FF8 Twink Challenge - Completed
Sat down today to finish it. Lionheart's Multiplier is SILLY (seriously, 17 hits at 4.5x a regular physical? That's a 76.5 mult >_>). As for the Bosses...
Adel - Seems like the amount she drains from Rinoa differs depending on her level. My guess is though its all a relative portion of Rinoa's health. Main concern was to kill Adel before Rinoa died. Given my set up, I could pretty much eat anything else she threw at me and still live, so it didn't matter. Needless to say, Squall bumrushed the crap out of her.
Sorceress Gauntlet - All of them were OHKO'd except for the last one who ate a physical and then a 5 hit Renzo thanks to Squall being weakened by Adel and the previous Sorceresses.
And then, Ulty's servants were fought in the following order
Sphinxara - Spam attack. Win
Tri-Point - Mostly spam attack. Absorb lightning obviously, but put self into sweet spot range before hand so that I can Renzo despite getting healed. He almost got Oncharge off which would've fucked me up big time.
Trauma - Hey look, his pulse cannon does like 900 damage. Renzokuken says hi
Red Giant - Epic. He has perfect defense. Squall has lots of strength + hitting weakness and blind'd him in one attack. Sweet spot range for Renzo spam go go go. This is the guy that can tank a Lionheart and still keep going. Many Renzos later and he finally goes down.
Gargantua - Three physicals to kill the Vysage before hand. Gargantua has Berserk, which is cute considering Counter twist deals a respectable amount of physical damage. I got a Renzo off before hand though, so I killed him before he killed me with counters.
Krysta – Sweet spot for Renzo range (around 3000 HP). 2 Renzos is all it can take. However, counter + final Ultima means around 2000 damage guaranteed to be dealt, which is why you need that sweet spot for this one.
Catablopas – One reset. Underestimated Meteor, which dealt 360 per hit. Double KO! Second time, I came back with Auto Shell. One Renzokuken later and a winner is me
Tiamat – Absorb Fire/Ice/Thunder. Doesn’t matter at this point since he can’t really do anything to you
Ultemecia – 0 resets! A number of things can actually go wrong in this fight. For example, if she pulls three people that have been KO’d and revived due to Save Point BS and then casting a MT spell, you lose. This didn’t happen as she picked Squall as one of the starting three. First form dies to one Renzokuken.
Greiver – Need Auto Shell for this one, since Shockwave Pulsar deals around 5500 damage. So having Auto Shell allows you to have lower HP threshold and lets you pull off Renzokukens instead of physical spam. Important as Greiver has Doom, which can definitely screw you over. Anyways, 4 attacks + 1 Renzokuken = gg
Ulti/Griever – Mmm..I got a Lionheart here, so!
Final Ultimecia – This completely hinges on which junctions she blew away. If HP is gone, then you need to kill Ultimecia’s subpart to prevent her from nuking you to kingdom come with Apocalypse. If she blew away your Strength junction, then spam Renzo constantly since losing any other junctions can become bad. Hope for Lionhearts. If she blew away Elem Attack/Elem Def for healing, you’re in trouble since Hell’s Judgment + anything = gg. If that happens, spam Renzo, then attack as fast as you can to get the plot KO to kick in. My run here faced none of these problems until the end where she blew away my Meteor. So basically at the point where it didn’t matter and I could plot KO her with Excalipoor anyway. 2 Renzokukens finish her off.
GF ranking:
1. Carbuncle – Has way too many good abilities. Ability x3 + HP/Vit junctions and St-Def so you don’t need to touch Siren ever again. I also gave it Card afterwards which let me stop using Queztacolt for good, so it was my staple GF
2. Cerberus – Has way too many junctions and a few awesome abilities to go with it. And afterwards, lots of leftover slots so you can teach him stuff like Str+60% or HP+80%. Junctioning both Carbuncle and Cerberus usually gave me enough for any situation. Cerberus loses points because he joins much later, at which point, Carbuncle likely has a few things invested ahead of time. Plus it takes Cerberus AGES to learn Auto Haste and St-Defx4. Good thing for him Cactuar Island is available like right afterwards so he’s not penalized as heavily on this.
