equipped when this skill is selected, his contribution to the attack will be to unleash a 50-hit combo. And again, it can't be interrupted. Only super-bosses possess the HP or stats to shake this attack off, but it also ''will'' drain your HP to basically one. |
| 282 | * Another invaluable technique that Ignis has is Regroup, which heals the entire party for free at the cost of two bars. With this being available early on, it's almost mandatory to get for any player who's starting out who doesn't have the money to buy lots of potions and elixirs. |
| 283 | * The passive abilities that reward AP for doing things, like riding in the car or camping, are nice to have for the long haul, but the "Sportfishing" ability is particularly good. It grants the party a particularly large AP bonus when Noctis catches large fish, which translates to up to 6 AP for the particularly good fish, and if you catch the Mummy Bass listed above, you get ''30 AP''. Sportfishing only takes 99 AP to get and will pay for itself in only a few visits to fishing spots, everything after that is pure AP profit. |
| 284 | * Lasagna al Forno, a recipe Ignis makes when his cooking is at level 9. It gives the player a 4,000 HP boost, and by the time the player usually unlocks it, they will have already gotten a decent amount of HP to begin with. It makes them immune to Elemental attack effects, which is useful for certain enemies. Finally, it gives the player a 100% experience boost, which is great for level grinding. |
| 285 | ** At the Hotel in Altissia, the bell boy on the right will offer the player a 30,000 gil room that gives them triple experience if they stay. Combine the Lasagna al Forno, go to an area with high-level enemies without rest (like the bonus dungeons you unlock after beating the game and obtaining all of the Armiger weapons), and the player could gain up to ten levels. |
| 286 | * The Nixperience Ring accessory is overpowered since it prevents you from converting any EXP gains into actual EXP. That sounds like a bad thing, until you think about the EXP boosting foods and the hotel multipliers. Galdin Quay, one of the first areas you visit has a 2x multiplier for the cost of 10k gil. So rather than spending 10k every night, save your EXP and do it once. At later chapters, this method can result in 15 levels per character and a ton of AP. |
| 287 | * 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. |
| 288 | * Anything that prevents Stamina drain. This includes several food effects, various, items a couple attires, and an accessory. During battle, limited Stamina prevents Noctis from sticking to warp points too long or repeatedly. But with Stamina negated? Nothing is stopping you from warping to warp points, warp striking, and repeating. The MP cost of Warping is negated by the fact that Warp Points rapidly regenerate your HP and MP. The only downside is that negated stamina prevents Noctis' "soft warp" when running (as it can only be done just as he's about to run out) making travel outside of battles ultimately slower. But it's a small price to pay and equipment can be changed whenever. |
| 289 | * The Ragnarok, a sword introduced in the 1.05 patch for Season Pass holders. Its laughable attack power might turn people off it... until they realize just how powerful the weapon is when used to warp-strike. A warp strike from the Ragnarok might be slower, but it is utterly devastating, easily hitting for 2000-3000 at the minimum, and usually well above that. Even the Adamantoise can suffer 9999 hits from this thing repeatedly. |
| 290 | * The Ring of the Lucii, obtained in Chapter 13, grants Noctis three unique abilities, one of which drains all your magic points but can OneHitKill almost ''anything'' in the game. Only a handful of story bosses are immune, which means even the resident superbosses like the Adamantoise with their [[DamageSpongeBoss millions of hitpoints]] can be taken out in one shot. It usually takes a couple dozen tries, but it still works ''much'' faster than beating the boss the old-fashioned way. Just stock up on Ethers (fully replenishes MP) and go to town. The Adamantoise rewards upwards of 50,000 XP and several extremely valuable items per run without posing a danger to the party, which makes it a prime target for farming XP and LimitBreak spell ingredients in the post-game. To put icing on the cake: the ring transfers into NewGamePlus where its basic Death spell can one-shot pretty much anything from the get-go (not that you'd need it; you also retain your level and other weapons). |
| 291 | * 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. |
