You give us far too much credit. Is the internet man's voice coming from my speakers? Yes it is. Did I remember to put both socks on this morning? I think so. All is right with the world.
I completed every one of these side quests, except one. For context: I collected all nine ultimate weapons in FF7 and crafted two Master-Summon materia. I collected Excalibur II. I collected all cards in both FF8 and FF9. I taught every character every skill they can learn in FF9. I got every damage cap lifted ultimate weapon in FFX and taught every character every skill. I am a FF completionist junkie. That jump rope reward is never, ever, EVER going to happen.
This is cheating the game a bit, but i got excalibur 2 very easily by playing the steam version. You can speed up the game to (I think) x3 or x4, and the game still leaves the timer at real world rates. Cut scenes, dialog blocking, all battles are accelerated and cut so much time as a result. I got it pretty easily with a few hours to spare.
I couldn't even manage to get the Alexandria card (200 jumps.) Next time I play that game I am going to play the PC version with mods so I can just cheat to get it.
Nah, that ff9 jump rope is the hardest thing by far. I've done everything else in this list *multiple* times. That 1000 jump ropes? Never. Not even close. I think the best I ever done was mid 300s.
Agree. Me and my friend were even competing against each other trying to see who will get the highest score. And i believe we both failed around 175 or so and it was our highest result.
the jumps in Super Mario RPG were a pain iun the A cuz the timing changed :S like that jump rope, think the same dev might have been responsible for both, with FF9 and SMRPG
Yeah, I guess I must just be lucky, or, like, some sort of chocobo racing savant or something because it's only ever taken me a few tries, each time I've played.
Yeah. I got it on first try long ago on ps2 and have gotten it on first or few tries many times after. Jump rope and lighting dodging I've only done once and would never even consider doing again given how tedious they were. I'd easily put ff9 frog catching over the chocobo race too given how tedious it was to wait frogs to spawn and run across the globe for the marshes. Or ff9 chocobo hot and cold if you wanted the high end rewards for how grindy it became for them.
The .1% Zodiac Spear is in the original game, too. Amusingly the RNG seed in XII has also been so thoroughly reverse-engineered that there are step-by-step guides to ensuring that the chest will spawn with the Spear. They involve hitting yourself in the face a few dozen times while you descend the mines.
@@RobertMason-i1y both of the chests in original and zodiac age in henne mines do respawn. only difference is that og spear is way more annoying to get not only for the lower drop rate but also that ZA has faster loading times due to better hardware even on switch, the x2/x4 speedup and THE AUTOSAVES! za saves between screen transition which IMMENSELY cut down ALL forms of grinding! for example, the bone helm that the wild saurian in the first estersand zone drops. on ps2, you really shouldn't even bother with how long it takes to do it on top of the rng that it might cannibalize the wolves around you. but in za you can abuse the autosave after whittling it down as a black mage to where a single fire will kill it. didn't drop? reload autosave and try again. on original i DID once set out to get the 1% burning bow drop from the dive talons earliest possible. with breaks it took me 10 months real time because i got so bored waiting for the long loading times and having to kill it from full constantly! each attempt with loading times took at least 3-4 minutes! zodiac age on pc with a 1060 6gb gpu, 16gb ram and i5-7500 cpu, i whittled it down to where the weakest knot of rust roll could kill it, autosaved with it right next to the area transition each attempt took like 30-50 seconds with loading times, and got the bow in 45 minutes. all in all, zodiac age makes grinding much, MUCH easier than how it was on ps2, like oh my god it was horrible if you didn't set aside a good few days/weeks or more
Late to the party but yes, this is how I got the spear back in the day, iirc it only spawned in a chest that was in a mine only 1% of the time and then the chest had a 10% of having the spear, I somehow managed to get it on 3 hours. My complete save of FFXII was 400 hours from doing this impossible odd grind like this or other odd weapons and rare monsters (I remember grinding hours for a red chocobo too) gotta love summertime as a kid with no worries.
Chocobo racing in FFX is janky, but doable, just takes enough tries to get used to it, and a good RNG with balloon placement. FFIX's jump rope is plain evil.
@@rosaheartlily I once got 199. I was just a wee bit furious. I did get it on my next try, at least. And I did so without breaking or biting a piece off my keyboard. My trick was to go to a secluded part of the plains and wedge myself in a way that Tidus wouldn't move around when dodging.
The trick to make this laughable... stand underneath a lightning tower.. when you walk out from underneath it a lightning strike will happen within 2 seconds.. immediately walk back under the tower, rinse and repeat, the lightning strike will always happen as soon as you knave the safety of the tower.
If you don't want regional Triple Triad rules to spread, keep challenging an NPC and then hitting cancel. Eventually you'll get their normal dialogue instead of their mixed-rules dialogue, and you can just play them as normal. Very handy for keeping Random from spreading
What's weird is that I got 0:00 in FFX three times, back to back, on the PS2 just to confirm there weren't any other prizes and didn't bat an eye. I think I used my lifetime supply of luck because I tried it again on the remaster and never could. Chance is a cruel mistress.
As a 14 year old i got 0.0 no problem on my PS2. As a 34 yo playing the remaster now? Such a struggle. I mustve used all my luck earlier in life too lol
I have the same issue. I'm wondering if it's some kind of frame rate issue or something to do with the version we got on the PS2. It wouldn't be the first time things were made easier for us in the west
@@ericgrimes341haha totally! In my endless time after school (hardly endless, but little responsibility compared to being an adult), I managed to get that one. I recall it wasn't easy, but I did manage it. Not a chance that would happen now. I would use save states after I tried a few times.
The PS4 version had broken RNG that never re-seeded*. This made the endgame torturous because the RNG was also notoriously 'streaky' (or low entropy), meaning that you might have to do a LOT of attempts before just so happening to get a pattern you needed. This makes the choco race harder if you get a lot of "bad" patterns in a row. This was also a huge pain for me when grinding materials - I would get dozens upon dozens of the same two wrong drops in a row, then dozens more of the next two wrong drops, and then finally the thing I wanted. Much less painful on the PS2. *What this means is - if you reset the game because you got a bad result, when you turn it back on you will get the exact same result. I had to manipulate blitzball prizes by intentionally getting into battles before checking the prize pool again.
the toughest in my opinion is the queen card mission of ff8, just because it’s nearly impossible to do that without a guide or tutorials. Plus, the quest is very long and propagates throughout almost the entire game. Ff9’s rope jumps is also nearly impossible but at least all you have to do is pressing X. Beautiful video by the way, cheers from Italy
"No is not" oh...without a guide....yeah....I have a Guidebook of FF 8 (Non official) and I was "like are players supposed to know all this stuff?" once you know is quite easy.
I always do the lightning dodges my first run through the Plains by using the "wedge Tidus between the cactuar stone and the wall" method, because you're technically standing still even during the dodge, so you can't get encounters.
The trick to Triple Triad was to abolish rules and play with as few as possible while only spreading favourable ones. Then it mostly became easy. Tetra Master was rng bs.
@@spectrasoulfaire215 Arrow placement was critical. A zero card with an arrow hitting a card with a blank wins. And if you place a card with all of its arrows covered, it can't be used to infect other cards.
@@Zafire063 Tetra master seemed random because it actually IS random (it's been reverse engineered, and the random element is very strong there, enough to turn a sure winning game into a losing one).
Ya I said fuck it and just bypassed it all together by just having the onion knight and them building another doll with the same stats. End result is the same.
Had a hard time with this one before too. I remember failing at 164th dodge and raged. Later on when I played the remaster I read and followed a few tips like don’t count but instead set a timer like 30 minutes, pausing and taking a 2 min break every 5 minutes. There’s also a specific spot where you can run into and lightning always strikes there, giving you the option to control the timing. So what I did was, go to the spot, put on some music, practice a few times to get into rythm, and took breaks. By the time I checked if I’d done it I was at around 390 dodges 😂
@@eternallove4248 I've read the guides and tried the suggestions yet fail around halfway. If they had a buy out mechanic for a ludicrous amount of Gil I would just do that. Who knows, they might just re-remaster the game with built in microtransactions. I'm not saying I would throw money....ok I would lol
My most hated 'side quest' in any Final Fantasy are the chests found in FFX's Omega Ruins. Basically, there are twelve chests spread out in groups in the ruins. Each time you open one, you get the next item in a predetermined list. Sometimes, the chest will be a Mimic, which will trigger a battle. Win or lose, the remaining chests in the group disappear, and you start back at the top of the item list. The chests that disappear never come back, so you have to open all twelve perfectly your first time through to get all the items in the list. The thing is, whether a chest contains an item or a Mimic is completely random, and is determined when you enter the Ruins. Nothing in the game tells you any of this, and nothing you do once you enter the Ruins will influence it. Whether or not you can get all twelve items is all luck.
