Game Breaker/Video Games/Role-Playing Game/Final Fantasy: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

* 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 its 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.

** Not to mention actions that ignore the action queue and take place immediately, such as Quick turns in V and VI and [[Limit Break|Limit Breaks]] in VII and VIII.

* 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 [[Guide Dang It]].

** [[Death of a Thousand Cuts|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 [[Nigh Invulnerable|absurd defenses]].

* Magic spells [[Evolving Attack|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, 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 <ref>and some soldiers outside the castle drop it, even if they are moderately powerful for that part of the game</ref>... Exit can also be leveled up easily, by just walking into a town and casting it, then going back into the town...

** The ''Osmose'' spell can also be considered a game breaker. It's easy to level up, drains humongous amounts of MP from your foe, and never fails (not even on the final boss). One single ''Osmose'' spell and the final boss is completely drained of MP, leaving him only physical attacks. If you have one PC 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.

* Use of the Blood Sword can take down the ''[[Final Boss|Emperor]]'' in two rounds. And in the NES version, there's two of them...

 

* Although the original [[Nintendo Hard|doesn't really have any]], the DS remake introduced a few:

** [[Guide Dang It|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 ALOT easier.

 

== Final Fantasy IV ==

** If you master all the minigames, Rydia's whitkin becomes the gamebreaker by maxing all his stats. Then combining with augments and the right skills you can finish any enemy in the game trivially. An easy "any enemy" strategy is to equip Whitkin with Flare as his only attack option and give him the augments to allow him to cast through walls. If his stats are maxed, Rydia will summon him and he'll get off 3 maxed power flares, doing ''far'' more than 9999 damage collectively - easily beating out Bahamut's damage cap - and all for the low low price of 50 mp.

** In the GBA version, Abel's Lance. This weapon has a chance of casting [[HP to One|Tornado]] whenever Kain attacks with it equipped, which would normally be [[Awesome but Impractical]] since with most common enemies you'll save maybe one hit. The problem is that ''it bypasses immunity''. On '''anything'''. Can you say "[[Final Boss|Zeromus]] dies in 2 hits"? Add the ring that turns Kain's Jump into a [[Double Jump]], and that becomes "Zeromus dies in 1 action".

 

== Final Fantasy V ==

* The spell "Quick" allowed you to immediately have the caster take two additional turns. It had a high MP cost, which curbed its abuse potential a little, but you'd be surprised what you can do with two turns, particularly if you also used X-Magic (which allowed you to cast two spells in one turn) or X-Fight (which allowed you to do 4 attacks on random enemy targets in one turn, albeit with each having reduced power).

* The Blood Sword is a powerful sword that absorbs the enemy's HP when you attack with it, which alone would make it a very effective weapon to use, but it has an abysmal hit rate. However, if you use !Aim, !Jump, or of course !X-Fight, you can completely circumvent the low hit rate as every attack made with these skills is guaranteed to hit. !X-Fight gets a special mention as the Blood Sword also ignores the half-damage aspect the skill. This is because the Blood Sword is considered a magic attack (!X-Fight is only supposed to be used with physical attacks, after all). So, you're getting 4 full-powered Blood Sword attacks, plus 4 half-damage hits from your second weapon (if applicable). Basically, this bumps the damage of a single !X-Fight up to SIX times your normal damage instead of a "mere" 2x. This almost always restores your health to full as well as greatly damaging the enemies, which makes every mid-game fight (and most of the end-game ones) a complete and total joke unless you're facing undead.

* The Mimic command allows characters to copy the previous attacker's commands at no cost, including magic. Mimic can also be used to mimic Mimic commands, so by giving your entire team Mimic, have one character X-magic Golem, which completely negates at least one physical attack, followed by a powerful spell, have the next character mimic that, then have everyone mimic the previous mimic, every character will be both attacking and setting up a shield to block the next physical attack every single round at no cost, making it impossible for an opponent with nothing but physical attacks to do anything but sit there and take damage as all its attacks are blocked... and through use of the above-mentioned berserk bug, all monsters can be made to use nothing but physical attacks.