| 292 | * For ''Comrades'', the Dragon Whisker is hands down the best weapon as it comes with the innate ability Penetrator X (reduces target defense by 50%) and an empty slot for a second ability. There's no stopping anyone from just pumping STR and then slapping another Penetrator X on it since it can stack with itself. Its base weapon Corsesca is also easy to acquire, though grinding for the best materials if trying to min-max the weapon will take a while, but it's all worth it as having a high STR and a 100% def decrease will make it easy to hit the damage cap and melt any enemy with ease. Since it's also a polearm, it can let players warp to enemies with no MP cost. Even if not doing any min-maxing, just slapping double Penetrator X on it is enough to kill high-leveled story bosses even on a low-leveled character and with three other less than stellar weapons. |
| 293 | * The Garuda weapons from the ''FFXIV'' crossover can be acquired as early as chapter 6 and are serviceable weapons. The Vortex weapons, on the other hand, are stupidly strong for a few reasons. Just equipping these gives a lot of stats similar to what the royal arms give and dishes out comparable damage without the HP drain. Unlike other weapons, these have ''3 passives'' that boost their intended attack styles: Gaze, Pain, and Plumes deal 50% more damage if doing aerials and reduce MP costs, Abandon has high appendage break and 50% more damage against vulnerable targets, and they also share the same "always deal critical hits" passive. This eliminates the need for crit food buffs so other food buffs can be paired with these like the aforementioned Lasagna al Forno. They might be a [[InfinityPlusOneSword little hard to acquire]] since it costs many Allagan Tomestones plus 1 Adamantite per weapon and Garuda only drops 1 per run, but doing a little platforming in Perpetuoss Keep will net 90 Tomestones which is enough for 1 Vortex weapon, which is [[InfinityMinusOneSword more than enough]] to melt any enemies in the story, even [[ThatOneBoss Ravus]] and Ardyn. |
| 294 | [[/folder]] |
| 295 | |
| 296 | [[folder: ''Dissidia: Final Fantasy'']] |
| 297 | !!''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy'' (and ''Dissidia 012'') |
| 298 | * In the first ''Dissidia'', numerous characters had infinite combos, most famously Squall, Golbez, and Zidane. Thankfully they were nerfed to no longer be possible in ''Dissidia 012''. |
| 299 | * The infamous "Exdeath Cheat" that, with the proper summons and equipment setup, allows you to take a character from level 1 to level 100 in ''one'' fight. Simply fight a Level 100 Exdeath, let him get to 9999 Bravery, then use the Magic Pot summon to copy his Bravery and deal a OneHitKO to him. ''Before'' multipliers from exp-boosting equipment and calendar bonuses, you'll earn 300,000 experience. While any opponent can be used for this, Exdeath is the most infamous because of his ArtificialStupidity and his BarrierWarrior gameplay making him the easiest to do it against. |
| 300 | * In the right hands, Exdeath can be the most dangerous character in the game. His ability to guard cancel out of most of his attacks means it is almost ''never'' safe to attack him unless you want to ram into Omni Block and eat a counter-attack, and the same ability means he can rapidly spam attacks and guard cancel them over and over to rapidly build up Assist Gauge. And, of the counter-attacks Exdeath can do after blocking something, Sword Dance deals massive Bravery damage and Wall Rushes, Almagest hits super-quick for HP damage and Wall Rushes, and Grand Cross hits directly around the opponent and is very difficult to avoid. All it takes is one slip-up on your part, and Exdeath will Omni Block you, deal massive Bravery or HP damage, and probably smash you into a wall to set up for an Assist combo. Oh, and he can set up a Black Hole for absorption and pressure with some decentBravery damage if you get trapped.[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FE2c4VgA6Y This video]] of Exdeath in tournament-level play demonstrates how disgusting he can be. |
