This site does not offer walkthroughs, enemy stats, or any of that junk. What this site offers is some useful information I've learned by playing through the games so often. I offer the kind of advise that most strategy guides do not offer or do not cover in great enough detail. I could probably write several walkthroughs with my eyes shut, but why bother? There's already several walkthroughs out there, so no need for me to waste my time writing one up. If you need a walkthrough, my 'Links' page will hook you up.

Final Fantasy V Hints:

Shinryu - Need help with the Shinryu (Death Dragon) in the last area (the monster-in-a-box)? He's really not that tough. Are you upset that a Tidal Wave can wipe out your entire party by itself? Did you never think to try equipping a certain accessory that will absorb certain water based attacks? I believe it's called the Coral Ring. Buy a Coral Ring for each of your characters, then hit him with your best attacks. He can still kill you without his Tidal Wave, so you'll still have to be pretty strong, but if you don't think you're quite up to par, make a team of Coral Ringed Dragoons. He can't hit what ain't there, so jump him. When you land, jump him again!
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Omega - You know that metal thing that's been pissing you off because everytime you fight him he demolishes your team and you can't even hurt him? Well, he can be beaten, but you'll have to master many classes, have everyone Bare (Normal), and equip them all with non-elemental weapons. Sorry Excalibur, but he even absorbs Holy. A good idea is to have at least one person with the 'Two-Handed' ability and the 'Magic Sword' ability with a Flare Sword. The rewards for this fight are minimal since if you can beat him, you can probably beat anything in the game, so if you're not at a really high level with lots of classes mastered, don't waste your time fighting him. If you're like me and can't stand having him walk around talking trash behind your back; save, fight him until you beat him, spit on his metallic corpse, and move on with life.
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Final Fantasy VI Hints:

Free Stat Bonuses - You know those stat bonuses you get from the Espers that can make your characters unbelievably strong? Every character that can use Espers (with the exception of Celes) can get tons of these stats essentially without leveling up. When you start your new game, try to keep all your characters at low levels until you get Celes so that the autolevel balance will set her with a relatively low level. Once you get her, keep her out of the party whenever you can. Once you get some good espers with good level up bonuses, level up like crazy, but do not level Celes. Now play through the World of Balance with ultra strong characters. Once you reach the World of Ruin, The game starts with Celes at her astounding level of 15 or so. When you play through the World of Ruin, while it may be hard with a low level Celes, continue to keep her level low until you get all your characters. They will conform to Celes's level, but their stats, hp, and mp will stay the same as they were before. Now you're free to level up your characters and get their level-up bonuses all over again.
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Magi Master - There are several ways to beat the Magi Master (the guy in the Fanatics Tower). Number 1: Bring Umaro. He can wail on him without fear of the barrier change. Number 2: Berserk the Magi Master. You may have to use vanish on him to make the berserk spell hit, but at least you didn't have to 'Vanish:X-Zone' him. He won't be able to barrier change, nor will he cast any of his strong spells (Warning: he's still got one hell of a physical hit, especially while berserked). Number 3: If you have it, cast Life 3 on the party, but contrary to popular belief, you don't need it. If your guys are strong enough, the Ultima he casts when he dies won't kill you anyway. Number 4: If your guys aren't strong enough to survive his Ultima, calculate the damage you've done to him with Scan, and when he's about to die within one person's physical attack, call Palidor. The whole party jumps, one person kills him, that same person is hit with the full force of the Ultima and dies, the rest of your team rejoices with their ceremonial jumping-jacks.
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Final Fantasy VII Hints:

