The most memorable 'make this harder through stupidity' moment for me is the first time I played the original game. I didn't realize you could visit Bahamut and have your classes upgraded, so I did the final dungeon with a fighter, thief, black mage, and white mage. I did eventually take down Garland, but there was a lot more 'fail, grind, retry' than there should have been.
My favorite example of this is definitely Ozma in FFIX. Equipping things that made you resistant to certain damage types would make him not use moves that use those damage types...meaning if you decided to become resistant to his main damage types, he'd start using doomsday frequently, which even at level 99, has a chance to automatically kill anyone
You can go immune to doomsday with dark absorb. The danger is that ozma stops using doomsday and spams Meteor instead lol. Similarly, leaving one character vulnerable to Lvl 5 Death and one character vulnerable to lvl 4 Holy significantly weakens the boss.
I hate Ozma so much. He's pure RNG. You can go in with the perfect setup and strategy, and if the RNG decides he's going to school you with his most powerful attacks, YOU. ARE. FUCKED. You can go in totally winging it with a party that shouldn't be able to lace his boots, and if the RNG decides he's going to suck then you're going to own him. He's the only superboss in the franchise like this.
For Final Fantasy IX, I was thinking about Ozma who would be immune to melee attacks and absorb dark if you haven't done the friendly enemy sidequest, or would stop using elemental attacks if the entire party absorbed those elements. Or Valia Pira who can get weakened by collecting bloodstones. Or Kuja who is a joke if you can absorb lightning, but starts spamming Flare Star if the entire party has Reflect. I didn't even know about Soulcage going on a rampage if you hit it with fire, that's kinda cool.
I think an honorable mention is the 1v1 fight with Wiegraf in FFT. My very first playthrough I was more fascinated with the generic character job classes and did not focus on Ramza except for story battles where he was mandatory. Before fighting Wiegraf there is a normal battle outside the castle and a subsequent save before being forced to the 1v1, where you can change classes and equipment but no longer do random encounters. So if Ramza is under leveled, and you only have the 1 save file directly before Wiegraf, it is possible to have a game killing situation where Ramza is not strong enough to beat Wiegraf by himself and there is no way to make Ramza stronger, and the only option is to start a new game.
@@seand7042have ramza be a monk or be a squire with monk abilities. Have him just yell and accumulate until he has 50 speed and 50 attack. Use chakra to heal while wiegraf goes after you, and then when maxed out, take him down. The stats transfer to the zodiac boss too, so ramza can easily 1-2 shot the zodiac boss with it.
FFIII is the only real and nearly impossible challenge that can also make you lose a lot of time since there is no save point in the last dungeon originally. Even if Sephirot and Ultimacia get boosted if you are maxed, you are too strong at that point to even care, and they can still go down pretty easily.
Having beat the DS and Famicom versions previously (back when the only way you could play FF3 was by fan translated ROM), I didn't think much of the CoD fight. Recently picked up the PSP version, and oh boy did I feel the pain of effectively doing two dungeons back to back, take out all dark crystal bosses, only to die on the final boss.
Idk if it counts, but in FFIV (3D remake, PC version at least) there's a certain element that heals Scarmiglione and i HAD NOT noticed it and was starting to get suspicious that this fight took longer even for it to be low-level mages-friendly. The damage & heal text color in this game is hella dangerously similar with dark red-brown & dark green, I'm glad that in any other version or continuation it's fixed.
Zodiark from XII came to mind on reading this video title. If you equip everyone with Dark absorbing equipment then it spams Darkja. The damage is of course absorbed, but the attack has a secondary effect of highly accurate instant death. Also, like many bosses, Zodiark begins battle with some buffs, but there's a trigger in its combat script triggered by using Dispel. Late in the fight besides when it always uses Paling to become immune to physical damage for some time, which has a very short window when it expires before it's activated again, if you've used Dispel then it also uses Magick Barrier to also become immune to magic.
Holy!, that explains why I never beat him when I was a kid, then when I was a teen, I did all of those things, so that’s why he oneshooted my party… interesting
I was hoping the Desert Palace in FF9 was gonna get mentioned, the mechanic with the boss getting weaker the more items u find was awesome, but if u happen to not find a lot of them, the boss isnt weakened much
My favorite example of accidentally making boss fights harder is from FFX. If you leveled up Kimari before his solo fight against the other two Rhonso they leveled with him. Honestly, I maxed him completely out along with the rest of the characters and that one fight took almost 4 hours to complete.
Never had that issue myself. Most people complain about neglecting Kimahri and the fight being hard for that reason. I usually make my Kimahri a general grabbag, get Steal and Use, pick up some other abilities on the way to Auron's Sphere Grid, Lancet every Fiend I encounter first. But then again, Seymour Flux at Gagazet was always easy for me too. People struggle with this, but when I get to the Calm Lands, this is where I really start the post-game grind and tasks to make the party tough.
@dirrdevil it wasn't necessarily a hard fight it took forever due to them each having more hp than most of the creatures of the monster maker (can't remember it's official name right now)
Surprised you didnt mention the mechanic in Ultimecia's fight where your characters get absorbed into time if you dont revive them fast enough. Do this enough times and you can be left with two or just one character left. On top of the fact that if you take too long in the phases after the first, she starts blowing away your magic stocks, if she happens to pick a spell that was critical to your build such as HP, Attack, or Spirit, then you may end up being screwed
the first time i fought her i was down to just squall in a never ending loop of attack and recover each turn, this lasted nearly an hour after she drew the ultima magic i had junctioned to my strength. eventually i just got bored and decided to chance a limit break over a recover and it beat her.
@SomewhatSlightlyBored I was left with Rinoa on critical health so I kept spamming limit break, fortunately she kept using the one that made her invincible followed by her more damaging ones and refreshed he invincibility whenever it wore off. It was a long and tedious process but I got there in the end.
In the SNES version of FF4 enemy speed is calculated relative to Cecil's, this means that if you have a very high level Cecil then the already fast Zeromus would feel *even faster* making the fight considerably more overwhelming.
This is especially egregious in certain romhacks of FF4 (such as FF4: Ultima Edition), so much so that if Cecil's speed stat reaches too high, certain bonus boss fights become impossible. On the other hand, equipping Cecil with special speed-lowering equipment makes these bosses much easier. It's a night-and-day difference. I couldn't believe it, especially since FF4 is a game I've played numerous times over the years, yet never knew about the speed stat situation, until I played Ultima Edition last year. Wild stuff haha
I recently did a job challenge run of FF7 where I restricted each character to only certain materia and equipment relating to a particular job. I fought Sephiroth at L99, and to my surprise, I actually lost because he was hitting like a truck and I was barely damaging him. I had to go back in and actually strategize what to do with my party in order to win. It was rather fun.
I kind of always play ff7 with role restrictions 😅 I've always leaned wayyyy more into roleplay than min/maxing so I don't usually end up with the strongest versions of characters. But I don't mind lololol
Bizarro Sephiroth also has hidden mechanics which have something to do with amount of turns Jenova takes during her final fight which make the fight harder by making you use multiple parties instead of just one.
FF8 also has an arguably harder fight if you're going through the game casually for the first time and ignorant of the level scaling mechanics. By not reading a certain "Timber Maniacs" in Shumi Village, a dream sequence fight against a Ruby Dragon in disk 3 becomes much harder as it allows the monster to use its "Breath" attack. The thing is programmed to only use this attack at higher levels and only if there are 3 active party members.
1st thing I thought of was that Mirror or whatever is was in IX. It gets stronger and has resistance to things if you wear specific gear that gets picked up in the castle. I think another thing was that the weakest weapons are actually the strongest in that place.
I was really expecting to see Materia Keeper (FF7) on this list. If you'd collected Vincent by this point, and didn't realise that A: his level 1 limit break, once activated, simply continues to deal massive fire damage each time his turn came around, with no way to end this without dying; and B: Fire heals Materia Keeper. Yeah. That killed me back when I first played it. Fortunately there's a save point just before the fight, so I was able to change up my party and try again; much easier without Vincent.
That happened to me when I was a kid but as soon as I saw him heal Materia Keeper with his beast flare, I immediately killed him to revert him back to normal.
What a great list! I didnt know about most if these. I am surprised FFX wasnt included. Powering up Yuna makes the fights against the Aeons much much harder.
