In Final Fantasy 8 the keys behind the power of your party are the Guardian Forces, or GF. Not only do you summon GF's to assist you in battle but you will also Junction each GF to a character. Without the Junction ability a character will only be able to use the attack command. When you Junction a GF to a character that GF begins to receive EXP and AP. They will level up and learn abilities that either increase the abilities of the character they're junctioned to or increase their own attack power or HP. Also, once you've junctioned a GF to a character that character can junction magic they have in stock to various vital statistics and defenses. However, the junctioned GF must have learned the corresponding stat ability (see GF ability lists below). You'll want to junction more than one GF to a character but it's important to remember that the EXP GF's receive is divided up among the GF's equipped on a given character equally.

There are also many more tricks to developing your GF's. GF's when summoned have a wait time once summoned before they attack. During that time the GF's HP can be depleted by enemy attacks. You'll want that wait time to be as short as possible. To shorten that time you'll need to raise the GF's compatibility with its summoner. Compatibility is raised by having the chosen character summon them frequently, using the same type of elemental magic as a GF, and using certain compatibility items. There are some GF specific compatibility items as well as items called LuvLuv G's that can raise any characters compatibility with all GF's by 20 points. You can also teach GF's abilities that they wouldn't normally learn by using items. You'll probably need to make them forget an ability to make room by giving them Amnesia Greens. For more information about using items to improve your GF's see the Items List.

There are also several unjunctionable Guardian Forces in the game. For more information about them jump to the Other GF's section.

You'll want to note that several GF's can only be drawn from a specific boss or acquired by doing a sidequest. However, during Disc 4 you have the opportunity to draw a few of the GF's you might have missed. Note that during Disc 4 all of your abilities are sealed and can be unlocked one at a time by defeating the very bosses you can draw missing GFs from so you may not be able to draw. Ideally you should get them at the first opportunity but if you did miss a GF here's the list of the bosses you can draw them from in Disc 4:

Quezacotl is an excelleng beginning GF. Once you learn Boost you'll be able to make his attack fairly strong. Also, Quezacotl can learn the Card and Card-mod abilities that allow you to turn monsters into cards and turn cards into items. This is one way to upgrade your weapons early on in the game. Quezacotl also learns the Time Magic refine and the Mid-Magic refine that allow you to turn items into time based magic as well as upgrade your first level spells to second level spells.

Like Quezacotl, Shiva is one of the stronger early GFs. She'll be extremely helpful going up against Ifrit, your first boss. You'll want to make sure whoever you equip her on has another GF with the HP and Mag J abilities.

Ifrit is the second GF you get with the HP-J ability so you'll want to have him on a different character than Quezacotl. You'll want to quickly build up to learning the Str Bonus ability. This will give the character Ifrit is equipped on a one point bonus every time they level up. You do have to equip the ability to get the bonus. You can also learn how to refine fire magic from items as well as Ammo for Irvine.

Siren's attack is a non-elemental attack that can be boosted. In this way you can use it against elemental bosses where you might not be able to use your other GF's. In addition to the attack Siren tries to Silence any enemy you use her against. Siren is the only GF with the Move-Find ability. If this ability is equipped on one of your characters you will be able to see hidden save and draw points when you're in location maps. This ability does not effect draw points on the world map (for more info on world map draw points check out our Maps section. You'll also want to make good use of her Treatment ability. This allows you to cure one party member completely of all status ailments. Some other abilities of interest are Mag Bonus, Life Magic Refine, and Tool Refine.

The Brothers, Sacred and Minotaur, perform a comedic Earth based attack called Brotherly Love. You'll want to remember not to use Brothers against flying creatures because they are immune to Earth attacks. Brothers gives you the HP Bonus ability which gives the equipped character 30 points to their HP at each level up. Brothers also have the HP plus abilities that can raise an equipped character 20, 40, & 80%. You can equip more than one of the plus abilities so you can potentially raise a character's HP by 120% (although I would recommend equipping other character abilities in addition to one of the HP pluses to better protect your character). One other ability unique to Brothers is the Defend ability. This allows a character to prevent damage from any type of attack.

