Final Fantasy's Painful Side Quests 

Sorry the for poor audio quality on this video! I had to use my iPhone for this one. Next vid will be better! 😇

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.

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.

Chocobo Race was WAY easier than the jump rope. Like, orders of magnitude easier.

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.

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.

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.

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

This era of FF sure loved torturous side quests...

Downloaded a script to get me the jump roap achevements. Not ashamed one tiny bit

Surprised Kimahri's infuriating butterfly run didn't make it here, but it's probably easier than young me thinks with modern guides..

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 lightning sidequest still gives me nightmares. Still never 100% FF10 :(

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 side quest to get Cloud in FF tactics was nuts.

The Zodiac spear quest is criminal

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

Toughest side quest for me was the darn Hippaul racing in ff9. I never finished it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the original FF12 on PS2, you can also find the Zodiac Spear with 0.1% chance. 10% for a box to appear in a specific place, 10% it will have an item inside, and 10% that this item will be a Zodiac Spear. There's even guides on how to RNG manip the spear to appear most of the time. That's how I got mine.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

WELL ALL of FF9's mini games that aren't digging up the Chocograph's are all pure CRAP are are NOT worth 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.

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.

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.

FF8's card game was truly amazing. Should be its own game tbh. Loved playing it back in the day.

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

"...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.

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.

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.

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

I got ptsd from the rope jump. It's not a joke. It broke me. Just watching it makes my tension up the roof.

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. 😂

The Chico race difficulty is completely overblown.

Grinding chocobo race in FFX was the only time I've ever broken a controller. Chocobo controls like it's drunk.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

I’ve done all of them, but the jump rope was easily the most annoying of them to me.

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.

Hearing the thunder plains music brought my trauma back to the surface

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.

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

These hard ass challenges is why our Gen is so tough

Fun fact: you need a chocobo racing time of BELOW 0 seconds. I learned this after getting exactly 0 and still losing.

I picked up FFX for the first time since 2020 this week and got the Sun Sigil on my first try. It truly blows my mind how much people complain about that mini game because it has always been far easier for me than the Remiem Chocobo Races, the Butterflies or the Lightning Bolts. It took me 3 or more tries to win each of the trials with the oncoming birds and blitzballs and like 10 tries to get the Remiem Wings to Discovery and Pendulums, so I'm not even good at riding the chocobo, I'm just taking the right path. Go straight during the first stretch so the trainer is behind you. Once she's behind you, the balloons in this section are basically free because she can't pass you. Then hold right as soon as you're past the dark spot on the ground during the camera change. Stay to the right during the big straightaway, and the birds will stop going after you and attack the trainer even though you're in the lead. Don't turn left into the final stretch until the camera angle starts changing to avoid the bird spawn point. Then in the home stretch, don't dodge too early. The birds decide on a trajectory after they've been on the screen for a second, so wait a second to try to dodge them until they start their straight line path at you. Once their trajectory is set, then you can turn 45 degrees toward a balloon. If you've got 13-14 balloons, you can stay hugging either the left or the right side of the final stretch, and the birds will often just despawn because they're meant to aim toward the center. But truly if you stay ahead of the trainer by going straight at first, then stay to the right side of the big straightaway only going for the most convenient balloons, then you're in almost no danger at all of getting hit until the last bit. All you need is a cooperative balloon setup, and they're not that uncommon.

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.

FYI - you have to get UNDER 0 seconds for the chocobo race. If you get perfectly 0 seconds you DONT get the sigil. ....I witnessed it. It was upsetting

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.

no way that chochobbo race was a cake walk compared to that dam rope game.

Hot take: FFX's chocobo mini-game is actually pretty easy and kind of fun. Sure, it can be frustrating, but it's nothing compared to the lightning bolt's skipping mini-game

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

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.

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.

I'd like to know how exactly the devs thought a normal player would ever uncover some of these side quests. The zodiac spear being a great example, the only way anyone would find it is by knowing the dev who set it up or data mining.

