God I miss the strategy involved with non-action RPG combat. Turn based is NOT inherently outdated, it’s just different! There’s many ways to modernize it
@@TheAuron32 no kidding. Combat in Pokemon hasn't changed much in 20 years, and people still buy it like crazy. And yes, I have both Scarlet and Violet. Hahaha
Not a boss, but there's this one mob in FF4 called the "tricker" if I remember. It uses analyze on itself showing you it's weak to lightning. And when you hit it with lightning, it basically gets charged up and usually wipes your whole team
Its literally named Trickster, if you fell for it you fucking deserve what happens. I was like 11 at the time and even I realized right off the bat that using lightning is the LAST thing I should do.
Seymour Flux was a nightmare as a kid. I had to sit through Seymour's speech so many times, I practically had it memorized. Funnily enough, when the HD version came out, I beat it first try and had more trouble fighting him in Bevelle.
Yeah ngl, after the tenth or eleventh time of that guy whipping my arse, I just finally went "fuck it", and used Yojimbo. I hate admitting that, but at that point, I just wanted it done and progress. Although when I did finally beat him properly in another playthrough, it felt great. Taught me patience and always be prepared, at least.
My first time playing FFX I really didn't understand the sphere grid at first. I somehow managed to send Tidus and Kimahri down Yuna's path. I started to get it later in the game, but when I got to Seymore Flux I just could not best him. Had to start the game over so that I could do the sphere grid properly.
Seymour Flux is such an amazing fight. I still have this guy's voice in my head when he instakills your summons and the whole dialogue before the fight from way back in the PS2 days.
I agree entirely about Chac. Stoneproof should mean Stoneproof - and the same goes for any other status. Not playing fair with the player achieves nothing more than that player turning the game off and leaving a bad review.
Got to love that ff12 zodiac age you have the ability to cast death for an instant kill but it’s completely useless cause everything that is worth wanting use the spell on is immune to death. Elite hunts, bosses be they monster or human and certain mission bosses. I was like why even give me the ability for this worthless spell.
This is one of the most annoying things about 12 - elements, shields, status-effects - those are mostly useless. "Hey, i got a great weapons" - nothing weak to it until the weapon is already to weak to be useful.
I was definitely one of those people that felt Seymour Flux was the toughest boss in the FFX story. I rarely had all three party members alive. Oftentimes would be on the edge of my seat using one character to revive the others while he kept killing them, and occasionally Auron, tanky as he was, could get a stray hit in. That boss was HARD.
You could probably make an entire list with the Via Infinito bosses, FFX-2 it's a surprisingly hardcore game and I love it because makes the most out of the battle system
Have you ever just captured the right characters in the beast catcher? You can equip your party to be Nooj, Tidus, and I believe it was either Baralai or the skinny dude with the pistols. You can set their abilities up to use quick hit and max their dress spheres up so that they just blast through literally any enemy in the game in under 20 seconds. I beat Trema in like 15 seconds without pressing a button lol
@@QuantemDeconstructor that's what I mean though even the hardest boss had a way to cheese it. I prefer it when super bosses are actually difficult to beat regardless of strat
@@187btokes true, I think they were designed around the content in FFX and didn't take into account the possibility of something having maxed everything because someone dumped Minerva Plates into it due to International additions
Also poison. Since pretty much every boss up until that point in the game was immune to poison (including Seymour's previous forms), I didn't even consider looking for it in his resistance list in my first playthrough.
This is the reason I enjoy the SMT games so much. Buffs/debuffs and status effects are not just useful, but totally necessary a lot of the times. In FF it's usually just needed for the really hard bosses and only necessary for super bosses.
@@johnnynightmare22 Here's the trick with Tantarian: you don't need to fight it in Disc 2. You can actually wait until Disc 3, during the part where you're trying to get to Garnet and Eiko as Zidane, Amarant, Freya, and Vivi. There's no time limit in Disc 3, and the higher levels means you can get through the fight a little easier. The steal rate's still bad, I'll admit.
@@Shadohime yes, but some people want to have an early access to the auto-haste ability, so they usually challenge it on disc2 with the time limit. If you know what you're doing, and you take some time to lvl up between disc 1 and disc 2 (early Grand Dragon strat) you can easily defeat the boss on disk 2 with 15-18 min still left on the clock. But for the regular player, who just passes through the story without paying much attention to equipment or levels and skills - this boss is a real threat even on disc3. Nowadays i can easily defeat it under the time limit, but on my first playthrough this boss was unexpected and decimated my party several times even without a timer. I remember it took me an hour to defeat it, 'cuz i mostly was healing and reviving with occasional window for dmg.
Not quite at the level of these bosses, but the bosses in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance were cheap in the sense that the could ignore the rules you had to play by. For example, you might not be allowed to use magic while the boss could. Technically, they got the "yellow card" warnings but never a red.
Speaking of which, Neo Shinryuu also was a damn piece of work. I don't remember everything, but the multiple parts were kinda tricky. Omega MkII changed its elemental affinity, but that's more manageable
Yeah Omega MKII is largely just "What if Omega was faster?" and only has the element resist gimmick to really differentiate it. It's honestly a really tame upgrade relative to what Shinryu got, but then again Omega is arguably the harder fight in the first place.
