9 Video Games That Used Everything You'd Learned Against You

If you've played an RPG before, you know how it works. You fight things, you gain experience, you level up, and you get stronger and stronger until you can kill most enemies in one hit.

Then along comes Final Fantasy VIII to say 'Oh hey, you know how RPGs work, do you? Wrong, my friend! Wrong I tell you!'

Whether you love or hate Final Fantasy VIII and its moody adventures with protagonist Squall Leonhart, the battle system is easily one of the worst in the series.

This is primarily because, for the most part, it renders actually fighting pretty pointless. See, in Final Fantasy VIII, all enemies in the game actively scale up in power with the player. So whether you're at the starting level or level 100, enemies in the game have been hitting the gym to make sure they're ready for you.

Instead, Final Fantasy VIII relies on a magic junctioning system, where you attach large amounts of 'drawn' magic to your stats to give them a boost. This, in turn, also means that the game actively discourages you actually using magic, as if you deplete your stocks of a spell, your stats will get weaker.

It's a bizarre system, and one that definitely works against everything practically every RPG before it taught you.