Best and worst limit break systems

(Regarding the thread title, obviously they're not all called limit breaks, but that's probably the name that most of us would use to describe all of them)

Each system has its own strengths and weaknesses, but which is the best, and which is the worst?

I think Final Fantasy X has the best system, Overdrives. Characters build them up, initially through taking damage from enemy attacks, but later through a variety of other means. That's one of the things I really like about the system; it can be tailored to suit your needs. For example, I always equip Rikku (and anyone else who knows the steal command) with Slayer in an area with Machina, because it charges fast. On the other hand, Slayer is useless in boss battles, so it's not all-powerful. The Overdrives all have their own methods of activation, which I think is more fun than just unleashing them with a tap of X. Another important feature that Overdrives had was that they did not have to be used at any particular time - they could be saved for a later battle - and they did not take the place of the regular attack command, so they weren't a disadvantage or an annoyance to have at any time.

The worst system, on the other hand, came in the very next (main series, single player) game. Final Fantasy XII has Quickenings, which made no sense to me. Rather than being last-gasp moves that were the result of suffering for a long time, it's possible to charge them up by... walking around in circles. Or touching a save crystal, or going to sleep on an airship, and so on. For some reason they are linked to your characters' MP through Mist Charges, which meant that using them would leave you needing to restore your MP immediately afterwards. The attacks could be chained together, and although they could be powerful, they were completely uninspiring. Each character's Quickening of a given level did the same damage as any other character's and none of them were elemental or inflicted any status effects (even though some of them had the appearance of being fire- or ice-based). Although they had their uses in some boss battle strategies, they were pretty much all-or-nothing attacks, due to the need to restore MP afterwards. Even Square Enix recognised the problem of linking them to MP, because they fixed it for the International version of the game.

As for the other games, I have pretty much never got a desperation attack in VI, as they are quite rare. VII's limit breaks were good, but it was annoying that they stopped you from using the regular attack command. Some characters' final limits were disappointing, too, because they only hit once and there was a 9999 damage limit. VIII's limit breaks were too easy to access with Aura and too powerful, at least for Squall and Zell. It also felt silly to keep tapping triangle in the hope of getting one - what did that represent in the game world, anyway? The biggest annoyance of IX's trances was that they could be activated at a bad time, like the very end of the battle. Other than that, I understood the premise behind them, and I liked that they were actually used as a plot device outside of battle, unlike pretty much every other game.

Sorry, long post. What do you think?

Pretty much exactly what you said Flint I can still remember back in ye olden dayes of yore when FFX was pretty new and rumors of a FFVII remake were both rampant and believable (if only cause younger and dumber). Someone told me the limit break system would work more like FFX's, leaving you able to store the full limit gauge for later and just use regular attacks until you were ready. And that sounded awesome as all hell.

I agree that X seemed to have the most balanced and well-implemented limit break system. Being able to choose how it charged was incredibly useful. For instance, I didn't always have Yuna out on the mainline during my battles, so if the limit break charge had only been based on damage they took, her limit bar would never had charged. As it was, though, with hers set on gaining charge when she healed people, she would often gain a limit just from me pulling her in solely to heal allies. It made the most sense of Auron to gain charge from dealing damage, etc. You could use them when you wanted, or still attack normally. Plus, Yuna's Grand Summon was freaking awesome during some boss battles The only thing I didn't like about X's was Kimahri's Overdrive, but that doesn't really have to do with the whole system so much as the stupidity of his design, of only being able to use his Blue Magic skills during an Overdrive.

I think that IX's was frustrating, at times, although I don't really remember any specific times that it backfired on me (trying to charge it up before a boss and having it go off in some inconsequential battle, although I'm sure it did happen), nor do I think that it really bothered me too terribly much when it did. I liked IX a lot, though it's been quite some time since I last played it, and don't really remember any of the negative thoughts on it as a whole that I might have had while playing it.

I liked VII's, though as Flint said it was rather annoying that you couldn't access your normal attack when you had a limit ready to go. I remember using items or magic just to avoid having to use a limit before getting to a boss battle, even if it made whatever current random encounter I was in last twice as long as it should have if I'd just been able to use physical attacks.