I think what I did for Omega Mark II was to two-turn it by setting up Lightning Spellblade on 1st turn for 2 characters, then Dualwield Rapidfire on the 2nd turn. It melts Omega because it is weak to lightning first in the cycle. That or I just wait until it becomes weak to lightning then destroy it.
Seymour was definitely tough, but before too long, you learn that pretty much every tough boss fight in the game can be defeated (entirely or mostly) by having all your aeons in overdrive mode, so they could get in an overdrive before Seymour kills them. Especially once you had Bahamut!
well if you want to cheese your way trough the game why even bother playing? You could one shot everything with yojimbo but if u had half a brain you could defeat any story bosses with ease
@@mikaeljalamo4834 Not to mention Yojimbo needed a lot of gil, that you wouldn’t typically have at that point in the game, so it’s not the best way to recommend… and this is something I learned later, obviously…
@@joshrichards1305 exactly, plus it was something I learned later, and with Yojimbo you wouldn’t typically have enough gil for that at that point in the game, so clearly it’s common sense but I guess not.
Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII was pure hell. It's got a time limit, crazy attack power and defense, and it looks like it's constantly T-Posing at you to asset its dominance. To say nothing of its movepool. That Materia Storm move is terrifying.
For me it’s gonna be the carry armour from final fantasy VII because the boss likes to spam Lapis laser and pick up your party members, and if your one character dies it’s game over.
For Omnislash I waited until Cloud can use The NORMAL KoTR to kill Emerald weapon with it in order to MASTER summon it for the battle square battles even with 9999 HP 999 MP Tonberries their are still a pain in the ass to kill WITHOUT it. I NEVER had Omnislash outdamage even a LOW 5000 per Knight against Emerald weapon anyways and had physical hits not even top 500 TO Ruby weapon itself at lv 60.
Great video. It’s funny it brought back memories for me when I very first played FF7. The demon wall boss in the temple of the ancients just kept killing me over and over. The damage it did was much higher than anything else I had encountered up until that point. Back then I didn’t grind at all so must of been under levelled. In the end I started a new game and eventually did it.
The difficulty increase/curve on Demon Wall was just not cool. I do not know how I beat it to this day on my first try because you could not gain exp after the last save before jt. I'm sure it was something simple, though.
FF V had the best job system. I loved that mastered jobs offered skills/abilities to be equipped even on other jobs, allowing for very flexible gameplay. That, and how after you master all the jobs, the Freelancer becomes the best job. The postgame content with the Sealed Temple is also incredible.
Omega is a difficulty spike from explorer's, because of mighty guard you have to knock out its legs and then go on the offensive, after that he is one of the only ways to get some of the ultimate weapons, which he has a 1% drop for the materials for the weapons.
My strategy for Seymour Flux has and always will be to go into the battle with every single aeon having their overdrive bar full and just summon them, use their overdrive, Seymour kills them, then just summon the next one on the list, it's a cheap tactic on my part but quite honestly, whatever gets the job done haha
I'm surprised Shinryu made it onto this list over Neo Shinryu. Shinryu might be bad, but at least it's not randomly invulnerable with no indication as to when that's going to happen.
pretty sure Neo Shinryuu was in the remake of FFV, as was Archeodemon which was already covered for that game, as well as arguably a cheaper boss with the "btw, now i'm back to full health whenever i choose so..." tactics it uses.
you should do a list series about difficulty spikes which I'd define as bosses that make a first time players lives really difficult and are often used to incentivizes grinding or using a system you haven't had to before. To make your life easier, I'll list one from each game: FF1: Astos, Instant Desth that are very effective, before you get LIFE. Phoenix Downs didn't exist in the NES version so you had to hoof it outta the dungeon back to Elfheim. It teaches the player to be grateful Phoenix Downs were added. FF2.) The Behemoth: A boss who doesn't have complex gimmicks just stupid high defense, a lot of HP and hits really hard. You have Gordon as your fourth party member who is by far the weakest character guest or not in the game. Like with how the level system and 4th character slot work in FF2 it can be a time sink for inexperienced players on a temporary character. FF2 is a wild game and i got stuck on this boss three separate times playing this game. FF3.) Salamander: The poster boy for difficulty spikes. Located directly before the second tier of jobs so your first tier are feeling obsolete and are just ill prepared for this boss. His AoEs being two hit kills in a game where AoE healing is not available yet is what makes him so hard. The dungeon before him is also pretty brutal with it's lava tiles and again NES eras famously stingy save points meaning the save point is not near the boss. FF3 is probably my vote for the hardest FF game except for the DS remakes of 4. FF4.) Golbez, specifically the Dwarven Cave one on the DD which at first makes you think it's a scripted loss... before a cutscene and a huge difficulty spike. You've got two party members Cecil and Rydia and Golbez is gonna make you suffer with second tier magic and status effects. He doesn't just run away like the SNES version either he has the most healthy for a boss you've fought so far in the game. 4 DS is an absolutely brutal game and while I love it this spike is seriously one of hardest in they series. FF5.) Atomos, if you know you know. This boss is one of the bigger difficulty spike bosses in the series. Spamming Comet and permanently removing party members in a game without back