Many moons ago when I did the omega ruins for the very first time I got extremely lucky and got the 99 warp spheres on my first chest. Now I can't find it to save my life. 😅
FF9 jump rope is by far the hardest. I've done the other sidequests and they don't compare. I had a friend come over and we spent hours trying to reach 1000 until finally he was able to achieve it for me. It was a huge relief to have it finished.
it's meh. in the beginning of the game, you get Ifrit, then Minimog, then Quistis, then you're unstoppable. you just keep getting better and better cards (character and GF), while opponents might only have 1-2 powerful cards, and you quickly take them for yourself. so the devs could've added a limit on how many strong cards are allowed in a hand, to keep the game challenging. so it's extremely easy. unless you get bad ruleset - then you're screwed no matter what you have. (random + direct, or random + all, even same/plus is more favorable for a weaker hand) so it's either very easy or unfair. doesn't seem amazing to me. (that said, it's still way, WAY better than FFIX's Tetra Master, which has huge RNG; Triple Triad at least plays consistently)
You are single handedly making the FF content creator space so awesome right now well done. Looking forward to more content the new video has me wanting to secret hunt in 7 and 9 now lol
Butterfly (and Lightning in a way) is very easy and quick with a guide at least. Chocobo, imo, is the absolute worst. Takes too long to re-race and very prone to bad luck. OG first playthough did all of them, but Chocobo was and remains the worst.
This help me with butterfly game. You only have to do it twice. Once you know where the blue butterflies are it makes it a Lil easier to plan your route. You can afford to hit ONE red butterfly and still make it to the end in time.
@@Zafire063 For sure. You'll have to play online and make sure you have robust Internet connection. Literally turn every device in your house off that connects to the Internet. Took a couple tries but you'll get it
Did the same thing, just remote connect laptop to ps4 and run the script :) had to adjust the network delay in the script and after a few tries it worked Never would I have done the 1000 jumps by myself, never!
@@ThexXxXxOLOxXxXx agree, 8 is only playable with the speed up function in the remaster. I tried to play multiple times during childhood because I loved other final fantasy. Could never make it very far in 8
That chocobo one cracks me up because I'd heard how tough it was before ever doing it... and then I completed it in 21 minutes. I kept track. Meanwhile, the lightning dodging took all day. Failed attempts after failed attempts.
AND by the time you can actually get him, he's woefully underpowered because he starts at level 1, and you already have OP characters like Orlandu at that point.
Blitzball ends up actually just being a time sync rather than being hard. It is pretty easy to manipulate the Blitzball AI so long as you have the proper players recruited (also pretty easy, just requires a bit of walking).
There are two players you can get in Luca (One being the second best goalie in the game, the other being one of the best passers), and it lets you win against every team pretty easily. Al Bhed Psyches are still annoying, but they're beatable with Jecht Shot. I had a file where I farmed tons of teleport and return spheres just to play the game differently. Think I did 40 hours of blitzball. My favorite mini game of all time in an FF.
Awesome vids! These games were amazing and you brought memories back to everyone that watched these. If you ever have time cover the bosses :). Final fantasy 11 when pandemonium warden first came out was unbeatable and incredibly difficult to even get to the fight. What an amazing time for games
After all these years, im still mad about it. The only way to know how to get it, is to look it up. And by the time you've done so, you've long since fucked it up and are probably in the last quarter of the game at least
Getting the complete collection of cards in ff9 was insane. Because it wasn't just getting all the cards. It was getting all unique attack directions for each card with no duplicate attack directions for each card
@@mogos.arcker22 there were so many hard to get cards, i remember spending forever getting Alexander card the one other thing i forgot that made it i the completion of the set insane, is you can only hold 100 cards max. so you have to purposefully lose games or do card inventory management so you dont risk cards disappearing when you win or find a card
Completed all of these side quests, and by far the hardest for me in this video was the jump ropes. I would eventually get to 200 jump ropes with no problem, but could never get the double-tap from 200-300 jumps down. I basically just got lucky. You mentioned the lightning dodges and the easy "cheese" method with the crater, which made that one easier for me. Other than the chocobo race, the other one from FF10 I struggled with was those butterflies that you had to collect in a certain amount of time, but if you ran into the wrong color you had to do a random battle. It was especially annoying because of the camera angles, and I think the butterflies took me the longest out of any FF10 side quest.
Upon seeing this video: "The lightning dodging BS better be in there" (and it was). That mini-"game" was utterly demoralizing. Eons ago, I managed to do it with a friend counting the dodges outloud while I did the actual dodging. It took several days and multiple failed attempts/ragequits.
Rope jump is a menace for me personally. Never was able to finish it, and i can't do it with a cheat as well, because the whole setting for it is difficult for me to do, with the pc and everything. I managed to dodge lightning 200 times in ffx but can't finish the rope jump. The chocobo racing was the easiest one tbh, i find second part of it more challenging than the original one. Usually the winning pattern if the balloons are on your side and if you use d-pad. As for lighting dodge i used another spot - right behind the agency, near the lightning tower, it strikes there every 2 seconds i believe, so you jump and move forward and jump again, there's basically no delay, and i know some people recommend to turn off the music, but i just turned off the game volume and found a music track that is 3 minutes 45 seconds long (or 4 minutes 25 seconds long) and used that as a reference for time. This would be enough to do 200 or 220 jumps. I really don't like counting in my head.
I did that ff9 jump rope quest as a kid at a cousins house back when I was young and still had good reflexes and time on my hand.....Never again will I subject myself to that.
Shout out to the FFIV Adamant Armor side quest. To obtain the most powerful armor in the game, you must go deep into the final dungeon and get a Pink Tail from a specific enemy, then go all the way back out of the dungeon to Earth and trade the tail to the tail collector. The Pink Tail is only dropped by one specific enemy that only appears in one very specific, very small room, at a 1/64 chance encounter. The enemy then has a 1/64 chance of dropping said pink tail, meaning you only encounter them 1.56% of the time, and when you DO, they will drop the item 1.56% of the time. Most players won't even get into a single random encounter in the room this enemy exists in, let alone encounter the Pink Puff and get the item to drop. It's pure insanity.
I might be in the minority, but I absolutely adored the triple triad from FF8. It's a great game, and sometimes I booted FF8 up, just to play the cards, and find them. You don't have to play it, but the game give you plenty of incentives to do so, as some of the special cards can be turned into rare items, which in turn can be turned into powerful spells, which you can junction for insane stats. I never finished the Queen of Cards quest all the way tho...
Gotta remember that a couple of these side quests are included to give you a reason to buy the walkthrough book (sold separately). The internet made walkthrough books irrelevant, so these kinds of side-quests are rare now. My tip for the chocobo race is to use the D-pad.
That jump rope quest was the bane of my existence. I could not even get past 100. Handed the controller off to my bro and he managed to get just over 16000 jumps. Turns out all you get is an achievement but that don't change the fact that my bro is my hero. :D
@@KezVanBeck That's the thing, I'm not. I couldn't believe it either when I saw it. I wish I had recorded it so I'd have proof but I didn't know how back then. Maybe I can convince him to do it again for a future video on my channel.
One of things is to help with the lightning dodging is to have control over how and when the lightning strikes, as well as the number it does in succession. My favorite spot is right by the southern exit in the Northern part of the Thunder plains (where there are two exits, one would lead to Rin's Travel Agency, the other exit to the Southern part of the Lightning Plains.) At that point there's an area where the lightning will always drop in sets of three, so as long as you are successful in the timing for the first dodge, the second, and third doges are guaranteed. A bit of warning though; since the dodging count resets when you exit a zone, you need to give yourself a bit of room to dodge three times without leaving the stage. But once you get used to the range and the timing, it's probably the fastest spot to rack up 200 dodges. But don't get me started on that chocobo racing. The only way that works for me is that I have to take in consideration that I will be hit at least 3 or 4 times, so I aim for about 17 or 18 balloons and pray the controls work.
Great vid, love to see more of these. My favorite of these is that in FF6 all of the barrels and chests in the game change their contents when you get to the world of ruin.
This may have been mentioned in the comments already, but there's actually a glitch that makes the chocobo racing even worse - you don't want a time of 0:0.0, you actually want a time LESS than that. There seems to be a bug where the game doesn't check if your time is 0, it actually checks if it's LESS than 0, so a time that is perfectly 0:0.0 actually won't give you the sigil.
You can also play with the son of the Queen inside a house in Dollet, he holds every single rare card that you lost to her. That way you can simply shift her between Balamb and Dollet and get the job done quickly.
Man I spent about 4 hours trying to get 0.0 on the chocobo race and after I got it I went over to a friends house to hang out he had been trying to get 0.0 for about 2-3 hours I was like here let me see the controller and did it my first time luckily, made it look easy it was not, but he flipped out and pounced on me, he was so pissed, lol good times.