Diablos is one of the most indispensable GF's in the game. His attack is in the form of a Demi attack that selects a percentage of the enemy's life based on Diablos's level. For example, at level 9 Diablos attacks for 9% of the enemy's max HP. At level 100 Diablos will attack for 100% of the enemy's max HP. However, his attack is capped at 9,999 HP. This might seem like a downside but Diablos can still be attacking for 9,999 every turn when his level is high enough. Diablos' best ability is Mug. This is the only version of stealing you'll find in FF8 and you can get so many helpful items by stealing from enemies. Diablos also has the Ability X3 ability, which allows the character equipped with Diablos to equip 3, rather than 2, GF abilities.

Rather than being a fighter, Carbuncle is an adorable creature that, when summoned casts Reflect, Shell, and Protect on your party. Like Diablos, Carbuncle has learned the Ability X3 ability. This will allow you to equip some of Carbuncle's abilities. The two of note are Counter and Vit Bonus. Counter gives the equipped character an ability to randomly counterattack when they are attacked. You'll want to right away use the Vit Bonus, which gives the equipped character one point to their vitality at level up. Increased vitality makes the character take less damage from physical attacks.

Leviathan is the strongest Water attack you can get in the game so you'll want to employ him to dispatch enemies weak to Water. Probably one of the best abilities in the game is the Recover ability. Leviathan's the only one who can learn this ability. Recover allows an equipped character to completely restore the life of one character at a time. This is particularly useful in times when you can't use magic or items. Leviathan can also learn the Spr Bonus ability. This gives one point to spirit at each level up on whichever character has it equipped. With high spirit your characters will be more resistant to magic attacks.

Pandemona uses a Wind based attack which is really good against flying creatures and other wind weak enemies. Pandemona's abilities are geared towards boosting a character's speed. This is one of the few GF's with the Spd-J ability and Pandemona also has the Initiative ability which allows you to attack before your enemies. You might also be interested in the Absorb ability and the strength boosting abilities.

Cerberus is the other GF that doesn't actually attack the enemy. He casts Double and Triple on your entire party. This is extremely nice when used in conjunction with the Expendx2-1 ability that allows you to cast two spells while only using one. Cerberus is also extremely nice when it comes to junctioning. With him you can junction magic to 5 stats rather than the two or three other GF's have. Cerberus also has the full set for status junctioning allowing you to junction 4 status magics to a character. Cerberus also has some speed enhancing abilities like Auto Haste and Alert (prevents enemy back attack and first strike).

Alexander's attack is Holy based and so he's extremely effective against undead or zombied enemies. You can use this to your advantage by casting Zombie on enemies or junctioning Zombie to your attack. Then just summon Alexander. Alexander's best ability is the Revive ability. This will revive a KO'd character without using items or magic. You'll also want to learn High Mag-RF right away. This allows you to turn mid level spells into upper level spells. Another nice ability is the Med LV Up ability. This allows you to turn lower level medicines to higher level medicines (ie: Potion - Hi-Potion). This is nice because it allows you to build a stock of high level medicines like Mega-Phoenixes, Mega-Potions, and Elixirs.

Doomtrain is by far the best status attack of the game. First of all his attack is Poison based but on top of that he causes Darkness, Silence, Berserk, Sleep, Doom, Curse, Gradual Petrify, Confuse, and VIT 0! Even if an enemy will absorb the Poison attack it's worth it to cause all the status ailments. Doomtrain is also very nice for junctioning. He has both Element and Status attack and defense junction sets. Doomtrain also has some excellent abilities. The most important are Junk Shop (allows you to call equipment shops from your menu) and Forbid Med-RF.

Bahamut's non-elemental attack isn't terribly strong but because of his long animation sequence you'll have plenty of time to boost him close to 250. Bahamut has a few duplicates of popular abilities like Mug and Expendx2-1. He also has an ability called Rare Item which allows you to get harder to get items after battles. He also has the very important Forbid Mag-RF. This will allow you to refine Meteor and Ultima magic from items.