up is bs. Fortunately FFV has lots of broken stuff so it's not as hard as DS Golbez but FF4 DS has a higher curve on average with Calcabrina being hard in it's own right while FFV is overall not too hard so I'd say it's a higher spike relative to it's game. FF6.) Storm Dragon. Another difficulty spike that's sky high and while the World of Ruin is pretty open the game tells you to come here when you probably don't have the party members or gear for this fight. Huge HP, Wind Damage is awkward to mitigate and his spells are Wind and AoEs. Plural spells as well he has options. This guy is your welcome party to the World of Ruin. FF7.) Rapps. Sure would be a shame if the game took away your mataria and put a pretty tough boss for first timers to fight wouldn't it. Part of what makes this difficult is it's designed for Limit Break spam but it might take someone a while to figure that out. I remember being a dumb kid and thinking he was invincible for like two weeks.. FF8.) Oil Boyles, a boss that hits very hard in a game with a lot of systems for a first time player to learn. Like if you haven't learned the magic of Junctioning and how to get Fire to spam it can get outta control real fast. FF8 was a game I didn't appreciate until years later and this guy is why. I tried to play like seven and that didn't work very well. FF9.) Gizmaluke, who really teaches you the value of strategy in this game. Hits hard with both of his attacks and loves to Silence Vivi when your magic is doing a lot of the work damage wise. you're gonna be losing turns healing Vivi and getting pounded by high damage so new players gotta come into this fight with a plan which honestly was there earlier but this boss really puts that practice into motion. FF10.) Evrae. A boss that is a real underappreciated roadblock and can seem to talk overwhelming if you don't know what you're doing. You've gotta decide how you wanna approach him, up close where he can hit you really really hard but you can hit him with physical party members who are probably a lot of your damage or further way where you've gotta rely on less damage from magic but it won't potentially kill you with how hard. No Yuna either. And he eventually casts haste on itself so he can stack even more damage and make it a race which can be difficult if a new player didn't realize how important rapidly updating the sphere grid is. It will definitely teach you. FFXI) Didn't play this so idk anybody who did feel free to mention what you think a difficulty spike was in that game. FFXII.) Demon Walls, an already pretty challenging boss now enhanced with obnoxious status effects, needing understanding of the battle system and fast inputs due to their time limit amd and Telega making it even harder. While the first is optional, I feel like most players are gonna come across it and fight it so I'm including it. FFXIII) Odin. Eidolins are already harder than most other things in this game, but Odin I think is where the game is truly like "we were being nice with fighting Shiva with just Snow, let's get serious." Three minute timer to fill a bar or you just lose, Odin focuses Hope who is the most fragile character in the game between low max hp and defense. To fill the bar, you've gotta micromanage getting chain bonuses and healing Hope with very little room for error which is easier said then done with how fragile he is. I feel like this difficulty spike is high enough it made people quit it's nuts FFXIV) Didn't play this either, fill free to chime in you did! FFXV) Ravus who's harder than the rest of the game combined except Ardyn. I played 15 a while ago and just remember him hitting like a ton of bricks, having tons of health and being hard to avoid which is mechanically different than RPGs enough it's harder for me mechanical explain why. Anyway hope this helps you if you wanna use it for anything. Appreciate the channel keep up the fine worm
it took me WEEKS to beat Seymour Flux. Back then i didn't have a ps2, i had to pay an hourly rate at a video game shop to play games. I played a lot of jrpgs this way. Just thinking about Seymour Flux pisses me off lol
I love your videos. They are excellent to listen to in the background. I don't want to be "that guy" but if possible I would like to make one small request. Is there any possibility I could persuade you to start putting time stamps for each entry in your lists videos? I watch them multiple times and it would be nice to be able to jump to the entries that pique my interest.
that last one reminded me... in the original FF7, JUST after the saddest moment, you are ambushed by a version of Jenova, that has VERY powerful attacks. it's almost certain to wipe your party, UNLESS you have one character equipped with the Water Ring, which enables him to absorb Water-type attacks. if i remember, you literally CANNOT LOSE if you have that Relic equipped, since ALL of that boss' attacks are Water types!
I've beaten X-2, but it was on the OG PS2 version (in US) so I've never fought Chac. But it sounds to me like it has one of my biggest pet peeves: DON'T GIVE PLAYERS A WAY TO IMMUNE SOMETHING AND THEN MAKE YOUR BOSS IGNORE IT. It just feels bad. Don't give players a solution to a problem and then say "yeah but versus these enemies it just doesn't work."
Agree, same with abilities that don’t work on any of the important things. Why are there high tier poison spells if everything and their grandma is immune to it?
Chac, and indeed the Via Infinito, were available in the OG PS2 version. The truly strange part about the fight is the fact that Chac is actually easier to defeat if you Oversoul it first, because its attack pattern changes significantly. To oversoul it, you need to simply kill enough of the other serpent-type enemies in the game for one of them to Oversoul, then leave the fight, and make your way down to Chac. As long as you didn't kill the Oversouled snake, Chac would be in Oversoul when the fight begins. That said, she's still an incredibly cheap boss, and the fact that it ignores immunities is far and away the worst thing I've ever experienced in a Final Fantasy game.
