Most Easily Manipulable Battle System

One of the chief complains about many of the Final Fantasy games is that their battle systems are too easy to manipulate to make the game easy. Let’s examine some of the battle systems in the more recent FFs, and how they do or don’t fall into this category:

Final Fantasy VI: This is the only classic game I’m really considering for this thread because I have seen some complaints that this game is too easy. In this game, you learn magic from equipped Espers (summons) and also occasionally from equipment. It’s quite easy to soup up your characters with powerful abilities later on in the game, making it really easy. Also, most versions of this game feature a "Vanish/Doom" trick that works on most bosses. Still, I think, on the whole, this game has some tough battles, especially earlier on in the game, and be discounted as the one that’s most easy to manipulate.

Final Fantasy VII: This game was also the first to feature Limit Breaks. The limit system was such (for most characters) that you had to perform the character’s first Limit Break within a level a certain number of times in order to gain the second limit for that level. After that, you had to kill a certain number of enemies with that character in order to advance to the next limit level. With easily exploitable Enemy Skills such as Beta or Trine, this meant it was really easy to get almost all of the highest limits early on in the game. Also, this game had the W-Item trick, which could be used to cheat extra items. And Materia was fairly easy to manipulate to get strong abilities, as well as to sell to get Gil (mastered All Materia.)

Final Fantasy VIII: This has been a big complaint with this game. This game features the "Junction" system, in which you Junction GFs (summons) to your characters in order to be able to Junction magic to your stats. Aura, Lion Heart, Disc 1

Final Fantasy IX: Probably of all the recent FF games, the one that’s the least "broken" as far as being able to manipulate the battle system. Trances could only be gained under certain conditions and couldn’t be "saved up." There weren’t really any other major tricks either, with the exception maybe of Quina’s Lv5 Death. Let’s move on…

Final Fantasy X: This game featured a turn-based system in which nothing happened in battles unless you took action first. I wouldn’t say this one was all that easy to manipulate. Still, the fact that it’s possible to beat the game without summoning any aeons (except for required battles), activating any nodes on the Sphere Grid, or customizing any weapons or armor might suggest that this game’s battle system isn’t as tough as some think.

Final Fantasy X-2: This game featured the Dressphere system. Tricks in this game included 777 Random Reels, Cat Nip, and various other manipulable Dressphere abilities. This game did have challenging battles, but it could be very easy to manipulate if you knew how.

Final Fantasy XII: Lots of complaints about "brokenness" of battle system in this one. All characters share access to the same License Board, which is how you customize their stats, and also add the ability to equip weapons/armor and types of magicks. License Points were fairly easy to "farm," meaning that early on, it was easy to have pretty souped up characters. There were some pretty tough battles, though, particularly if you didn’t customize things right, or wandered into areas before you were really ready for them.

Thoughts? Comments? Disagreements?

Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. A few more things worth mentioning though would be the Gil Toss ability in FFV (which is considered by many people to make the game a lot easier then in should have been), saving Aeon overdrives to nuke bosses in FFX and abusing the quickening system in FFXII.

My opinion about this is that FFIX and XII, although different in their approach, are the 2 almost flawless systems out there (FFIX could actually be considered without flaws, with FFXII not far behind).

Sure, FFXII was pretty easy if you went at the final boss when you were on level 99, but so is all the other games in the series.

I don’t have much I want to say other than that… don’t feel like arguing either. 😛

Well i think final fantasy 8’s is the most broken . The fact you can get magic from so many sources (Cards, Drawing from monsters, Items, draw points) you can easily stumble across something that gives one of your characters a major boost in stats. Then you’re sorted for the rest of the game.

Now if you actually know what you’re doing? It’s even easier.

Also limit breaks (or whatever they’re called) are too easy to get. Renzokuken could potentially thrash any boss in the game if Squalls attack is high enough.

Pretty good analysis, Agent. There are a couple of points (mostly minor ones) that you omitted, though.

In FFVI, many Espers boost stats on top of teaching magic. While not necessary at all, a bit of forethought in Esper equipping can make for some pretty crazy characters. FFVI also had "limit breaks," though they weren’t a command of any sort. If your character is in critical health (they kneel), they’ll occasionally perform a mega-strong attack with the "Attack" command. Admittedly, this is very rare and ultimately random, but the origin of Limit Breaks should be traced to FFVI.