Cactuar has potentially the second strongest attack among the GFs. For every 10 levels Cactuar has it will deal 1,000 points of damage. When Cactuar is level 100 it will deal 10,000 damage. Cactuar and Eden are the only GFs to break damage limit. You should also note that Cactuar's damage cannot be reduced by high defense or support magic like Shell. You'll want to get Cactuar right away once you've got the Ragnarok because Cactuar has all 5 Bonus abilities already learned. Cactuar has some repeat abilities like Defend and Initiative. You might also have fun with the Kamikaze ability (although I wouldn't recommend using it in a tough battle).

Tonberry is fairly weak to begin with but he gets better as he levels up. Although his animation is short you should still be able to get a little bit of Boosting in. Tonberry has lots of abilities you'll want to take advantage of. Familiar and Call Shop are must haves. Familiar adds rarer items like Elixirs to shops and Call Shop allows you to access any shop you've previously visited from your menu (Absolutely necessary for Disk 4). In addition to manipulating the shops you can also manipulate monsters once you have Tonberry. LV Up and LV Down allow you to adjust monsters to get the items and magic you want from them. It can also allow you to survive at lower levels on the Islands Closest to Heaven & Hell.

Eden is the best GF you can get, no contest. Without Boosting Eden usually attacks for around 13,000. However, Eden has the longest animation so you can easily Boost her to the full 250 causing around 35,000 damage. Eden doesn't have many new abilities but they're pretty helpful. You can now take better advantage of Triple magic with the Expendx3-1 ability. The GFAbl Med-RF ability lets you make ability items for your GFs. Perhaps the most interesting ability Eden possesses is the Devour ability. With Devour a character can eat enemies. This can cause status ailments, no reaction, healing, or, best of all, raise the character's stats. The Bestiary can tell you exactly what effect an enemy will have.

During the game there are several other GF's you can pull into battle by using an item or those that randomly appear to assist you in various ways. Here's how you can summon or acquire the aid of the various other GF's:

Odin is a GF that you have to go out and defeat before he will come to your aid. You'll find him at the top of the Centra Ruins. You'll need to get to the top and defeat him in battle before the time limit expires. For more info on acquiring Odin check out the Centra Ruins Guide. Once you've beaten Odin he will randomly come to your aid at the beginning of a battle and perform his Zantetsuken attack which KO's all enemies on the screen. Odin will not appear during boss battles.

Phoenix is literally a life-saving GF. Phoenix will come any time you use a Phoenix Pinion in battle and revive any KO'd party members while administering a fire attack to the enemy. Although Phoenix Pinions are hard to come by once you've summoned Phoenix the first time she will sometimes appear if your entire party has been KO'd. If your luck is really high it's possible for her to come to your aid two times in a row in particularly tough situations.

To get the opportunity to summon Boko you'll need to partipate in the Chocobo Forest sidequest. During this quest you'll have a chance to get Gysahl Greens. Once you have this item you can use it in battle to draw a Chocobo into attacking your enemies.

Before you can summon MiniMog you'll need to acquire an item called Mog's Amulet. Once you have it you can use it to teach the MiniMog ability to a GF. With that ability equipped you can call MiniMog durring battle. MiniMog enters and restores the HP of all your GFs. However, you have to pay for the service - your party's average level X 100 = gil amount needed.

Throughout the game you'll encounter many Moombas. They're normally docile creatures but if you befriend them they will fight by your side. Simply use a Friendship item in battle and a Moomba will come to assist you.

At the end of Disc 3 you will lose the service of Odin (if you had him at this point). However, Gilgamesh will enter to replace him. Gilgamesh appears randomly, just like Odin did. However, he can appear at any time during any battle, including boss fights. He has four attacks: Zantetsuken - KO's all enemies on screen, Masamune - Severe damage to all enemies, Excaliber - Strong damage to all enemies, & Excalipoor - Deals 1 point of damage to all enemies.