There are two ways you can get the cards from the Card Queen sidequest without doing the sidequest itself: 1. Remember the pod from the space station? It's still accessible in Disc 4, and the Card Queen will be there. You can play her right then and there for her exclusive cards. Be warned, though: she has every bad rule in the book against you, and no Open, so you can't see her cards, making it a nightmare to win; 2. This second method is a bit convoluted, but it's the easiest way to get almost every card in the game. First, you need to manipulate Trabia's game rules so that it gets the Open rule and its native rules, Random and Plus, are abolished. You can accomplish this in Disc 1 by first changing Galbadia's rules so it gains Open and loses Same, then talking to a transfer student in Galbadia Garden. This particular guy comes from Trabia Garden, so you can use him to manipulate Trabia's rules. Once you're done with that, the next step is to complete the CC Group sidequest by defeating all of their members. You can do this starting halfway through Disc 2. With these accomplished, play the game normally until Disc 4. If you've completed the CC Group sidequest, its members will all be inside the Ragnarok. The member we're looking for is Left Diamond: she uses Trabia's rules, and she'll have any rare card you don't have (except PuPu). She'll even have cards you lost in other games or changed into items, allowing you to farm them from her, and of course, she will have the Card Queen's exclusive cards.
In 2003: I once got a 0.7 second time on the chocobo race. What got me heated was a bird spawned at the last possible second before I crossed the finish line. I’ve never been able to get close since.
Jump rope is the hardest by a mile. The Chocobo race is annoying and can rely a bit on RNG but very doable. Though I do love that if you get the perfect time you can get 0.0.0 and still not get the reward because you hit the number exactly rather than go below it. 😂
X is one of my two favorite games, and I've played it multiple times. Have never been able to beat the chocobo race or lightening dodge. I knew for sure they'd be on this list lol
All of them are very doable except the Jump Rope in FF9. That is impossible without cheating on the newer systems/Steam. In the PS1/PS2 the hard wired controllers made it where it didn't have the slight delays so it was very hard but doable.
My brother and I as kids were able to scour what we could at the time and found out just how you explained it the quest to earn every single card in that game. You have to lose specific cards at specific times in order to obtain new cards and get your old cards back. Man it was daunting and fun.
For the lightning dodging quest, what I did way way back was keep my eyes closed, and the lightning causing the screen to flash can be seen through eyelids.
@@gnosis_gaming The real worst part is that I KNEW, I bought the official guide detailing the method to use and its rewards, it didn't help...Still my favourite FF anyway.
I remember setting my TV brightness settings down to nothingness and contrast settings up in a mode I cant remember anymore doing the lightning dodge event, my room was a lighthouse that night. The TV mode somehow filtered the flashes from its surroundings, didn't see anything else and the contrast+brightness amplified whenever a lightning struck lul Had a giga headache after but was a safe route
Without a guide, the Zodiac Spear was one of the most missable items in any FF game. My highest score jumping rope is like 7. 😂 I've only played the Remaster for a few hours though. Triple Triad sounds like a nightmare for completionists.
Yep, I also imagine the same to be true for getting the Barrett date in ff7. Not a missable item, but it is a missable trophy when that became a thing.
I player FF10 when i was a child, tried to 100% it, but i couldnt do de lightning, i was literally at 180 and dropped it, my eyes were bleeding. Years later, my childhood best friend got to play FF10, and he completed everything, as i did, an just left the lightnings for the end. He invited me over to his house, and told me it was time to surpass my fears. We did a hangout, it took me at 10 hours of tries, but eventually i manage it, it is one of my most beloved FF memories
Considering out the ones shown, only the FF9 Jump rope I have never managed to complete ( I usually get around 136-150 on a good run), its def the hardest.
Bro i remember doing the JUMP ROPE quest in FF9. Literally just sitting there for hours doing mf jumprope without a care in my mind how much time i was wasting.
Just an FYI on the FF10 Lightning Dodge minigame, you do not have to run around to have lightning strike you, you can just stand right near the screen transition and wait for the flash, dodge, and repeat. I recommend having a friend count for you, as I'm pretty sure I dodged much more than 200 in a row out of sheer terror of having to do this again. This minigame is why, in my life, when I'm waiting, the Thunder Plains theme plays in my head.
Nice video! Though I gotta be honest, to me personally the 1000 jump ropes are impossible. I completed the Chocobo race about 3 times in life and I never want to do it ever again. I avoided the 200 lightning strikes once in my life and I actually wouldn't mind doing it again. It's really alright using exactly the method you mentioned in the video. The jump ropes though... Final Fantasy IX is my favourite game of all time, but I will never ever attempt to do this. My record was 301 btw. Also I think the Chocobo race at Remiem Temple is painful as well due to the janky controls.
Fun trivia about Triple Triad in FF8: there's an NPC near/at the docks in Balamb (the town, not the Garden). If you challenge him to a match of Triple Triad, he erases ALL THE RULES you were carrying with you, and the game you play against him has only the basic rules. You don't even have to go through with playing a match against him (though he's pretty easy to beat, so I don't see why you wouldn't). I make the distinction of "Triple Triad in FF8" because there's also a Triple Triad in FF14. At least in the latter, you don't carry rules around with you or spread them. (At least no NPCs in FF14 use the Random rule anymore. Heck that rule.)
I just realized that the Jump rope minigame is similar to Vagrant Story's Chain mechanic. The timing starts changing past a certain limit. For VS the timing changes at 25 combo in FF9 it randomizes every 100(?) Reps
Ahhh fond times of my youth ff8 card games was definitely my favorite i solely played FF8 just for those cards so it wasnt as tedious to me. FFX though was a pain luckily blitz ball can be cheesed after getting world champion so and dodging lightning was just a matter of patience the chocobo was annoying though
@@gnosis_gaming Theres so many guides for everything these days. Challenges like the Butterfly challenge in Macalania Forest are made so simple just a map. I remember the battle saucer in FFVII very frustrating. But that was also 20 years ago. I feel like back then we all had to find answers for ourselves. Usually just find a way to break the mini game and exploit it lol
Queen of cards isnt really hard if you use a guide, it just takes a bit of a grind, but that grind cuts down a lot on the length of the combat sections of the game.
what about that one lightning tower in X-2? it requires different input on each hand, the location of the directions on the screen is random and the speed keeps increasing. towards the end it's so unmanageable by the time you react it's too late. i remember when i got it, i had to guess what the last one might be and just hope it was correct.
Chcocobo race took me 4 days of attempts (high schooler with infinite free time) and then I found out my copy crashed before Sin. Restarted from the beginning on the HD version and it took me another week and a half. In that time I: Got 0 on the first race win that doesn't count. Got EXACTLY 0 which unbelievably doesn't count for it (you have to get BELOW zero), TWICE! And spent probably 60-70 hours total. Hell. And I would rather do it 3 more times than 100% FFX-2 again.
Had the same exact issue with my PS2 copy, spent 12 hours overnight in a single sitting doing the chocobo race nonstop until completing it, only to find out that my copy crashes at the sin fight. Fast forward to when I got the HD version on my steam deck and I got 0:00 on the very first try but it still counted for me somehow.
How about the map system in final fantasy tactics advance? we STILL don't know the intentional map layout but depending on where you choose to place map icons you lose out on potential items. it's one of the only times in final fantasy where there are multiple guides with different layouts that all are seen as "correct" by the community.
I would say my toughest would be the ones I haven't completed. So...all of them except for Titus (though frustrating, I did get all the ultimate weapons aside from Lulu's).
I think that a large part of why these quests are so insane and convoluted was that internet fora and guides were not available for everything, so Square could sell strategy guides for everything
I remember watching a video of this method like 6 months after it came out, so unless you did it 20 years ago, people were doing this since the very beginning.
I wish I could find a source on this but I remember reading somewhere that the Zodiac Spear's completely arbitrary requirements was actually the result of a bug. Apparently it was supposed to reply on something much more sensible (nobody's sure what), but either the variables were rearranged or the pointers were set wrongly in the first place because the Zodiac Spear is checking a completely random-ass bit of memory compared to similar items.
I remember the 0-second chocobo race not being too bad. I don't know if I got lucky, if I'm better at it than average, or if it's overhyped. I also noticed that the lightning strikes seemed to fall into a loop of just a few lightning strikes. Before I was halfway through, I knew when every lightning strike was coming before it happened.
getting the Morbol Mount in FF14. beating the highest dificulty of the Bahamut and Alexander Lair with a full team of Blue Mages. which all need to go trough several Extreme Dificulty Dungeons to earn the nessesary Skill so they have a chance to win.
I loved Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII. It was the Tic-Tac-Toe greatest number wins game. You had to pay attention to your numbers on the cards and the strategy in placement in the spaces. And the fix to make it easy is to find her in the region you are ready to lose the card in, then save your game. Go to play her and when she notifies you of the rules being used, reload your save file if they are bad rules, until you get the favorable rules you want to play with.