FFVIII is ridiculously broken. Aura. Enough said. Most of the limit breaks are crazy strong. Selphie can cast "The End," Zell can literally do a million damage with the "Armageddon Fist" technique, Rinoa can spam numerous, free Meteors (or Flare, or Ultimas…), Irvine can make Omnislash look like a joke, and Squall has Lionheart.

FFIX actually has a few borderline-broken abilities. Quina’s Frog Drop, Zidane’s Thievery, and Freya’s Dragon Crest can be pumped into automatic quad-9 attacks for far fewer MPs than say, Shock, Flare, or Solution-9.

All that being said, though, I agree completely with Andyuk’s conclusion.

FFXII is pretty broken, for the exact reasons Agent outlined. You can get all the augments by the Garamsythe Waterway if you kill enough random wolves, Cactites and so on. Because the game makes no (or very little) distinction in LP terms between strong monsters and weak ones, it doesn’t encourage you to fight stronger enemies when you can bash the crap out of weaker ones for the same LP in double-quick time.

The moment I realized how the License Board works I stopped playing XII. Its just a ridiculous system. Basically, the player has to move randomly in the board, hoping s/he will find good abilities and quickenings. Also the fact that you have to learn how to use the weapons from the license board and then use them was pretty stupid considering that you had to progress in the license board almost blindly.

After all, most people perform a simple search in google and they can easily find a full map of the license board.

Even without telling you what exactly is behind each tile you can already get a good idea about what each license does just by hovering the cursor over it. They all say things like ‘Black magic’ or ‘Great Swords’, so at least you can follow a vague path depending on what role you want your character to perform.

XII is broken and easy to manipulate because once you have all your gambits, gambits slots, good weapons and armour, and your party members at decent levels, all you do is let them fight on their own while you just sit there and don’t have to do anything.

As for IX: 99% close to being perfect.

XII is broken and easy to manipulate because once you have all your gambits, gambits slots, good weapons and armour, and your party members at decent levels, all you do is let them fight on their own while you just sit there and don’t have to do anything.

As for IX: 99% close to being perfect.

As ever, someone fails to understand the beauty of FFXII’s battle system. While the License Board is indeed broken, the gambits aren’t. They merely take the repetitivity out of the gameplay that would result if you turned the gambits off and input every last command yourself. You still have to be able to set up your gambits well to have any chance of winning most battles, hence the system is not broken and serves its purpose.

The License Board isn’t broken either. Although it removes any "exclusivity" to the characters, you can still have a good idea of what you’ll be giving to your characters (augments, techniques, magics, types of weapons/armors, etc…) After that, it is up to you to decide the roles of each party members (will there be a ranger, a knight tank, and a healer?).

Of course, like in almost every titles in the series, every characters will be godlike when you hit the level 80 mark. So like Ceidwad say it best, you can’t count it as a flaw of FFXII’s battle system is you don’t do so for every game in the series… Heck, you’d have to do so for almost every J-RPG out there. Each of them will reward you with easiness if you spend countless hours building your character’s levels.

The License Board is actually broken because of the LP issue I talked about earlier. But you’re right, that makes no difference once you hit higher levels.

I don’t count it as broken at all for that reason. Easy monsters gives only 1 LP. Yeah, you can get more LP faster by killing 5 cactoids every 2 minutes instead of one Bombshell in 5. But the same applies to almost every other games. It’s mostly a factor of time x kills, rather than a definite flaw. IMO

If LP weren’t such a big part of characters’ battle development, you would have a point. However, all the augments put together can make a tremendous difference at lower levels, while you need good amounts of LP to get the most powerful weapons and spells, which are in turn crucial to your hopes in battle. Making LP so easily available just cheapens the system.

Ceidwad, it is just the same with any other games in the series. LP and EXP are the 2 factors for building up the characters, but in the end, the outcome is the same. You have to take the time to farm for LP. And it is in no way easier (or harder) than to do some level build up in the other games of the series.

I’d say the Gambits are partially broken, because they leave out some essential Gambits such as Enemy has enemy to steal —> Steal, and some Gambits are made available too late in the game.

Ceidwad, it is just the same with any other games in the series. LP and EXP are the 2 factors for building up the characters, but in the end, the outcome is the same. You have to take the time to farm for LP. And it is in no way easier (or harder) than to do some level build up in the other games of the series.