| 301 | * Ultimecia became one in ''012'' thanks to her new Bravery attack -- Knight's Lance. A charged Knight's Lance creates a tripod wall of lances with Ranged High priority, meaning little can disperse them and they will reflect or block most attacks. Ultimecia can then dance around her shield firing out other projectile attacks, the opponent trying to find ways to safely get close to her and being unable to use Assists because they'll hit the lances and get Assist Locked. In particular, she has another new attack, Hell's Judgment, which hits from below the opponent for Bravery damage and then HP damage. With her Knight's Lance to protect her from reprisals, Ultimecia can fire out her two variants of Knight's Arrow and bait the opponent into dodging or blocking, then catch them in Hell's Judgment as they recover. Or she can just fire out Knight's Sword for massive Bravery damage and stun-lock the opponent long enough to call her Assist out. Oh, and finally, while Knight's Lance has Ranged High priority when it's out, on execution it has the same blocking priority as ''Omni Block'', as in "will block anything that can be blocked". This is why Ultimecia is widely considered the best character in tier lists. |
| 302 | * Jecht has Jecht Block, which is just shy of Omni Block and Knight's Lance for being able to block ''anything''. Jecht can't use it to combo into Assists and attacks like Exdeath and Ultimecia, but mastery of Jecht Block renders him almost untouchable, especially against fellow melee characters who won't have good ranged options. |
| 303 | * Feral Chaos's Via Dolorosa HP attack sends out two waves fire, but you can hold the button to delay the second wave, making it easy to catch the opponent on a dodge, when they land on the ground, are recovering from an attack, etc. Spamming this attack during tournament play (if Feral Chaos is allowed in the first place) will earn you much hatred from other players. |
| 304 | * By setting your character's Level to 1 and removing all their equipment, it's possible to give them a 99.9x Booster set-up. This allows myriad combinations of accessories and summons to quickly crush Level 100 enemies in spite of the power gap. |
| 305 | ** The infamous 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. |
| 306 | ** The Safety Bit gives your character a 6% chance to survive a fatal HP attack with 1 HP, as long as they have more than that when they get hit. Combine with an EX Mode build to give you constant Regen status, or an "Exp to HP" build to recovery HP whenever ''you'' deal HP damage, and you're invincible (unless the opponent has [[NoSavingThrow Destroyer]] equipped to negate the Safety Bit's effect). |
| 307 | ** As above in the level grinding trick, you can just set your summon as Magic Pot to copy the opponent's 9999 Bravery instantly. |
| 308 | ** Equip an Arcane Resin to start the battle with a full EX Gauge. You can just launch into your character's EX Mode instantly, or wait for the opponent to attack before using EX Revenge to stun them, at which point the Iai Strike and/or Magic Pot trick come in. |
| 309 | ** Or, you can ignore the level requirement -- by stacking enough Bravery-boosting equipment and equipment that gives you a bonus to starting Bravery, you can open a fight with several thousand Bravery, even up to 9,999. Combine with Alexander to lock your Bravery at this high amount and it'll only take a couple hits to win. |
| 310 | * The "Exp to Brv" ability converts the experience you would receive when you land an HP attack into Bravery. With accessories to increase how much experience you earn, it's possible to regenerate more Bravery than you had when you attacked. On characters like Zidane, who have poor Bravery games but can easily land HP attacks, and with an Assist build to let them unleash Assist combo attacks more easily, and you have a CycleOfHurting. |
| 311 | * Alexander locks your Bravery at its current amount for 25 seconds, letting you spam HP attacks without fear and making you immune to Bravery Break. |
| 312 | * Demon Wall makes you immune to Bravery damage, period. And the manual version lasts ''50 seconds''. There's also Phoenix, who lasts the same amount of time and if your Bravery is ever lowered to 0, you instantly recover to your base Bravery and the opponent gets no Break bonus. And there's also Mandragora, who rapidly recovers your Bravery to its base value whenever it drops below that value, and it also lasts 50 seconds. |
| 313 | * Tiamat, which activates a 20 second timer, and when it ends your current Bravery triples. A few good Bravery attacks to prepare can easily get you to 9,999 Bravery. |
| 314 | * Behemoth, who instantly doubles your current Bravery. You then have to deal with a Bravery drain for 50 seconds, but if you save it until just before you land a massive HP attack, the doubled damage you inflict will be well worth it, assuming you didn't just end the match right there. |
| 315 | [[/folder]] |
| 316 | |
| 317 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy Tactics Advance'']] |