I did the lightning bolt sidequest when I was in high school, over half my life ago. I told myself I'd never do it again. What I did was pause the game after every 10 jumps or so and go take a break. The monotony is what always made me mess up. It's one of the reasons I never want to play the FF version with the dark aeons, because I'd have to do all that again. I just can't imagine. The balloon game did take me a little while, but it wasn't near as stressful as the lightning bolts. I've also never done the 1000 jump ropes. Think I managed 100 once and it took a while. I can't imagine doing 1000.
in FFX lightning dodge side quest, there is a ledger on the counter in the inn of the thunder plains that shows you how many times you dodged. I have a file that I missed at 199 jumps :(
Oddly, I never had an issue with the chocobo race. I found the butterfly sidequest in FFX to be the hardest. I always struggle the most with that one. When I learned the RNG trick with the lightning, that stopped being as difficult. The jump rope is still the hardest minigame in the entire series IMO. I have never once beaten it and I stopped even trying. It's so brutal lmao.
Getting Quistis's Shockwave Pulser without cards was long and annoying. Mugging 100 dark matter from TriFace enemies takes forever, because TriFace aren't a very common encounter, at least in Ultimacia's Castle.
A world were a quest is not just a big UI sign that says "Go to B and talk with ALPHA"... specially considering that those crazy quest were available right out of the box... I wonder how many undiscovered secrets are still yet to be found in the FF series. 90's and 00's was the best gaming era for JRPG...
FFVIII card collection is the hardest one by far. Queen of Cards aside, you also need to lose cards to Martine and maybe Callaway (can't remember it all) and there are also many, many missable card players at various stages of the game. As for side quests not mentioned here, FF7 Rebirth has gone pretty far to create some insane challenges: Queen's Blood survival, Cactuar Crush, Gears n' Gambits, the last part of the Protorelics side quest and of course, the battle sim - specifically Rulers of the Outer Worlds.
That chocobo race can rot. Nothing like making the worst controls ever for something that should be relatively easy. I cant even describe how bad they are, just straight up garbage
Got every Triple Triad card in FF8 remaster a few months ago, but it was a little more intense than I expected. I followed the 100% card guide to the letter until I got to the final rare Squall Card. I accidentally saved and missed setting the card rule in Esthar to something sane enough to complete the card quest with, so it made Laguna unintentionally like a final boss using some of the worst rules on Random. It's really hard to fix the ruleset after spreading it that far, so I just savescummed and went at it until I finally won the Squall Card. My friends that were watching at the time got more hype about that than beating Ultimecia. Felt amazing finishing it, but for the love of god please remember to rng those rules first for your own sanity, lol.
The Ultimate Weapon in FFX couldn't have been that bad, I remember getting them all in my first Playthrough back on the PS2. Replacing the whole original Spereboard to beat all Dark was the real headache. Thank's for the Tonberry fight for enless AP in the monster Arena...
FF8 well forever, be one of my favorite entries in the series, but man, it is convoluted. I remember that shortly after it came out, there was an Internet, rumor that you could unlock Sephiroth from FF7 as a character, but only if you did specific actions that took you all the wayto desk 3. It sounded as plausible as any other weird stuff in the game. Obviously, after many hours, I came up empty-handed.
Proud to say I actually got the 0.00 time in the chocobo race as a teenager when FFX released, that was the first game I ever played that had serious grinding in it, previous FF games seemed brief by comparison. I gave up on the lightning, from memory you got something for dodging about 15 so i stopped there. I found Bliztball fun so I managed to do that one fine for Wakka's weapon. Oh to have the spare time of my youth back again haha
I did the card sidequest in the 90s for the sole purpose of self-gratification of getting them all. The chocobo one was infuriating and as for the lightning one, I turned off my lights as well as the sound to help really focus.
So many folks in the comments focus on difficulty, which seems fair. However, I struggle with discussions that argue which agonizing side quest chokes more joy from a player trying to enjoy a game in full than another. I cannot resist a focus on the missing "why" for so many of these side quests. Why would developers design frustrating or virtually impossible missions (impossible without tedious guides on walking a thread-wide path toward a poorly advertised prize) for players to pursue in masterfully crafted worlds and grand stories that... at best add nothing to the narrative and mechanics and at worst counter them. For example, FF9 and FF10, with their excessive jump rope and lightning dodge challenges, rely on reflexes with only a few frames warning and that directly contradicts the mechanics of them both as turn-based games, like chess and spades and D&D, and arguably counter what draws players to a turn-based game instead of an action-based one. It's a bit maddening. Lol Sigh. I adore these games. Like, a LOT. These painfully unfun sidequests mar what I regard as an otherwise beautiful mosaic, yet I appreciate the beauty still, in spite of them, as one would adore a mural despite graffiti in its corners or its paint chipping.
Fun fact: at FFX's Chocobo racing in order to win the Sun Sigil, your resulting time must actually be NEGATIVE (it still displays as zero though). If you, say, finish in exactly 36 seconds and collect 12 balloons (that actually happened to me once), your time will be zero, but you will not get the sigil.
Sorry the for poor audio quality on this video! I had to use my iPhone for this one. Next vid will be better! 😇
It's unlistenable if you are using speakers with any bass output at all, I tried.
You give us far too much credit. Is the internet man's voice coming from my speakers? Yes it is. Did I remember to put both socks on this morning? I think so. All is right with the world.
Have have flipped the phase of the left and right output. Super easy to undo.
I completed every one of these side quests, except one. For context: I collected all nine ultimate weapons in FF7 and crafted two Master-Summon materia. I collected Excalibur II. I collected all cards in both FF8 and FF9. I taught every character every skill they can learn in FF9. I got every damage cap lifted ultimate weapon in FFX and taught every character every skill. I am a FF completionist junkie.
That jump rope reward is never, ever, EVER going to happen.
A fellow FF-addict :) ... I am one short though - 1000 jumps? never; regarding Excalibur II I refuse to even consider trying to this day.
I second this. Fuck that mini game 😂
This is cheating the game a bit, but i got excalibur 2 very easily by playing the steam version. You can speed up the game to (I think) x3 or x4, and the game still leaves the timer at real world rates. Cut scenes, dialog blocking, all battles are accelerated and cut so much time as a result. I got it pretty easily with a few hours to spare.
I couldn't even manage to get the Alexandria card (200 jumps.) Next time I play that game I am going to play the PC version with mods so I can just cheat to get it.
Right there with you brother, my usual ff9 play through is like 350+ hours lol
Nah, that ff9 jump rope is the hardest thing by far. I've done everything else in this list *multiple* times. That 1000 jump ropes? Never. Not even close. I think the best I ever done was mid 300s.
Agree. Me and my friend were even competing against each other trying to see who will get the highest score. And i believe we both failed around 175 or so and it was our highest result.
Final Fantasy 6 = Uncursing the Paladin Shield ...
Cursed Shield + Ribbon, 255 fights
the jumps in Super Mario RPG were a pain iun the A cuz the timing changed :S like that jump rope, think the same dev might have been responsible for both, with FF9 and SMRPG
@@througtonsheirs_doctorwhol5914 that one is easy because you have the motivation to get a great item
⚡never again fuck no harder than 1000 jumps ur high 😅
Chocobo Race was WAY easier than the jump rope. Like, orders of magnitude easier.
Yeah, I guess I must just be lucky, or, like, some sort of chocobo racing savant or something because it's only ever taken me a few tries, each time I've played.
Yeah. I got it on first try long ago on ps2 and have gotten it on first or few tries many times after. Jump rope and lighting dodging I've only done once and would never even consider doing again given how tedious they were. I'd easily put ff9 frog catching over the chocobo race too given how tedious it was to wait frogs to spawn and run across the globe for the marshes. Or ff9 chocobo hot and cold if you wanted the high end rewards for how grindy it became for them.
@@GyprockGypsy I guess I really suck at this kind of challenge
@@gnosis_gamingi had more trouble with the stupid temple chocobo race all chests no poles than i did 0.0 choco race
Chocobo Race is pretty easy. I did it multiple times
The .1% Zodiac Spear is in the original game, too.
Amusingly the RNG seed in XII has also been so thoroughly reverse-engineered that there are step-by-step guides to ensuring that the chest will spawn with the Spear. They involve hitting yourself in the face a few dozen times while you descend the mines.
Don't they also have Seitengrat seeds mapped out as well for IZJS/Zodiac Age?
It was indeed a .1% chest in the original game, but it's a 1% chest in Zodiac Age.
Much more doable without manipulating the RNG!