Emerald Weapon - Knights of the Round is the cheapest (not cost wise, but cheat wise) thing in FF7 next to one thing: Emerald Weapon. Emerald Weapon will cheat, so why not cheat back? Sorry, but I'm going to say you need Knights of the Round to beat him, though I hate to admit it. Emerald Weapon has somewhere around 1,200,000 life, so if you want the break down, that's 121 maximum damage attacks, which means 121 turns. Chances are, with 121 turns, Emerald Weapon is bound to use an Air Tam Storm or two...thousand. Do you know what Air Tam Storm is? It's his attack that does 9999 damage to each of your guys...there's no withstanding that unless he happens to miss one of your characters (which he does from time to time) or if you have the Final Attack-Phoenix combination, but chances are at this point he's already zapped away all of your guys' mp, so this won't save you. Not every time anyways. What I'm getting at, is you probably need the Knights. There's 13 of them, and with enough Magic Plus materia equipped for each knight to do maximum damage, that's only 10 rounds to kill Emerald Weapon. So, the one victory combination I know of: 1 Knights of the Round, 3 Mimes, and many Magic Pluses. Optional things that help you out: 1 Enemy Skill with Big Guard, 1 HP Absorb attached to Knights of the Round, 1 W Summon (Knights of the Round should be at level 2 for double summoning). Turn one: Cast Big Guard. Turn two: Summon Knights of the Round (twice if you have W Summon). Turn three: Mime. Four, Mime. Five, Mime. Six, Mime. If you have W Summon, he should be dead. If not, continue Miming. You will not need the Underwater Materia because if you can't beat him in 20 minutes, you probably won't beat him. As far as protection against Air Tam Storm: Pray. If he is able to use this, you're screwed. Final Attack-Phoenix probably won't help you because chances are you won't have enough mp to summon Knights anymore.
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Ruby Weapon - Ruby Weapon's strategy is very similiar to Emerald Weapon with two small exceptions. First: you must go into the fight with only one person alive or else Ruby will do some attacks that can take certain members of your team completely out of the fight. With one person alive, fight Ruby with whatever you feel like doing until he sticks his arms into the ground. When his arms are in, summon Phoenix to get your friends back. Next you have two strategies. You can either: Equip someone with W Summon, Knights of the Round, and Phoenix, then do a double summon of Knights of the Round and Phoenix. He counters Knights of the Round with Ultima, which could hurt your team pretty badly, so Phoenix will revive those who died, then Miming the W Summon will revive your team and you can continue this pattern. Another strategy (and the one I prefer) is to attach an HP Absorb to Knights of the Round and summon it once. This way the character using Knights will be at full life when the Ultima hits. When the next character Mimes, he will be brought up to full life, and when the third, almost dead person Mimes, he'll go to full life. The one thing you have to make sure of if using this strategy is that each person must Mime in the correct order. If you Mime out of order, one person will die and lose out on the massive experience, and his materia will not get the massive ap.
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Side Note: One day I may figure out how to beat both Emerald and Ruby Weapon without Knights of the Round, but until then, use Knights of the Round. You probably shouldn't fight them without Knights of the Round just because these two Weapons give lots of AP. I never fight either one without Knights of the Round on a 'triple AP' weapon.

Final Fantasy VIII Hints:

Zell Combo Trick - Does 2.2 seconds for Zell's limit sometimes seem like it's just not enough to do substantial damage? Can't quite get to the 'My Final Heaven' or 'Burning Rave' or any other finishing moves of his? In response, I say "who cares?" Zell has the most powerful limit break in the game, and here's why. If you simply load Zell down with a good strength junction so that he does massive damage with a normal hit, he'll have a limit that rival's Squall's Lionheart. Zell's combos have loops that you can use to your advantage. My favorite loop is the 'Punch Rush' to 'Booya'. A 'Punch Rush' (Circle, X) can always be followed up by a 'Booya' (Left, Right), and a 'Booya' can always be followed up by a 'Punch Rush.' If you utilize this kind of advanced knowledge whenever Zell gets a limit, you can punch ach of these in sometimes in less than .1 seconds, so a 2.2 second interval can actually give Zell 22 hits. If he's at the point that he's doing maximum damage with each hit, Enemies beware. Zell can kick some ass. Now just imagine the damage if he's lucky enough to gets a 4.5 second limit break...
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Final Fantasy IX Hints:

Maximum Damage - Certain characters have abilities that will do maximum damage depending on certain things that they do. Steiner's 'Shock' will do 9999 without doing anything to it. Zidane's 'Thievery' will do damage depending on how much he has stolen, so continue to steal with Zidane until this does 9999. Freya's 'Dragon Crest' will get more powerful depending on how many dragons she has killed, so level up by fighting Grand Dragons and try to let Freya finish them off to get her 'Dragon Crest' up to 9999. Quina's 'Frog Drop' will do damage based on her level and how many frogs she caught. Once you get around level 60 and catch around 100 frogs she should be doing 9999.
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Excalibur II - I gave it my best with the Excalibur II, but failed. Now, I think there's something important here that everybody planning to get the Excalibur II should know. I've seen page after page saying that you have to get to Memoria on disk 4 in 12 hours or less to get the Excalibur II. I want to correct this. You don't have to get TO Memoria, you have to get THROUGH Memoria. Big correction there. See, my most recent run through was highly successful in my opinion. I got TO Memoria in exactly 12 hours. So in my mind I did it, and that's good enough for me. If you need an Excalibur II walkthrough, look elsewhere, I can't help you. BUT one thing I've read on just about every Excalibur II walkthrough is that you should skip FMV cut-scenes by opening your PS1/PS2 during them. I figure I could have shaved a good hour or so off my time and probably gotten the Excalibur II if I were to do this, but I'm not about to break my PS2 nor my copy of FF9, so I'm not about to go ejecting my game for a worthless Excalibur II. Steiner doesn't need it, he's strong enough with the Ragnarok. To risk breaking your PS over a worthless item is just sad, and I won't do it. I'm easily confident that if I'd skipped the videos I would have gotten it, and therefore I'm satisfied enough. To those of you who were able to get the Excalibur II without skipping FMVs: Good job. To those of you that got the Excalibur II by skipping FMVs: You're pathetic and/or rich, and I hate you.
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Final Fantasy X Hints:

Block - This is actually just a friendly reminder of that little triangle button on your control pad. There are several fights in this game which are actually pretty tough, but this is the first Final Fantasy where blocking can actually save your arse. The fight with Seymour on Mt. Gagazett took me quite some time my first time through, but once I remembered to block, I found that his attacks are nothing since his powerful attacks all give you notice that he plans to use them. Blocking can reduce this damage significantly.
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Nemesis - For those of you who have not played this game for hundreds of hours, Nemesis is the final 'Original Creation' in the Monster Arena. To get to Nemesis you'll have to capture 10 of every monster that can be captured (good luck getting 10 Tonberrys from the Sunken Cave. Those bastards try as hard as they can to never show their faces.). Once you've done this, you have to defeat every Area, Species, and Original Creation. I emphasize this because some of these guys can be extremely difficult. If you plan to defeat the most powerful monster in the game, you'll need to be extremely powerful. In order to stand a chance against him, you'll have to have all of your characters hitting maximum damage with their physical attacks. Yes this means Yuna and Lulu too. No, maximum damage does not mean 9999. You'll have to also get all of their final weapons and hit the true maximum damage of 99999. In addition, if you want to have a chance of surviving even his weakest attacks, your characters will have to break the HP limit or have so much defense that they can survive powerful attacks. I've never checked how much life he actually has, but I'd guess it's somewhere around 50,000,000. That means about 50 maximum damage attacks. You'll also have to memorize his attack patterns. I'm not sure exactly how many times it is before he uses it, but always be prepared to substitute Yuna in to Summon a monster to take a hit. He has an attack called 'Armaggeddon' that does 99999 damage to all characters no matter what your defense may be. I still fear this attack in my best game, and my game can basically be called the best game. In 200+ hours of gameplay (about half of which is Blitzball hours), every character of mine has mastered the Sphere Grid twice! Life? Me? Why 2 times you ask? My first time around the Grid, everybody got every ability and every stat. My second time around (after countless fights in the Monster Arena) I used Clear Spheres on every stat that wasn't perfect. Even a Strength +3 node was deleted to put in a Strength +4 node in it's place. Now every character of mine has 255 on every stat except for Luck because Luck is worthless. Still, even Luck is in the 70s for everybody. All of my characters have their ultimate weapons and an armor that has: Break HP Limit, Break MP Limit, HP +30%, MP +30%, giving them approximate HP/MP of 63000/2000. It's a godly game that took me endless hours to create, but Nemesis can still be competition for me. If you have a game like this, I recommend using 'Hastega' followed by 'Quick-Hits' until he's dead, and substitute Yuna in to summon an aeon to take the damage from his 'Armaggeddon' attack. If you just have to go up against Nemesis, I wish you luck my friend.
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Ultimate Weapons? - You may have noticed while making weapons and armors that if you have enough Dark Matter (60 pieces) you can add Break Damage Limit to a weapon. While this may seem like a good idea for certain people that have useless abilities on their final weapons (i.e. Rikku's Double AP and Gillionaire) to replace these abilities with more useful skills, don't bother. The final weapons that you find are more powerful than anything you can make. The final weapons come with a built in ability that ups attack power against certain enemies. If you have an abundance of Dark Matters, just give them to Rikku to do some powerful overdrives. Using them to make your own weapons is entirely a waste.
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Fleck’s FF7 Domination Guide:

There’s a million other guides out there for defeating Ruby and Emerald weapon. But most of them suck. So I made my own. These strategies were made by putting together hints and tips that I’ve collected from multiple sources (mostly gotten from IGN.com) and mixed in with some of my own ideas. This guide assumes that you know how to get the Knights of the Round (KotR) materia, w-summon, w-item, etc. If you need help getting those, look elsewhere. There’s plenty of other guides out there. This guide is property of Fleckenstein and if I catch you replicating it on another site without giving me credit (especially the alternate Ruby Weapon guide), I will personally kick you in the nuts. Note that while I say Barret and Tifa, you don’t necessarily have to use Barret and Tifa. It’s just easier fo me than saying Character 1 and character 2 etc. But I highly recommend that you NOT bring Vincent along. His limit breaks aren’t very helpful in the fights against the weapons. So let’s begin.

Becoming Super-Powerful to Prepare for the Battles Ahead: Like Goatbob said, Ruby and Emerald Weapon cheat, so why not cheat back? Granted he was talking about using Knights of the Round and I’m talking about using the W-Item trick, the most dirty and underhanded trick in the game. But this trick is an essential part of my strategy.

The W-item Trick:
Most other guides I looked at were kinda hazy about how this trick works exactly. So I thought I’d clarify. Equip the w-item materia. Then in battle, select w-item, select the item you want to replicate, then select a char to use it on. Then select the same item, but instead of using it, hit cancel. This will increase that item by one. You should be able to just hit O and X over and over until you have 99 megalixers, elixirs, x-potions or whatever else you want (so long as the item can be used in battle).

Super-high Levels and Mastering Materia:
Once you have 99 elixers go to the Northern Crater during disk three. Go all the way down until you come to where the road branches. Go down the left path. You’ll soon come to a room with a crack down the middle that has the lifestream showing through. Take the first right and you should be in a room that has lots of plants and water (the background music will change too). Here you’ll encounter several different foes including master tonberrys, magic pots, and other assorted enemies. Most of the enemies around give off lots of exp and ap, especially magic pots. Magic Pots are invincible until you give them an elixir, then you can kill them. Each one is worth 8000 exp and 1000 ap and they often appear in pairs. Put KotR and mime and any other materias you want to level onto a weapon with triple ap and within an hour or two, you’ll have mastered materia and a shitload of exp.

Three Ribbons:
Acquiring three ribbons is crucial for defeating Ruby weapon because he has several attacks that can cause some pretty nasty status effects. So, if you don’t already know, you can get more ribbons by morphing master tonberrys. These guys have a shitload of HP and have a wicked counterattack called Everyone’s Grudge. And you can’t use the sense materia on them. So, the bast way to morph them is to cast stop on them, take off a bunch of HP, and keep trying to morph it till you’re successful. It can take a while, so be prepared to recast stop.

Defeating Emerald Weapon:
Once you get KotR to level 2, master mime at least once, and get your chars into the mid seventies level-wise, it’s time to come out and face the weapons. You should beat Emerald weapon first because the Earth Harp that he drops can be traded for Master Summon, Magic, and Command. All of these are good, but master summon is important for defeating Ruby Weapon (unless you want to go through the trouble of mastering KotR).

PREP: Each character should be equipped with an Enemy Skill materia (with Big Guard). Give Cloud a Mime Materia. Give Barret a double-cut material with 4x cut. Give Tifa the underwater materia. If any of your characters has less than 8000 health, give him/her a mastered HP+ materia. DO NOT EQUIP ANY OTHER MATERIA! Give as many characters as possible Sprint Shoes. Equip your best weapons and armor and initiate combat.