 

== Final Fantasy VI ==

** A lesser known, but arguably equally broken, abuse of Gau's rages does not involve exploiting any glitches, but is a legitimate use of a particular Rage. The Rafflesia Rage uses the special move "Entice" which basically causes the enemy to convert to the side of the caster, and will damage itself indefinitely. Normally, spells like this would be blocked by immunity but not one enemy in the game is immune to it. The spell may miss occasionally, but it cannot be blocked indefinitely. Use of this rage on the ultimate bosses of the game renders them as helpless pets, who will do nothing but damage themselves for the rest of battle unless the caster (either Gau or Gogo) dies.

** The [[Boss in Mook Clothing|Intangir]] rage seems useful...then Gau casts Pep Up, which gives his HP and MP to another party member and removes him from battle. However, if you cast Mute on Gau, he can't use Pep Up. Using Intangir on a Muted Gau will make him absorb all elemental attacks and almost every status ailment. Unless you're up against something with Stop, an instant death attack, or non-elemental magic, Gau will be untouchable for the rest of the fight.

* Another infamous trick is the Psycho Cyan glitch. By having Cyan use his "Retort" tech, killing him, and then [[Baleful Polymorph|turning him into an Imp]], you activate two glitches, the combination of which causes Cyan to respond to any attack, ''including his own'', with a standard attack on the enemy side. This would cause him to attack, respond to his own attack with an attack, and respond to that attack with another attack, and so on, until the entire enemy side is dead.

* And by killing dinosaurs in a particular forest you could get Economizers (Celestriad if you're playing the GBA rerelease), relics which reduce the cost of all spells to 1 MP. Even the ridiculously expensive spell Ultima that can take out the [[Final Boss]] in a few hits.

** The Economizers (Celestriads), however, become less useful if you consider ''another'' game breaker, the Osmose spell, which drains MPs from enemies and works on virtually every enemy except the undead. It's essentially a free MP recharge. It does waste a turn, unlike the Economizer/Celestriad, but it doesn't take up a relic slot. With the Economiser/Celestriad, you can simply use Osmose to recharge your MP stock, should it somehow fall low.

* The Genji Glove (which allows dual wielding of any two weapons) can be paired with the Offering/Master's Scroll (four attacks for the price of one). Wield the strongest weapons with those relics and the final boss just becomes a challenge of getting the first attack off before he does his opening move. It's one of the few ways you can actually defeat Chupon/Typhon in the arena.

* In the SNES version, the stat MBlock, which should only determine the rate at which a character dodges magic attacks, thanks to a glitch also determines this for physical attacks. Therefore raising your MBlock to 255 allows you to dodge virtually anything. This is fixed in the Game Boy Advance version, but it's still possible (albeit much harder, and only on a few characters) to get '''both''' evasion stats to 255, causing the same result.

** You don't need 255. 128 is enough for most characters, though due to an oddity, some characters need about 131.

** This can be done with an Auto controller even more easily. If left on for five days, your characters will be around Level 88. It takes much longer to gain additional levels, due to the large increases in XP needed.

* The desert near of Maranda allows you to learn the game's best spells in an hour; this can work with the above Ultima/Quick combinations to easily massacre your opponents.

 

== Final Fantasy VII ==

* First of, this game offers the all-powerful Knights of the Round summon. Combine it with (almost) any of the game's support materia for massive fun. W-Summon makes it do a quarter of a million damage. MP Absorb makes it practically free to cast. HP Absorb plus Counter makes you completely invincible. With enough work you can build a whole character around it. The only balance? It's [[Infinity+1 Sword|not available until the end of the last sidequest in the game]] and it takes ''a full minute'' to watch every time it's cast. However, the Quadra Magic materia works with every other summon and magic to make it be cast four times over, albeit at reduced power each time.

* There's also the mechanics for learning limit breaks. Once you figure out how they work, it's really easy to find a good spot and just crank everyone's limit breaks up to the highest trainable level and watch the carnage.