That how I got the spear I think you can get it again if you do it like another hundred times
@@RobertMason-i1y both of the chests in original and zodiac age in henne mines do respawn. only difference is that og spear is way more annoying to get not only for the lower drop rate but also that ZA has faster loading times due to better hardware even on switch, the x2/x4 speedup and THE AUTOSAVES! za saves between screen transition which IMMENSELY cut down ALL forms of grinding! for example, the bone helm that the wild saurian in the first estersand zone drops. on ps2, you really shouldn't even bother with how long it takes to do it on top of the rng that it might cannibalize the wolves around you. but in za you can abuse the autosave after whittling it down as a black mage to where a single fire will kill it. didn't drop? reload autosave and try again.
on original i DID once set out to get the 1% burning bow drop from the dive talons earliest possible. with breaks it took me 10 months real time because i got so bored waiting for the long loading times and having to kill it from full constantly! each attempt with loading times took at least 3-4 minutes! zodiac age on pc with a 1060 6gb gpu, 16gb ram and i5-7500 cpu, i whittled it down to where the weakest knot of rust roll could kill it, autosaved with it right next to the area transition each attempt took like 30-50 seconds with loading times, and got the bow in 45 minutes.
all in all, zodiac age makes grinding much, MUCH easier than how it was on ps2, like oh my god it was horrible if you didn't set aside a good few days/weeks or more
Late to the party but yes, this is how I got the spear back in the day, iirc it only spawned in a chest that was in a mine only 1% of the time and then the chest had a 10% of having the spear, I somehow managed to get it on 3 hours. My complete save of FFXII was 400 hours from doing this impossible odd grind like this or other odd weapons and rare monsters (I remember grinding hours for a red chocobo too) gotta love summertime as a kid with no worries.
Grinding chocobo race in FFX was the only time I've ever broken a controller. Chocobo controls like it's drunk.
Ikr......Lulu's side quest for final weapon was WAY more easier. I never got Tidus' final weapon because of the quest.
Chocobo racing in FFX is janky, but doable, just takes enough tries to get used to it, and a good RNG with balloon placement.
FFIX's jump rope is plain evil.
My best tip for the lightning dodge - stay in one spot, dodge 20 lightning bolts and pause the game to give your eyes a rest, repeat 10 times :)
That’s what I did back in the day.
@@rosaheartlily I once got 199. I was just a wee bit furious. I did get it on my next try, at least. And I did so without breaking or biting a piece off my keyboard.
My trick was to go to a secluded part of the plains and wedge myself in a way that Tidus wouldn't move around when dodging.
The trick to make this laughable... stand underneath a lightning tower.. when you walk out from underneath it a lightning strike will happen within 2 seconds.. immediately walk back under the tower, rinse and repeat, the lightning strike will always happen as soon as you knave the safety of the tower.
Crater strategy. Makes it 10 times easier.
Yep crater strategy works best. You literally just run in a circle and press the button at the exact same spot every time
If you don't want regional Triple Triad rules to spread, keep challenging an NPC and then hitting cancel. Eventually you'll get their normal dialogue instead of their mixed-rules dialogue, and you can just play them as normal. Very handy for keeping Random from spreading
I could eventually dodge 200 lightning bolts in a row, but I'll never be able to get that jump rope trophy as long as I live lol.
What's weird is that I got 0:00 in FFX three times, back to back, on the PS2 just to confirm there weren't any other prizes and didn't bat an eye. I think I used my lifetime supply of luck because I tried it again on the remaster and never could. Chance is a cruel mistress.
As a 14 year old i got 0.0 no problem on my PS2. As a 34 yo playing the remaster now? Such a struggle. I mustve used all my luck earlier in life too lol
I have the same issue. I'm wondering if it's some kind of frame rate issue or something to do with the version we got on the PS2. It wouldn't be the first time things were made easier for us in the west
@@ericgrimes341haha totally! In my endless time after school (hardly endless, but little responsibility compared to being an adult), I managed to get that one. I recall it wasn't easy, but I did manage it. Not a chance that would happen now. I would use save states after I tried a few times.
i think they made it harder on the remaster i seem to read somewhere they tweeked it
The PS4 version had broken RNG that never re-seeded*. This made the endgame torturous because the RNG was also notoriously 'streaky' (or low entropy), meaning that you might have to do a LOT of attempts before just so happening to get a pattern you needed. This makes the choco race harder if you get a lot of "bad" patterns in a row.
This was also a huge pain for me when grinding materials - I would get dozens upon dozens of the same two wrong drops in a row, then dozens more of the next two wrong drops, and then finally the thing I wanted. Much less painful on the PS2.
*What this means is - if you reset the game because you got a bad result, when you turn it back on you will get the exact same result. I had to manipulate blitzball prizes by intentionally getting into battles before checking the prize pool again.
the toughest in my opinion is the queen card mission of ff8, just because it’s nearly impossible to do that without a guide or tutorials.
Plus, the quest is very long and propagates throughout almost the entire game.
Ff9’s rope jumps is also nearly impossible but at least all you have to do is pressing X.
Beautiful video by the way, cheers from Italy
Thanks! By the way, I love your Mega Man speed drawings.
@@gnosis_gaming Thank you man i didn’t expect that 😂
Final Fantasy 6 = Uncursing the Paladin Shield ...
Cursed Shield + Ribbon, 255 fights
"No is not" oh...without a guide....yeah....I have a Guidebook of FF 8 (Non official) and I was "like are players supposed to know all this stuff?" once you know is quite easy.
I followed it with a guide and still managed to mess it up.
Shame as I like the game but no way am I playing random rules.
This era of FF sure loved torturous side quests...
I hate to tell you this but we're still in that era. "18 hour boss fight" springs instantly to mind.
@@danielgehring7437 That was from FFXI my dude.
Another settlement needs your help.
@@danielgehring7437 Another settlement needs your help.
I always do the lightning dodges my first run through the Plains by using the "wedge Tidus between the cactuar stone and the wall" method, because you're technically standing still even during the dodge, so you can't get encounters.
I must remember this for when i play again
There's a way to run in a circle and everytime u hit the crater the lightning stroked literally letting you know when the lightning strikes.
@@jaykiller4510this is the method I use
The trick to Triple Triad was to abolish rules and play with as few as possible while only spreading favourable ones. Then it mostly became easy. Tetra Master was rng bs.
Yep, I never truly understood Tetra Master. It seemed TOO random. Triple Triad always made sense, and I played it in middle school.
One time, as a joke, I entered the required Tetra Master tournament using five Flan cards that had zero in all stats. I won. Screw that game.
This
@@spectrasoulfaire215 Arrow placement was critical. A zero card with an arrow hitting a card with a blank wins. And if you place a card with all of its arrows covered, it can't be used to infect other cards.
@@Zafire063 Tetra master seemed random because it actually IS random (it's been reverse engineered, and the random element is very strong there, enough to turn a sure winning game into a losing one).
That lightning sidequest still gives me nightmares. Still never 100% FF10 :(
Same, it's caused me to rage quit every time
Ya I said fuck it and just bypassed it all together by just having the onion knight and them building another doll with the same stats. End result is the same.
Ikr ⚡ fuck no never again
Had a hard time with this one before too. I remember failing at 164th dodge and raged. Later on when I played the remaster I read and followed a few tips like don’t count but instead set a timer like 30 minutes, pausing and taking a 2 min break every 5 minutes. There’s also a specific spot where you can run into and lightning always strikes there, giving you the option to control the timing. So what I did was, go to the spot, put on some music, practice a few times to get into rythm, and took breaks. By the time I checked if I’d done it I was at around 390 dodges 😂
@@eternallove4248 I've read the guides and tried the suggestions yet fail around halfway. If they had a buy out mechanic for a ludicrous amount of Gil I would just do that. Who knows, they might just re-remaster the game with built in microtransactions. I'm not saying I would throw money....ok I would lol
My most hated 'side quest' in any Final Fantasy are the chests found in FFX's Omega Ruins. Basically, there are twelve chests spread out in groups in the ruins. Each time you open one, you get the next item in a predetermined list. Sometimes, the chest will be a Mimic, which will trigger a battle. Win or lose, the remaining chests in the group disappear, and you start back at the top of the item list. The chests that disappear never come back, so you have to open all twelve perfectly your first time through to get all the items in the list. The thing is, whether a chest contains an item or a Mimic is completely random, and is determined when you enter the Ruins. Nothing in the game tells you any of this, and nothing you do once you enter the Ruins will influence it. Whether or not you can get all twelve items is all luck.
Many moons ago when I did the omega ruins for the very first time I got extremely lucky and got the 99 warp spheres on my first chest. Now I can't find it to save my life. 😅
FF9 jump rope is by far the hardest. I've done the other sidequests and they don't compare.
I had a friend come over and we spent hours trying to reach 1000 until finally he was able to achieve it for me. It was a huge relief to have it finished.
Yeah the worst part about the FF9 jump rope one is that you get JUST a trophy 😅
FF8's card game was truly amazing. Should be its own game tbh. Loved playing it back in the day.
im replaying ff8 now never really finished it but i love playing triple triad. i wish more ff games had a card game included like ff10 or something
it's meh. in the beginning of the game, you get Ifrit, then Minimog, then Quistis, then you're unstoppable. you just keep getting better and better cards (character and GF), while opponents might only have 1-2 powerful cards, and you quickly take them for yourself.
so the devs could've added a limit on how many strong cards are allowed in a hand, to keep the game challenging.
so it's extremely easy. unless you get bad ruleset - then you're screwed no matter what you have. (random + direct, or random + all, even same/plus is more favorable for a weaker hand)
so it's either very easy or unfair. doesn't seem amazing to me. (that said, it's still way, WAY better than FFIX's Tetra Master, which has huge RNG; Triple Triad at least plays consistently)
You are single handedly making the FF content creator space so awesome right now well done.
