Belive me, you don't want to level up. Monsters level with you, so don't even think about grinding for levels. The strength you gain is exclusively in the magic you draw.
Summons will become useless very fast as soon as you have access to better magic and can gain the higher boosting abilities from your GFs.
Later game combat is reduced to just attacking and using limit breaks as often as possible. Did you know you can force the limit breaks? Because they are tied to as specific chance which gets higher, the lower your HP gets. By switching characters a lot you can force a limit break even at higher HPs.
Again, the level and junction system in FFVIII are highly experimental and fail on many levels. It really is the weakest part of the game. It also has a lot of secrets that are easy to miss, especially the secret GFs which hold the best abilities. So if you're having trouble with difficulty, definitely read up a bit on that.
It's the story and music that win most people over who like FFVIII, like me.
Also Tonberry. This game has a whole (optional)dungeon dedicated to him, which is awesome!
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