I mean, by the point you fight them, you're under a constantly renewing auto-life. So while yes, they might be made more powerful, it would ultimately just take more time to bear.
@@dethkruzer True, and I remember thinking that was super lame for the ending. Basically might have well has made it a cutscene if you are going to make it impossible to fail.
The thing about Final Fantasy VIII, though, is that good junctioning almost makes the level scaling obsolete. I've always found it kind of silly to say, "Final Fantasy VIII gets harder as you level because the enemies level up with you..." when your level is actually quite insignificant in the long run. Final Fantasy VIII's core engagement is the junction system, and once you learn it well, you can actually make Final Fantasy VIII among the easiest Final Fantasy gaming experiences out there. This means as you junction and level up, your enemies have to level up... to keep up with YOU, not the other way around. You're too strong, so the enemies need a boost to have a fighting chance against YOU. They may become "stronger" but rarely--VERY RARELY--are they actually becoming harder. Final Fantasy VIII is extremely straightforward in this regard. Your level matters so little in the game that each level only requires 1000 EXP to level up because there isn't much that leveling does for you in the game. They want you to junction. If you junction well to HP, Str, Def, and Spr, then Ultimecia is merely an enemy that has a lot of HP, but hardly any devastating attacks. Ultimecia gets stronger... but not really that much "harder." In fact, most players likely won't even notice a difference. This is doubled by the fact that you can far more easily manipulate your stats even at level up by equipping abilities that'll give you certain stat bonuses. I was hoping to learn of another way for Ultimecia to gain strength, but it's kind of cop out to continuously say, "the enemies leveling up with you in Final Fantasy VIII makes the game harder!" That's simply not true. What makes the game harder is failing to understand and/or make effective use of the junction system. That will trip players up far more than the enemies leveling up with them. All of this is compounded more by the fact that Final Fantasy VIII's limit break system allows access to limit breaks when HP is low, with no gauge or anything to monitor it (or just casting Aura). Once down to around 30% HP, you start getting limit breaks, and it's not hard to have someone's HP hover there. The point is that making Final Fantasy VIII takes time because it's one of the games in the series that gives you far more tools than you actually need to be nothing short of a beast to your enemies. Including the Final Boss.
Yeah, FF8 was the one exception to the "enemies getting harder if you're too strong" rule. Square wanted to try something different at the time honestly. It's just that a lot didn't take the time to figure stuff out.
Add devour and you can max out most stats as well. Or exploiting the time you have control of Siefer to power level at Dollet to get higher level magic early game.
All 7 of the bosses listed on this video, I made the boss battle not by accident but on purpose. I really like a good challenge for theses games to be a more enjoyable and memorable experience. I still remember fighting the Omega weapon in FF8, I accidentally made it easier by using Selfie the end. I was lucky, that time that was in 2013.
Sephiroth's final form can also be more powerful than he already is, if the player is unaware that he has to use the ''De-Barrier'' materia to lower-up his defence towards magic, since if he doesn't use it, Sephiroth will receive less damage during the fight!
My personal entry to this list would be the Riovanes Castle rooftop fight in FF Tactics. Depending on the jobs or characters you have available, the character you're supposed to protect may go charging towards the enemies, who just happen to have touch-of-death attacks. You can get a game over screen without even getting a turn.
I hate when that happens. But if you place the same units in different spots when preparing for battle, it affects the AI and what choices it makes. Did the battle with the same team in a different formation, had Rafa get killed before I took a turn the first try, then they left her alone the second try.
Biran and Yenke scale with Kimahri in certain aspects. I only learned this on ps2 with gameshark...To be honest it wasn't super hard but it made for a very epic battle. Especially if the circumstances around that battle hit hard for you personally. Edit: also especially if you've been walking through easily with cheat codes until this point 😅
I remember that as a kid, my fight was literally more like a war of attrition at that point. It was one of the reasons I stopped cheating in games for a number of years - old habits die hard, haha.
I never used kimahroi on my first play. I managed to beat them. However I only used tidus Auron and Yuna (and a freshly leveled kimahri). Got wiped at spectral keeper
the two that spring to mind for me are Evrae and the Rhonso Twins vs. Kimhari, both from FFX. if you've not been building all of the characters then you can really easily be punished by both
Damn remember when Hironobu Sakaguchi's true boss fight was doubling their initial print run of Final Fantasy I from 200,000 copies to 400,000 copies? Remember when he went as far as showing his work to other companies to convince Masafumi Miyamoto and the others in order to do extra damage? If Sakaguchi didnt win that boss fight, we might not have had any of the bosses in this video.
Thought for sure yunalesca would make the list, if you thought it was a goof idea to clense zombie off your party, but I guess that doesn't so much as make the fight more difficult, as it does end it very suddenly lol.
I ended up with the Knights for Safer Sephiroth, lit the Soul Cage on fire, and was in the high 70s when fighting Ultimecia. The only one of the fights I remember being a nailbiter was UItimecia where I was lucky enough to have Selphie get The End while she was the last remaining party member.
What makes FF8's levelling system more devious is that the level cap is 100, meaning that any max level character basically HAS to junction 100 Death spells to protect against Lv.5 Death (used by Omega Weapon).
in lightning returns on Day 7 or later the Noel boss can also be made stronger and turn into Noel Kreiss + the final boss Bhunivelze can be Bhunivelze+ but only in new game +
Surprised Ozma wasn't included - he actually has 2 dickish things he can do. The first is if you equip a bunch of immunities to the status effects he can inflict, it will make his AI cast direct damage spells more frequently instead. The second is using Quina's Magic Hammer - while on paper it's a good idea, in practice what ends up happening is he starts stealing the party's MP to recover. One last thing I wanna add is levelling up in FF6 - grinding for XP before getting Espers (especially the later ones) can actively make the rest of the game MUCH harder as you will have missed out on significant stat increases.
Not really even in the PIXEL remaster I got the first espers like at lv 50 to lv 60 and still did 9999 per Ultima spell on ALL But Cyan at lv 99 so FF6 is still a joke.
In FFII Dawn of Souls, I removed all of the spells from the powerful mage at the beginning of the game, and in the post game when he returned, I had to fight solo with him without his spells because of my decision lol.
I feel so proud. I beat Ultamecia with all level 100 party members. Basically I saved every invincibility granting item, stocked everyone but Squall with aurora and had Squall go to town when he got in the fight with Lionheart over and over again.
As a kid playing FF8 back in 2002(I was 10), I noticed that enemy levels were always the average of my 3 party members. My favorite characters were Squall, Rinoa, and Irvine and they were maxed at 100 but the other 3 were level 50. Well Kid me, challenged Omega Weapon and lost numerous times and then eventually beat it with my maxed team. Later I revisited the game later in high school and it dawned on me, I beat Omega Weapon at Max! I could have used Quistis and Zell at level 50 with my 100 Squall and beat it with much ease! What the heck!?? Anyway, well personal achievement to know that 10-year old me beat Omega Weapon with maxed 100 characters.
Guard Scorpion in FF7, because of the mistranslation asking you to attack when its tail is up, missing the words DO NOT in front of attack 😂. Also Jenova Life could count, very difficult if you hadnt grinded a bit, unless you equip the Water Ring on someone which makes it essentially unfailable.
Even with her scaling, ultemicia isn’t that tough because of how broken the combat system is. Aura and the Zell combo was my go to back in the day. It didn’t matter what boss you fought.
The scaling was only a problem for peoplethat didn't know the game. If you didn'tknow that 95% of your strength cames from junctioning then you'd assume your character strength came from levels like all the previous games. As such you'd end up at high level but super weak and essentially just spamming your GFs for damage.
For me, it was made worse by the fact that I didn't fully understand how the skill system worked, and by the time I had, it was no longer possible to get equipment that taught "Scan"
Not talking about a Final Fantasy game, but I've seen that happen in a few role playing games. One of note is Wild Arms 5 where on a 2nd playthrough, having characters at a high enough level will make the final boss have basically stats that push it into the 2nd highest HP pool of any enemy party. Stuff like that is uncommon, but still more common than you'd think.
Golem (and the Golem Twins) from Chrono Trigger definitely count. It starts off using it's physical damage moveset. Where it alternates between using an attack which halves your current HP, and an attack which will flat out one shot you. The trick is that using an elemental magic spell will change it's moveset to that element. The elemental magic movesets are WAY less dangerous. And that's without using tricks like forcing it to use elements you're protected against. Or alternating different elements to reset it's ATB bar, so it rarely even attacks.