THE FIGHT: 
So, why so stingy on the materia? Because the damage caused by Emerald’s ultimate attack (Aire Tam Storm) is determined by the number of materia that character has equipped. ATS causes 1111 points of damage per materia equipped. So, since all your characters should only have 2-3 materia equipped, ATS should only do 2222-3333 damage. This makes the fight a lot easier. Begin the fight by casting Big Guard. Then have Barret use 4x cut. Have Cloud Mime. Then have Tifa use a Megalixer EVEN IF YOUR CHARACTERS ARE AT FULL HEATH! Emerald Weapon moves fast so it’s better to be proactive rather than reactive. Repeat this (4x cut, Mime, Megalixer), (remember to recast big guard when it runs out)until Emerald’s lasers open up. He’ll use his laser attack that reduces all of your char’s HP by 2/3. At this point, have Tifa continue to use Megalixers each turn and have Cloud and Barret focus on destroying the blue colored lasers since they cause HP damage. When your char’s limit breaks fill, use them right away, but make sure someone is ready to use a megalixer if needed. When all of Emerald’s lasers are destroyed, go back to using the 4x cut, mime, megalixer strategy until his lasers open up again. If you do this right, I guarantee a victory unless something goes horribly wrong. Note, that this fight will take a while. I ended up using almost 60 megalixers by the end of the battle.

Defeating Ruby Weapon
NOTE: Beat Emerald First!

PREP:
Equip everyone with ribbons and enemy skill materias (with Big Guard). Load them down with HP+ and Magic Plus materias. Give as many people as possible the mime materia. Give the char with the highest magic the Master Summon materia (DO NOT EQUIP W-SUMMON!). Equip someone else with KotR materia. Give someone else the TIME (with SLOW) materia. You can equip any other materia that you like, but those are just the necessities. Also equip armor that grants protection from fire (use fire-elemental if you can’t equip all char’s). Kill the two char’s without master summon and initiate combat.

THE FIGHT: 
When Ruby buries his claws, summon phoenix to revive the other two char’s (if you come into battle with all char’s alive, then Ruby will use the whirlsand attack, which permanently removes two characters from your party). Then cast Big Guard. Then cast slow on Ruby and his claws. This makes life simpler. If all your char’s are in good health and still have Big Guard up, then summon KotR. Ruby will counter with Ultima. If your char’s are still in good health, mime KotR. Then use megalixers to heal the party, recast Big Guard, and repeat this process until Ruby dies (it should only take 7-8 castings of KotR). Note that when Ruby gets low on health, he uses whirlsand a lot, thus inspiring me to come up with this alternate strategy.

ALTERNATE STRATEGY: 
Only a crazy person like me could’ve come up with this strategy. Give Cloud Master summon, enemy skill, w-summon, and time and all that good stuff. Kill the other two char’s. When you go into battle DO NOT REVIVE THE OTHER TWO CHAR’S! This keeps Ruby from using whirlsand. Cast Big Guard and slow and keep Cloud healthy. If your health is high and your barrier is up, w-summon KotR. Heal Cloud [Goatbob's Advice: Hook KotR to an HP Absorb], recast Big Guard and wait till you next chance to use KotR. If you’re doing around 9000 damage per each individual hit with KotR, then it should take seven castings to kill Ruby (you may need to adjust the number of summonings). When you’ve casted it 6 times, heal, barrier, blah, blah, then w-summon phoenix and KotR IN THAT ORDER. If you’re lucky, the last casting of KotR should kill Ruby. This strategy (when done correctly) guarantees that all three char’s will be alive and not whirlsanded by the end of the battle. Also, this strategy is good if you don’t want to use the w-item trick, just be sure to stock up on lots of X-potions and Turbo Ethers.

If you have any questions or feel that I’ve left something out, feel free to tell me in the message boards.
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Wyvernxk7's FF7 Weapons Guide:

All: Two to three {Counter (the blue one) + Mime} 
Cloud: {Knights of Round + Turbo MP} {Knights of Round + MP Absorb} W-Summon 
Other Character (Cid): {Final attack + Phoenix} 
Other Character: Whatever, Underwater might be helpful, but, it's not necessary. 
This is THE easiest method to kill the Weapons fast. The thing is: Whenever the enemy attacks a guy from the time after you have double-summoned KotR, the person will counter attack by summoning KotR four times (if they had two Counter+Mimes) or six times (three). It took a total of ten rounds to kill Ruby this way (a round being each person attacked), and 1 1/3 for Emerald.
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