** Not to mention the mechanics for actually acquiring limit breaks in the first place. Killing large groups of lower-powered enemies can unlock your characters' higher level limit breaks earlier than you would otherwise. When it comes to the limits that you can only unlock by using other limits, quipping characters with crappy armor and fighting enemies with high attack power causes them to suffer much higher damage than they normally would and allows you to learn the limits faster.

* Vincent's ultimate weapon deals damage based on the number of enemies he's killed with it. Kill [[Powers of Two Minus One|65535]] enemies and it's an instant kill on anything due to its damage formula overflowing so that it ends up doing negative damage, which triggers a failsafe script that instantly kills anything he hits with it. Due to this, it can even one-shot [[Sequential Boss|Sequential Bosses]] at their first stage.

** to a lesser extent every ultimate weapon does this. They each have the ability to do 9999 damage, when most melee attacks will only do ~1000 damage when the gamer first gets hold of the easier weapons. These weapons all have methods that power them up, such as having high MP or HP, and are weaker when unpowered; but it's usually absurdly easy to satisfy these conditions so that you always hit for 9999 damage, invalidating all spells that don't do multi hits. Special note goes to Barret, Tifa, and the aformentioned vincent, who's ultimate weapons stay at full power once powered up and can never grow weaker.

** Beta is available ''very'' early on in the game. If you're good or lucky, this nuclear chainsaw will cut through the rest of the first disc without any effort. It's three times more powerful than the second-strongest attack you'll have at that point.

** White Wind, which can also be obtained really early in the game, is basically all of the healing materia in the game mashed together for ''less MP'' than any one of its weaker cousins. It recovered your teammates by how ever many health points the caster has, so if the caster has 9999 HP when they use this move, their allies both recover 9999 HP also. Just keep the caster's health high, and your team was in good shape.

** Trine, which has an absurdly low cost for the damage it does; for comparison, the summon Ramuh (which deals damage with exactly the same properties as Trine) does half the damage for double the cost. And Trine is powerful enough to wipe out entire swarms of mooks in a single shot until around the end of disc 2. You know, around the time it's possible to get W-Item and after the time it's possible to get Knights of the Round.

** Goblin Punch, which is incredibly easy to obtain if you know where to find it, and does an obscene amount of damage for 0 MP.

** Command Counter. When hit the character would Counter Attack with a mime of the last action your party performed. Naturally, this can lead you to miming a double summon of Knights of the Round and then on your actual turn repeating it. This was especially notable with enemies that dealt physical damage to all characters in the party because each one of them (if equipped with Command Counter+Mine), they would Mime the Mimed Knights of the Round. This reduced even the strongest enemy in the game to putty.

** Even worse: Barret with Ungarmax. After loading him up with a few Hero Drinks, let him do this, let the enemy attack him, and watch as Barret unleashes up to 144 attacks each worth about 5000+ damage apiece.

* If a character's HP hits exactly 7777 on the dot, they will start automatically attacking enemies for 7777 damage. [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|62 times.]] The [[Incredible Shrinking Man|Mini spell]], normally a [[Useless Useful Spell]], reduces all physical damage caused by one enemy to 1, but there's nothing stopping you from using it on your own characters. By using enough HP Plus materia for 9999 HP, the Demi spell (deals 1/4 max HP in damage) will leave you at 7499 HP - attack with the Mini-ed character 22 times, then use 3 of the lowest level healing potion to heal 100 HP each, and we have instant overkill of any non-[[Bonus Boss]] enemy in the game. It helps that Emerald Weapon has an attack that deals 1111 damage for every materia on your characters - you can see where this is going.

* A comparitively lesser one, but the morph ability can be used like this. The morph ability dies less damage, but if it kills an opponent the opponent will be morphed into a specific item, with each monster type having a specific item it morphs into. The end game has a [[Peninsula of Power Leveling|sunken plane]] where every monster is absurdly powerful (for the level your originally find it) but morphs into a stat boosting item. This by itself isn't too much of a game breaker, the effort of cherry tapping the games hardest foes to death is so extream that you deserve the boost you get. That is until you explor the sunken plane a little and discover [[Secret Character|Yuffie's]] [[Infinity+1 Sword|ultimate weapon]] which can one do full damage attack when using morph, making it absordly easy to collect these stat boosting items, the game starts to get a bit more broken.