I had no idea I made every single boss battle more difficult for myself with the one exception being the Air Buster in FF7remake. I stole EVERY damn AI unit possible lmao i wanted a dumb machine and wondered why the fight was so easy.
When I saw the thumbnail, Soul Cage was the first thing that popped to mind for me. I remember the first time I played FF9 and got to him. I didn't know Phoenix downs would work, and assumed he was weak against fire. Boy was in for a surprise. He wrecked me. Took me forever to figure out how to beat him the first time. But that'll always stick out in my mind as one of my favorite bosses because of how he reacted to the player's actions. And I just found out from this video that using ice on him would put the fires out. I didn't know that before! Honestly, I think that including Cloud of Darkness, Air Buster (FF7R), and something like Ozma shouldn't be considered as the player has to actively weaken them. For CoD and Ozma, weakening them are technically side quests. Skipping the tasks to weaken them is completely possible. For CoD, the four boss fights are optional though highly recommended. For Ozma, doing the friendly monster quest is potentially missable if you aren't careful. And with the FF7R Air Buster, you can literally choose to do nothing and fight it at full strength. Fighting something at it's base power instead of weakening them shouldn't be considered for the purposes of this list, but it could be a good topic for it's own video.
I wonder how many people accidentally met the conditions to remove Indalicio's limiter in Star Ocean 2. Doing so changes him from a battle that is challenging if you are around level 90 to a battle that expects you to be maxed out at level 255 to even have a chance.
When reading the title of this video I immediately had to think of Wendigo from FFX. It's accompanied by 2 Guado guards, and if you have the bright idea to kill them first in order to focus on the Wendigo, they cast Protect and Shell on it before going down. Wendigo is already pretty powerful in its own right, but now you have a beefed up behemoth to take down
Yuuuuup! I was one of those players that lvl'd all party members to 99 on ff7 and was left scratching my head on why he was still a challenge. Had no idea about the alterations until years later.
I have played 7 many times and choose to fight Safer Sephiroth in his hardest form. My first time through I did every thing right and was disappointed when the fight seemed so easy.
The only one from this list I did was Atlas in XIII-2. I noticed at one point that you could try to fight him without triggering that one mechanism, but that he was pretty much undefeatable if you do so the first time through. So I went back after powering up some more and beat him pretty easily, getting the Paradox ending. I actually got a lot of Paradox endings, and eventually beat the game. The one thing I never figured out was how to actually fight in that arena place you can fly to pretty early on. Anytime I went there, there was nothing to do, but I read on forums where people were fighting in it. I got frustrated, move on to other games, and never bothered figuring it out.
In Resident Evil 5 Lost in nightmares, you lose all your weapons as Chris in Jill in the Spencer mansion. Just before you fight Wesker you are supposed to pick up a handgun that you can't accidentally miss. Since some games had scripting to always makes sure you have what's needed in a boss battle no matter what I thought that this might do that so me and my friend ignore picking up the handguns. On the hardest difficulty in the game where 1 hit takes you into dying mode with less than a second of a window for your partner to heal you. We spent nearly four hours fighting him as the checkpoint starts at the fight so we couldn't go back for the handguns unless we restart the whole mission, that we'd been at all night by that point just to get to the fight. We only had knives and reaction commands as a way to fight a the superhuman close combat Wesker on the hardest difficulty.
the DS/PSP remake even the NORMAL final dungeon enemies are brutal at least in the PIXEL remaster the CoD only attacks ONCE a turn even if it still Spams Particle beam BUT on the PIXEL remaster all 6 games have Auto Saving/Quick saving which in FF3 is a blessing.
I used a gameshark on my first go at FF7. I used an experience multiplier, and got my characters to level 99 very early on. I never found KotR, but the buffs to Safer Sephiroth are the reason why I never beat FF7 as a kid.
Ultimecia was a breeze at level 99. Even Omega was doable. The fights that i still have nightmares about regarding FFVIII battles, were the ones with the Malboro Tentacles. Of course i tried to junction all the status weaknesses, but that wasn't foolproof against a lvl 100 Malboro. it mostly came down to praying Odin would show up and straight up kill the beast, because i had about a 30% chance of winning the encounter, and i needed its items for Quistis' ultimate weapon.
You know, I honestly don't remember those pesky tobacco plants as being that hard. Annoying sure, but as long as my party was immune to berserk/confusion/petrify and maybe sleep, I don't recall it as being that terrible. Besides, if all you wanted was the tentacles and you were already LV100 yourself, a single Lv Down would cut the cigarette breathed shrub down to Lv 50 and still have it dropping it's best drops. But of course all this is knowledge you may or may not have had at the time since it's kind of in retrospect, so perhaps that's why you struggled more? Or maybe I'm forgetting something about the fights after all these years. That's definitely possible with my aging brain. 😅
Actually hoped to see that horse transformer from ff13, it felt impossible to fight against, I haven't played the game since a long while so I can't say if it was an age thing
In ff8 the machanics of ultimecias castle should be mentioned as well. Because they could make the fights significantly harder the fewer seals have been broken and therefore more options are locked out
8:30 No wonder why he felt harder than I'd imagine. All my characters were max lvl, max stats all summons everything. I made sure I did everything I wanted to do before beating the game.
"enemies lv as you do". The way to counter this was to keep your lvs low, UNTIL your GFs unlocked abilities like str bonus, mag bonus etc. Etc. This way, along with other methods as well, you could boost stats to 255 and thus not need to rely on the junction systems. Furthermore, you could erase lesser GF abilities once you'd learnt their higher tiers. This helps empower you even further, making being lv 100 a beneficial boon. One last handy tip for final fantasy 8, squall has 255% hit naturally, meaning blind status junction & hit junctions are pointless for him.
Are we forgetting about Yiazmat, and how it can hit your team with reflectga then proceeds to bounce a renew spell off them to fully heal itself, essentially resetting the fight Or something basic like equipping more materia makes Emerald weapon hit significantly harder with Air Tam Storm, have 9 or more and it's instant death
I remember not being aware of Emerald Weapon's scaling mechanic for Airetam Storm for a literal year. Because you obviously want to go in with as many materia as you can fit on your character right? I just had no idea how to avoid or reduce the 9999 damage burst consistently. I found out that he dealt a multiplier of 1111 * (the number of materia equipped on the character) and beat him within 2 tries. I had been farming the submarine enemies for stat-boosting items and AP for an uncomfortable amount of time.
I intentionally leveled to 100 on all characters in FFVIII, and still Ultimecia was something of a pushover. I knew well about enemy scaling with party level, but clever stat junctioning overweighed that.
My first play through of FFVIII was in 2002 or 3. I jumped in, learned how to junction and went in a grinding spree per the JRPG norm. If I recall correctly it took me three weeks and a broken controller or two to beat Omega and Ultimacia. I’d get so pissed off at it that I’d rather do homework for college than play the game. But I finally did it, with maxed out characters and general luck. Lol
I never use phoenix downs/life/elixirs on undead bosses because it feels cheap. Theyere usually some of the strongest boases at their stage in the game. I will totally use cure though.
This is awesome.. the last time I played FF7 OG, I had 4 characters at lvl 99, and had Knights of the round at Max LVL, plus 2 mimic materia at max level, I didn't even realize he was harder, I just had the max level KotR used, then spammed mimic by the other 2 lol
@@groudonvert7286 I know, I even intend to replay the game on hard mode someday just to face him, I wish every final fantasy had the means to upgrade the final bosses, it would make the experience even better
Although not the hardest boss fight in FF history, Final Fantasy X's Yu Yevon definitely deserves an honourable mention. In the final fight, you summon every Aeon you have in order for Yu Yevon to possess them and you then kill them to force Yu Yevon out in the open. This means that getting any of the game's optional Aeons prolongs the final battle and forces you to fight against stronger Aeons.
Yeah but you have permanent auto life so it's not actually harder just more time consuming On a side note YuYevon is vulnerable to zombie strike so you can actually kill him in 2 moves, zombie strike then toss a phoenix down at him
No? It's purely a story battle. You have perm. reraise. The only possible way to lose that battle is if you get petrify, and the enemies don't do it so you'd have to do it to yourself. Braska's Final Aeon is the final boss, everything after is just an interactable cutscene.