Looking forward to more content the new video has me wanting to secret hunt in 7 and 9 now lol
Wow, thank you! These videos have been fun to make and the comments are really rewarding. Welcome to the channel!
Surprised Kimahri's infuriating butterfly run didn't make it here, but it's probably easier than young me thinks with modern guides..
i never ever pulled off the butterfly or the lightning. the chobo race was easy, at least more fun than the others and a bit more variable....
When I was younger, I got the Chocobo and Lightning quests (with much effort), but I don't know ANYONE who beat the butterfly quest.
Butterfly (and Lightning in a way) is very easy and quick with a guide at least. Chocobo, imo, is the absolute worst. Takes too long to re-race and very prone to bad luck. OG first playthough did all of them, but Chocobo was and remains the worst.
The Cloister of Trials in FFX made me want to kick the devs in the penis. I love FFX but it had the worst mini games in the franchise.
This help me with butterfly game. You only have to do it twice. Once you know where the blue butterflies are it makes it a Lil easier to plan your route. You can afford to hit ONE red butterfly and still make it to the end in time.
Downloaded a script to get me the jump roap achevements. Not ashamed one tiny bit
You got your revenge on the devs
That's a thing? Thanks for the tip! I hope I can find it
@@Zafire063 For sure. You'll have to play online and make sure you have robust Internet connection. Literally turn every device in your house off that connects to the Internet. Took a couple tries but you'll get it
Did the same thing, just remote connect laptop to ps4 and run the script :) had to adjust the network delay in the script and after a few tries it worked
Never would I have done the 1000 jumps by myself, never!
@@MeWojakWill use this when I reach FF9. Thanks
I just recently played my first FF game and it was FF9. It was amazing. Then I played 8 and then 7. These games are amazing and I can’t explain way.
Welcome to the fandom😊
8's the worst who told you to play it?
@@ThexXxXxOLOxXxXx agree, 8 is only playable with the speed up function in the remaster. I tried to play multiple times during childhood because I loved other final fantasy. Could never make it very far in 8
@@fangiscool1 You're the norm, it amuses me when someone enjoys it to the point of finishing it.
That chocobo one cracks me up because I'd heard how tough it was before ever doing it... and then I completed it in 21 minutes. I kept track.
Meanwhile, the lightning dodging took all day. Failed attempts after failed attempts.
I love these kind of videos, they are very similar to Cybershell's but with Final Fantasy. Please keep doing more of these !
The side quest to get Cloud in FF tactics was nuts.
AND by the time you can actually get him, he's woefully underpowered because he starts at level 1, and you already have OP characters like Orlandu at that point.
@@mxx720 Yes. I had seen my brother go through the trouble.
Waaaa didn't know it was a thing! Absolutely love that game , thx!
@@shinpaws1014 it is really time consuming and specific. Good luck
Blitzball ends up actually just being a time sync rather than being hard. It is pretty easy to manipulate the Blitzball AI so long as you have the proper players recruited (also pretty easy, just requires a bit of walking).
The time sink is why I'll NEVER TOUCH the mini game AFTER you LOSE the FIRST required one it just takes TOO long only to have me still LOSE.
@@veghesther3204 ANNOYING things like THAT also cause me to YELL RANDOMLY during my SENTENCES, they bug me that much.
There are two players you can get in Luca (One being the second best goalie in the game, the other being one of the best passers), and it lets you win against every team pretty easily. Al Bhed Psyches are still annoying, but they're beatable with Jecht Shot. I had a file where I farmed tons of teleport and return spheres just to play the game differently. Think I did 40 hours of blitzball. My favorite mini game of all time in an FF.
Awesome vids! These games were amazing and you brought memories back to everyone that watched these. If you ever have time cover the bosses :). Final fantasy 11 when pandemonium warden first came out was unbeatable and incredibly difficult to even get to the fight. What an amazing time for games
Toughest side quest for me was the darn Hippaul racing in ff9. I never finished it.
Hippaul lives rent free in my nightmares
The Zodiac spear quest is criminal
hope someone went to jail for that
After all these years, im still mad about it.
The only way to know how to get it, is to look it up. And by the time you've done so, you've long since fucked it up and are probably in the last quarter of the game at least
It will be hilarious if someone mod the game ang change the plot and dialogues into "Zodiac Spear"
Nicee, another video on this kind of topic, loved the one about the sword and noticed you uploaded another one, my man is working overtime!
When you find a good thing, so more of it! 😅
Getting the complete collection of cards in ff9 was insane. Because it wasn't just getting all the cards. It was getting all unique attack directions for each card with no duplicate attack directions for each card
Did u try playing against those ghosts in memoria, they are very hard and have top cards
@@mogos.arcker22 there were so many hard to get cards, i remember spending forever getting Alexander card
the one other thing i forgot that made it i the completion of the set insane, is you can only hold 100 cards max.
so you have to purposefully lose games or do card inventory management so you dont risk cards disappearing when you win or find a card
@@b1ackgammaAlexander? there is an alexander card in one of the digging treasures with the chocobo no?
@@mogos.arcker22 yeah but might end up needed the other one based on your collection
Completed all of these side quests, and by far the hardest for me in this video was the jump ropes. I would eventually get to 200 jump ropes with no problem, but could never get the double-tap from 200-300 jumps down. I basically just got lucky.
You mentioned the lightning dodges and the easy "cheese" method with the crater, which made that one easier for me. Other than the chocobo race, the other one from FF10 I struggled with was those butterflies that you had to collect in a certain amount of time, but if you ran into the wrong color you had to do a random battle. It was especially annoying because of the camera angles, and I think the butterflies took me the longest out of any FF10 side quest.
Upon seeing this video: "The lightning dodging BS better be in there" (and it was). That mini-"game" was utterly demoralizing. Eons ago, I managed to do it with a friend counting the dodges outloud while I did the actual dodging. It took several days and multiple failed attempts/ragequits.
Rope jump is a menace for me personally. Never was able to finish it, and i can't do it with a cheat as well, because the whole setting for it is difficult for me to do, with the pc and everything. I managed to dodge lightning 200 times in ffx but can't finish the rope jump.
The chocobo racing was the easiest one tbh, i find second part of it more challenging than the original one. Usually the winning pattern if the balloons are on your side and if you use d-pad.
As for lighting dodge i used another spot - right behind the agency, near the lightning tower, it strikes there every 2 seconds i believe, so you jump and move forward and jump again, there's basically no delay, and i know some people recommend to turn off the music, but i just turned off the game volume and found a music track that is 3 minutes 45 seconds long (or 4 minutes 25 seconds long) and used that as a reference for time. This would be enough to do 200 or 220 jumps. I really don't like counting in my head.
I did that ff9 jump rope quest as a kid at a cousins house back when I was young and still had good reflexes and time on my hand.....Never again will I subject myself to that.
Shout out to the FFIV Adamant Armor side quest. To obtain the most powerful armor in the game, you must go deep into the final dungeon and get a Pink Tail from a specific enemy, then go all the way back out of the dungeon to Earth and trade the tail to the tail collector.
The Pink Tail is only dropped by one specific enemy that only appears in one very specific, very small room, at a 1/64 chance encounter. The enemy then has a 1/64 chance of dropping said pink tail, meaning you only encounter them 1.56% of the time, and when you DO, they will drop the item 1.56% of the time.
Most players won't even get into a single random encounter in the room this enemy exists in, let alone encounter the Pink Puff and get the item to drop. It's pure insanity.
Tip - you can use the Alert item in that room to force the Pink Puff to appear 100% of the time
I might be in the minority, but I absolutely adored the triple triad from FF8. It's a great game, and sometimes I booted FF8 up, just to play the cards, and find them. You don't have to play it, but the game give you plenty of incentives to do so, as some of the special cards can be turned into rare items, which in turn can be turned into powerful spells, which you can junction for insane stats. I never finished the Queen of Cards quest all the way tho...
Gotta remember that a couple of these side quests are included to give you a reason to buy the walkthrough book (sold separately). The internet made walkthrough books irrelevant, so these kinds of side-quests are rare now.
My tip for the chocobo race is to use the D-pad.
That jump rope quest was the bane of my existence. I could not even get past 100. Handed the controller off to my bro and he managed to get just over 16000 jumps. Turns out all you get is an achievement but that don't change the fact that my bro is my hero. :D
Just over 16000? Even if you meant 1600…. If you’re gonna lie on the internet, make it seem at least reasonable
@@KezVanBeck That's the thing, I'm not. I couldn't believe it either when I saw it. I wish I had recorded it so I'd have proof but I didn't know how back then. Maybe I can convince him to do it again for a future video on my channel.
