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!

Damn, I almost thought you already beat it XD

It took me over 40 hours to beat this mess of a game, its honestly the worst mainline FF game I've played, still pretty good, but way too convoluted, the story takes way to long to get interesting and the characters take too long to become likable.

Seriously by the end of Disc 1 Squall is still a dick.

As Rol said, jump to FFIX, that one is pure gaming bliss.

The battle system is weird, the plot is absurd (even more stupid than in FF 7!) but I love the game. Maybe it's the characters (Rinoa), or the fact that it was one of the first JRPG's I played.

But I love it and you should force yourself through it.

What's your current highest magic junctioned with strength? This table is very helpful for optimal drawing and junctioning. It also saves you time by not endlessly drawing magic you will never need.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Junction_System

I always hated using the summons because they took so fucking long. In the later game it will become very inefficient und time wasting using them.

At which point are you?

It needs time to get to the good stuff but you are finally on the "good" part. As for the battle system... the final boss battle can get hard if your levels are too high so there is no point in grinding. In fact there is no such thing as grinding for levels in an RPG but that's a secret I won't reveal to you, it may lead to an off topic conversation.

Still I can't wait until you get to the really good stuff, FF IX!

FFVIII is one of my favorite games of all time...Its a lot more complicated in terms of its plot than any other FF to date, but makes complete sense if you do all the side stuff in the game...Things that arent explained in the main story but are explained elsewhere include who Squalls parents are.

Its easily the most mysterious Final Fantasy ever...which many dont like...probably because the vast majority of us were quite young when it came out and brand new to the series via FF7...spoon feeding of plot was preferred.

The Battle System was enjoyable for me, I preferred maxing out my characters in the training center early in the game to make the game that much more difficult...low level games were not that fun for me, its quite boring when you just thrash through everything the game has to offer from start to end...I never understood that boring method.

Bosses like Omega Weapon and the Final Boss are FAAAAAR FAAAAAAR more interesting and exhilarating if you level up. While one Lionheart Limit break with a good set of junctions can one shot almost anything if you stay at low levels...boring.

I find that people who did the low level thing are the same people who say the game was boring trash. Its the same thing as people buying a Little Big Planet game and never taking the time to learn the create mode - and saying the game is a boring mess...makes no sense.

The problem is that you get XP at all. You shouldn't get any because they're absolutely irrelevant. That's why the low level walkthrough is so viable.

You are able to finish the game at level 7. It's really exhausting to avoid XP though. It's fun though because you have all the strong magic to boost your stats and all bosses have so few HP and low stats that they're just no match^^

Just reread the walkthrough. God, there is so much fun ahead. Makes me want to play it again.

I'm usually not a person to replay games(or movies or animes) for that matter.

FF would be a big exception to this. I played FFVIII and FFIX like 3 times already. I was actually planning on replaying FFV after finishing FF Dimensions but that's not gonna happen now. Already downloading the android psx emulator.