Soulcage… I just accidentally beat this boss without even trying. Vivi took the first hit and was almost dead. I had Dagger case Cura on him while he had reflect ring on him. Soulcage died instantly. 😂
NOT A FF game but if you turn OFF the final bosses limiter and you don't any Bloody armor user even in the R version of Second story the FINAL boss even at the games max lv is likely to hit the entire party for 9999 damage per hit and game over you in under 10 SECONDS on Earth/Easy mode.
I was young when i faced against the soul cage, i fucking got hard stuck fighhting against it that i stopped playing lmao Needless to say, i fought it another day when i was older, finally beat it and the game was great the rest of the way
I levelled my characters to max 100 in FF8 without knowing enemies scaled together. Just played normally and I don't feel any boss is very hard except Omega weapon. Just need to spam more Hero Potion and a bit of luck with Omega weapon.
Huh didn't know or notice that sepiroth got buffs for doing certain things, considering I went out of the way to to max the party's levels/stats they still chew through his hp pool like nothing
Damn I forgot about being able to buff Safer Sephiroth via Jenova; I should try that. I recently did a playthrough and I nuked him with Tifa’s limit breaks with Yuffie’s Doom of the Living to round it out
Thank you for telling me how to beat Soulcage and what NOT to do! I'm about to start a Final Fantasy 9 run, and I don't want to accidentally make the game hard.
You forgot two other mechanics of Ultimecia. First, her dungeon can be completed without defeating all the bosses. Each boss locks a different ability. So you might be going to the final boss with no magic. Secondly, and more devastatingly, your party is chosen at random. While normally you can assign all of your guardian forces add junction the best magic to the top three characters, now, you have to outfit all of them at least decently. So, you are going to be at partial strength, or you are going to have a completely unjunctioned character who can do practically nothing and even if they die, will stick around for several terms until they disappear and are hopefully replaced by a powered one
Sephiroth seems like list padding. I know he technically gets a boost, but if you're lvl 99, have KOTR, or Hydaelyn forbid, BOTH, you're going to go through him like a burning chainsaw through warm butter. "even harder"? He's softer than pudding.
All FF13LR chapter bosses power up after a certain amount of days, even the final boss powers up if you unlock the hidden bonus day. (if i recall right)
The boss of the Fanatics Tower in FF6 can fit here. Depending on your magic grind, he can be not to hard, or so hard you might as well bend over and die. And the only cheese strat that works is berserking him, but he also phsyicallt hits pretty hard, even if it makes the fight super easy. But imagine playing it back in the day, no real internet, so no way of really knowing
i beat the damn thing back in the day by casting rasp over and over. my plan was that he'd have no mp left to cast ultima, but it turned out that getting him to 0 mp killed him directly.
Ah yeah, umm, I did set off the tree, yeah. I still won, but I really should've seen coming that I'd set fire the battleground I'm standing on, and that that would be harmful to me. Cloud of Darkness' method of defeat is, by the by, also the way things were done in Xenogears against Deus. By removing Deus' four functioning parts, you remove one of his abilities and a chunk of his HP. People still took on Deus at full strength, and probably did same the Cloud of Darkness, but I am basically saying Square sometimes reuses certain methods of play. Safer Sephiroth can be annihilated before he goes Super Nova if Cloud, Barret, and Cid unleash Level-4 Limit Breaks at least once. This was done with everybody at the max level, and the Knights of the Round bit wouldn't make any difference when you consider just how much Omnislash, Catastrophe, and Highwind hit when your characters are truly strong. FF8's entire system was a mistake. I went through that whole entire game, and I didn't like a single thing about it. It was just a bad game.
huh how funny, since I ALWAYS went for max level when I faced Ultimecia, so I NEVER encountered her "weaker" form before, and even then she mostly was a cakewalk.
Oh yeah, felt this burn rather recently, albeit not from a Final Fantasy game. For anyone playing Tales of Vesperia, do NOT collect all the Fell Arms! Trust me on this one.
I can add a couple to this list that caught me completely off guard when I played. In Final Fantasy 2, when fighting The Emperor at the end of the game, I thought it would be a good idea to use Osmose on him in an attempt to remove some of his magic based weaponry. It worked, however The Emperor was also equipped with Blood Weapons and proceeded to start one shotting party members while healing more HP than I could strip away. FFV superboss Omega was also one that could be made tougher based on builds. Omega's coding had Counters built in based on each Attack it received, either hitting with Rocket Punch to cut HP in half and inflict confuse, or using Circle to erase a party member from existence. One of the optimal boss killing builds, utilizing Ninja Dual Wield and Hunter X-Fight or Rapid Fire, would result in Omega countering Eight times per use of this setup, guaranteeing him to start erasing party members.
That first part is actually a really good strategy. You just have to make sure to also cast Blink on your own party with a good enough Evasion%. This will cause the Emperor to only be able to use physical moves, but miss with every single punch :D .
@@beechteeth Same! I ended up Powering up Bartz with Chemist Mix before having him go in for a Bolt3 Infused X-Attack after using the Kiss of Blessing bug to Berserk Omega.
I would personally remove Dark Cloud and Airbuster from this list, because your actions in game don't make them harder. You can only make them easier by taking certain actions, ignoring to take those actions leaves them at their base strength and not above it.
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
The most memorable 'make this harder through stupidity' moment for me is the first time I played the original game. I didn't realize you could visit Bahamut and have your classes upgraded, so I did the final dungeon with a fighter, thief, black mage, and white mage. I did eventually take down Garland, but there was a lot more 'fail, grind, retry' than there should have been.
My favorite example of this is definitely Ozma in FFIX. Equipping things that made you resistant to certain damage types would make him not use moves that use those damage types...meaning if you decided to become resistant to his main damage types, he'd start using doomsday frequently, which even at level 99, has a chance to automatically kill anyone
Also unless you do the sidequest you basically can't even touch it
You can go immune to doomsday with dark absorb. The danger is that ozma stops using doomsday and spams Meteor instead lol. Similarly, leaving one character vulnerable to Lvl 5 Death and one character vulnerable to lvl 4 Holy significantly weakens the boss.
Same can be done with Zodiark on ffxii
Ozma's gimmick is that it reads your party, and also uses 1 of any of its I think 8 moves at any time.
I hate Ozma so much. He's pure RNG. You can go in with the perfect setup and strategy, and if the RNG decides he's going to school you with his most powerful attacks, YOU. ARE. FUCKED. You can go in totally winging it with a party that shouldn't be able to lace his boots, and if the RNG decides he's going to suck then you're going to own him. He's the only superboss in the franchise like this.
For Final Fantasy IX, I was thinking about Ozma who would be immune to melee attacks and absorb dark if you haven't done the friendly enemy sidequest, or would stop using elemental attacks if the entire party absorbed those elements. Or Valia Pira who can get weakened by collecting bloodstones. Or Kuja who is a joke if you can absorb lightning, but starts spamming Flare Star if the entire party has Reflect. I didn't even know about Soulcage going on a rampage if you hit it with fire, that's kinda cool.
I think an honorable mention is the 1v1 fight with Wiegraf in FFT. My very first playthrough I was more fascinated with the generic character job classes and did not focus on Ramza except for story battles where he was mandatory. Before fighting Wiegraf there is a normal battle outside the castle and a subsequent save before being forced to the 1v1, where you can change classes and equipment but no longer do random encounters. So if Ramza is under leveled, and you only have the 1 save file directly before Wiegraf, it is possible to have a game killing situation where Ramza is not strong enough to beat Wiegraf by himself and there is no way to make Ramza stronger, and the only option is to start a new game.
I had to cheat tactics to beat it lol.
@@Turkeybatrhow did you cheat?
@@seand7042have ramza be a monk or be a squire with monk abilities. Have him just yell and accumulate until he has 50 speed and 50 attack. Use chakra to heal while wiegraf goes after you, and then when maxed out, take him down. The stats transfer to the zodiac boss too, so ramza can easily 1-2 shot the zodiac boss with it.
@@ethanstates884 oh you mean in game exploits yeah monk breaks the game the longer a fight goes on
Hell, the rooftop after this is just as nightmarish if you're unprepared
Honorable mention to boss fights with party members you ignored for most of the game 😂
FFX Khimari for sure
THIS!!! hahaa
FFIII is the only real and nearly impossible challenge that can also make you lose a lot of time since there is no save point in the last dungeon originally. Even if Sephirot and Ultimacia get boosted if you are maxed, you are too strong at that point to even care, and they can still go down pretty easily.