=== [[Crisis Core]] ===

* You can equip an accessory called Brutal that raises the maximum damage you can do to 99999. If you then use the Costly Punch materia, you will do 99999 damage with it. All for the low cost of a tiny bit of HP...

** Well, increasing stat bonus of your materia is the only way to max your stats, although even without it, Brutal and Costly Punch allows you to [[One-Hit Kill]] any boss in story mode. On the other hand, you can't even think about killing strongest boss in side missions if you don't have Costly Punch and Brutal and haven't maxed at least some of your stats. After all, she has ''only'' 10 000 000 HP (she can heal herself too), not to mention her deadly attacks.

 

== Final Fantasy VIII ==

* ''FFVIII'''s junction system, combined with the game's [[Dynamic Difficulty]], makes it phenomenally easy to put together game breakers once you know how to use it effectively. Quezacotl's Card and Card Mod and the various GF item-refining abilities can be used to stock the characters up with magic to junction to and boost their stats. Card also prevents the party from earning XP for enemies thus transformed, keeping everyone's levels low; if the player avoids [[Level Grinding]] and focuses on refining and junctioning high-end magic instead, the party's stats quickly outstrip those of their enemies.

* Keeping a character at low HP allows them to execute their [[Limit Break|Limit Breaks]] every turn:

** Selphie's [[Confusion Fu]] limit break includes two [[One-Hit Kill]] spells, "Rapture" and "The End," the latter of which works even on bosses. It doesn't come up often, but by exploiting some minor flaws in the game's programming it's possible to make it unable to perform the next character's action, allowing the player to keep rolling indefinitely until The End comes up.

*** This gets even worse when you use this on really strong enemies like T-Rexaur, Snow Lion, or Ruby Dragon, which almost guarantees enough experience for an automatic level up with each victory.

** If you make sure that the only offensive magic in Rinoa's list is Meteor, her Angel Wing limit break becomes ridiculous, especially when combined with speed exploits. In short, it spams Meteor. [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|Incessantly.]]

** Squall + [[Infinity+1 Sword|Lionheart]] + 100 Hastes junctioned to Speed + Aura + Haste = absolute carnage.

** The risk of leaving characters at low HP is easily offset by another absurdly simple junction setup: set Squall with the Cover and Counter abilities and junction 100 Drain spells to Status-Attack-J. Leave the other two party members' HP as low as you like; Squall will take the hits for them and immediately counterattack, replenishing his own HP with every hit. [[Always Accurate Attack|And he always hits.]]

* Another way of abusing the [[Dynamic Difficulty]] involves [[Guest Star Party Member|Guest Star Party Members]] Seifer (in disc 1) and Edea (in disc 3). Letting the other party members get KOed and [[Level Grinding]] with the guest party member can, if you're willing to grind that much, leave a comparatively low-level party with level 99 GFs and high-end spells like Firaga with no effect on the party's average level once the guest character leaves.

* Any GF that eventually gains an ability that has the word "Bonus" in it, like Ifrit who gets "Strength Bonus", Leviathan who gets "Spirit Bonus", Carbunkle who gets "Vitality Bonus", or Brothers who get "Health Points Bonus", mainly because learning these abilities and keeping these GF's attached to your party members will give them significant boosts in their stats.

* In general the [[Summon Magic|GFs]] are, as already demonstrated above, far more useful for their junction abilities than as actual summons, but there are exceptions:

** Eden's absurdly long summon sequence gives the player ample time to abuse the Boost option. Max your compatibility so you can summon it up within a couple of seconds and watch it completely ignore the damage cap by about 40,000+ points to all enemies.

