Need general help

[StophJS]

Hey all. I'm playing through FF8 again, and I seem to be having some trouble. I'm pretty sure when I was 12 or so and I was first playing the game, I ended up cheating to be able to beat it. This time I don't even have the option, or maybe I would, since I'm mostly playing for the story. It feels like I'm at kind of a weird place in the game. I'm on Disk 2, just after the fight in Balamb with Raijin and Fujin. So far, I have literally just been spamming GFs, because it is clearly my most powerful way of fighting. My physical attacks are garbage, and spells aren't powerful enough to warrant using them up instead of just keeping them junctioned.

I've been able to beat the bosses so far obviously, but I literally can't defeat a single tonberry, let alone get the tonberry or odin summons. I also see no possible way for me to kill a cactuar, and it seems like these are all things people are doing at this stage in the game. I have spells junctioned to a few stats per character, so I don't think it's like I'm failing completely at developing my party.. I haven't done any weapons upgrades because I haven't even found the required items to do any along the way. I've tried to look into what I should do online, but it's all a little confusing and there's so much information to sift through. I guess I could just go on spamming GFs along the main story as long as it's working.. but I kind of want to get tonberry, etc. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[Squalllionheart]

Are you drawing and junctioning magic to take advantages of your stats? For example Squall and Zell have good stregth and speed, while Quistis and Selphie have good magic stats, obviously the more powerful the magic the stronger the boost in stats you get, if I were you I would find a walkthrough (try gamefaqs.com) to see where you can draw different magics from. As for Tonberry and Odin, from what I remember they are pretty tough but again refering to a walkthrough will give you lots of helpful tips and advice on what the best party/strategy is.

Hope this helps.

[Rinoa-Ultimecia true]

YOU CANT EVEN BEAT A TONBERRY?! thats pathetic you should get F magic refine or any magic refine, you should get card mod go play triple traid with ma dincht in balamb and win the zell card from her, when you do that go card mod, refine zells card in to 3 hyper wrists which teaches you'r GF's the str+60% abillity equip that on all 3 party members you currently have, now here is the fun part get time magic refine and you should get diablos if you allready didn't if you did you should get his GF triple traid card now refine his card in to 100 black holes and than refine those 100 black holes in to 100 demis for each of you'r party members now keep using demi on 1 tonberry untill his HP drops enough for you'r phisicalls to drop him dead once you've killed 19 tonberrys you get to fight the king tonberry which is an easy variation of a normal tonberry and get ifrit to learn mad rush before hand and just use it in this boss fight the king tonberry will literaly NEVER get a turn

[kratoscar2008]

YOU CANT EVEN BEAT A TONBERRY?! thats pathetic you should get F magic refine or any magic refine, you should get card mod go play triple traid with ma dincht in balamb and win the zell card from her, when you do that go card mod, refine zells card in to 3 hyper wrists which teaches you'r GF's the str+60% abillity equip that on all 3 party members you currently have, now here is the fun part get time magic refine and you should get diablos if you allready didn't if you did you should get his GF triple traid card now refine his card in to 100 black holes and than refine those 100 black holes in to 100 demis for each of you'r party members now keep using demi on 1 tonberry untill his HP drops enough for you'r phisicalls to drop him dead once you've killed 19 tonberrys you get to fight the king tonberry which is an easy variation of a normal tonberry and get ifrit to learn mad rush before hand and just use it in this boss fight the king tonberry will literaly NEVER get a turn

Thats not patethic the guy is a newbie in FF i guess so dont bash at him

The OP should take his time and wait to Disc 3 to do the lots of sidequests.

[StophJS]

Eh, I guess it doesn't matter now. Thanks for the advice all, but I just copied a couple saves over to my PS3 internal memory card to experiment with it and it copied over my other save...

[Leonheart~]

Didn't a lot of grinding help you along the way?

[Rinoa-Ultimecia true]

Thats not patethic the guy is a newbie in FF i guess so dont bash at him

The OP should take his time and wait to Disc 3 to do the lots of sidequests.

i did all of the side quests as soon as i obtained the flying army base on the centra continent i got Odin and i got tonberry he just needs to do some very time consuming shit such as grind to get the card mod ability from quezacotl and time magic refine abillity from diablos as well as the zell card from triple triad with ma dincht, in his home @ balamb, that is all needed if you wont to play the game normally seriousely if you dont junction and do all that to make you'r self obsenely over powered by just phyisicall attacks you are pretty much screwed

[Omega_Beast]

I usually grind right at the beginning and get Squall to level 20 before the Fire Cavern. Then when I get the other party members, I level up outside Balamb, draw a load of water and junction it. My GFs would also be the same level as Squall too.

I'm good to go for disc 1 and the first part of disc 2. Since I spent loads of time grinding. Levelling up is boring, but it pays off!

[George Costanza]

There's not much point level grinding in FFVIII, and having Squall a lot higher than other members of your party is counter-productive as the monsters and bosses level up with Squall. The junctioning system is at the heart of the game. Once you understand how to junction magic well it's a very easy game. I don't think you can leave Balamb once you enter it to fight Fujin and Raijin, but if you can it might be worth your while to go to Trabia. You can draw Meltdown from those monsters that look a bit like Stingrays. Meltdown reduces enemy vitality to 0. Other than that stock as much powerful magic as you can and then junction it. The higher the quantity of a particular magic, the more power it has when you junction it.
If you're having trouble with the junctioning there's an auto-junction feature, but I'd recommend learning how to do it yourself.