One of things is to help with the lightning dodging is to have control over how and when the lightning strikes, as well as the number it does in succession. My favorite spot is right by the southern exit in the Northern part of the Thunder plains (where there are two exits, one would lead to Rin's Travel Agency, the other exit to the Southern part of the Lightning Plains.) At that point there's an area where the lightning will always drop in sets of three, so as long as you are successful in the timing for the first dodge, the second, and third doges are guaranteed. A bit of warning though; since the dodging count resets when you exit a zone, you need to give yourself a bit of room to dodge three times without leaving the stage. But once you get used to the range and the timing, it's probably the fastest spot to rack up 200 dodges.
But don't get me started on that chocobo racing. The only way that works for me is that I have to take in consideration that I will be hit at least 3 or 4 times, so I aim for about 17 or 18 balloons and pray the controls work.
Great vid, love to see more of these. My favorite of these is that in FF6 all of the barrels and chests in the game change their contents when you get to the world of ruin.
This may have been mentioned in the comments already, but there's actually a glitch that makes the chocobo racing even worse - you don't want a time of 0:0.0, you actually want a time LESS than that. There seems to be a bug where the game doesn't check if your time is 0, it actually checks if it's LESS than 0, so a time that is perfectly 0:0.0 actually won't give you the sigil.
You can also play with the son of the Queen inside a house in Dollet, he holds every single rare card that you lost to her. That way you can simply shift her between Balamb and Dollet and get the job done quickly.
Man I spent about 4 hours trying to get 0.0 on the chocobo race and after I got it I went over to a friends house to hang out he had been trying to get 0.0 for about 2-3 hours I was like here let me see the controller and did it my first time luckily, made it look easy it was not, but he flipped out and pounced on me, he was so pissed, lol good times.
🤣
There are two ways you can get the cards from the Card Queen sidequest without doing the sidequest itself:
1. Remember the pod from the space station? It's still accessible in Disc 4, and the Card Queen will be there. You can play her right then and there for her exclusive cards. Be warned, though: she has every bad rule in the book against you, and no Open, so you can't see her cards, making it a nightmare to win;
2. This second method is a bit convoluted, but it's the easiest way to get almost every card in the game.
First, you need to manipulate Trabia's game rules so that it gets the Open rule and its native rules, Random and Plus, are abolished. You can accomplish this in Disc 1 by first changing Galbadia's rules so it gains Open and loses Same, then talking to a transfer student in Galbadia Garden. This particular guy comes from Trabia Garden, so you can use him to manipulate Trabia's rules.
Once you're done with that, the next step is to complete the CC Group sidequest by defeating all of their members. You can do this starting halfway through Disc 2.
With these accomplished, play the game normally until Disc 4. If you've completed the CC Group sidequest, its members will all be inside the Ragnarok. The member we're looking for is Left Diamond: she uses Trabia's rules, and she'll have any rare card you don't have (except PuPu). She'll even have cards you lost in other games or changed into items, allowing you to farm them from her, and of course, she will have the Card Queen's exclusive cards.
In 2003: I once got a 0.7 second time on the chocobo race. What got me heated was a bird spawned at the last possible second before I crossed the finish line. I’ve never been able to get close since.
Jump rope is the hardest by a mile.
The Chocobo race is annoying and can rely a bit on RNG but very doable. Though I do love that if you get the perfect time you can get 0.0.0 and still not get the reward because you hit the number exactly rather than go below it. 😂
I've never done the jump rope and don't intend to. But that stupid chocobo race was the bane of my FFX run.
X is one of my two favorite games, and I've played it multiple times. Have never been able to beat the chocobo race or lightening dodge. I knew for sure they'd be on this list lol
All of them are very doable except the Jump Rope in FF9. That is impossible without cheating on the newer systems/Steam. In the PS1/PS2 the hard wired controllers made it where it didn't have the slight delays so it was very hard but doable.
WELL ALL of FF9's mini games that aren't digging up the Chocograph's are all pure CRAP are are NOT worth it.
The mog post side quest was very good tho.
@@veghesther3204 impressing queen brahne with choreography was fun honestly
My brother and I as kids were able to scour what we could at the time and found out just how you explained it the quest to earn every single card in that game. You have to lose specific cards at specific times in order to obtain new cards and get your old cards back. Man it was daunting and fun.
For the lightning dodging quest, what I did way way back was keep my eyes closed, and the lightning causing the screen to flash can be seen through eyelids.
I got ptsd from the rope jump. It's not a joke. It broke me. Just watching it makes my tension up the roof.
The worst part is there’s no good reward 😅
@@gnosis_gaming The real worst part is that I KNEW, I bought the official guide detailing the method to use and its rewards, it didn't help...Still my favourite FF anyway.
Great video love watching final fantasy stuff ☘️
I remember setting my TV brightness settings down to nothingness and contrast settings up in a mode I cant remember anymore doing the lightning dodge event, my room was a lighthouse that night. The TV mode somehow filtered the flashes from its surroundings, didn't see anything else and the contrast+brightness amplified whenever a lightning struck lul
Had a giga headache after but was a safe route
Without a guide, the Zodiac Spear was one of the most missable items in any FF game.
My highest score jumping rope is like 7. 😂 I've only played the Remaster for a few hours though.
Triple Triad sounds like a nightmare for completionists.
Yep, I also imagine the same to be true for getting the Barrett date in ff7. Not a missable item, but it is a missable trophy when that became a thing.
I player FF10 when i was a child, tried to 100% it, but i couldnt do de lightning, i was literally at 180 and dropped it, my eyes were bleeding.
Years later, my childhood best friend got to play FF10, and he completed everything, as i did, an just left the lightnings for the end. He invited me over to his house, and told me it was time to surpass my fears.
We did a hangout, it took me at 10 hours of tries, but eventually i manage it, it is one of my most beloved FF memories
Considering out the ones shown, only the FF9 Jump rope I have never managed to complete ( I usually get around 136-150 on a good run), its def the hardest.
I’ve done all of them, but the jump rope was easily the most annoying of them to me.
"...You don't steal from friends..." *Yuffie pops up* 🤣
It wasn’t the hardest side quest by a mile but the Chocobo Treasure Hunt in FFIX was beyond tedious.
Nah, took me like 30 minutes, nothing close as hard as the stupid jump rope mini game (dangerous for the health at this point);
@@andrewhudson7108 it was extremely fun though and the rewards make it worth
Bro i remember doing the JUMP ROPE quest in FF9. Literally just sitting there for hours doing mf jumprope without a care in my mind how much time i was wasting.
Haha, good memories!
Just an FYI on the FF10 Lightning Dodge minigame, you do not have to run around to have lightning strike you, you can just stand right near the screen transition and wait for the flash, dodge, and repeat. I recommend having a friend count for you, as I'm pretty sure I dodged much more than 200 in a row out of sheer terror of having to do this again.
This minigame is why, in my life, when I'm waiting, the Thunder Plains theme plays in my head.
Nice video! Though I gotta be honest, to me personally the 1000 jump ropes are impossible. I completed the Chocobo race about 3 times in life and I never want to do it ever again. I avoided the 200 lightning strikes once in my life and I actually wouldn't mind doing it again. It's really alright using exactly the method you mentioned in the video.
The jump ropes though...
Final Fantasy IX is my favourite game of all time, but I will never ever attempt to do this. My record was 301 btw.
Also I think the Chocobo race at Remiem Temple is painful as well due to the janky controls.
1000 jumps is terrible especially because there’s not even a good reward
Fun trivia about Triple Triad in FF8: there's an NPC near/at the docks in Balamb (the town, not the Garden). If you challenge him to a match of Triple Triad, he erases ALL THE RULES you were carrying with you, and the game you play against him has only the basic rules. You don't even have to go through with playing a match against him (though he's pretty easy to beat, so I don't see why you wouldn't).
I make the distinction of "Triple Triad in FF8" because there's also a Triple Triad in FF14. At least in the latter, you don't carry rules around with you or spread them. (At least no NPCs in FF14 use the Random rule anymore. Heck that rule.)
Another settlement needs your help.
I just realized that the Jump rope minigame is similar to Vagrant Story's Chain mechanic. The timing starts changing past a certain limit. For VS the timing changes at 25 combo in FF9 it randomizes every 100(?) Reps
Ahhh fond times of my youth ff8 card games was definitely my favorite i solely played FF8 just for those cards so it wasnt as tedious to me. FFX though was a pain luckily blitz ball can be cheesed after getting world champion so and dodging lightning was just a matter of patience the chocobo was annoying though
The Chico race difficulty is completely overblown.
I'm really bad at racing stuff 😅
I agree. Its not *that* hard
@@ericgrimes341 which side quests / mini games would you rate as being the most difficult?
