Chicobo: Guardian Force

Guardian Forces, or GFs, are what usually is known as summons in previous FF installments. But unlike summons, GFs add abilities to your characters, be it individual or team abilities. Since i'm not talking about your regular, ability-giving GF, let's skip that talk.

Like previous FF games, a chocobo can be summoned in FF8. The chocobo GF is called Chicobo. But unlike a normal GF, Chicobo doesn't give any abilities to the characters, it won't show up in the menu screen, and doesn't even need AP and EXP to level up.

There are two requirements before you can summon Chicobo. First is that you need gysahl greens. And lastly, you need to have at least solved one of the numerous chocobo forest puzzles scattered around (I'll make another section on that one next time) in order to have a Chicobo which is defaultly named Boko.

You can get gysahl greens in several ways: from the vase piece quest, buying from Chocoboy at the different forests provided that you haven't solved the puzzle in that forest first, and also from Chicobo at the Chocobo Holy Area in exchange for him stealing 600gil for each.

Boko's main attack is the Choco Fire which deals minimal damage to enemies. Buuut, Boko can actually learn more attacks by leveling him up and receiving some stars in Chocobo World with the use of the PocketStation. Below are the number of stars Boko needs to learn other attacks. These stars are acquired by going through some series of events at Chocobo World.

No star - Choco Fire
One star - Choco Flare
Two stars - Choco Meteor
Three stars - Choco Buckle

Choco Flare does medium damage, Choco Meteor does random multiple hits to all enemies and Choco Buckle does damage exceeding 9999HP to all enemies. Choco Fire is sooooo weak that it's not even worth the time to summon this GF. But if you have a PocketStation, I would suggest that you level up Boko until you can get Choco Buckle since it's one of the best, if not the best attack there is causing damage reaching up to 15000HP.