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Here's where you'll learn my strategy on mastering this game.
This game is basically keeping your characters up to date. It is quite easy to beat Adel (the last boss before Ultimecia's Castle) with your originial weapons, high level magic, and every GF up to Alexander. (However, you won't be want to use GF's on Adel, more on that later.)
You won't *need* ever GF to beat the game, but you *should* obtain every one. You only draw most of the GF's out of bosses you're forced to fight anyway, and out of the ones you don't have to get (there are 7): 3 are the most powerful in the game (Eden, Cactaur, and Diablos), 1 allows you to shop in disc 4 (Tonberry, although Doomtrain does this too. But he's more important for something else.) 1 will make it possible for you to cast double and triple on everyone w/o magic (Ceberus). 1 allows you to raise a character's HP by 140% once it's learned 3 abilities (Brothers) and finally, Doomtrain not only has the junk shop ability, but it greatly helps you out in Ultimecia's castle. I'm warning you now, once you unlock your GF you will need to summon Doomtrain against each of Ultimecia's servants. Get every GF. Trust me. None of them are impossible to obtain. If I can do it, anyone can. And I'm not just saying that to put your mind at ease. Truly, I am not a Final Fantasy expert.
Once you get the hang of the game, it's not hard if you remember the cardnial rule: put cure and revive before attack. Why? Cause keeping your characters alive is more important than destroying the enemy. You don't want game over. If someone's HP gets low, heal them! When I play, I don't let a character's HP get about 1/4 lower than full before I heal them. You never know what attack is next in the enemies bag of tricks. If a character dies, do whatever you can to get that character back on their feet. Your worst nightmare is having 2 characters down. I've only been able to get out of that situation once, while fighting a ruby dragon. The dragon's breath killed Irvine and Zell, leaving only Squall. On my next turn, I brought Zell back to life, because he had the "revive" ability. Next , Zell brought back Irvine, and on Irvine's next turn, he used "recover" to heal Zell. then Squall healed himself and the battle continued. That kind of teamwork is need to beat this game. Another example of revive before attack comes from my sister's game. The fight against Rajin and Fujin on disc 2 in Balamb is the hardest battle up to that point. Screw Edea at the end of disc 1. That was nothing compared to this. (More on that later) Anyway, Irvine, who had the lowest HP out of him, Squall and Zell (my sister is alot like me), died right away. I instructed my sister to bring Irvine back to life with phoniex down as soon as Zell's turn came. She did so, and Irvine was alive--for a second. Fujin immeditaly attacked Irvine, killing him again. I told my sister to bring him back again. She did and the same thing happened. This must have happened 5 or 6 times before Irvine was up for good again. While Zell was reviving and curing, Squall was attacking, more or less. The moral is to keep reviving characters, even though it may seem hopeless. Because if you think about it, while the enemy's killing a newly revived character, it's laying off your living ones. So, remember, the cardinal rule of battle: revive, then cure, then attack.
Here are some other battle rules:
1. When all else fails, GF prevails
Lame line aside, I'm serious. If it seems to be taking forever to kill some creature, or your party's in bad shape, just call upon a strong GF or two. If you're not familiar with the enemy you're attacking, steer clear of any elemental GF's or Diablos, because you may end up inflicting no damage, or worse, healing the creature. Cactaur, Tonberry, Bahamut, Eden and Doomtrain are always good bets, because even if the enemy is immune to poison, the status effects inflicted upon the enemy are well worth it. If you don't have those GF's, you can usually check and see what's not good to use by what magic the creature is casting on you, or what magic you can draw from it. For example, if you're getting hit with fire magic, call upon Shiva. For a safe bet, call upon the Brothers or Alexander, as most enemies aren't immune to Earth or Holy. you can usually tell when Diablos will work. If the creature looks like it could have wandered out of your backyard, and is the color red, blue, green or yellow, Diablos will most likely help you out. All enmies on the Galbadian continent are damaged by Diablos. If the creature is a heavy magic caster, Diablos will probably not be effective. Creatures that use mainly phyical attacks are. For example, Rudy dragons, Malborlos, and Iron Giants are damaged by Diablos, but creatures like Imps are not. What can I say? I have a 6th sense for indentifying creatures immune to Diablos. Maybe you'll develop it too.
2. Save you cure magic
For boss fights, I mean. Don't go around using it anytime you get injured in random encounters. Use abilities like "recover" or use hi-potions. You can always buy more of those while there's no such thing as a magic store. Same goes for hard to come by magic like aura, demi, ultima, triple, double, regen, meltdown, meteor, tornado and full-life. When you get to a big boss fight and are looking for a regen spell, you don't want to curse yourself because you used it fighting a geezard.