Having beat the DS and Famicom versions previously (back when the only way you could play FF3 was by fan translated ROM), I didn't think much of the CoD fight. Recently picked up the PSP version, and oh boy did I feel the pain of effectively doing two dungeons back to back, take out all dark crystal bosses, only to die on the final boss.
Right. KotR does something like 130,000 damage if you have enough stats to hit 9999 on each hit right? So 80K hp means nothing
yeah I always fight Ulti at 100, more fun that way
Idk if it counts, but in FFIV (3D remake, PC version at least) there's a certain element that heals Scarmiglione and i HAD NOT noticed it and was starting to get suspicious that this fight took longer even for it to be low-level mages-friendly. The damage & heal text color in this game is hella dangerously similar with dark red-brown & dark green, I'm glad that in any other version or continuation it's fixed.
Zodiark from XII came to mind on reading this video title. If you equip everyone with Dark absorbing equipment then it spams Darkja. The damage is of course absorbed, but the attack has a secondary effect of highly accurate instant death. Also, like many bosses, Zodiark begins battle with some buffs, but there's a trigger in its combat script triggered by using Dispel. Late in the fight besides when it always uses Paling to become immune to physical damage for some time, which has a very short window when it expires before it's activated again, if you've used Dispel then it also uses Magick Barrier to also become immune to magic.
Holy!, that explains why I never beat him when I was a kid, then when I was a teen, I did all of those things, so that’s why he oneshooted my party… interesting
Yeah, Zodiark is made much easier by just blitzing him. Shell, Bubble, Haste, and Berserk with a few Holy Weapons. Its HP is nothing.
I was hoping the Desert Palace in FF9 was gonna get mentioned, the mechanic with the boss getting weaker the more items u find was awesome, but if u happen to not find a lot of them, the boss isnt weakened much
My favorite example of accidentally making boss fights harder is from FFX. If you leveled up Kimari before his solo fight against the other two Rhonso they leveled with him. Honestly, I maxed him completely out along with the rest of the characters and that one fight took almost 4 hours to complete.
Exactly why I only level up Kimari for steal then I never touch him 😅
Never had that issue myself. Most people complain about neglecting Kimahri and the fight being hard for that reason. I usually make my Kimahri a general grabbag, get Steal and Use, pick up some other abilities on the way to Auron's Sphere Grid, Lancet every Fiend I encounter first.
But then again, Seymour Flux at Gagazet was always easy for me too. People struggle with this, but when I get to the Calm Lands, this is where I really start the post-game grind and tasks to make the party tough.
@dirrdevil it wasn't necessarily a hard fight it took forever due to them each having more hp than most of the creatures of the monster maker (can't remember it's official name right now)
Surprised you didnt mention the mechanic in Ultimecia's fight where your characters get absorbed into time if you dont revive them fast enough. Do this enough times and you can be left with two or just one character left. On top of the fact that if you take too long in the phases after the first, she starts blowing away your magic stocks, if she happens to pick a spell that was critical to your build such as HP, Attack, or Spirit, then you may end up being screwed
the first time i fought her i was down to just squall in a never ending loop of attack and recover each turn, this lasted nearly an hour after she drew the ultima magic i had junctioned to my strength. eventually i just got bored and decided to chance a limit break over a recover and it beat her.
@SomewhatSlightlyBored I was left with Rinoa on critical health so I kept spamming limit break, fortunately she kept using the one that made her invincible followed by her more damaging ones and refreshed he invincibility whenever it wore off. It was a long and tedious process but I got there in the end.
In the SNES version of FF4 enemy speed is calculated relative to Cecil's, this means that if you have a very high level Cecil then the already fast Zeromus would feel *even faster* making the fight considerably more overwhelming.
This is especially egregious in certain romhacks of FF4 (such as FF4: Ultima Edition), so much so that if Cecil's speed stat reaches too high, certain bonus boss fights become impossible.
On the other hand, equipping Cecil with special speed-lowering equipment makes these bosses much easier.
It's a night-and-day difference. I couldn't believe it, especially since FF4 is a game I've played numerous times over the years, yet never knew about the speed stat situation, until I played Ultima Edition last year.
Wild stuff haha
I recently did a job challenge run of FF7 where I restricted each character to only certain materia and equipment relating to a particular job. I fought Sephiroth at L99, and to my surprise, I actually lost because he was hitting like a truck and I was barely damaging him. I had to go back in and actually strategize what to do with my party in order to win. It was rather fun.
I kind of always play ff7 with role restrictions 😅 I've always leaned wayyyy more into roleplay than min/maxing so I don't usually end up with the strongest versions of characters. But I don't mind lololol
Bizarro Sephiroth also has hidden mechanics which have something to do with amount of turns Jenova takes during her final fight which make the fight harder by making you use multiple parties instead of just one.
FF8 also has an arguably harder fight if you're going through the game casually for the first time and ignorant of the level scaling mechanics. By not reading a certain "Timber Maniacs" in Shumi Village, a dream sequence fight against a Ruby Dragon in disk 3 becomes much harder as it allows the monster to use its "Breath" attack. The thing is programmed to only use this attack at higher levels and only if there are 3 active party members.
1st thing I thought of was that Mirror or whatever is was in IX.
It gets stronger and has resistance to things if you wear specific gear that gets picked up in the castle.
I think another thing was that the weakest weapons are actually the strongest in that place.
Yeah Ipsen's Castle on the Forgotten Continent.
If you don't deactivate the bloodstones the boss would indeed get all kinds of power-ups.
I was really expecting to see Materia Keeper (FF7) on this list. If you'd collected Vincent by this point, and didn't realise that A: his level 1 limit break, once activated, simply continues to deal massive fire damage each time his turn came around, with no way to end this without dying; and B: Fire heals Materia Keeper.
Yeah. That killed me back when I first played it. Fortunately there's a save point just before the fight, so I was able to change up my party and try again; much easier without Vincent.
That happened to me when I was a kid but as soon as I saw him heal Materia Keeper with his beast flare, I immediately killed him to revert him back to normal.
Happened to me too. Oops. 😅
What a great list! I didnt know about most if these. I am surprised FFX wasnt included. Powering up Yuna makes the fights against the Aeons much much harder.
Indeed, topping out Yuna with max stats makes them rather vicious.
I haven't finished the video yet, but same with khimari, the stronger he is, the stronger the other 2 ronso are too
Yeah, it's a win button for most of the game, so they had to give it to you in the end.
I mean, by the point you fight them, you're under a constantly renewing auto-life. So while yes, they might be made more powerful, it would ultimately just take more time to bear.
@@dethkruzer True, and I remember thinking that was super lame for the ending. Basically might have well has made it a cutscene if you are going to make it impossible to fail.
The thing about Final Fantasy VIII, though, is that good junctioning almost makes the level scaling obsolete. I've always found it kind of silly to say, "Final Fantasy VIII gets harder as you level because the enemies level up with you..." when your level is actually quite insignificant in the long run. Final Fantasy VIII's core engagement is the junction system, and once you learn it well, you can actually make Final Fantasy VIII among the easiest Final Fantasy gaming experiences out there. This means as you junction and level up, your enemies have to level up... to keep up with YOU, not the other way around. You're too strong, so the enemies need a boost to have a fighting chance against YOU. They may become "stronger" but rarely--VERY RARELY--are they actually becoming harder. Final Fantasy VIII is extremely straightforward in this regard. Your level matters so little in the game that each level only requires 1000 EXP to level up because there isn't much that leveling does for you in the game. They want you to junction.
If you junction well to HP, Str, Def, and Spr, then Ultimecia is merely an enemy that has a lot of HP, but hardly any devastating attacks. Ultimecia gets stronger... but not really that much "harder." In fact, most players likely won't even notice a difference. This is doubled by the fact that you can far more easily manipulate your stats even at level up by equipping abilities that'll give you certain stat bonuses. I was hoping to learn of another way for Ultimecia to gain strength, but it's kind of cop out to continuously say, "the enemies leveling up with you in Final Fantasy VIII makes the game harder!" That's simply not true. What makes the game harder is failing to understand and/or make effective use of the junction system. That will trip players up far more than the enemies leveling up with them.