@@gnosis_gaming Theres so many guides for everything these days. Challenges like the Butterfly challenge in Macalania Forest are made so simple just a map. I remember the battle saucer in FFVII very frustrating. But that was also 20 years ago. I feel like back then we all had to find answers for ourselves. Usually just find a way to break the mini game and exploit it lol
Queen of cards isnt really hard if you use a guide, it just takes a bit of a grind, but that grind cuts down a lot on the length of the combat sections of the game.
what about that one lightning tower in X-2? it requires different input on each hand, the location of the directions on the screen is random and the speed keeps increasing. towards the end it's so unmanageable by the time you react it's too late. i remember when i got it, i had to guess what the last one might be and just hope it was correct.
Chcocobo race took me 4 days of attempts (high schooler with infinite free time) and then I found out my copy crashed before Sin.
Restarted from the beginning on the HD version and it took me another week and a half.
In that time I: Got 0 on the first race win that doesn't count. Got EXACTLY 0 which unbelievably doesn't count for it (you have to get BELOW zero), TWICE! And spent probably 60-70 hours total.
Hell.
And I would rather do it 3 more times than 100% FFX-2 again.
Had the same exact issue with my PS2 copy, spent 12 hours overnight in a single sitting doing the chocobo race nonstop until completing it, only to find out that my copy crashes at the sin fight. Fast forward to when I got the HD version on my steam deck and I got 0:00 on the very first try but it still counted for me somehow.
How about the map system in final fantasy tactics advance? we STILL don't know the intentional map layout but depending on where you choose to place map icons you lose out on potential items.
it's one of the only times in final fantasy where there are multiple guides with different layouts that all are seen as "correct" by the community.
I would say my toughest would be the ones I haven't completed. So...all of them except for Titus (though frustrating, I did get all the ultimate weapons aside from Lulu's).
I think that a large part of why these quests are so insane and convoluted was that internet fora and guides were not available for everything, so Square could sell strategy guides for everything
Love seeing people use the crater technique that I discovered/shared 10+ years ago still used today!
I remember watching a video of this method like 6 months after it came out, so unless you did it 20 years ago, people were doing this since the very beginning.
@@Prophecy6 yep, shortly after the HD version came out. There’s a video of someone doing it in 2001? That would be wild!
I wish I could find a source on this but I remember reading somewhere that the Zodiac Spear's completely arbitrary requirements was actually the result of a bug. Apparently it was supposed to reply on something much more sensible (nobody's sure what), but either the variables were rearranged or the pointers were set wrongly in the first place because the Zodiac Spear is checking a completely random-ass bit of memory compared to similar items.
I remember the 0-second chocobo race not being too bad. I don't know if I got lucky, if I'm better at it than average, or if it's overhyped.
I also noticed that the lightning strikes seemed to fall into a loop of just a few lightning strikes. Before I was halfway through, I knew when every lightning strike was coming before it happened.
getting the Morbol Mount in FF14.
beating the highest dificulty of the Bahamut and Alexander Lair with a full team of Blue Mages.
which all need to go trough several Extreme Dificulty Dungeons to earn the nessesary Skill so they have a chance to win.
My cousin dodged lightning 192 times and got hit. He eventually did the challenge again and completed it, but it was demoralizing.
@@SLouiss ouch! I can only imagine gettin so close and getting hit is traumatizing 😂
FF12 in particular had some very obscure and cryptic puzzles and mechanics, i would have never figured them out without a guide book
Jumprope is hard, but have you ever played Red Light Green Light in Tales of Symphonia?
I loved Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII. It was the Tic-Tac-Toe greatest number wins game. You had to pay attention to your numbers on the cards and the strategy in placement in the spaces. And the fix to make it easy is to find her in the region you are ready to lose the card in, then save your game. Go to play her and when she notifies you of the rules being used, reload your save file if they are bad rules, until you get the favorable rules you want to play with.
How did you feel about FF9's card game?
I did the lightning bolt sidequest when I was in high school, over half my life ago. I told myself I'd never do it again. What I did was pause the game after every 10 jumps or so and go take a break. The monotony is what always made me mess up. It's one of the reasons I never want to play the FF version with the dark aeons, because I'd have to do all that again. I just can't imagine. The balloon game did take me a little while, but it wasn't near as stressful as the lightning bolts.
I've also never done the 1000 jump ropes. Think I managed 100 once and it took a while. I can't imagine doing 1000.
Ff9 rope jumps and ff10 butterfly chase. The Chocobo race with the balloons is quite easy for me, also the lighting dodging
in FFX lightning dodge side quest, there is a ledger on the counter in the inn of the thunder plains that shows you how many times you dodged. I have a file that I missed at 199 jumps :(
Oddly, I never had an issue with the chocobo race. I found the butterfly sidequest in FFX to be the hardest. I always struggle the most with that one. When I learned the RNG trick with the lightning, that stopped being as difficult.
The jump rope is still the hardest minigame in the entire series IMO. I have never once beaten it and I stopped even trying. It's so brutal lmao.
Getting Quistis's Shockwave Pulser without cards was long and annoying. Mugging 100 dark matter from TriFace enemies takes forever, because TriFace aren't a very common encounter, at least in Ultimacia's Castle.
A world were a quest is not just a big UI sign that says "Go to B and talk with ALPHA"... specially considering that those crazy quest were available right out of the box...
I wonder how many undiscovered secrets are still yet to be found in the FF series.
90's and 00's was the best gaming era for JRPG...
FFVIII card collection is the hardest one by far. Queen of Cards aside, you also need to lose cards to Martine and maybe Callaway (can't remember it all) and there are also many, many missable card players at various stages of the game.
As for side quests not mentioned here, FF7 Rebirth has gone pretty far to create some insane challenges: Queen's Blood survival, Cactuar Crush, Gears n' Gambits, the last part of the Protorelics side quest and of course, the battle sim - specifically Rulers of the Outer Worlds.
That chocobo race can rot. Nothing like making the worst controls ever for something that should be relatively easy. I cant even describe how bad they are, just straight up garbage
Hearing the thunder plains music brought my trauma back to the surface
Got every Triple Triad card in FF8 remaster a few months ago, but it was a little more intense than I expected.
I followed the 100% card guide to the letter until I got to the final rare Squall Card. I accidentally saved and missed setting the card rule in Esthar to something sane enough to complete the card quest with, so it made Laguna unintentionally like a final boss using some of the worst rules on Random. It's really hard to fix the ruleset after spreading it that far, so I just savescummed and went at it until I finally won the Squall Card. My friends that were watching at the time got more hype about that than beating Ultimecia.
Felt amazing finishing it, but for the love of god please remember to rng those rules first for your own sanity, lol.
The Ultimate Weapon in FFX couldn't have been that bad, I remember getting them all in my first Playthrough back on the PS2.
Replacing the whole original Spereboard to beat all Dark was the real headache.
Thank's for the Tonberry fight for enless AP in the monster Arena...
FF8 well forever, be one of my favorite entries in the series, but man, it is convoluted. I remember that shortly after it came out, there was an Internet, rumor that you could unlock Sephiroth from FF7 as a character, but only if you did specific actions that took you all the wayto desk 3. It sounded as plausible as any other weird stuff in the game. Obviously, after many hours, I came up empty-handed.
Proud to say I actually got the 0.00 time in the chocobo race as a teenager when FFX released, that was the first game I ever played that had serious grinding in it, previous FF games seemed brief by comparison. I gave up on the lightning, from memory you got something for dodging about 15 so i stopped there. I found Bliztball fun so I managed to do that one fine for Wakka's weapon. Oh to have the spare time of my youth back again haha
I did the card sidequest in the 90s for the sole purpose of self-gratification of getting them all. The chocobo one was infuriating and as for the lightning one, I turned off my lights as well as the sound to help really focus.
So many folks in the comments focus on difficulty, which seems fair. However, I struggle with discussions that argue which agonizing side quest chokes more joy from a player trying to enjoy a game in full than another. I cannot resist a focus on the missing "why" for so many of these side quests.
Why would developers design frustrating or virtually impossible missions (impossible without tedious guides on walking a thread-wide path toward a poorly advertised prize) for players to pursue in masterfully crafted worlds and grand stories that... at best add nothing to the narrative and mechanics and at worst counter them. For example, FF9 and FF10, with their excessive jump rope and lightning dodge challenges, rely on reflexes with only a few frames warning and that directly contradicts the mechanics of them both as turn-based games, like chess and spades and D&D, and arguably counter what draws players to a turn-based game instead of an action-based one. It's a bit maddening. Lol
Sigh. I adore these games. Like, a LOT. These painfully unfun sidequests mar what I regard as an otherwise beautiful mosaic, yet I appreciate the beauty still, in spite of them, as one would adore a mural despite graffiti in its corners or its paint chipping.
I often don't do side quests for a reason 😅
Fun fact: at FFX's Chocobo racing in order to win the Sun Sigil, your resulting time must actually be NEGATIVE (it still displays as zero though). If you, say, finish in exactly 36 seconds and collect 12 balloons (that actually happened to me once), your time will be zero, but you will not get the sigil.