* The Meltdown spell, which is available once you reach Trabia, will inflict Vit-0 on any and all enemies in the game, including the bosses, ''including'' Omega Weapon, 99.9% of the time. It hardly ever fails. Combine this with Aura (another potential gamebreaker that allows the use of Limit Breaks regardless of health), and you too can experience the fun of spamming Renzokuken on enemies who are literally defenseless.

== Final Fantasy IX ==

* Partially due to the fact that the battle system maxed out at doing one hit of 9999 damage and a maximum boss HP of [[Powers of Two Minus One|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.

** Whether it's a [[Good Bad Bug]] or something else going on, but with at least Auto-Haste and Auto-Regen, characters will become invincible so as long as something doesn't hit for their max HP, as Regen will fire off every millisecond.

* There's Zidane's, Quina's and especially Freya's defense-ignoring 9999 hit spells. Low MP requirements, no available early in the game, though you're unlikely to fulfill the requirements of Quina's until near the end of the game, but that's alright because...

* Many of Quina's Blue Magic spells. Bad Breath, Level 5 Death, Night (combined with your party equipping the Insomniac ability), Magic Hammer, Mighty Guard, Limit Glove, Angel's Snack, White Wind... whether its attacking, defending or healing, at full or low HP, Quina is easily a top tier character, even without his maxed out Frog Drop.

* Steiner's Shock ability which does max damage to practically anything it hits regardless of their stats.

* Amarant in general counts for this due to his high attack strength, his solid stats, and his versatility in his 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.

* 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.

* 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.

 

== Final Fantasy X ==

* Rikku's [[Limit Break]] 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.

** To clarify: Trio of 9999 makes every single effect you use do 9999 damage or healing. Use it with Tidus' and Wakka's best Overdrives to get 6 and 12 hits of 9999 respectively. Conveniently, the 2nd to last boss (much more difficult than the [[Anticlimax Boss]] that you fight after him) has 180,000 hp, letting the combination of these three Overdrives kill him with no trouble.

** To make up for these qualities, however, Dark Knight and Alchemist have low Agility, giving them longer delays between turns. This makes them not-so-great on faster enemies, like the [[Demonic Spiders|Lacertas]] in Via Infinito.

** Paine's Trainer class rivaled an alchemist later if you got your paws on the Ragnarok accessory, reducing all MP cost to 0. She could full-heal the party for about as much as an alchemist Mega-potion (depending on her magic stat), and much much quicker, in addition to having access to a host of other useful functions, like a haste+heal, two different reliable instant kill abilities, shields, and much more.

* Much worse than Cat Nip, the Lady Luck class is completely insane if you are good with those wheels... Black Sky and Cry in the Night are some rather strong nukes, dark matter is a cap-damage vs all enemies damage item, Megalixir completely heals the entire party, Megaelixir+ does the same, but also revives, Mighty Guard+ is pretty much the ultimate defensive skill and just to make it extra broken it has a spell called “CONGRATS!” which grants you instant victory against 99% of the game’s enemies while giving you outrageous amounts of money and insanely powerful rare items for free. Finally Lady Luck gives you automatic double experience, money and items after battle just in case you had any doubt as to what the best job is.

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

 

== Final Fantasy XI ==

** 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 ridiculous overpowered 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".

** 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 [[Limit Break|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 [[Squishy Wizard|Squishy]] with none of the [[Squishy Wizard|Wizard]]. Did I mention that the region not only has an XP bonus, but very short respawn times? Needless to say, colibri [[Broken Base|are a rich source of flame wars]].)

** 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 spam their highest level spells at once.

 

** Zodiac Spear + Bravery + Adrenaline + HP Critical status = a force to be reckoned with, especially if you use Basch. Add Last Stand and Battle Lore and you're really pushing it up to 11.

* Berserk + Bravery + Hastega + Ninja Swords can decimate anything that does not resist Dark; consider the below for a guide on how to massacre the strongest boss in the game. Fran is not berserked for healing when required, and Ashe and Basch bring on the pain. ''Hard.''