I did the lightning mini game 3 times successfully before just moving on. Fast forward 20-30 hours and I realized, I had to come BACK for it later because there was the chest. So, I was both relieved and thoroughly annoyed.

I remember nearly putting an actual spear through my PS2 while attempting the lightning dodge challenge in FFX

A part of me is curious why the 3D version of Final Fantasy IV isn't on here, but then I realized that a lot of the challenge from that game is just how it's all RNG Hell...and it doesn't really have mini-games, just item collection and beastiary entries

As a teenager I spent hundreds of hours trying to get all the cards. Back then there was daily up so unless you wanted to waste hours waiting for a page to load you would have to figure it out yourself.

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

My cousin dodged lightning 192 times and got hit. He eventually did the challenge again and completed it, but it was demoralizing.

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

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 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

wtf last 20 seconds is an X-File?

What I felt was so evil about the jump-rope thing was that you had to stop right there, in the VERY beginning of the game and do it right there and then, and the first time you assume you'll be able to come back or replay that thing... But nooo.... So *starting* the game by attempting that jump-rope thing is beyond annoying, beyond the thunder-avoiding 100 times in FFX.

I'm all for difficult quests, but I think the chocobo quest caused my early balding - it's almost f'n mandatory!

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.

I don't consider tedious side quests to be hard. They just take a while and you can treat them like leveling up. There is something to be said for obscure quests like doomtrain or queen of Cards in FF8, but assuming you have a guide those just take time. The annoying ones are the skill/reflex related quests. As someone who has never legitimately gotten the sun sigil in 3 runs originally on the ps2, its one of those things that had made me stop replaying the game. I can skip stuff like jump rope but losing out on Sun sigil and not having a save file with everyone ultimate weapons triggers my ocd.

FFXV's secret dungeon that you only access via giving the Regalia the ability to fly, which is a pain to land where it wants you to is very cruel because it is a platforming dungeon with no ability to stop mid-session. No! You must do it in one go and you cannot leave once entering if I remember correctly.

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...

Great video love watching final fantasy stuff ☘️

The worst "sidequest" would be gettin the best bow in FF12.

getting zero is vastly easier than getting 1000 jumps

While it isn't painful and just time consuming, FF9's tantalus brothers sidequest where you need to leave the final dungeon and return to Lindblum at specific points in the dungeon progression to not even get a unique item certainly wins some awards for how pointlessly hidden and useless it is

You forgot the Seitengrat in FFXII 1/10,000 chance. Truly the strongest weapon.

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.

Due to my completionist nature, I've finish once the Jump rope mini-game. I will never do that again. By far the hardest and stupiest "side quest" / mini- game ever in Final Fantasy.

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.

To me, the 0 second race was actually pretty easy. The Triple Triad was tedious but enjoyable because I actually love TT. The jump rope was a nightmare, but I got it after a while. The lightning dodge -- well, FFX is my favorite Final Fantasy game and I've played it to completion maybe 10 times. Not once have I succeeded in dodging 200 lightning bolts. Every time I either gave up on the sigil or cheated using save editors. To this day I'm scared to even try it again, knowing I'd be spending 2 or 3 whole days trying then rage quitting.

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 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.

if you put on headphones and turn off the background sound for the the jump rope section of ff9 its actually pretty easy. The lightning dodging one is pretty easy if you find the one crater where you can manually trigger it and just time it. These are pretty easy, just long. The lightning one is the worst because if you lose count you dont know when you have hit it because it doesnt tell you. Choco 0 sec time was WAYYYY harder than those

My cousin lived left middle of no where. He 100% the game. Blew my mind. Even as kids. He hit 999 hrs on most FF games he had

THE HARDEST QUEST IS THE FF9 JUMP ROPE QUEST. All the other quests simply require patience and practice, but they're not physically as challenging.

The Zodiac Spear thing always seemed more like a debug remnant or easter egg. The intended way to get it is off of a preposterously rare chest, but there's this little bonus in there if you're in the know. I think people really overreact to it.

Dodging lightning bolts... nothing else in FF history compares with dodging lightning bolts 200 consecutive times without error.