All of this is compounded more by the fact that Final Fantasy VIII's limit break system allows access to limit breaks when HP is low, with no gauge or anything to monitor it (or just casting Aura). Once down to around 30% HP, you start getting limit breaks, and it's not hard to have someone's HP hover there. The point is that making Final Fantasy VIII takes time because it's one of the games in the series that gives you far more tools than you actually need to be nothing short of a beast to your enemies. Including the Final Boss.
Yeah, FF8 was the one exception to the "enemies getting harder if you're too strong" rule.
Square wanted to try something different at the time honestly. It's just that a lot didn't take the time to figure stuff out.
Add devour and you can max out most stats as well. Or exploiting the time you have control of Siefer to power level at Dollet to get higher level magic early game.
All 7 of the bosses listed on this video, I made the boss battle not by accident but on purpose. I really like a good challenge for theses games to be a more enjoyable and memorable experience.
I still remember fighting the Omega weapon in FF8, I accidentally made it easier by using Selfie the end. I was lucky, that time that was in 2013.
Sephiroth's final form can also be more powerful than he already is, if the player is unaware that he has to use the ''De-Barrier'' materia to lower-up his defence towards magic, since if he doesn't use it, Sephiroth will receive less damage during the fight!
My personal entry to this list would be the Riovanes Castle rooftop fight in FF Tactics. Depending on the jobs or characters you have available, the character you're supposed to protect may go charging towards the enemies, who just happen to have touch-of-death attacks. You can get a game over screen without even getting a turn.
I hate when that happens. But if you place the same units in different spots when preparing for battle, it affects the AI and what choices it makes. Did the battle with the same team in a different formation, had Rafa get killed before I took a turn the first try, then they left her alone the second try.
Biran and Yenke scale with Kimahri in certain aspects.
I only learned this on ps2 with gameshark...To be honest it wasn't super hard but it made for a very epic battle.
Especially if the circumstances around that battle hit hard for you personally.
Edit: also especially if you've been walking through easily with cheat codes until this point 😅
I remember that as a kid, my fight was literally more like a war of attrition at that point.
It was one of the reasons I stopped cheating in games for a number of years - old habits die hard, haha.
I never used kimahroi on my first play. I managed to beat them. However I only used tidus Auron and Yuna (and a freshly leveled kimahri). Got wiped at spectral keeper
@@thechevyreverend I know what you mean but to be honest I really enjoyed that battle. That's why I still remember it
When it comes to FF7 i didn't bothered with grinding to level 99 but i did bother into source farming and duping them for max stats.
the two that spring to mind for me are Evrae and the Rhonso Twins vs. Kimhari, both from FFX. if you've not been building all of the characters then you can really easily be punished by both
Damn remember when Hironobu Sakaguchi's true boss fight was doubling their initial print run of Final Fantasy I from 200,000 copies to 400,000 copies? Remember when he went as far as showing his work to other companies to convince Masafumi Miyamoto and the others in order to do extra damage? If Sakaguchi didnt win that boss fight, we might not have had any of the bosses in this video.
Thought for sure yunalesca would make the list, if you thought it was a goof idea to clense zombie off your party, but I guess that doesn't so much as make the fight more difficult, as it does end it very suddenly lol.
yeah, I wouldn't really call that 'making the fight more difficult', but more of a 'gotcha' moment.
I ended up with the Knights for Safer Sephiroth, lit the Soul Cage on fire, and was in the high 70s when fighting Ultimecia. The only one of the fights I remember being a nailbiter was UItimecia where I was lucky enough to have Selphie get The End while she was the last remaining party member.
Same with me when first played ff8
That's actually incredible lol
What makes FF8's levelling system more devious is that the level cap is 100, meaning that any max level character basically HAS to junction 100 Death spells to protect against Lv.5 Death (used by Omega Weapon).
in lightning returns on Day 7 or later the Noel boss can also be made stronger and turn into Noel Kreiss +
the final boss Bhunivelze can be Bhunivelze+ but only in new game +
Surprised Ozma wasn't included - he actually has 2 dickish things he can do.
The first is if you equip a bunch of immunities to the status effects he can inflict, it will make his AI cast direct damage spells more frequently instead.
The second is using Quina's Magic Hammer - while on paper it's a good idea, in practice what ends up happening is he starts stealing the party's MP to recover.
One last thing I wanna add is levelling up in FF6 - grinding for XP before getting Espers (especially the later ones) can actively make the rest of the game MUCH harder as you will have missed out on significant stat increases.
Not really even in the PIXEL remaster I got the first espers like at lv 50 to lv 60 and still did 9999 per Ultima spell on ALL But Cyan at lv 99 so FF6 is still a joke.
@@veghesther3204 how TF did you hit 50 that early into the game? More importantly WHY ?
@@Malacite Grinding can do wonders
Ff7re i had elemental lightning on my regular attack during hellhouse. That made everything so... so much harder than it needed to be
Yeah, after that first run, I've learned to put Elemental in my armor with either fire or Lightning to reduce damage instead.
@@saltyk9869 I'm glad I wasn't the only one
same here............
Did you guys had trouble? I just had the 4 elements so i can stagger faster and Focus Thrust the heck out of him
I had no idea about the air buster. I chose the M unit because I didn’t know what any of those things would do :(
In FFII Dawn of Souls, I removed all of the spells from the powerful mage at the beginning of the game, and in the post game when he returned, I had to fight solo with him without his spells because of my decision lol.
I feel so proud. I beat Ultamecia with all level 100 party members. Basically I saved every invincibility granting item, stocked everyone but Squall with aurora and had Squall go to town when he got in the fight with Lionheart over and over again.
As a kid playing FF8 back in 2002(I was 10), I noticed that enemy levels were always the average of my 3 party members. My favorite characters were Squall, Rinoa, and Irvine and they were maxed at 100 but the other 3 were level 50. Well Kid me, challenged Omega Weapon and lost numerous times and then eventually beat it with my maxed team. Later I revisited the game later in high school and it dawned on me, I beat Omega Weapon at Max! I could have used Quistis and Zell at level 50 with my 100 Squall and beat it with much ease! What the heck!?? Anyway, well personal achievement to know that 10-year old me beat Omega Weapon with maxed 100 characters.
Omega Weapon is always level 100 in FF8 in the original PlayStation version.
@@Kartissa I never knew that trivia. Thank you, I looked it up. I am just recounting from my memory
Guard Scorpion in FF7, because of the mistranslation asking you to attack when its tail is up, missing the words DO NOT in front of attack 😂.
Also Jenova Life could count, very difficult if you hadnt grinded a bit, unless you equip the Water Ring on someone which makes it essentially unfailable.
Even with her scaling, ultemicia isn’t that tough because of how broken the combat system is. Aura and the Zell combo was my go to back in the day. It didn’t matter what boss you fought.
The scaling was only a problem for peoplethat didn't know the game. If you didn'tknow that 95% of your strength cames from junctioning then you'd assume your character strength came from levels like all the previous games. As such you'd end up at high level but super weak and essentially just spamming your GFs for damage.
It's small details like this is why I love the Final Fantasy games!!! Great video you guys!!!
I feel like Supernova is FF7 is mostly iconic for how long it takes lol
Definitely the tree boss from FFIX! I never realized the difficulty spike was because of the fire magic despite playing the game multiple times.😂
I always liked that you can kill him using life and landing any other attack
For me, it was made worse by the fact that I didn't fully understand how the skill system worked, and by the time I had, it was no longer possible to get equipment that taught "Scan"
Not talking about a Final Fantasy game, but I've seen that happen in a few role playing games.
One of note is Wild Arms 5 where on a 2nd playthrough, having characters at a high enough level will make the final boss have basically stats that push it into the 2nd highest HP pool of any enemy party. Stuff like that is uncommon, but still more common than you'd think.
I beat Airbuster in FF7 in like 20 seconds. I did my limit breaking on his back and then hit him in the back when he countered Cloud and he died.
Golem (and the Golem Twins) from Chrono Trigger definitely count.
It starts off using it's physical damage moveset. Where it alternates between using an attack which halves your current HP, and an attack which will flat out one shot you.
The trick is that using an elemental magic spell will change it's moveset to that element. The elemental magic movesets are WAY less dangerous.
And that's without using tricks like forcing it to use elements you're protected against. Or alternating different elements to reset it's ATB bar, so it rarely even attacks.
Chrono trigger isn't ff so no it doesn't count....