* Related to the "General" tab above, ''XII'' also has something similar due to limitations of the Playstation2. When several actions are in queue, spells and abilities that are low in graphic intensity are all triggered at the same time while more powerful abilities in the same queue have to wait until all current actions are completed. When a powerful ability that is graphically intense like Holy or Scathe are used, all other actions in the queue are put on hold until the animation is done. However, regular attacks are not restricted by this rule so enemies and allies alike are free to pound each other while the powerful spell is being cast. This can be frustrating when your powerful spells go off and the enemy wails on you with its melee attacks, but it can also work to your advantage if you do it right yourself to force enemies to wait for their spells or abilities to go off.

 

 

== Dissidia: Final Fantasy ==

* With the right combination of equipment, one can stunt one's character to a piddling 400HP. With 9999 initial Bravery and a full EX Gauge. There is a summon that can lock your Bravery at 9999, and EX Mode can block HP attacks, so you just need to use a single attack on the opponent; but as almost all set-ups give more than four-hundred Brave, the term "rocket tag" is quite suitable. Oh, and you could add a Phoenix Pinion to the combo, ensuring that if you got killed, you'd be healed back to 9999 HP.

* All the above is indeed well and good for breaking tournament play or optional [[Bonus Dungeon|Inward Chaos]], but [[Square Peg, Round Trope|aren't quite gamebreakers]] due to requiring [[Difficult but Awesome|a great deal of skill and practice to begin to be effective]], [[Bragging Rights Reward|equipment and accessories so painstaking to get that almost anyone who has them can demonstrate that they don't need them]], and anyways, villains like Exdeath, Gabranth, and Jecht aren't playable in the plot of ''Dissidia''. Dodge-cancel combos are a different story, however. Some attack chains involve large hitstun to keep the opponent within range of the next part of the chain, but any chain requiring multiple button presses can be interrupted with a dodge before the next attack button is pushed; the attacker can then begin a new attack chain, and some characters can do this repeatedly to maintain these extended combos indefinitely. Furthermore, as the [[All There in the Manual|in-game help files]] state, some HP attacks can be canceled by entering EX Mode, which is another way to abuse hitstun. When you start playing online with human opponents, expect those who use Warrior of Light, Golbez, Sephiroth, and Zidane to spam their aptly-named "infinite combos" to entirely destroy the playability of the game.

 

 

== Final Fantasy Tactics series ==

* If you're willing to put in a little more work, you can build a character that can devastate every enemy on screen, regardless of distance or visibility, with a "Holy" spell while simultaneously healing himself, for no MP cost. If you know how to twist the game mechanics, you can pretty easily solo the entire game.

* For more entertainment, we have the Ninja. They carry awesome stats in almost every category, and handing them the support ability "Martial Arts" makes a devastatingly fast, double-fisted death machine.

** Give a Ninja the "Equip Spear" ability, the "Jump" ability, and optimize them with all of your speed boosting equipment and the Ultimate Javelin. For added effectiveness, learn the Lancer/Dragoon's best Jump skills. You'll have a warrior able to inflict 999 damage from eight panels away with the speed of a Short Charged, level 1 Black Magic spell.

* Two Dancers, paired with three Mimes. Set the Dancers to Wizzinabus. Set the controller down. Even without exploiting the way the game engine calculates damage, they can usually murder their way through just about anything before the enemy can even reach them.

** Incidentally, the fact that [[Duel Boss|Wiegraf]] practically ''requires'' you to abuse this [[Game Breaker]] is part of why he's [[That One Boss]].

* Calculators. With a little trial and error and simple math, you have the ability to get any spell, free of cost, with no charge time, and hitting potentially every enemy in the screen at once. This method was used to solo a speed run in under five hours.

* The Concentrate ability. This Passive ability raises your accuracy by an absurd degree, despite the fact that the accuracy rate is practically the only device the game uses to balance abilities. That instant kill move that only had a 30% hit rate? Well now it's 80%!

* 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.

* [[Video Game Stealing|Steal: Ability]], which was originally intended as a late-game accelerator pedal. By abusing certain really simple game mechanics, you can gain access to the ability [[Disc One Nuke|at a ridiculously early stage]]. As if the dev team anticipated this, you can steal ludicrously powerful abilities in some early missions, and after that the entire power curve of the game just falls apart.

