I'm not sure what I'll do, but I'm definitely interested in hearing people's own opinions on this whole translation kerfuffle, especially if you have pre-existing knowledge of the game's translation issues (that you can talk about without spoilers).
From what I've gathered, the French translation is less accurate than the English one most of the time (as mentioned, the original had Squall be uninterested in Quistis at all, it's a recurring thing whenever they have scenes together, weird as that might sound), even if the English one also isn't very good. So, I would suggest using the English one.
Here's everyone on both this and spoiler thread going "maaaan FFVIII so EASY so BREAKABLE gaem"
Meanwhile Omi's gotten two game overs in the first dungeon
Using only things Omicron already knows, the fishes on the beach have Blizzard to draw, so you can go into the cavern with a full 200 already drawn; note that both Shiva and Quetzal have the "J Elem-Atk" ability, so you can have those Blizzard make your attack ice-elemental, if you feel like having it available. Shiva also has Junction STR (one of the reasons I default to give her to Squall, with Quetzal going to Quistis), and the fishes also often comes in groups of three, which gives off 3 AP - making them easy to grind abilities on, to unlock that ability; a STR junctioned Renzokuken will turn anything in the Fire Cavern to nothing in the blink of an eye. Plus, Fire Cavern enemies are locked at level 5 - they don't scale up, one of the very few places in the game where that is the case. Meaning, you can just level up outside the cave to breeze through.
So, it's entirely possible (although not recommended) to clean the fire cavern within 5 minutes with time to spare, and without even going into gamebreaking mode. It just requires that you know how the system works before Quistis has explained any of it to you, which obviously is not something that can be expected of somebody on their first run-through. And as mentioned, if you
don't understand how things work, then FFVIII can turn out to be surprisingly hard, although it doesn't really turn punishing until near the end of Disk 2. It's not that the game is easy, it's that the game-breaking options are impossibly efficient at doing their job once you figure out what they are.
I also found this image, which confirms the case is exactly what I assumed and the wiki page further explained it appeared in the opening credits so this is another certified Blind Omi MomentTM.
The opening credits sequence is actually extremely long, and it requires leaving the game idle in the opening menu for a bit to make it start in the first place; I would not at all be surprised if Omicron only watched the first few scenes, or clicked something and exited the sequence midway through without realizing it.
