Limit Break (ability)

Limit Breaks, also known simply as Limits, are powerful combat moves featured in several Final Fantasies. The term comes from Final Fantasy VII, but it was not the first game to feature Limit attacks.

Limit Breaks are always connected to the damage received by the character, the exception being Final Fantasy XII, where you need full MP instead. In some cases, the lower the HP, the higher the probability of a Limit Break becoming available, while in other cases, the damage is "stocked" by filling a bar. Once the bar is full, the Limit Break becomes available. 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 IV
Limit Break is a Decant Ability in the Nintendo DS version. When equipped, the character exceeds the damage limit, allowing them to do a maximum of 99999 damage. The ability is received simply by completing the game.

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 physical 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 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.

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 (known as Special Arts in the Japanese version). 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. In addition to the frequency, the potency of a Limit Break is affected by conditions. A stronger break is more likely when the other characters are KOed, for example.

Also, a player could cycle through their characters. Each time a character was brought up again, the system would re-determine the probability even if HP was the same and give him another chance at a limit break. With the spell, Aura, the chance would increase, effectively meaning that a Limit Break would be possible even while at full health.

All the characters Limit Breaks are unique to them, and have unique ways of obtaining them. You can get better finishing blows for Squall with better gunblades. Unlike Zell's Limit Breaks, where you use button combinations to do attacks. You get better attacks for him by reading in-game magazine items.

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.

Final Fantasy X
In Final Fantasy X, the Limit Breaks are called Overdrives. They function much as they did back in Final Fantasy VII. The only real change is that bars cannot be stacked, since all Overdrives have the same levels, and that each character can choose a different method to gain Overdrive, a process known as Overdrive mode, but they may only select one at a time.

Aeons also have 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 X-2
The Limit Break system is similar to that of Final Fantasy IX. Each character can access a Special Dressphere once they have changed into all the dresspheres on their Garment Grid during the current battle. Sphere changing into a special dressphere raises the character's HP, MP and most attributes. They will also receive a unique set of abilities and the other two party members will be replaced by two support units. The special dresspheres are Floral Fallal, Machina Maw and Full Throttle. Yuna and Rikku obtain theirs during the main storyline but Paine's must be obtained by speaking to Tromell Guado in the Macalania Woods in the first three chapters.

Final Fantasy XI
In Final Fantasy XI, Limit Breaks are called 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 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. Using a Weapon Skill will drop the TP down to 0 plus the amount of the hits you had land with your Weapon Skill. The 2-hour Ability of the Samurai, Meikyo Shisui will give you the possibility only to use 100% TP with a Weapon Skill, even if you have 300%, what means that you can use 3 Weapon Skills in a row and therefore create a Skillchain with yourself.

"Limit Break"
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 every 5 levels there-after, a character must finish a Genkei quest given by Maat, in Jeuno before he can continue to level up. The maximum level in Final Fantasy XI is 75.

"Two-hour Abilities"
Even though it is not a real Limit Break, you could name it more a "Desperation Ability". Every job has a special ability for emerency situations, with a recast time of two hours. Like the Mana Font of the Black Mage, what let you cast spells without using MP, Red Mage's Chainspell, let you use spells without casttime, or Invincible of the Paladin will reduce every non-magic damage, dealt on the Paladin down to 0 and create a huge ammount of enmity, forcing every enemy to attack him.

Final Fantasy XII
Limit Breaks are known as Quickenings, Mist Knacks in the Japanese version. They can be purchased via License Points. Each character can learn three total Quickenings. Every new Quickening obtained gives the character a new Mist Charge, increasing their MP by the original amount (i.e. 3 Quickenings = Triple MP). They can be chained together to increase damage, and depending on the Quickenings chained, an extra ultra-powerful area attack, called a Concurrence, can be added at the end of the chain. When a character purchases a Quickening, its square disappears from the other characters' License Boards, making it inaccessible to the other characters. There are a total of 18 Quickening squares, which are enough for each character to obtain all three.

There is also an enemy ability called Limit Break that reduces the charge time for magick and physical attacks to 0.