I beat it in the ps2 version, but in the remaster they nerfed catnip. That combined with trigger happy was pretty much the only way i could get to Trema.
@@SomewhatSlightlyBored Admittedly, that was my strat for the Via Infinito as well. Unfortunately, it's no longer viable since Catnip adds the Berserk status now. Reminds me, I should replay the remaster, see how far I can push the arena.
The problem with Seymour Flux for the underlevelled party (especially during a blind run) is that Aeon spam is such a viable and grossly overpowered tactic for steamrollering every threat in this game. Its the same reason why so many players also suffer when they reach Evrae for the first time. But Seymour's ability to banish your Aeons suddenly puts you on a very nasty back foot if those Overdrives aren't doing their job.
With FF-X on the very first playthrough i just always had the Aeon overdrives ready - they are just too strong of a weapon to not abuse. Basically anything but Yunalesca is easy with that.
Reminds me of how The Legend of Dragoon has several bosses who'll outright murder you for using the game's titular mechanic. It's a nasty but necessary lesson for complacent players.
Ff8 had the same mechanic for Ultimecia. If you used a GF on her (to try and have them eat an attack), she banished them, and you lost your junctions. That one truly hurt 😂
It's kind of like my experience with Cid in XIII. I basically was spamming X the whole game, but that boss fight forced me to actually learn how to play. It was a rough time, but I remember the boss for it.
There's an infamous fight against Belias in Final Fantasy Tactics. The first part of the Battle, Ramza is going after him alone, and if he isn't built correctly, the fight is unwinnable. The problem is that you can save right before the fight. So if you save there, and that's your only save, and Ramza isn't leveled up right, or doesn't have useful abilities for the fight, then you may have to start the game over, as you have no opportunity to train up Ramza anymore until after the fight. The problem is avoided if you have a save from one Battle earlier, then you can Train Ramza Up. That's one of the most Unfair Final Fantasy Situations I've come across. I made sure to train Ramza up for that fight specifically on the next run and he whooped Belial's butt! If you ever play Classic FF Tactics, make sure you always have a free save file that has access to random battles! Also, I believe Yojimbo in FFX screwed me over by poisoning my whole party, then immediately using an attack to bring everyone's hp down to 1. Everyone died of poison damage before I could heal anyone!
Can we take a moment and revisit Tactics and the fight on the roof with Elmdor and his two assassins? The assassins would very often get to Rafa and kill her before you could even act, causing game over.
There could just be an entire series on how frustratingly difficult Tactics is alone. Melida isn't too tricky but is a difficulty spike, then there's most of chapter 2's battles which are a struggle, then there's Wiegraf, Elmdor, Most of the Underground of the Monestary. Just oof. Then Cid comes along and it gets extremely easy.
yeah, you have to have spec'd into at least one speed or absurdly long-range class (like the lancer) to even stand a chance (to add to the nonsense, you can get save-locked in that spot due to being offered a save). For added fun though, certain enemies can break or steal your extremely rare or one of a kind equipment, such as a certain lady that was I think a "Lunar Knight" or something like that and you can get her on your team eventually. Nothing is more annoying though than attempting to learn ULTIMA... There are only 2 enemies in the game that use it and both are ridiculous and even AFTER you learn it, not only are its mana requirements ridiculous, it's not even that impressive compared to everything else you can do in the game. So, a hidden ability that only a single character can learn that requires very specific circumstances and is the iconic magic of the franchise... got basically nothing XD
Late to the party, but Minerva from CC (Reunion specifically, I haven't played the OG yet). Instant kill spells that can sometimes be near impossible to dodge (the ice move took so many KOs for me to get the timing down) and the only viable strategy is like stealing her 99 PDs and reviving after each death from her spells and physical attacks. I am honestly, no joke, surprised it only took me three days to beat her.
The first major FF boss I legit remember needing a strategy guide for was the green wyrm boss in FF12. I can’t remember it’s name, but I do remember that it was the first time you encountered the “oil” status, which makes you vulnerable to fire damage & could only be removed by one specific item (not even esuna removed it) & of course it had the Malboro style “give everyone ALL status debuffs” ability. Though not one enemy per se, I would say that any SHINRYU mission boss from Opera Omnia fits the category of cheap as they add a whole new level of difficulty to any battle by giving the bosses a force gauge on top of the LUFENIA mission countdown abilities that could be increased only by performing specific actions, making it so that in order to actually complete these missions required you to use specific characters who had to have all abilities maxed out, including having obtained & maxed all of their weapons, armors, crystal strength as well as their ability & summon boards to stand any chance of winning! I love Opera Omnia, but there are many leaps in difficulty that I find infuriating.
