10 is by FAR easier than 7. 7 you gotta power level at some points... 10 you come to a boss, die once, and think "oh, this boss is a tiny bit hard. No prob charge up every aeons over drive i win ez np"

also, there is a way to abuse the Overdrive to Exp items and pretty much level to full in 1 fight once you got the air ship

and the reason there's so many challenges for 7 and none for 10, those challenges you see in 7 just can't be done in 10 for a few reasons. And it's not cus it's to hard, mechanically you can't do it

[QUOTE=Andross1,29 Jul 2011 22:21][QUOTE=vdeity,Jul 29 2011 03:09pm]I think 8 is way easier.
The junction system was sorta innovative at the time (they were really trying to mix it up), but it's just so easy to exploit.
At the start of the game, find a T-Rex and blind it and draw 100 Fire and Thunder on everyone and junction it to STR or HP -- and you just breeze through everything.
Easy to convert found items into large amounts of powerful magic which boosts your stats when junctioned.
Magic is not necessary in the game. I always just used magic as a stat booster.[/QUOTE

Triple Triad is what made the game so easy. Card Mod for life.[/QUOTE]

this. it's unbelievable how easy that game can be. Fuck, theres a card, you get at THE VERY BEGGINING that gives you 20 tornadoes with of the card mod abilities. Not to mention the dino thing like you said, except you can just kill them and get a Dino Bone that gives 20 Quakes. Just get 100 quakes and ban strength.

FF8 is way easier than 7. NOt even close

I never had to powerlevel in 7. I never even got Knights of the Round my first play through, and Sephiroth was still cake. I never lost a battle in FF7 on my first play through. Sure, it took me a few tries when I played it my second try to beat Ruby/Omega weapons, but everything in the story wasn't that difficult. 10 is definitely harder, there are more challenging bosses, and I actually had to spend time leveling on the side to beat it.

And I'm not denying 8 isn't easy. If you stand there draw whoring(which I'm assuming most people do), most of the game will be easy. And yes, if you spend the time playing the card game, you can get a lot of great items and magic pretty easily as well. However, there are still a lot of points in the game that are more challenging than 7. Specifically Ultimecia's castle. Back when I was really into RPGs, on my first try I'd always try not to use a guide because I didn't want hints on how to exploit the game or make it easier. I'd only use it if I absolutely had to, for example if I just missed something and couldn't figure out where to go. Anyways, my point is, my first playthrough of 8 I didn't draw whore or use any guides, and it was pretty difficult. It took me a hand full of tries to figure out how to beat Ultimecia's castle, and eventually Ultemicia. I never ran into anything like that in 7 my first time playing. And it's ridiculous how many cheap combinations of materia you can make in FF7, you don't need a guide to tell you how to use it so efficiently that you'll never lose a battle. Yes, there are some crazy ones that I didn't know about until I used a guide, but those are basically just extra crazy things to try for fun.

In the end, yes, there are ways to exploit pretty much every FF game system. Maybe 8 is just a little easier to exploit once you figure out the Junction system for the first time.

if you don't use them super cheap bombos (slashall+death, phoenix+final attack, etc) it's very difficult. Hell you almost have to level as a team because if you don't bizzaro sephiroth can be a very difficult fight. FFX was just by far the easiest to me. Instant heal at a fight, most bosses being able to die to just aeon over drives, etc. Even without anima/yojimbo/magus sisters it was just not a challenege. Not to mention having a very high damage cap