I had no idea I made every single boss battle more difficult for myself with the one exception being the Air Buster in FF7remake. I stole EVERY damn AI unit possible lmao i wanted a dumb machine and wondered why the fight was so easy.
When I saw the thumbnail, Soul Cage was the first thing that popped to mind for me. I remember the first time I played FF9 and got to him. I didn't know Phoenix downs would work, and assumed he was weak against fire. Boy was in for a surprise. He wrecked me. Took me forever to figure out how to beat him the first time. But that'll always stick out in my mind as one of my favorite bosses because of how he reacted to the player's actions. And I just found out from this video that using ice on him would put the fires out. I didn't know that before!
Honestly, I think that including Cloud of Darkness, Air Buster (FF7R), and something like Ozma shouldn't be considered as the player has to actively weaken them. For CoD and Ozma, weakening them are technically side quests. Skipping the tasks to weaken them is completely possible. For CoD, the four boss fights are optional though highly recommended. For Ozma, doing the friendly monster quest is potentially missable if you aren't careful. And with the FF7R Air Buster, you can literally choose to do nothing and fight it at full strength. Fighting something at it's base power instead of weakening them shouldn't be considered for the purposes of this list, but it could be a good topic for it's own video.
I wonder how many people accidentally met the conditions to remove Indalicio's limiter in Star Ocean 2. Doing so changes him from a battle that is challenging if you are around level 90 to a battle that expects you to be maxed out at level 255 to even have a chance.
we'll find out rather soon with the remaster now won't we?
aeronite from lightning returns is also a boss that can be made harder if it is guided to a chaos infusion
When reading the title of this video I immediately had to think of Wendigo from FFX. It's accompanied by 2 Guado guards, and if you have the bright idea to kill them first in order to focus on the Wendigo, they cast Protect and Shell on it before going down. Wendigo is already pretty powerful in its own right, but now you have a beefed up behemoth to take down
Yuuuuup! I was one of those players that lvl'd all party members to 99 on ff7 and was left scratching my head on why he was still a challenge. Had no idea about the alterations until years later.
Oh, the FF7 State of Play description is used
I have played 7 many times and choose to fight Safer Sephiroth in his hardest form. My first time through I did every thing right and was disappointed when the fight seemed so easy.
The only one from this list I did was Atlas in XIII-2. I noticed at one point that you could try to fight him without triggering that one mechanism, but that he was pretty much undefeatable if you do so the first time through. So I went back after powering up some more and beat him pretty easily, getting the Paradox ending. I actually got a lot of Paradox endings, and eventually beat the game.
The one thing I never figured out was how to actually fight in that arena place you can fly to pretty early on. Anytime I went there, there was nothing to do, but I read on forums where people were fighting in it. I got frustrated, move on to other games, and never bothered figuring it out.
In Resident Evil 5 Lost in nightmares, you lose all your weapons as Chris in Jill in the Spencer mansion. Just before you fight Wesker you are supposed to pick up a handgun that you can't accidentally miss. Since some games had scripting to always makes sure you have what's needed in a boss battle no matter what I thought that this might do that so me and my friend ignore picking up the handguns. On the hardest difficulty in the game where 1 hit takes you into dying mode with less than a second of a window for your partner to heal you. We spent nearly four hours fighting him as the checkpoint starts at the fight so we couldn't go back for the handguns unless we restart the whole mission, that we'd been at all night by that point just to get to the fight. We only had knives and reaction commands as a way to fight a the superhuman close combat Wesker on the hardest difficulty.
Jeez, I remember fighting the Cloud of Darkness on my DS and getting annihilated so hard that I started to call her the Cloud of Dankness from then on
the DS/PSP remake even the NORMAL final dungeon enemies are brutal at least in the PIXEL remaster the CoD only attacks ONCE a turn even if it still Spams Particle beam BUT on the PIXEL remaster all 6 games have Auto Saving/Quick saving which in FF3 is a blessing.
@@veghesther3204 very true! That place messes you up. I am unfamiliar with the pixel remaster, but that does sound like a godsend
I used a gameshark on my first go at FF7. I used an experience multiplier, and got my characters to level 99 very early on.
I never found KotR, but the buffs to Safer Sephiroth are the reason why I never beat FF7 as a kid.
Ultimecia was a breeze at level 99. Even Omega was doable. The fights that i still have nightmares about regarding FFVIII battles, were the ones with the Malboro Tentacles. Of course i tried to junction all the status weaknesses, but that wasn't foolproof against a lvl 100 Malboro. it mostly came down to praying Odin would show up and straight up kill the beast, because i had about a 30% chance of winning the encounter, and i needed its items for Quistis' ultimate weapon.
And Doomtrain. Can't forget Doomtrain.
You know, I honestly don't remember those pesky tobacco plants as being that hard. Annoying sure, but as long as my party was immune to berserk/confusion/petrify and maybe sleep, I don't recall it as being that terrible.
Besides, if all you wanted was the tentacles and you were already LV100 yourself, a single Lv Down would cut the cigarette breathed shrub down to Lv 50 and still have it dropping it's best drops.
But of course all this is knowledge you may or may not have had at the time since it's kind of in retrospect, so perhaps that's why you struggled more? Or maybe I'm forgetting something about the fights after all these years. That's definitely possible with my aging brain. 😅
Actually hoped to see that horse transformer from ff13, it felt impossible to fight against, I haven't played the game since a long while so I can't say if it was an age thing
In ff8 the machanics of ultimecias castle should be mentioned as well. Because they could make the fights significantly harder the fewer seals have been broken and therefore more options are locked out
I had no idea that Sephiroth got stronger if you used Knights of the Round. That's goofy
Didn't Safet Sephiroth ALSO get more HP every time you killed Bizarro Sephiroth's head?
Or did I make that up?
It's reduced actually by 100 HP. BUT if you defeat JENOVA Synthesis with Knights of the Round he gets an extra 80,000 HP.
8:30
No wonder why he felt harder than I'd imagine. All my characters were max lvl, max stats all summons everything. I made sure I did everything I wanted to do before beating the game.
"enemies lv as you do".
The way to counter this was to keep your lvs low, UNTIL your GFs unlocked abilities like str bonus, mag bonus etc. Etc.
This way, along with other methods as well, you could boost stats to 255 and thus not need to rely on the junction systems.
Furthermore, you could erase lesser GF abilities once you'd learnt their higher tiers. This helps empower you even further, making being lv 100 a beneficial boon.
One last handy tip for final fantasy 8, squall has 255% hit naturally, meaning blind status junction & hit junctions are pointless for him.
I give Squall hit junctions for completeness, and for the few times you shift to Laguna, who doesn't have 255% hit.
Are we forgetting about Yiazmat, and how it can hit your team with reflectga then proceeds to bounce a renew spell off them to fully heal itself, essentially resetting the fight
Or something basic like equipping more materia makes Emerald weapon hit significantly harder with Air Tam Storm, have 9 or more and it's instant death
I remember not being aware of Emerald Weapon's scaling mechanic for Airetam Storm for a literal year. Because you obviously want to go in with as many materia as you can fit on your character right? I just had no idea how to avoid or reduce the 9999 damage burst consistently.
I found out that he dealt a multiplier of 1111 * (the number of materia equipped on the character) and beat him within 2 tries. I had been farming the submarine enemies for stat-boosting items and AP for an uncomfortable amount of time.
I intentionally leveled to 100 on all characters in FFVIII, and still Ultimecia was something of a pushover. I knew well about enemy scaling with party level, but clever stat junctioning overweighed that.
My first play through of FFVIII was in 2002 or 3. I jumped in, learned how to junction and went in a grinding spree per the JRPG norm. If I recall correctly it took me three weeks and a broken controller or two to beat Omega and Ultimacia. I’d get so pissed off at it that I’d rather do homework for college than play the game. But I finally did it, with maxed out characters and general luck. Lol
I never use phoenix downs/life/elixirs on undead bosses because it feels cheap. Theyere usually some of the strongest boases at their stage in the game. I will totally use cure though.
I can't even focus on the video with those great FF arrangements on piano
This is awesome.. the last time I played FF7 OG, I had 4 characters at lvl 99, and had Knights of the round at Max LVL, plus 2 mimic materia at max level, I didn't even realize he was harder, I just had the max level KotR used, then spammed mimic by the other 2 lol
I had tifa be surprised and fast kotr from master summon materia then a limit break killed him.
I would add Bhunivelze+ to the list.