It probably doesn't count because the boss itself isn't super hard, but I still nominate Hell House on hard mode for FF7 Remake. Chapter 9 cruelly has you first fight through the Collapsed Expressway, where finding MP is hard (you cannot use items on hard mode, so Cloud can only regain MP very slowly over time or from boxes), and then you have to fight in the Coliseum, which gives zero chances of obtaining MP. Aerith has Soul Drain to regain MP from enemies, but you'll likely use it up quicker than you gain it. Sam's modified Cutter and Sweeper are brutal and easily can keep you using up all of your MP with Curing yourself. Hell House is a fight that's all about MP, but on hard mode, the game tosses in tonberries, too. They have low HP, but they're wiley. If Aerith should use any magic attacks on them, they bind her, then disappear behind her and stab her, often leading to an instant death. It's imperative to kill them with Cloud before they kill her. And then the worst trick of all, in the final round with the house, if you fail to defeat it after its first move where it flies around the ring, a cutter and sweeper are sent out...two more enemies who's weakness lies in that precious MP that you are likely very low on or completely out of with one or both characters by that point. It's so damn dirty, in my opinion. Your biggest enemy that chapter is already yourself and your resource management, they didn't need to add the cutter and sweeper.
@@waylander9265 Or not knowing that it's best to actually remove all elemental materia from your weapon because if you do regular attacks when it's in the same element that you're wearing, you're just going to heal it. Also really sucks if you didn't level up a pray or chakra materia to take the place of Cure or you don't even have the materia space for them. I had both, but it uses ATB and I rarely could get enough ATB to sacrifice on using those instead of just Curing with Aerith. But because I had her holding the bulk of my materia, if she died, Cloud was pretty much a sitting duck as I had no room for a revival materia. The revivial earrings were my accessory of choice for them, but so many times a character would die before I was far enough into the fight to justify the death, so I had to restart. I don't think it's an exaggeration that it took me over 50 tries to beat that House on hard mode. I remember it was an absolute desperate last move that won the battle for me, being crowded into a corner by either the cutter or sweeper and unable to see, and Cloud was dead and I didn't have the MP to revive him. I remember reading in a guide that the lightning attacks will always hit their target, unlike wind, fire and ice, so though I couldn't see a thing and had no idea what element the House was in, I used my last MP on a lightning attack and surprisingly, that beat Hell House. After I beat the game and had all of the items, I decided I needed to redeem myself and fought it again on hard mode, lol. While I beat it on the first try, even with everything and more tips and tricks up my sleeve, my arrogance almost cost me the fight. Goes to show that that's a battle to not take lightly, no matter what.
Yes, that Hell House really caught me off guard the first play through. I am a grinder and had leveled up magic and characters, but it still killed me quite a few times before I beat it. The first time I did not save between battles and had to do it over again. When I replayed it on hard it was a better fight having much better materia and the Gotterang (whatever it is called). Not even going to tell you how many times I had to fight Weiss before I finally broke through.
One of my favorite near unstoppable bosses was the original Gogo! He would appear and tell you he wants your party to mime him. If you tick him off he hits you with two high damage meteor blasts and casts a TON of booster magic on himself so in the event you managed to survive by some miracle you've got a VERY hard hitting enemy to deal with! Ironically all you have to do to make him happy is stand there and do absolutely NOTHING? Hey Luigi? Gogo beat you to it lol!
Chac. Just use a party made of monsters from the capture thing. Monsters are naturally immune to petrification if they have ailment defense. A guardian beast from chapter one can be trained to easily win against everything in via infinito except Trema himself. I used a claret dragon myself. In the original version, just use catnip. Seymour Flux. Seriously? You would think people would know that silence and reflect exist. You can win pretty easily after that. Vercingetorix. Poison, and hope for the best. Go for poison and fast staggers. Slow works too so you might want to replace Hope with Vanille. The faster poison and slow are applied, the faster you can switch to stagger methods.
Yes but the later bosses will still kill a Aeon via 9999 damage so you only have 1 shot per summon over drive UNLESS its Zanmato which in FFX pretty much nothing is immune to being instantly killed that way save for maybe the DARK Aeon bosses.
On my first play through this was my go to strategy for every tough boss fight lol. If in doubt charge every aeon's overdrive in random battles and try again 😂
@@David-vh8op Yea, this move made A lot of boss fights easier since at some point bosses would just kill the aeons after one attack and it makes the fight a LOT easier when you have a couple very powerful attacks over the course of it.
The full Shinryuu strat involves berserking Shinryuu with Chemist, having one party member be a knight to use Guard, which negates physical attacks, and have the rest of the party be at low HP so that said knight Covers them when they’re attacked. Without doing all of that, the berserk-buffed physical attacks will quickly destroy you, regardless of endgame armor.
Eh, you don't need to do *all* that. With a full set of Hermes Sandals you can not only outspeed Tidal Wave but also keep up with Shinryu's attacks and sandbag your party with Phoenix Downs as single target is non-threatening. Additionally you can also Blind Shinryu or use sources of Image like Blink, !Image, and the Mirage Vest exploit to mitigate damage entirely without being locked into Knight. In fact between Hermes Sandals and the Wonder Wand, the baseline you need to beat Shinryu this way is just having any job that can equip the Wonder Wand.
Its just faster to steakl 8x Dragon lances master 4x Ninjas put party members as Freelancer equip 2 Dragon lances each use Jump and kill Shinryu AFTER it uses Tidal Wave in the final dungeon IN 1 turn.