3. Queztacolt – Has Card and Card Mod. Gives you early game 100 Triples to smash everything into pieces. Later on, you still need Card Mod. And if you didn’t give Card to any other GF, he’s your EXP avoider. Very important even though he’s not impressive junction wise.
4. Ifrit – Early Strength junction + Strength +40% and HP junction. Ifrit dominates early on. Also has Ammo RF, which you need for those Pulse ammos too.
5. Brothers – Earliest to get HP+80%, which is already awesome. Aside from that, him + Carbuncle gives you a nice list of junctions before Cerberus and Doomtrain come to take over. Later on, he has nothing though.
6. Doomtrain – St-Defx4 is redundant thanks to Cerberus. What sells Doomtrain are Elem-Def x4 and Auto Shell. Both are very cool abilities and he has them on his initial ability list. Plus when he arrives, you can get back to Cactuar Island fairly soon.
7. Shiva – Earliest Strength junction, which you need for the Dollet mission. Nets her this high despite being completely useless afterwards!
8. Diablos – Earliest and possibly your only GF to learn Mug if you get lazy. Need Mug to get a few refining items and ingredients, so don’t brush it off. Enc-None is also godly and has HP+80% as well. Also has Time Mag RF for your Triples. He was a pain to junction at all times however since he never provided anything useful junction wise.
9. Pandemona – Speed + Strength is cool. Pandemona gets way too little GF time before Cerberus shows up and completely over shadows. It’s like Orlandu vs. Meliadoul all over again. Pandemon to its credit, has Initiative. This makes your Cactuar hunting easier and is useful against Tonberries!
10 . Siren – Has L Mag RF and Move/Find. Nothing else pretty much. Tool RF is way too situational for it to be any use. And the rest of her abilities are garbage. Lolmag-j
11. Alexander – Uh…uh…it has Med Level UP for out of battle use >_>? Elem Defx4 rendered moot thanks to Doomtrain coming so close. Learns…pretty much nothing else.
12. Tonberry – Call shop in Disc 4 is worth a few points for restocking HP to get Squall to a sweet spot range.
13. Leviathan – It has a Spirit junction at a point where you might not have spirit junction!
14. Cacutar – It has EVADE AND LUCK!!!1111!
15. Bahamut – In fairness if you never got a Rosetta Stone or decided to avoid GF customizing, it would probably be higher because Ability x4 is awesome and he has innate Strength+60%. However, he comes so damn late. And he DROPS a hyper wrist for you, so that Str+60% point is moot. Both Carbuncle and Cerberus have free GF space to learn Ability x4 too, so he’s largely useless, but still better than…
16. Eden – this guy. Lolultimategf what
And that as they say is that. Overall thoughts:
Its quite a fun challenge and does pretty much as advertised in the twink league. Some key differences:
1) In the twink league is that Squall can’t adjust his HP whereas he can in game. Huge advantage he has here since opening Renzokukens can be such a vital step that it becomes impossible for the enemy to come back from.
2) In twink league set ups, Squall never gets any of the abilities such as Auto Haste, which are very awesome and something that amplifies the power of the twink in-game.
3) St-Atk is basically glorified in the DL (partly thanks to Drain). It was my LEAST used junction next to something like Mag/Luck/Eva. Two reasons for this. One is that if you’re healing, the status you used can’t be something lethal otherwise you will kill yourself with it. The other is just that most bosses are not susceptible to particular lethal statuses. Sure Red Giant gets owned by Blind, but someone like Adel or Ultimecia isn’t threaten by it.
Healing was by far and large the biggest concern. But once you have it, you have pretty much EVERYTHING you would ever need despite all the command restrictions. I’m really tired of triple triad for now though, seeing as how many games I played to stock up on differing magic. Anyways, hope you enjoyed reading. That concludes that challenge/experiment!
Squall’s Disc 4 starts when game beaten:
HP – 8500
Str – 204
Vit – 95
Mag – 63
Spr – 88
Spd – 93
Eva – 25%
Luck – 34
Elem Atk – 100% Ice
Elem Def: - Absorb Ice 100%, Absorb Fire/Thunder 30%, Resist everything else 50%
St-Atk – 100% Blind
St-Def – Immune Blind, POIZN, Silence, Curse, Confuse, Death, Petrify