Hynad, I refer you again to my previous post. Similar flaws exist in other games (such as the AP abusability on FFX-2) but in those games AP is not as important to the development of the characters as XII’s Licence Board is. The Licence Board controls weapons and armour, as well as mere abilities, and as such FFXII’s gameplay is, by default, more broken.

I’d say the Gambits are partially broken, because they leave out some essential Gambits such as Enemy has enemy to steal —> Steal, and some Gambits are made available too late in the game.

I agree on both points, but the system itself isn’t fundamentally flawed, in fact most aspects work well. It is just a couple of very minor specifics. The same is the case for the Licence Board-if they just made it harder to accumulate vast sums of LP, or proportioned LP awarded for defeating each enemy according to its difficulty, it would likely work. But the system as it is is broken. Not irredemable, unlike FFVIII’s Junctions which is just inherently retarded.

Hynad, I refer you again to my previous post. Similar flaws exist in other games (such as the AP abusability on FFX-2) but in those games AP is not as important to the development of the characters as XII’s Licence Board is. The Licence Board controls weapons and armour, as well as mere abilities, and as such FFXII’s gameplay is, by default, more broken.

Not at all. Even though you can buy the License for the best weapons, armors, magics and other abilities pretty early on, those become available only in the later part of the game. So just like in any other games in the series, you won’t be going through the first dungeons with the Ragnarok in hands.

No, but you can go through the early dungeons with 3000 HP, if you farm enough, and if you get all the augments, that gives you an insane advantage early on.

I give you that. Yet even though I did a lot of farming, I did stumble on some challenge through the normal course of the game. Not mentioning the optional sidequests. Truth is Ceidwad, except for FF II and V, I don’t think any of the games in the series offered any real difficult challenge. They are all easy if you take the time to build your characters enough. And FFXII is no exeption.

Even in IX (which as I stated before, is probably the most near-perfect in the series), if you took the time to build your levels, which isn’t really hard once you get access to the cliff filled with Red Dragons near Dali, you could get enough gem stones to equip almost all the abilities you had early on and beat all the bosses in less than 3 minutes.

Red Dragons?

Are they the same thing as the Grand Dragons only the name is changed?

Yeah, they are Grand Dragons. Just got the name mixed.

I give you that. Yet even though I did a lot of farming, I did stumble on some challenge through the normal course of the game. Not mentioning the optional sidequests. Truth is Ceidwad, except for FF II and V, I don’t think any of the games in the series offered any real difficult challenge. They are all easy if you take the time to build your characters enough. And FFXII is no exeption.

Even in IX (which as I stated before, is probably the most near-perfect in the series), if you took the time to build your levels, which isn’t really hard once you get access to the cliff filled with Red Dragons near Dali, you could get enough gem stones to equip almost all the abilities you had early on and beat all the bosses in less than 3 minutes.

This isn’t a debate about which game was easiest/hardest, though. This is a debate about which system is the most broken or manipulable. I have clearly shown it is easy to get large amounts of LP on XII, and also that the LP system itself is broken in terms of not being properly proportioned to the enemies you beat to get it.

You are right-all FF games are easy if you take your time levelling up, but my point is that you have to spend, on average, less time to achieve god-like status in FFXII, especially early on. The one system more broken than FFXII’s LP is the Junction system, which is such a minefield of retardedness that I won’t comment further on it in this thread.

As for the Grand Dragons and Garudas outside Gizmaluke’s Grotto (not Dali) in FFIX, that is not broken-ness, because those beasts are far too powerful for you until a point in the game when you would be able to obtain similar EXP and AP against other enemies elsewhere in the world.

It’s broken because it is easier to get LP, but we are not talking about the game being easier or harder than the others…

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Pretty much all of them are broken, tbh.

It’s broken because it is easier to get LP, but we are not talking about the game being easier or harder than the others…

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A game can be easy without having a broken system. FFX-2’s battle system, for example, was not particularly broken, but there were no particularly difficult boss fights that were mandatory. Spotting a flaw in a battle system’s design is about finding an area where it is possible to make something Y amount easier despite only putting in X amount of effort. It takes very little effort to farm LP on a large scale in FFXII, but you can make the game significantly easier, especially early on, if you take full advantage of the LP system, due to reasons I have already explained.

Also,

Pretty much all of them are broken, tbh.

While that is true to some extent, some are clearly more abusable than others, which is the point of this debate.