@@veghesther3204 Thats still a pretty sizable set-up given the AP requirement of Dual Wield. The barest minimum to clear Shinryu will always be Hermes Sandals + Wonder Wand, sure it's not a 1337 instant one-shot but it still solves the fight. Its also viable in limited runs!
Wonder Rod ONLY casts the RETURN magic spell when used as a ITEM in battles so its kind of useless against Shinryu/Omega because of that. For Ninja I mastered that job IN world 1.
The Easiest way that Me and my Brother were able to kill Syemour Flux was EVERYONE’S OVERDRIVE! That Goes for Summons too since Bahamut already has the Break Damage Limit on him to get Symour down! But yeah, we noticed that he will instantly take up his entire turn to banish the Summon. And once the party came back, the fight would basically reset the initiative trackers :) It was the only way to beat him. Sowing the fight fairly was impossible. The only other way to kill him was to use Yojimbo’s Zanmato instant Death attack. But to this day, I’ve never been able to pull that off.
Seymour Flux was a broken boss battle because if you didn't grind enough at certain points of the game you're just not going to beat him without one specific way to cheese it. Without that cheese you would essentially have to restart the game because you'll never get enough experience from grinding through what is available at that time.
I always hated the final boss fight of Final Fantasy IX with Necron (I think that was his name) since he would hit you repeatedly with all the worst status effects, some of which had no defense (from what I remember; it's been a long time) like countdown doom. So all of your time was recovering from the status effects or reviving your party if you weren't prepared properly.
With shinryuu in my PR run of the game I had basically no issues while omega took me hours. Probably just that after omega I had a strategy to defeat powerful enemies so then when shinryuu surprised me I was able to handle it the same as omega
Yunalesca was a nightmare if you didn't have the right armor abilities and items. Harder than Seymour, I think. And the cutscene to get to the fight took a while.
Watching this today, I’m all about so many numbers and menu objects being on screen as in the FFXIII in battle UI. I don’t mind a focus on scenery and real time effects as in the modern games. But I’m battle UI’s were there own gem in the games.
Maybe I was always overleveled by that point, but I don't think I have ever lost against Seymour Flux. I find him much easier to get through than Yunalesca. If anything I think that spamming aeon overdrives makes him a non-issue completely, whereas Yunalesca's three phases and megadeath makes that much more difficult to accomplish
The absolute WORST PART of yunalesca and Seymour was having to sit through extremely long cutscenes if you died to either of them. And as stated they are cheap and difficult if you don’t know what you need to do.
I cheesed basically the entirety of ff-x up until the end portion where I farmed the entirety of the beast arena thingy and got all the ultimate weapons won 100 blitzball matches completed the sphere grid etc because I'm a completionist. I cheesed every boss using yuna because I neglected the hell outta the sphere grid khimari was broken and Riku died constantly, I think my most useful team members were obviously tidus because slice n dice is amazing, yuna and lulu. And I cheesed seymour flux by farming overdrive guage on my summons until the fight, and then spamming all of their overdrives back to back effectively keeping seyomour from having a turn while I dealt massive damage each time.
I'd give a shout out to Pandaemonium Warden in FFXI. Not only did this NM initially have 20 forms to fight through, but the final form has the ability to use Astral Flow, the Summoner SP ability with not one, but NINE avatars being summoned simultaneously and all using their ultimate attacks.
FF6 has some really hard boss fights where the boss just doesn't fight fair. Your first introduction to Ultros. Gilgamesh in the Coliseum. But I distinctly remember having a very hard time against the boss of the dungeon where you acquire The Falcon.
Really feel like Shinryu from FFX should have been here over Chac, since Shinryu can also bypass petrification protection, but unlike the fight with Chac, the character instantly shatters because you're underwater, not to mention being limited to 3 specific characters rather than having your full party.
Have not watched either video yet, but my first thought for cheapest, most unfair boss, was Omega Weapon in FFVIII, lvl 5 death in a game with a lvl 100 level cap... meaning if you maxed out your level, the boss could insta kill your entire party in one turn whenever he felt like it, as the level cap was a multiple of 5. Emerald/Ruby weapon in XII and Yiazmat in XII were pretty bad too, but NOTHING on Omega weapon in FFVIII.
Not sure if it is technically a boss, but the Tonberry encountered in the story of FF7R is especially nasty because it does something that, to my recollection, no other enemy in the game can do; he stuffs your attacks on purpose. With very few exceptions, trying to use any kind of ability on him will result in him immediately casting instant death counter magic that is guaranteed to hit your character faster than their attack can come out, interrupting it and killing them for the crime of daring to use their ATB charges against him. You could equip protection against instant death, in which case the counter attack is downgraded to _just_ doing massive non-elemental damage. Such nonsense
THANK YOU for including Chac as the first boss in this video! That bitch is nearly impossible to beat without being extremely cheap. Darkkefka confirms as much...
FF7 Lost Number is pretty cheap if you're not familiar. But if you poison him and just defend & heal, never attacking, then he'll never switch to either form at low health and eventually just die. This also works with Zolom early on if you don't want to deal with chocobos, as he'll never raise, kick anyone, or counter with anything including Beta.
