[Iceglow]

On what basis Karellen would you say the FFVIII battle system was broken?

The draw method was tedious it could have been innovative if say spirit had affected the number and the max had not been 9 because it would then reward people who understood the junction system. FFVIII had a similar battle system in many regards to FFIX or FFVII (in FFIX you run around for many hours doing the exact same thing of fighting enemies for hours on end to learn abilities, on FFVII you ran around for hours on end levelling up your materia to master level to make the most of it in the extremely fiendish boss levels, or atleast fiendish for their time same can be said for ALL FF games prior to XI and XII)

The junctioning itself most people will claim is "broken" because they did not understand how to do it because on the main part it was not as simple as "this materia makes this spell target all allies/enemies but only works in a double or joined slot with a spell materia" or they just didn't pay enough attention to the tutorial or even just what was obvious. I have in the past written the technique of junctioning magic and GFs to ALL characters in the party (Rinoa's set is used by Edea when she is in the party for the journey to Esthar) and maximising the potential of the junction system. I won't repeat it here but I can say it provided me with a party selection where it didn't matter who Ultimecia chose to fight against my party won without losses. So I'd like to see you elaborate more on how the fight system is "broken" and "clunky" as you put it.