3. Remedys cure everything.....
Sure, remedys cure every status effect, but don't go reaching for one every time a character comes away from battle with an abnormality. Why? Here's why: 1) remedys are really expensive, and you can't afford to stock up frequently. 2) when a character is hit with an abnormal status attack in battle and has the item command instead of magic, are you going to remember which particular product cures what? No! You're gonna just slap a remedy on them. Well, what if you're out.....So you see, when you have the luxury of the menu that tells you what cures what, use the specific product. Save the remedys for later.
4. Don't be stingy healing your GF's!
Heal any GF that has suffered an HP loss immediatly after battle. You don't want a GF to die on you. I hate that. And even though it will happen no matter how often you heal your Gf's, it may sometimes come down to it either dying cause you didn't bother, or it hanging on with 100 cause you used the G-potion. Better to be able to use the GF one more time than not at all.
5. Plan Ahead!
Before you plunge into battle, think about how you're going to start. The whole rhythm of the event will be set by how you go about it at the start. Think what each character will do their first time up (the 1st time they're ready to attack). For boss fights, I usually don't recommend summoning 2 GF's at once. If the enemy counter attacks with something major, you'll have two damaged GF's. Not a good thing.
6. Keep the Pressure Up!
This is for big battles, and pretty much what I mean is: think and act. Don't ponder over what you should do next, pick something and do it! Spend your pondering time during the tail end of GF animation, when you can't boost anymore. Most of the time an enemy will not wait for you to make up your mind on which attack you want to use! So, think when you can afford to, during GF animation and magic casting, or even while your characters are getting attacked. Simply, keep doing stuff, and try not to stop. When a character's turn comes, give them something to do right away.
7. 2 Great menu features
They're called "rearrange" and "battle". Here's a quick description, one at a time.
**** "rearrange": go into your menu and select magic, then select a character. On the top you'll see a few choices: use, exchange etc etc etc and rearrange. Choose rearrange and a menu will pop up with ways you can arrange your magic. Manuel is good, because you can truly customize the order of your magic. The other choices are different combos of the words: indirect, restore and attack. The game will arrange your magic depending on what words you choose. Indirect is magic like haste, double and aura. Restore magic is cure, life and the like, and attack is magic such as thunder, demi, water, holy etc etc etc. I recommend manuel or restore, indirect, attack.
**** "battle": select item and you'll see a command called "battle" at the top. Choose it, and you can arrange your items for battle. Not quite as important as rearranging magic, but important nonetheless. It's nice to know where your items are.
8. Limit Breaks--Beware
Limit Breaks are great. But don't go using them every time the oppertunity comes around. Think "is there something more important my character could be doing this turn?" i.e healing anyone, or summoning a powerful GF. Sometimes it's better *not* to use your limit break. Think about the best think to do before you happily click the X button.
9. Flipping through menus, nightmare #2
I told you about nightmare #1, having 2 characters KO'd, and although I've touched on this with the "rearrange" command, I thought I'd reinforce it. During a difficult battle, the last thing you want to be doing is flipping helplessly through your menu, searching for a spell. Truly, the magic menu can be a death trap. If all 8 pages are filled, that means you have 32 spells in your inventory. I'ts very easy to skip over what you're looking for as you frantically go through each page. Have an idea of where your spells are. Put frequently used spells on the first 3 pages so you can find them easily.
10. Ammo, ammo, ammo. I made you out of clay....
Well, you can't make ammo out of clay, but you can make it out of other items. You'll need powerful ammo for battles, when Irvine needs his limit break. The best kind is Pulse Ammo, but it can only be obtained by refining energy crystals, which are dropped by a creature in the city of Esthar (and by in the city, I mean *in* the city). Ap ammo, the 2nd most powerful type, can be easily refined from chef knives, which can be stolen from Tonberry's at the Centra Ruins. I recommend stocking up on this ammo because the types of ammo that can be bought, normal and shotgun, suck.ABOUT SAVING
Save everytime you reach a save point. You may regret it later if you don't. On the World Map, save after every random encounter (you can save anywhere on the World Map) that way if you make a big mistake, you can reset your game and start from when just before you messed up. I also recomment that you devote an entire memory card to FF8 and save you game in a different section from time to time. That way, if you screw up, you can pick up before the mistake.
MY SUGGESTIONS ON WHEN TO SAVE IN A DIFFERENT SLOT
You should save on a different part of the memory card after you do something you really like. For example, if you save right before you meet Irvine, and you decide you have to watch his entrance animation again and again (like me ::cough cough::), then the next time you save your game, save in a different slot so you can watch it again without having to play the whole game over. Other suggestions are when you meet Zell, the SeeD dance, and Squall and Rinoa on the Ragnarok (disc 3).