I don't remember Flux being a problem back when I played X. Only thing I remember being infuriatingly difficult was dodging the seagulls and lightning.
Hmm haven't played FFX-2 since the Ps2 days, so my memory of the bosses in that place are fuzzy, but Chac and Elder Drake are the ones I hate the most I think. I wanna enter that place and crush it with my own monsters in the HD remaster. It will be so satisfying.
Same here I vividly remember dying so many times against him on my first play through, listening to all the dialogue before the fight each time almost drove 8 year old me insane!
That's a great point. Feral Chaos was insane. You needed either some insane skill or a cheesetastic setup. Even canonically he's a solid contender for being the most powerful enemy in the franchise.
Am I the only one who thought Yunalesca was easy? I beat that boss first try no problem. Seymour Flux on the other hand had me raging and I had to rewatch that cutscene so many times.
I don’t know the name of the boss (?) but in ff 9 near the end there is an enemy-boss which instant-kills the party when he dies unless you have enough maximum health to survive it. Even when you manage to kill him, when you haven’t grinded enough he wipes your party when he dies, so you fail and have to try again … or more specific you have to grind until you have enough lifepoints to survive
I think that's the main antagonist at that point of the game. He casts a party-wide flare as a parting gift and if you're unlucky in how turn order takes effect, it can happen immediately after you just took one. Been so long I don't remember if auto-raise was even a thing
Final Fantasy fans want a maximum production quality modernized turn-based ATB battle system, a fully playable party, and an overworld. Any Final Fantasy game without them are spin-offs with a number in its name.
I don't remember Seymour Flux being that difficult. Its been a long time but ive played ffx many times and don't think i really ever had trouble with him.
I always thought Chac was the easiest boss in Via Purifico besides the Crab. She was so easy to stagger with physical attacks that you could go in with three speed bracers and never let her get a turn.
Can we include Super Mario RPG since it was made by Squaresoft ( pre SquareEnix)? The Axem Rangers or Smithy comes to mind first but the Culex boss literally has to be on this list. Harder than any boss in the game and if you lose, the door shuts to never fight him again if you save anyways
No one wants to mention the Iifa tree in IX? I guess I'm the only one that used Fire on it, huh? I know it isn't exactly an extremely difficult fight but it definitely ups the difficulty if you're oblivious to what happens when you try to hit it with fire...
@@sabin1981 you aren't wrong. But speaking for my first time playing through IX when I was 12, I didn't know that you could do that with undead monsters. I imagine I wasn't the only one 😂
@@TheBlessedRed Oof, yeah, not knowing about using curatives on undead monsters would definitely leave you at a huge disadvantage in the series! You weren't wrong about Soul Cage (the boss in Lifa Tree) being brutal either.
@@sabin1981 It's been so long since I've gone through IX that I would have never remembered Soulcages name. Extremely interesting boss for it's relation to the plot. But man... that thing gave me quite a challenge with my first playthrough.
While Seymour Flux was a cheap boss to deal with, eventually I got equally as cheap, got Yojimbo, gave him a ton of gil, which would bring about Zanmato and there you have it, no need to worry about the mechanics, I got all the characters to hit at least once, so they would get EXP, then bring in Yuna for a grand summon.
for Shinryu, id read to fight Crystal Dragons and then restart the battle (reset? return?) to get more dragon lances from it what i failed to realize is (and my god this would have been SO much easier) YOU CAN DO THIS IN THE VERY SAME BATTLE so steal WOOHOO return/reset w/STOLEN ITEM steal again reset yada yada yada i disagree that hes on this list, but hearing about him invoked my "story time" and thats why we are here i also dont remember Seymour Flux being THAT difficult, but i havent played that in a decade and a half
Shout out to Neo Shinryu from FFVA. Neo Shinryu has an expected array of powerful and annoying attacks and is blazingly fast, but the true malice lies invisibly. You see, when you fight Neo Shinryu you fight 2 Neo Shinryus. The first is the Neo Shinryu that actually attacks you, it is invulnerable and untargettable so you cannot meaningfully debuff Neo Shinryu's assault and additionally makes random target abilities like !Rapid Fire just randomly whiff. The second is the Neo Shinryu you actually fight, being just a sack of HP, though not without its own evil tricks. This targettable Neo Shinryu is still largely invulnerable, only becoming vulnerable at set periods. There is no way of knowing if he's vulnerable or not, you just have to deal with it. And finally as a parting gift, when you do finally kill Neo Shinryu it uses Giga Flare into Meteor, almost certainly killing anyone that isn't !Jumping or !Hiding. He's delightfully rude.
On the subject of Tonberries, World of Final Fantasy's King Tonberry boss is a huge wall for a lot of players. In that game Everyone's Grudge is an AoE ability that deals damage based on missing HP of the group, including dead teammates. Up until that point World of Final Fantasy is fairly easy and every threatening attack has been single target, and this continues *after* King Tonberry, but for this one fight the game takes off the gloves and forces you to deal with a move that can easily wipe you for the slightest misstep deep into the fight. Ironically, Everyone's Grudge is Dark elemental, the easiest element to deal with due to the presence of an L-sized Mirage with 200% Dark Resist. However you do not get access to said Mirage until *right* after this scary boss fight.
