Limit Break (ability)

Limit Breaks (or sometimes just called Limits) are powerful combat movies featured in Final Fantasy VII. The terminology sticks around in English because of the popularity of the game, though Final Fantasy VII was not the first game in the series to use the concept.

Limit breaks generally occur when a character has taken a large amount of damage in combat and this gives the character the possibility of returning some of that. All of the subsequent version of the linear Final Fantasy titles since Final Fantasy VI have used some sort of limit break system.

Final Fantasy VI
The term Limit Break might have come from Final Fantasy VII, but the idea was first used in Final Fantasy VI. These attacks were so-called "desperation attacks" and would only activate occasionally when a character was in a Near Fatal status and a Fight command was issued. The term "desperation attack" is actually a player-coined term, not included in the English version of the game. Characters who have a Muddled, Image, Clear, or Zombie effect could never perform a desperation attack. Characters will also never use a desperation attack within the first 25.6 seconds of combat and no one character would ever use a desperation attack more than once per battle.

The attacks were unblockable. All of these attacks are magical in nature and ignore defenses. Some of these are even instant death attacks.

Final Fantasy VII
In Final Fantasy VII, each character has limit meter that fills up as the character takes damage. When the bar is full, the character can unleash a powerful attack. While most limit breaks do massive damage, not all of them do. For instance, Aeris' Healing Wind will heal the party.

Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy VII are divided into four levels. There are two limit breaks per limit level until the highest rank of limit breaks, where there is only one. Most of the limit breaks can be learned by killing large numbers of enemy creatures, but the highest rank of limit breaks for each character is attainable only by doing a special quest.

The player must choose outside of battle what level of limit break they want to use. In battle a higher level of limit break will do more damage, but it also requires that the character take more damage before their limit bar fills up. Once the bar fills up, the character can continue to function as normal and save his limit break for later, but because the limit command replaces the attack feature, he will have to limit his choices to magic and materia based skills.

Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII actually reverted towards Final Fantasy VI's system. The limit bar was removed. Instead, the less hitpoints a character had, the more likely the character would have a glowing icon next to his attack showing he could perform a Limit Break. A character was most likely to get this when he is in a Near Fatal status. This often resulted in players allowing their characters to remain dangerously low on hit points. Also, a player could cycle through their characters. Each time a character was brought up again, the PlayStation would re-determine the probability even if HP was the same and give him another chance at a limit break.

Final Fantasy IX
For Final Fantasy IX, Square renamed Limit Breaks to Trance and brings back a bar to show the amount of trance slowly building up over time. The difference between this and Final Fantasy VII is that Trance must be used once the trance bar fills up. Trance also functions different than any other incarnation of limit breaks in that it lasts a short period of time, potentially a few turns for a trancing character, during which his stats are increased and a character could potentially use skills, abilities, or spells multiple times. Generally speaking though, the effects of trance is a little less extreme than massive, multi-hit, limit breaks from Final Fantasy VII or VIII.

Unlike its predecessors, Final Fantasy IX uses Trance to affect the story. Certain battles important to the plot may involve compulsory trances and during the party's visit to Terra, Kuja learns about the effects of trance and uses it to destroy Terra. The only possible argument otherwise would be Cloud's use of Omnislash on Sephiroth to end Final Fantasy VII, whether or not a character actually earned the ability through the battle arena in the Golden Saucer.

Final Fantasy X
In Final Fantasy X, there is yet another name change for this concept, but it remains largely the same. Overdrives function much as they did back in Final Fantasy VII. The major change to how these work are the different modes that can be learned by characters. Each character can choose a different method to gain Overdrive, but they may only select one at a time.

Aeons, the version of Summon Spells available in this game, also gain Overdrives which give them the capacity to cause massive damage. This is an interesting change for Summoned creatures which was probably forced by the fact that summoned monsters actually take the place of your party rather than just doing their one super attack and allowing the battle to continue without interruption.

Final Fantasy XI
In Final Fantasy XI, limit breaks are again renamed to Weapon Skills. Weapon skills are again limited only to doing physical damage. A character now has a percentage known as "TP". TP is short for Tactical Points, though this fact is so unimportant you will only find it written once in the Players Manual and in the game you will never see it unabbreviated. TP is gained through taking damage, slightly, but mostly by hitting an enemy and causing him damage. Once a character has reached 100%TP they can unleash a weapon skill.

TP in Final Fantasy XI charges up to 300%, and the greater the TP amount, the more damage the attack could potentially do. The attacks themselves potentially could do a lot of damage, but generally they are less effective proportionally to Limit Breaks of single player games. Their true power lies in multiple characters being able to do weapon skills in set orders in quick succession to perform Skillchains. After a skillchain has been done, casting the appropriate type of magic will amplify its effects and cause a Magic Burst. In this way, multiple characters can work together to perform a series of attacks, and through teamwork and synergy, probably even surpass the power of traditional limit breaks which have up until Final Fantasy XI always been a solo-concept.

Curiously enough, in Final Fantasy XI, there is a term (Genkei) that appears in the Auto-translator which literally means Limit Break. In the game this refers to a limit cap that is initially established at 50. Upon reaching level 50 and very 5 levels there-after, a character must finish a Genkei quest given by Maat, in Jeuno before he can continue to level up.