I don't remember seeing any of the desperation attacks in VI, and I haven't played VIII or XII.

So I guess my favorite system of the bunch is definitely X's. VII's was more player friendly than IX's, although I thought story-wise IX's made the most sense.

I agree with most of what has already been said.

I definitely think X's had the best, which seems to be common consensus. However, XII's was OK. They were easy to use and probably the most interactive of any system, I liked being able to chain together all the different attacks then end with a powerful move depending on how many you'd managed. It wasn't often useful but for damage output if you needed a big finisher or whatever it was pretty great, just not a lot of people used it due to the MP cost thing.

IX's was the worst, no contest for me. I found them completely useless due to the way they charged. Maybe if they even charged up more often I would have found it less irritating, but meh. On my most recent playthrough I don't recall using them even once. Maybe Double Magic for Vivi in a random battle against a spider monster, but that was about it.

Having said that, I don't remember using a desperation attack in VI either. VII's was just about right, VIII's was too spammable. XIII doesn't really have them, I suppose summons were the characters' special attack since it consumes TP. They do have a unique attack each though, Fang's highwind being my favourite. But they don't really compare to "limit breaks".

While not exactly a limit break system, FFXIII and XIII-2's stagger system did add an interesting aspect to the battle mechanics, probably the most important aspect of it, actually. The character's 'ultimate' abilities usually do something with said stagger thing, but it's not very dramatic. Just mentioning it, can't remember them all properly,

Well Vanille has death, with I think a base 1% chance of working or something, but if it doesn't it causes high damage. Lightning's builds the stagger % which s useful, and Fang's causes massive damage and hits a number of times in an instant, but ends the stagger. It's probably the most useful of all the character abilities. Snow has Sovereign Fist which I think I've used once but I forget what it does, and I don't know Hope's or Sazh's :s

It's tough to give it to anything other than FFX's. As people have elaborated, the ability to set what makes the bar increase is supremely useful. They take just a bit of skill to perform, and you can hold onto them. The best of all worlds really.

I also agree that I don't like Quickenings. In addition to everything Flintlock said, like the MP usage, and the lack of extra effects, I can't, freaking, chain them. I just can't do it, I don't know if I still don't understand something about it, if it's just a mental block, no idea. All I know is I can't chain more than the number of MP bars I already have. I don't get what I can't do about the Mist Charges, but I can't do it in Dissidia either. So I hate them in that sense.

As for IX's, the fact that it activates instantly can definitely suck. Especially on a random encounter before a boss. But, honestly, it's the only one that makes any in-universe sense. The whole limit break idea is a release of power due to desperation or anger. Why would you be able to save that? I also like that it lasts 2 or 3 turns. And holy crap is Steiner a beast when he's Tranced.
Similarly, VII's, it can be annoying that it takes away the attack command. But I'm okay with it because, while it's unrealistic that you can hang onto it, at least it costs you something to do so, as opposed to X where you can just sit on this reservoir of emotion indefinitely.

VIII's are too easy to exploit, but did pioneer (along with Tifa), the little skill-based things used to activate the moves that X perfected.

I'm gonna be honest, I liked IXs system the most. From a technical standpoint X is better since you can save up your limit for later. But IX was far more useful in that a limit break actually lasted for a few turns, giving new powers and abilities and boosting base stats. True it could go off when you didn't want it to, but with a little planning and effort that problem is easily avoidable, and never really came up that often for me. Besides that I enjoyed the fact that Trances were incorporated into the storyline.

WOrst is XII for reasons already stated.

Really didn't like IX's... I eventually came to just ignore it in favor of everyone's regular abilities.

VII's was nice. What I liked the most about that one was that the characters didn't just have one limit break, but that their limit breaks changed into more powerful forms as time went on. To be fair to VII, there is an explanation given for why limit breaks exist; we even see a group of NPCs teaching another NPC how to do a limit break. It's not as good an explanation as IX's is, but at least it was there.