Actually almost every boss in LR has an upgraded form, except for Caius, which is so badass he does not need an upgrade 😂
@@RPsj Well Bhunivelze+ is much harder than the normal form.
@@groudonvert7286 I know, I even intend to replay the game on hard mode someday just to face him, I wish every final fantasy had the means to upgrade the final bosses, it would make the experience even better
Bhunivelze - Getting to the final day and doing the ultimate lair makes him uber + version.
Although not the hardest boss fight in FF history, Final Fantasy X's Yu Yevon definitely deserves an honourable mention. In the final fight, you summon every Aeon you have in order for Yu Yevon to possess them and you then kill them to force Yu Yevon out in the open. This means that getting any of the game's optional Aeons prolongs the final battle and forces you to fight against stronger Aeons.
Yeah but you have permanent auto life so it's not actually harder just more time consuming
On a side note YuYevon is vulnerable to zombie strike so you can actually kill him in 2 moves, zombie strike then toss a phoenix down at him
FFX and Yu Yevon using your own Aeons on you? The stronger your aeons, the harder the fight!
No? It's purely a story battle. You have perm. reraise. The only possible way to lose that battle is if you get petrify, and the enemies don't do it so you'd have to do it to yourself. Braska's Final Aeon is the final boss, everything after is just an interactable cutscene.
@@Veladuseven against the aeons? I thought only against Yu Yevon you get infinite raise?
Soulcage… I just accidentally beat this boss without even trying. Vivi took the first hit and was almost dead. I had Dagger case Cura on him while he had reflect ring on him. Soulcage died instantly. 😂
NOT A FF game but if you turn OFF the final bosses limiter and you don't any Bloody armor user even in the R version of Second story the FINAL boss even at the games max lv is likely to hit the entire party for 9999 damage per hit and game over you in under 10 SECONDS on Earth/Easy mode.
I was young when i faced against the soul cage, i fucking got hard stuck fighhting against it that i stopped playing lmao
Needless to say, i fought it another day when i was older, finally beat it and the game was great the rest of the way
I firmly believe Cid from FF13 should've been insanely more difficult rather than a Status Ailment machine.
I levelled my characters to max 100 in FF8 without knowing enemies scaled together. Just played normally and I don't feel any boss is very hard except Omega weapon. Just need to spam more Hero Potion and a bit of luck with Omega weapon.
Huh didn't know or notice that sepiroth got buffs for doing certain things, considering I went out of the way to to max the party's levels/stats they still chew through his hp pool like nothing
Damn I forgot about being able to buff Safer Sephiroth via Jenova; I should try that.
I recently did a playthrough and I nuked him with Tifa’s limit breaks with Yuffie’s Doom of the Living to round it out
Thank you for telling me how to beat Soulcage and what NOT to do! I'm about to start a Final Fantasy 9 run, and I don't want to accidentally make the game hard.
My answer was the FF7 weapon when you try to fight it without the breathing apparatus
Emerald Weapon - brutal even with the ability to breathe underwater
it takes 25 minutes MINIMUM to KoTR its 1 million HP so you MUST remove its timer.
@@veghesther3204 Mug glitch allows you to kill him pretty quick. I've seen it done but not done it myself, so can't tell you exactly how it works.
You forgot two other mechanics of Ultimecia. First, her dungeon can be completed without defeating all the bosses. Each boss locks a different ability. So you might be going to the final boss with no magic. Secondly, and more devastatingly, your party is chosen at random. While normally you can assign all of your guardian forces add junction the best magic to the top three characters, now, you have to outfit all of them at least decently. So, you are going to be at partial strength, or you are going to have a completely unjunctioned character who can do practically nothing and even if they die, will stick around for several terms until they disappear and are hopefully replaced by a powered one
I feel like you have to go out of your way to do that though. So wouldn't be an accident
Sephiroth seems like list padding. I know he technically gets a boost, but if you're lvl 99, have KOTR, or Hydaelyn forbid, BOTH, you're going to go through him like a burning chainsaw through warm butter. "even harder"? He's softer than pudding.
All FF13LR chapter bosses power up after a certain amount of days, even the final boss powers up if you unlock the hidden bonus day. (if i recall right)
The boss of the Fanatics Tower in FF6 can fit here. Depending on your magic grind, he can be not to hard, or so hard you might as well bend over and die. And the only cheese strat that works is berserking him, but he also phsyicallt hits pretty hard, even if it makes the fight super easy.
But imagine playing it back in the day, no real internet, so no way of really knowing
i beat the damn thing back in the day by casting rasp over and over. my plan was that he'd have no mp left to cast ultima, but it turned out that getting him to 0 mp killed him directly.
@@srhg6300 probably where they got the idea for the second fight with the Zombie Dragon in FF6A, where it wouldn't die until it had 0 mp
Ah yeah, umm, I did set off the tree, yeah. I still won, but I really should've seen coming that I'd set fire the battleground I'm standing on, and that that would be harmful to me.
Cloud of Darkness' method of defeat is, by the by, also the way things were done in Xenogears against Deus. By removing Deus' four functioning parts, you remove one of his abilities and a chunk of his HP. People still took on Deus at full strength, and probably did same the Cloud of Darkness, but I am basically saying Square sometimes reuses certain methods of play.
Safer Sephiroth can be annihilated before he goes Super Nova if Cloud, Barret, and Cid unleash Level-4 Limit Breaks at least once. This was done with everybody at the max level, and the Knights of the Round bit wouldn't make any difference when you consider just how much Omnislash, Catastrophe, and Highwind hit when your characters are truly strong.
FF8's entire system was a mistake. I went through that whole entire game, and I didn't like a single thing about it. It was just a bad game.
both bizzaro and safer sephiroth get bonuses based on your stats. bizarro gets similiar boosts based on stuff such kotr versus jenova beforehand.
forgot if you level to 99 and run into a group of red chocobos in FFT - literal boss fight
In final fantady 4 heroes of light the gsmes harder the more you level up. The final boss is INSANE and near unbeatable at high levels.
Is that Cloud of Darkness fight technically possible? Like as a challenge boss?
I want all of these contents with FF adjacent games included! Like Bravely, etc.
huh how funny, since I ALWAYS went for max level when I faced Ultimecia, so I NEVER encountered her "weaker" form before, and even then she mostly was a cakewalk.
was Ultimecia's english name spelt as Ultimatia in the PAL version of FFVIII?
lightning returns had a glitch when I played it that on the 2+ playthrough the final boss was hard difficulty regardless as to my settings
Oh yeah, felt this burn rather recently, albeit not from a Final Fantasy game. For anyone playing Tales of Vesperia, do NOT collect all the Fell Arms! Trust me on this one.
Just starting the video. Hoping to see the final Jenova/Sephiroth battle on here from the OG FFVII.
I can add a couple to this list that caught me completely off guard when I played. In Final Fantasy 2, when fighting The Emperor at the end of the game, I thought it would be a good idea to use Osmose on him in an attempt to remove some of his magic based weaponry. It worked, however The Emperor was also equipped with Blood Weapons and proceeded to start one shotting party members while healing more HP than I could strip away.
FFV superboss Omega was also one that could be made tougher based on builds. Omega's coding had Counters built in based on each Attack it received, either hitting with Rocket Punch to cut HP in half and inflict confuse, or using Circle to erase a party member from existence. One of the optimal boss killing builds, utilizing Ninja Dual Wield and Hunter X-Fight or Rapid Fire, would result in Omega countering Eight times per use of this setup, guaranteeing him to start erasing party members.
I remember running into Omega like this for the first time and feeling like a fool.
That first part is actually a really good strategy. You just have to make sure to also cast Blink on your own party with a good enough Evasion%. This will cause the Emperor to only be able to use physical moves, but miss with every single punch :D .
@@neobullseye1 Fair, but imagine the surprise when Osmose works, but not expecting his clapback XD
@@beechteeth Same! I ended up Powering up Bartz with Chemist Mix before having him go in for a Bolt3 Infused X-Attack after using the Kiss of Blessing bug to Berserk Omega.
I was waiting on the Ultimecia fight mentioned as so many people I see level up in FF8 and I'm like NO you're just making it hard on yourself lol
I would personally remove Dark Cloud and Airbuster from this list, because your actions in game don't make them harder. You can only make them easier by taking certain actions, ignoring to take those actions leaves them at their base strength and not above it.