* It should be noted that the "Damage To MP" game breaker from Final Fantasy tactics is even ''easier'' to pull off in this game, since units automatically regenerate MP without moving each round. This makes one of the hardest boss battles in the game trivial.

** It gets better, the Paladin job allows you to wear one of five different types of elemental absorbing robes/armor, shields that can absorb either fire or ice attacks, and two swords that can negate or even absorb Holy-type damage. Combined with the broken setup for the magic users listed below, the equipment options makes the class damn near ''unkillable'' in later missions where elemental damage is more common. Add the fact that the [[Artificial Stupidity|enemy units will NEVER check to see if their elemental attacks will actually harm the target]], and...

* Another fun one is a crew of Nu Mou Scholars. Build your party right and they can damage the entire enemy party while constantly refilling your party's HP or MP. Stagger this properly and you become stupidly unkillable.

** You can then take this even farther by having one ability be Summoning and the other Red Magic, which includes Doublecast. So you can then do all of that ''twice a turn''.

** You can also Ether Shell another Cannoneer with the Gladiator skillset and has the ability Ultima Sword. You can even have them Ether Shell ''each other'' and have both be able to pump out Ultimas for their next two turns -- ''ten turns'' with the Halve MP passive skill equipped. ''Yikes''.

* For your Gria units, have your Ravager master the Sneak Attack ability, which doubles damage from back attacks, and the Unscarred ability, which gives a massive boost to your stats if your HP is full. Then give both abilities to a Hunter, whose huge attack range will generally keep her out of trouble. Add the Regenga clan ability to make sure your Gria's health stays full even if she does take a hit, and you've got a devastating long-range unit that can one-shot almost every regular enemy. As a bonus, Unscarred will also boost the Hunter's Sidewinder (double damage against monster-class enemies) and Ultima Shot (triple damage) attacks.

* Stopshot is ridiculous. Imagine a skill that inflicts the same amount of damage as a regular attack, while also having a high chance inflicting Stop, making the target completely defenseless for about 3/4 of the length of a normal fight, at which time it wears off. While stopped, all of a unit's turns are skipped, meaning it cannot generate MP, move, or act in any way. If the unit has an ability that would normally allow it to counterattack when struck, it does not trigger. A stopped unit has a 100% chance of being hit by any attack for which it is a valid target, including moves that sacrifice accuracy for power. Stopshot costs no MP to cast and, when fired from a gun (as is the point of the Fusilier class), can target almost any square on a normal battlefield. This is in a game where most fights are 6v6, so losing any unit to Stop is a significant disadvantage. Losing two or three to a single gun-toting Moogle is entirely possible, especially if said Moogle receives Haste, allowing it to act (and therefore fire Stopshot) much more frequently.

* Vaan has an ability called Life of Crime that deals damage based on the number of times he has used the Steal command. Use Steal enough and Life of Crime will deal a guaranteed [[Cap|999]] damage every time it's used. But why stop there? By making Vaan a ninja and having him [[Dual Wield]] shields (and giving him the right armor), you can get his Evasion to 80%. Combine this with his Razor's Edge ability, which increases Evasion by 20, and he becomes almost completely unhittable - status effects still work, but that's what the Debuff Resistance clan privilege is for. This allows Vaan to beat most maps entirely by himself.

 

== Other ==

* The SAW weapon in ''Final Fantasy Legend'' (actually a ''[[SaGa]]'' game renamed for the American market) was supposed to have a chance of automatically killing the target if the user's strength was higher than the defender's defense, which is how it works in the sequel. Unfortunately, there was a programming mix-up between ">" and "<", making it so the SAW only worked if the attacker was ''weaker''. This lead to an unfortunate end to the final boss.

** 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 [[Final Boss]] 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 [[Money for Nothing|nothing else to spend money on]].

** 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 [[Revive Kills Zombie]]. 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 [[Good Bad Bug]], 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.

** 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.