One special case of a cheap fight is Omega from the Matrix version of FFV. You know, the ugly old iOS/Steam version that nobody likes. Matrix "fixed" a number of things in the game that ultimately just made the game worse and one of these was a very special interaction Omega had. Typically you beat Omega with Stop spam, overwhelming DPS from Reflected Thundagas or Thundaga Blade, or Chemist Bullshit and these are all very effective and reasonably consistent. Outside of those strategies Omega is *brutally* difficult as every time you attack him you risk the 33% chance for him to counterattack with Encircle which deletes a party member from the fight. Only Chemist Bullshit can save you from it. However, part of Omegas pattern involves a move called Search. Search does nothing, it just tells his AI who he's targetting with his next attack and lets the player plan accordingly. If you reflected Search then Omega would target *himself* with his next attack. This meant that every time you reflected Search, you were safe to attack him as even if he rolled the Encircle counterattack it would uselessly target himself. This felt like an actual mechanic and the intended way to play around Encircle and thus the intended way to perform the fight entirely. The Matrix team seemed to disagree however and made it so reflecting Search does absolutely nothing, while at the same time bosses across the board have shorter durations on statuses so you can no longer meaningfully Stop Omega. Finally, Reflected Thundaga would ignore his counter script. It doesn't anymore. So the number of effective strategies got reduced down to !Rapid Fire Dual Wield Thundaga Blade and Chemist Bullshit. Thanks Matrix.
Continuing Matrix FFV oddities, you got Omniscient. Omniscient is a gimmick fight that tries to force you to beat him with only Magic by casting Reset as a counter to any non-Magic attack. There were however alternative strategies. Mage Masher procs, for instance, would Silence Omniscient allowing you a window of opportunity to safely attack him. Berserk would also just turn off his AI entirely, letting you do whatever the hell you want. Probably the most common non-Magic strategy though was MP stalling. Omniscient cannot break through Bone Mail + Reflect Ring, his normal spells get bounced and Drain gets reversed. In Matrix FFV, Omniscient ignores Berserk when running his Reset script. This is possibly a global change to stop Berserk breaking scripts entirely but nobody cares to test this version. So Berserk strategies are gone. Additionally, the Reset script was adjusted slightly. Instead of checking the move he was hit by Omniscient instead checks the command used. This means that Silence procs from Mage Masher are no longer unpunished, the script will always run. If the Silence manages to *stick* you're gucci, it fortunately will not bypass that, but the reduced status duration of Matrix bosses means you have a significantly smaller window to follow up so the fight is much slower and riskier. As for the MP stall strat? Omniscient's spell list was slightly adjusted so he has Thunder instead of Libra. This tiny change means that Omniscient reaching 0 MP to be safe from Reset is completely RNG and you'll only find out after stalling 65k MP. Great.
Yes that sucks so yes for certain games some of those effects have a 100% hit rate and by that I mean immunity doesn't work while Star Ocean 2 has Bloody armors even IT has at least 1 attack that the bloody armors won't null but that 1 attack only shows up in the Cave of Trials 13 floors dungeon anyways.
I understand the dismissive tone of some people about the FFV Omega. But for me this encounter was the reason I never got to Shinryu and never finished the actual game. Couldn't figure this one out. So for me it is the ultimate cheap boss. Not the one YOU choose to fight, but the one who chooses to fight you.
first time wantin to know what that red thing in the dessert near gold saucer will always be mine, and nr 2 ofcause that big green thing under water.... and 3rd must be penance / dark aeos in ff10. still haven beaten penancne or all the dark aeons.
16:10 I have a strategy for shinryuu that involves lvl 5 death. I haven't tried it yet though. Raise lvl to 107. Darkshock down to 53. Raise lvl to 63. Dark shock down to 31. Darkshock down to 15. Lvl 5 death.
omega mx xii from ff12 japan 10 million hp party wide 1 shot mechanics, cant run once you enter his room which is just randomly in the upper part of the great crystal
Culex. I know, not in any Final Fantasy game, but.... He's totally a final fantasy boss. Brutal optional boss fight in Super Mario RPG, Culex admits he's not from this in-game universe, art style is drastically different from any other character in the game, and he's got 4 elemental crystals. He's clearly from the Final Fantaverse; the game was a co-op between Nintendo and Square.
The thing I hate the MOST about ff12 is bosses breaking out the complete immunity to magic/physical attacks. You want to have something annoying and hard to deal with that I have an answer for and that I can utilize myself, that’s fine. But to have something that I just have to wait out is annoying as hell. Or worse in the case of Zodiarc where you have to try to dispel reflect and get a few magic attacks off in the brief moment the magic wall is down. Just feels like lazy design. Make him cast reverse on himself and berserk my whole party or something. But not the full immunity.
Speaking of Omega and Shinryu and cheapness, I'm reminded of FF1 remake. 50 floors and hours of gameplay to be ended with those battles... And even if you manage to beat them, you needed to go through the entire thing again to fight the other.
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