Anyone else remember the epic version of the series staple Ultima Weapon in FFVIII?
The one who was weaker but way cooler than Omega?



For my part, it's the build-up that makes him so awesome and memorable.
You find the Deep Sea Research Facility and start making your way down, not exactly knowing what the place is or why it was abandoned. (if you didn't cheat and already know what you were going down there for, you also didn't know what was coming next =P) After a rather long trek of fighting monsters you arrive at your destination and start up some sort of machine to do...what? Who knows.

We wait, anticipation grows and the heroes ponder over why the place was abandoned. We get to see different bits of the facility and out of nowhere an alarm goes off with a warning to evacuate. Cut back to the heroes and they're noticing some rocks are now resonatig...the air is heavy...the sound of a heartbeat is getting louder and louder and the tension could be cut by a knife. All the mystery and questions and anticipation comes to a head at this moment.

Then BAM.

The battle is jumped right into with no warning whatsoever.

It helps that the music chosen for the fight was also perfect and Ultima himself looked wicked with his huge version of Cloud's Ultima Weapon.

Yeah...that was my experience.
How about you all?

It was no fair Ultima Weapon jumped me out of nowhere i died horribly cause i didn't have my main team out which was Squall Rinoa and zell. But di second time i gave him LionHeart. Squall is hitting weak on dis video he should be hitting up to 5000-7000 per hit on Renzokuken. And hitting on 8000-9999 wid Lionheart.

First time i battled Ultima Weapon, my characters were weak and unprepared, still i managed a win by doing 6 or 7 times Zells limit break (I did not know about Armaggedon Fist at that point). Although i wa so focused on surviving that i forgot to draw Eden.

Ultima Weapon is the second best boss in my opinion in FFVIII. Yet if you have your characters well prepared he is not tough at all. Zell is all you need to finish Ultima, 1 Armaggedon Fist combo is enough to destroy it. Squall's Lion Heart is to random and it does less damage.

Also Selphie's Full Cure helps too.

Ultima Weapon was a badass, but he looked more frightening than he actually is, imo. The first time I played through the game, he was just another tough-boss, but later on, he was nothing... but that was because I had learned the tricks of the trade.

The real trick is to keep yourself on a low level throughout the game, while junctioning yourself to keep your max HP high/maxed and getting your strength and otehr stats as close to maxed as possible. The thing is that by doing this (as long you concentrate on drawing the magics needed for the proper junctions) you can manage to pull off maxing your main party's stats around level 25-30... which keeps all the enemies on the low levels, and allows you to annihilate them like you're on level 100.

By doing this, I ended up taking out Ultima Weapon with just casting aura, and using one Renzokuken... landing a Lionheart, of course. The only draw back to this strategy is if you decide to level up to 100 before beating the game... because it takes FOREVER.