| 318 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'' |
| 319 | * Concentrate breaks a number of skills clean in half, since it turns almost every skill into an AlwaysAccurateAttack and low accuracy is what keeps them balanced. Three races can learn it. Double Sword is also fairly ridiculous, but that's Human-only. Doublecast is terrifying when you consider that it works on Summoner abilities - yes, including Madeen. |
| 320 | ** The only thing worse than the above skills is using them with other jobs' abilities. A Ninja with two swords? Unnerving. A Paladin wielding two swords, both of which are insanely powerful? Scary. A Paladin wielding two of the aforementioned swords and toting Ultima Shot, arguably the most powerful ability in the game along with similarly named abilities? Freaking ''terrifying''. |
| 321 | * 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''. |
| 322 | * Equipping a Bangaa Dragoon (highest attack base stat and growth in the game) with the Gladiator's Ultima Sword (triple attack 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. |
| 323 | * Raising a Gunner as a Mog Knight gives you access to Ultima Charge from across the screen. If it's not possible to scrounge up the MP for that, you can also spam Stopshot or Charmshot, which disable any enemies they don't outright kill. Add Counter and you have a killing machine. |
| 324 | * Steal: Ability, intended as a late game accelerator pedal, can be acquired after the first few introduction missions with a couple of hours of cheesing a couple of bonus missions meant to help clans with less than six members. Doing so turns every single Human and Moogle unit into a DiscOneNuke. This frees munchkins from having to waste time learning abilities and lets them move straight into stat optimization. |
| 325 | ** In fact, due to how there is an ''absurdly high'' amount of end-game equipment and abilities hidden in the first few missions of the game, there are guides detailing how to turn the whole game into a MontyHaul by performing said method.[[note]]For example, the mission Wanted:Diaghiev Godeye, which is acquirable right after the third tutorial mission, has a Thief with Steal: Weapon, which is only learnable at the last legs of the game. Another early mission, Frosty Mage, has said mage rolling out with a Chill Rod (enhances Ice damage, and teaches Blizzaga, Stop and Deluge) stowed away in his inventory, which you can draw out by, you guessed it, stealing all his weapons until he decides using that one rod. This modus operandi can be repeated in other missions, provided you remember to check the enemy units' Status Screen as often as possible.[[/note]] |
| 326 | * HP<->MP is generally not terribly useful, but it *does* break any DuelBoss situation clean in half; as long as your speed is high enough to get a turn for every turn your opponent receives, it will block all damage, because you regenerate MP every turn and the reaction skill will nullify all damage if you're not at 0 MP when it fires. |
| 327 | ** Combine it with Immunity, which makes you immune to poison, and you will be outright ''invincible'' when you face Llendar in the palace. |
| 328 | * Make 3-4 Viera Assassins with Sniper multiclass. First round, everyone go invisible. Second round, everyone appear behind target and use either [[OneHitKill Last Breath]] or Ultima. Now you have your very own [[AmazonBrigade Viera Death Squad.]] |
| 329 | ** The Assassin job in general is absurdly broken. They're fast as hell, have access to incredibly potent status effects that can be made highly accurate with Concentrate, can wield katanas, one of the most powerful weapon types in the game, and greatbows to let them fire off Ultima Masher from afar. It's quite telling that they were the most nerfed job in the sequel. |
| 330 | * Moogles can learn Ultima Charge, go level up enough to meet its absurd MP requirements, become a Gunner, and dish out death every time they get a turn. Humans can do similar with archers or hunter, Viera can use assassins and snipers, etc. |
| 331 | * Status effects. Because UselessUsefulSpell is ''not'' in effect, status effects are ridiculously powerful. For example, Blinding an opponent makes it practically impossible for them to hit you, and an attack against a Sleeping or Stopped opponent is guaranteed to hit. When you get a Blue Mage to learn Bad Breath or raise a properly equipped Gunner, your enemies won't have a chance. Please note that this same law applies to ''instant death'' skills, which don't have appreciably lower chances to hit than, say, poison. |
