Final Fantasy VIII can be a fairly counterintuitive game when it comes to leveling up and advancing your characters. This primarily has to do with the unique magic junction system, which is the primary means of increasing the power of your party members, but this is also tied into the strange behaviour that exists between your party members and the enemies they face.

In summarize: the enemies you face will increase their level to match the average of your party. This means that if you spend a bunch of time leveling up your characters by engaging in random battles that it could actually have the unintended consequence of making battles even more difficult.

This is because enemies tend to gain more HP, Strength, etc. as they level whereas your party members don’t gain nearly as much. Instead, your party will need to rely on junctioned magic to increase their character stats.

Enemy Levels

The game determines the level of an enemy by adding up the current level of your party members and dividing by the number of party members you have. This is usually 3, but there are certain points in the game where you will only have 2 party members. This value is rounded down. This number is then divided by 5 to come up with a “Modifier” value which is then added or subtracted from the average at random.

Let’s look at some examples. Let’s say that your party member levels are 27, 28 and 32. The average level would be 29. This average level is then divided by 5 to come up with the modifier (and rounded down) which ends up being 5. The level of the enemies that you would face will either be 29-5=24 or 29+5=34.

This calculation always maxes out at 100 and there are a number of exceptions in certain areas of the game where this calculation is not used.

Exceptions

There are a number of exceptions to the level calculations outlined above.

• Enemies in the Fire Cavern are always level 5.
• Enemies in the Lunatic Pandora at the end of Disc 3 are always level 1.
• Enemies on the Island Closest to Hell and Heaven are always level 100.
• Enemies in the Deep Sea Research Center use the same calculation but always add +15 to their level (up to a maximum of 100).
• Enemies in Ultimecia’s Castle will have a randomly assigned level.
• Using LV Up or LV Down will change the enemies level by +5/-5 accordingly.

Level Ranges

There are a number of level ranges in the game that impact what types of attacks and spells an enemy will use on your party and what type of magic you can Draw from those enemies. One area where this is specifically identified in the walkthrough is during the Laguna Dream Sequence in Trabia Garden where you can use LV Up to increase a Ruby Dragons level into the “High Level” range and then Draw Meteor from it. So what are the level ranges to be aware of?

Keep all of this information in mind as you progress through the game!