VIII's were spamable for sure, no way around it. But then again, this is the game that had Meltdown (Vitality and Spirit drop to 0 and it works on every monster, including the Bosses), and Pain (Silence, Darkness, and Poison all in the same spell), so it isn't that surprising. And forget Squall and Zell, Rinoa could dish out more damage then both of them combined when set up right. The boss battle verses Ultimacia was the most boring boss battle of the entire game.

12's quickening system was decent imo. You just had to be able to chain them and were excellent for finishing off bosses when they were at there final bit of HP, when they were prone to either heal back to full HP or capable of dropping you down to 5hp (or kill) consistently lol.

The predictable damage was also useful because then you knew when to actually use it and how many chains to hopefully perform. You could try to wait it out and chip off some more damage with normal attacks so that you only have to do a small chain, or go for broke and try to go for a big one.

It was a finisher attack more then anything else. Using it at the beginning of the round would result in nothing and in the middle would just result in wasted MP. Though later on when you got decent equipment and could consistently land critical hits after every attack it was pretty unnecessary.
I do agree the visuals seemed a bit uninspired, how ever the higher quickenings in a chain did look pretty neat.


I recall 10-2 having a pretty decent overdrive system.. I dont recall much of it at all but I do remember mowing down bosses with it like cake.

Agree with the consensus of X's being the best. People have already explained why so I won't go into further detail.

IX's system is the one thing I can name that strikes me as a weakness of the game. It certainly makes in-universe sense to have them happen arbitrarily, but having no control over when they occur removes a fair amount of strategy from the game, and/or forces players to fight tedious random battles they probably have no interest in fighting in order to save their characters' Trances for important boss battles. It's pretty annoying.

Quickenings are rubbish. I don't care if it's possible to chain them for great damage output, it's too frigging confusing. Desperation Attacks from FFVI are crap too, but only because they're rare. Still not as bad as Quickenings though :p

1) FFX: One of few good things about the game .
2) FFVIII: Decided to put this in second, after thinking maybe it should be in third, but I think more characters have useful limit breaks than in FFVII, throughout the entire game.
3) FFVII: I found the system rather thrilling. Hoping the limit break gauge fills up in time before an enemy slaughters you, in the earlier parts of the game anyway. All except the Omnislash, they do become rather pointless by the end though, when your characters become powerful. The variety is interesting though.
4) FFXII: A bit average, but I recall them being useful throughout the game.
5) FFIX: Frustrating when your gauge is full and the battle ends, and it goes empty, or something. Disappointing limit breaks too, but arguably useful throughout the game.
6) FFVI: I really can't comment, since I don't think I ever witnessed one, but since they are so rare, I guess they're pointless.

Jiro said:

Quickenings are rubbish. I don't care if it's possible to chain them for great damage output, it's too frigging confusing. Desperation Attacks from FFVI are crap too, but only because they're rare. Still not as bad as Quickenings though :p

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Whats so confusing about hitting 1 button to cycle through them and then selecting it?

I dunno, but I sure can't get them to work. You press R2. For how long? What determines when/whether another one becomes available?

Been awhile since I played it but IIRC its

Hit R2 > Next quickening comes up at random or a MP restore (not 100% sure on this one anymore), it could be from anyone in the fighting party.
Your goal is to chain the same party members quickenings, like a few Vaan ones in a row every time you nail a chain you get a few more seconds, you can keep going for awhile if you cycle quick enough and are actually paying attention to which quickenings (or MP restore) options come up.

Hitting R2 then instantly selecting the next thing that pops up just leads to wasted MP and like 2 quickenings being casted with 0 chain.
Its actually a pretty interesting system if you arent there just hitting R2 and X like a madman and put some thought into it lol.

Are you holding R2 until Vaan's comes up again? Or pressing and releasing?

IIRC you just press it to "shuffle" until one becomes available. It allows you to chain attacks beyond the MP limit.

ForceStealer said:

Are you holding R2 until Vaan's comes up again? Or pressing and releasing?

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I would press it rather then hold it down if my memory serves correctly.