| 332 | * The Angel Ring gives immunity to the status effects Zombie, Blind, Frog, Poison, Slow, Silence, Immobile, Disable, Doom, and grants the invaluable ability Auto-Life, which brings a character back from the dead once per battle. Because an enemy in a rather easy repeatable mission has it, you can steal the ring repeatedly and equip all of your clan members with it. This also makes many Gadgeteer abilities, which have a 50% chance of casting a status effect on either all of your allies or all of your enemies, a lot more useful. |
| 333 | * The Thief class in general is broken. Not only they can steal almost anything from enemies, the class also has a high growth in speed, which itself is a game breaker when you get it high enough so that you can attack more often than the enemy can. On top of this, Thieves have high evasion, making them hard to hit. A Moogle can also be a Thief and they have higher evasion than their human counterparts; with the right gear, you can boost your thief's evasion to 100, allowing you to dodge almost everything with a lot of success. |
| 334 | * The Red Mage's unique ability, Doublecast, seems a bit less broken than its equivalent from other FF, until you realize: 1) it counts as casting a Red Magic spell, meaning you can cast two Thunder spell with Thunder outlawed; and 2) it works for any kind of spells, which means ''you can cast two freaking summonings in the same turn''. Small example of how it breaks the game: start of the fight, your whole team is gathered around your Red Mage. She is the quickest and goes first; Doublecast -> Carbuncle + Kirin = you start the fight with Reflect and Regen ''on your whole team right off the bat''. |
| 335 | * Jugglers. In particular their skills Dagger, and Smile. Dagger does respectable damage and unless the target is immune to the status effect, it will almost always inflict Disable as well, completely preventing the target from acting in any way aside from movement. And they can use this freely without any worries about MP. Smile meanwhile, makes it so an ally gets to move next... no questions asked. And again, they can use this ability for ''free''. Give any moogle Juggler skills and even if they can't immediately attack, they're almost always going to be unspeakably useful. Just imagine combining Smile with any of the above-mentioned skills or combos. |
| 336 | [[/folder]] |
| 337 | |
| 338 | [[folder: ''Final Fantasy [=Type-0=]'']] |
| 339 | !! ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyType0'' |
| 340 | * The Regal Crown accessory[[note]]Obtained from the Class First Moogle after playing for 70 hours[[/note]] ''doubles'' a characters MP and boosts all Magic stats by 40. The Akatoki Amythest[[note]]Obtained from Celestia during the Milites ceasefire in a NewGamePlus if you got all five extra Classmates Zero[[/note]] increases all Magic stats by ''100'' and applies a permanent Quick status. Rem Tokimiya is a BlackMage who starts off with Twinspell and has more natural MP than any other two Classmates Zero put together. Give her the crown and the jewel, equip her with a Blizzard/Thunder spell (depending on whether you're fighting Concordia or Milites) and Fire spell of your choice, choose the Vermilion Bird as your group attack, and you have yourself a goddess of war. |
| 341 | * Rem is overpowered in general. It only lasts a short time, but her Undying Wish ability casts Reraise on the whole party, and even better, allows Rem to be revived after summoning an Eidolon. Her Seraphic Strike has power comparable to the air-support ''Mega Flare'' available during the Battle of Big Bridge. Her sole drawback is that she isn't always available in every mission, as well as being unable to use magic whenever there's a crystal jammer in play. |
| 342 | * Avoid magic is equipped to your defensive slot and uses your MP to automatically dodge anything you're not in the middle of dodging already. Sounds good in theory, but you need to be in a situation where, seeing the attack coming, you ''could'' have initiated a dodge yourself, so it's no good if your cadet is in the middle of an attack. Unless you have it on Ace, whose innate Quick Reflexes allow him to cancel out of almost ''anything he's doing'' with a dodge. |
| 343 | * Jack has a huge damage output, but lacks combo ability. One of his commands is Lightning Flash, which is a fast flurry of swings ''with the same damage output as his normal attacks'', which works wonders against [[ThatOneBoss the Dragon Egg]]. |
