I visited Hell this summer and all I got was this stupid blog

Leveling

every level requires 1000 EXP for party members and 500 EXP for GFs

unlike most RPGs, leveling up your characters is something you want to keep to a minimum if you can, for two reasons

1. the stat increases you get from leveling up are negligible, you will instead be boosting your stats through the Junction system (I will explain below)

2. FF8 uses level scaling for most enemy encounters including bosses (there are a few exceptions where the levels are fixed, namely the Lunatic Pandora on Disc 3/4 all monsters are lv 1, the Islands Closest To Heaven and Hell all monsters are lv 100). this means that your encounters will get stronger over the course of the game and if you aren't maintaining your Junctions you will start to fall behind really quickly.

2a. you can use level scaling to your advantage if you know a certain monster or boss drops an item or can Draw specific spells over a certain threshold. I think these thresholds are 1-19, 20-29 and 30-100. don't be afraid to consult the FF Wiki if you're after something specific

in order to manage your EXP, you can use Enc-Half/None (acquired from Diablo) or Card (acquired from Quezacotl). GF abilities will be explained below.

Drawing

quite possibly the biggest complaint against the game is that Drawing magic from monsters is tedious, and it is! however, the amount of Drawing you are required to do against monsters is basically none as there are other, more effective ways of obtaining magic

while you won't want to spend time drawing basic spells like Fire/Blizzard/Thunder, you will probably want to do this for rare spells like Triple, Aura and Meteor that are rarely found in drop points and are otherwise obtained from rare items

for around 95% of the game you will be getting spells by refining items and/or upgrading lower level spells into higher tier ones

Junctioning

very scary at first since the tutorial does not do a good job explaining how it works (none of the tutorials in this game are good for that matter...), but once you get a handle it's great!

it's how you improve all your stats, elemental attack/defence and status attack/defence

you will need to Junction at least one GF in order to start assigning spells to stats. the GF's abilities determine which stats can be assigned to

many high level spells, like Triple, Ultima and Pain provide very good stat boosts/protections, so you will probably want to save them instead of using them in battle

on a basic level, junctioning a spell to elemental attack adds that attribute to your regular attack. e.g. junctioning Fire will make you do Fire damage. junctioning to elemental defence reduces the damage you take from that element. the tier of spell and the amount you have in stock will improve the effectiveness of the junction, up to and including absorbing damage from enemy attacks.

status attack/defence works exactly the same way, so if you want to nullify Instant Death you would junction 100 Death to stat defence (as an example), or junction 100 Break to inflict Petrify with your attacks.

Weapons

rather than buying new weapons or equipment you upgrade them at junk shops

once again, most of the stat boosts you get are very small so the only two you really care about are Squall's Gunblade, as this unlocks better Limit Break finishers, and Selphie's Nunchakus, as her ultimate weapon has a 255% Hit rate (meaning that she'll never miss)

you can downgrade a weapon if you wish, there's actually a very good scenario for downgrading Squall's weapon with the first boss on Disc 4 since his basic Limit only hits one enemy and you NEED that quality in this specific fight

several character's starting weapons have Hit rates below 100% so you will at least want to upgrade them for that

while you will find weapons magazines throughout the game they aren't necessary for upgrading, you will just need the materials

Limit Breaks

this is how you're going to be doing the vast majority of damage to bosses, trust me it's more efficient this way.

you gain access to Limit Breaks once your HP is low and the chance that the command appears increases the lower your HP (this chance is increased further if you have the Aura status effect). you can actually skip your turn until Limit can be selected and avoid healing your party to full to further increase your chances.

rather than explain in detail how they work mechanically I'll go through the best uses for each one

Squall: he has 4 in total, starting with Rough Divide which only hits one enemy, the other 3 will hit all enemies. the finisher used is picked at random. use this knowledge wisely. he gets more Limits via upgrading his Gunblade

Zell: learns martial arts moves from magazines and executes them through button combos. if you've played any FF that uses martial arts (such as VI), you'll get how this works. there's a Google Docs spreadsheet that explains how to pull off specific finishing moves. by far my favourite way to use Duel is a method called "Armageddon Fist", which basically involves putting in low-level commands extremely quickly without using a finisher. you can deal thousands of points of damage in a single turn this way, and the damage output gets absolutely ridiculous with higher stats.

Quistis: uses Blue Magic spells learned from special items. Degenerator is one of the best ones, as it ejects enemies from battle and is available relatively early. if you need to grind for EXP for any reason using Degenerator to remove enemies is a really efficient way of doing this.

Selphie: Slot, randomly gives a spell and number of uses. you can do over as many times as you want until you find a spell you're after. The End, one of her four unique spells, can instantly defeat all enemies and bosses (except for undead enemies), but is exceedingly rare. her other three unique spells are Full-cure, Wall (combination Protect and Shell), and Rapture (removes all enemies from battle, works differently from Instant Death, Eject and The End)

Rinoa: starts with Combine, gets Angel Wing late into Disc 3. Combine has her dog perform various tricks which can be learned from pet magazines and are performed at random when learned. Invincible Moon might be the best Combine command as it makes the party invulnerable for a limited time, and you can boost the chance it appears by not learning Angelo Strike or Wishing Star. All of the passive Combine abilities are worth learning, and Angelo Search is the only way to obtain certain rare items. a method to use Angelo Search for item farming can be found here.

Rinoa cont.: Angel Wing is basically a unique Berserk status where Rinoa will randomly use boosted offensive spells from her inventory without spending them. Angel Wing cannot be combined with Invincible Moon, so choose wisely. a popular use for Angel Wing is the "Meteor Wing" method where the only compatible spell in her inventory is Meteor, with her stats instead junctioning powerful support magic.

Irvine: uses ammunition from the inventory. Pulse Ammo is the most powerful, but is hard to obtain and is better used for upgrading the Lion Heart and/or refining into Ultima. AP Ammo is the second strongest and is far easier to obtain in large amounts.

GFs

the only mandatory GFs are Quezacotl, Shiva and Ifrit (all of which are obtained at the start of the game) the rest are obtained either through special items or drawn from bosses. for all GFs obtained via drawing, if you miss them the first time you get a second chance to draw them from the bosses in Ultimecia's Castle on Disc 4. I personally recommend checking every boss with Draw to make sure you don't miss them, as many have extremely helpful abilities that are wasted if you only get them in the final dungeon.

whenever you obtain a new GF, you will want to set abilities for them to learn. I recommend always prioritising Refine abilities, followed by Junction abilities (denoted by [blank]-J) as these will increase the stats/attributes you can junction. if there are specific abilities you want (such as Enc-None or Counter), feel free to prioritise them. thankfully abilities in FF8 pretty much all do what they say on the tin.

at the very start of the game, the first ability you learn is Quezacotl's Card, followed by Card Mod. do not argue with me, you will regret it if you don't.

later in the game you can obtain items in order to teach specific abilities and delete others. this is a good opportunity to teach Junction abilities so that you don't need to shuffle your GFs around as much.

when you summon a GF, they have their own HP bar and they will take damage in place of the party member summoning them. their summon abilities either attack all enemies or buff all party members simultaneously. most summon attacks are elemental.

there are several non-junctionable GFs which you obtain through sidequests or using special items. one of these is Phoenix, summoned through the use of a Phoenix Pinion. after you've summoned it once it has a chance to appear and save the party from a game over.

Triple Triad

I'm gonna be honest, I have no idea how to play Triple Triad effectively. however, if you can wrap your head around it it's a very easy way to get cards for use in Card Mod. it is well worth learning, I just don't have the patience personally.