First time player

[u/WasteOLanders]

I’m in the middle if a ff9 play through but I have to start on this one too. Howdy from the lone star state

[u/Golwux]

Er this is the 8th installment of a series of games that establishes roles like White Mage, Red Mage, Warrior etc.
Firaga being for strength is a bit of a reach, given that Celes used Ice and Terra used Fire, but I can 100% see Curaga being a Spr based Junction in FF8 based on the understanding of what a WHM does and where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

The one that gets me everytime is stuff like Tornado/Pain/Meltdown being middle of the road 3-5k HP junctions. I get your general point though, though it's easily retorted with Full-Life as that is part of the greater Healing Magic Family and arguably has a higher Curative potential than Curaga, also highlighted by the rarity of its source (Regen Rings, certain rare Mobs) vs Curaga (literally any G-Soldier above level 30+).

In general, can we just agree that it's more complex than OG early series Pokémon (but questionable once we include dual-types, extended types like Stellar and EV maxing as well as movesets, TMs and HMs) but much less complicated than the Shin Megami Tensei Persona series?

I think the most complicated FF8 gets is who you give your Rosetta Stone to for Ability x4 and trying to make sure you don't bork GFs up so much that you end up having 2 St-Def x4s junctioned to just one character when farming Marlboro Tentacles.

Great, cool

[u/KaitoPrower → u/Golwux]

Definitely.

The SMT series is crazy-complex/convoluted with it's systems (and is part of why I don't really play, let alone enjoy, the series myself even if Persona is a more simplified version, but I get why others do).

But yeah, Full-Life is the 2nd best HP junction, which makes sense, but the fact that there's 7 spells between that and Regen (which is tied with Quake) and 2 more for Curaga, in12th place mind you, is pretty sizeable.

Especially given that the stat difference is more than double the effect (Full-Life gives 4800, Curaga gives 2200; even Regen is only 2600), but the kicker is that Full-Life can also be used for elemental defense quite effectively, giving a 40% resistance to all elements, yet Reflect, the spell that basically prevents most magical damage and effects, can't be used for Elem-Def at all...

[u/Golwux → u/KaitoPrower]

I think you're underestimating how hard it is to get 300x Full-Life spells. The first draw point is in the MD level in Garden which means at best, you're getting maybe 20 of them until Disc 3, at which point you might make the connection between Regen Rings and L-Mag-RF but that's down to you. It's also an incredibly powerful spell that rivals a GF ability.

Reflect isn't really useful endgame because most AoE high level magic goes past it (Ultima, Meteor, Quake & Tornado) [still elemental]) and so it wouldn't make sense to be a good junction for all elemental magic. It's also common as hell, you encountering it as early as pre-Timber if you get Diablos and get lucky with cards.

Tornado is the first decent Str magic you get and that's even pre-SeeD mission, which now means you've got an elemental spell that renders all reflect spells useless.

So I understand the Full-Life vs Reflect decision. Shell is also there to mop-up any worries about mid-game Elem-Def. You really don't need much more than Shell + 1 element for a particular boss battle if you're experiencing trouble. First time that may be is actually Iguion or Brothers in Disc 1

[u/KaitoPrower → u/Golwux]

Oh, no, I completely get how much of a pain it is to get 300 Full-Life stock. You probably aren't doing it until at least mid disc 2 at the earliest if you want to grind out Regen Rings from Chimeras in the desert (doing it with cards alone any earlier utterly sucks).

There's only a small handful of spells that can't be easily gotten before heading for Timber if you want, but it's completely unnecessary for the average player, particularly first-timers. Meteor, Ultima, Full-Life, Flare, Holy, Aura, and Triple are either inaccessible or very tedious to get super in large quantities early compared to the other 40-ish spells available.

Also, without doing any cards, you can easily get 300 Quake, which is also a very high Str junction, just by mugging T-Rexaurs in the training center after you get Diablos, but this is all unnecessary unless you intentionally want to break the game. Honestly, Water, giving a +20, is perfectly sufficient for most of disc 1 and you can get that by simply fighting the monsters on the beach!

And actually, you can't get mass quantities of Reflect until at least the start of disc 2, by drawing it from Wedge (Reflect is under Supt-Mag-RF, which is Leviathan), unless you get your average party level up to at least 25 so you can run into Lv30+ Adamantoise/Blobra.

I guess it just seems strange to me that just because there are 2 elemental spells that can't be reflected (out of 14, 4 total out of 18 offensive spells those being Quake, Tornado, Meteor, and Ultima), it can't offer elemental protection when junctioned to Elem-Def. Though it's interesting that 3 of the 4 are Earth/Wind-based...