| 344 | * [[DarkIsNotEvil Diabolos-class]] Eidolons are sold on their GravityMaster abilities, which fall under AwesomeButImpractical. What the Rubicus doesn't tell you is that Diabolos' movement is a swarm of bats that makes one think of the ''Film/BatmanBegins'' "backup" scene at Arkham. It's difficult to tell if the Eidolon can even ''take'' damage in this state[[note]]He can[[/note]], due to the fact that contact with an enemy results in Diabolos dishing out CollisionDamage with a Life Drain effect. |
| 345 | * Secret Training allows you to gain extra Experience points while you save and turn off your game. In a maximum 24 hours, your character will have gained around four levels. However, if you change the date on your system, you'll get the results instantly rather than waiting until the next day. With enough patience, you could give your characters quite an experience boost. |
| 346 | [[/folder]] |
| 347 | |
| 348 | [[folder: Other]] |
| 349 | * The SAW weapon in ''VideoGame/TheFinalFantasyLegend'' (actually a ''VideoGame/{{SaGa|RPG}}'' game renamed for the American market) is supposed to have a chance of {{One Hit Kill}}ing the target if the user's strength is higher than the target's defense -- which is how it works in the sequel. Unfortunately, there was a programming mix-up between ">" (greater than) and "<" (less than), making the SAW work only if the attacker is '''weaker'''. This has the unfortunate effect of creating an {{Anticlimax|Boss}} FinalBoss. |
| 350 | * The Dragon Claw in ''VideoGame/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. |
| 351 | ** Magic in general is very, very powerful in Mystic Quest, especially the all-hitting Wizard spells White, Meteor, and Flare. These can end a good deal of non-boss battles with a single cast, and if not, they will certainly end it with two. However, casting of them is limited, to the point where it is not unheard of to confront the FinalBoss while still having a maximum number of Wizard spell casts in the single digits. Sounds balanced, right? Until you factor in the Seed item, which completely replenishes your spell capacity to maximum. And which can be bought in increments of a ''hundred'', in a game where there is basically [[MoneyForNothing nothing else to spend money on]]. |
| 352 | ** Even more powerful than the highly damaging Wizard spells was the White magic. For strange reasons, most white magic would have the opposite effect if cast on the enemy, and we're not talking ReviveKillsZombie. We're talking ''Revive Kills Everything''; Life was an instant-death spell when used on enemies, the dungeon-warping Exit spell ejected enemies from combat, the status-cure caused random status effect on the enemy. Only Cure was limited to only hurting undead, otherwise White magic was full of death-dealing terror. And thanks to a GoodBadBug, even Cure has an offensive use; it more than makes up for its general lack of offensive power throughout the game by dealing obscene amounts of damage to the final boss, overkilling him in a few casts. |
| 353 | * Early on in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyThe4HeroesOfLight'' you can find an item called a Hunting Horn, which forces a random battle when it is used and has infinite uses (similar to the musical instruments of the ''VideoGame/WildArms'' series.) Shortly afterwards, you unlock the Merchant crown, which increases the drop rate of gems after battles, and comes with an ability to find gems on the battlefield. |
| 354 | ** Better yet -- if you walk into a wall, you get into a fight. You can set up the game to auto-finder (Merchant crown) and auto-escape (Wanderer crown). Escape does not cause an end of battle screen, so you're instantly on the world map again. In other words, if you really wanted to, you can point at the wall in auto mode, with 3 Merchants and 1 Wanderer, each with Hermes Boots equipped (always act first), steal 3 gems, escape, repeatedly, until you come back to the DS. |
| 355 | ** In a game where most bosses are heavily elemental, a third rank Elementalist is capable of wreaking absolute havoc. When equipped with a shield that absorbs a specific element, or better yet the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Robe of Light]] (a cape that grants resistance to ''all'' elements), they are virtually impervious to elemental damage. After using the power Mysterio, which grants element resistance to every member of your party, an Elementalist will be actively ''gaining health'' from elemental attacks - and, assuming you have the correct shield to endure the attacks of the current boss, the rest of your party will be hugely element-resistant as well. |
| 356 | [[/folder]] |
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