7 Hardest Random Encounters That Made You Regret Not Saving 

A description of the quest in FF7 Remake where you fight a Tonberry went something like, "So while the FF newcomers were either dawwing or tilting their heads in confusion, FF veterans were collectively sh**ing themselves at the sight of this abomination."

My first encounter was the FFVIII version so I kept dying to Everyone's Grudge. All the while there's a timer going that I had no clue what it was for which just made me panic.

​@@bobafettjr85Same

My first ever Tonberry encounter was with a MASTER TONBERRY in the Northern Crater in FFVII. It traumatized me.

First time for me was the tonberries that come at night in XV. Then there are the Sir Tonberries that moves like Yoda and their knife still OKOs you

Confuse or berserk ward proofs on armor too

Confuse or berserk ward proofs on armor too

He didn't even mention them being In the calm lands. I got a game over the first one I encountered my entire party decided they wanted to commit suicide

Just use Auron with the Masamune as a permanent member in the Omega ruins. Shooting Star overdrive is an instant kill and i never encountered Great Malboro twice in the consecutive battles(i have over 1200 hours in the game on PS2), so Auron have plenty of time to get his overdrive back. Omega ruins is a great leveling spot.

@@cateatingchezburger4267 Because in calm lands they don't always go straight to bad breath. You can pretty easily kill them before they use it with just normal tactics, or flee if you don't want to bother.

Unless your playing a game like resident evil 1 and you have to use ribbons to save and they are in a limited supply And what about war mech in FF1 there is no save option

If you pass a save point and don't save twice* Fixed it for you

Yeah that sentiment works if you're somewhere where there is an actual save point and not the overworld where you can save at any time, but also don't have that visual reminder to do so.

Or a speedrunner

You should learn to take some risks in life.

those damn stone lizards! stop you before you can even start if they get to go first...

@@deekayson9637 I ended up having to lead my team with someone that had first strike in the party so I could switch in my team to either defeat them or flee.

Well the safest bet was to equip Tidus or Rikku with pre/first strike weapon and switch to Yuna for an instant summon.

I HATE Malboros!!! I always try to retreat whenever I encounter one.

I don't even know what developers think when they do that except complete sadism. How is that any good game design if it leaves you no chance to win? Even if it's just a low chance. There should at least be a small dialogue beforehand telling you to care for monsters that confuse or Petrify you. So that you don't play an hour for nothing.

From FF5 onwards nearly EVERY GT (Great) Behemoth uses Meteor only in FFX its a PHYSICAL hit counter but that won't matter since their immune to blind and even the ones in FF5 trying prevent its Meteor counters through Silence/Mute in FF5 won't work since its immune to it.

@@veghesther3204 What was special about FF10's wasn't that it used meteor, but the fact that it was able to attack you after it died.

@@warpuppy4528 That is a common feature of that type of enemy. An attack on death. Usually Meteor. I know the boss Behemoth in the final dungeon of FF 8 did the same thing.

​@@warpuppy4528 I found out that capturing it or getting the final hit from a Counter Attack actually negates Meteor entirely, but that can potentially put you at risk of getting murked unless you do something specific first lol

Have one party member flee before beating the behemoth and you're good I've had full end-game parties wiped by malboros without ever gaining control

True that. Even in tactics advance/a2 they annoying as fuck

The Great Malboro in FFX is on another level like they stated in the video though. It's obvious from the title that it's assumed you're going in blind, thus you don't know how to deal with it at first. If you aren't leading with a party member with a First Strike weapon, you can extremely easily get wiped without even getting a chance to act at all thanks to confusion.

​@@randumo24I think the 3x mask fight in ff4 should get an honorable mention. At that point in the game during a blind play through you will be royally screwed since they have one of the highest speed and attack modifiers in the game. More often then not by the time you even get a turn they will already be ready to start raining holy on your party.

I actually would of loved to find that fight with the team I made in tactics

@@ryanchurchill5081 It's been a while since I played Tactics, but I remember that the best way to go about that fight was to try and pull the monks away from each other and prioritize taking down the crystals so that they cannot revive each other. Spreading out the players damage on the other hand is making oneself a disservice. Of course, further down the game with Calculator and a bunch of strong spells to go with it, all battles were pretty much trivialized.

I believe I used Ninja/knights, and Mage/Monks, a leveled up Mustadio, and Time mages did the job for me...whatever I did, I would always grind up a rock solid party, and use them to open new areas before using those areas to level up the rest of the party...

Think it's about time you went back and tried again?

@@S-Groove certainly, in fact I'm planning on replaying it along with the other Tactics games on GBA and DS (which I haven't finished)

Lol, I had the same encounter, thought I could grind on some grats, till T-Rex came in and used tail swipe first and wiped me....

That doesn't matter her Degenerator limit 1 shots every non boss besides Lefty Right Visages Gnats Cactuars and Tonberries and out of those 6 all but the Tonberries are a total joke to kill even at lv 100 and the Lionheart still made on disc 1. But Ever since FF4 and Malboros exist their a pain in the ass to kill in EVERY game and the ONLY normal ribbons FF4 has are the 2 in the FINAL dungeon but Sylph Cave to fight those is way before you can even get those 2 ribbons.

@Veghesther well see, the original commentor and I are talking about first time playing in 99 when the game out, not 20 years later with some wiki guide open telling you what to do step by step, nowadays, yes you're correct if you follow a script instead of learning anything yourself, the T Rex isn't a problem, just keep in mind what I said, and try your best not to be condescending jackass

@@veghesther3204 Way to overanalyze their comment! You kinda missed the context here that it was their first time playing and it's also the start of the game. Kind of the context that applies to a lot of the encounters mentioned in the video as well. We're not talking about encounters where you're equipped to the teeth specifically to take them on with little to no issues.

Yeah, I can relate. I spent practically an hour fighting one before I realized I could just cut and run. Nowadays, I junction 100 Death spells to Status Attack (by modding Tonberry cards) for instant death.

For real. But there was that sweet sense of revenge when you came back forty levels higher and laid absolute waste to that damn wall.

Omg. I remember being so incredibly angry when that happened. Funny thing is, when Zodiac age came out, it was almost pathetically easy, like the difficulty of the game had been toned down drastically.

@@Cyraxior Then there's me that powerleveled via dustia method into about the 50s or 60s back in the day just to try to breeze through the game

​@ThrillDaedra96 getting overlevelled so I csn use my espers to 1v1 bosses

​@TreeHopper it's more like three bosses, though there is a save point between Garuda and the first Demon Wall.

i'd say the normal mind flairs or whatever their upgraded name was were superior. If you weren't immune to berserk / confusion, your entire party would just do nothing forever while slowly dying

Finally someone who mentions the Chocobo Kill Squad.

There's also a random battle with a bunch of Samaria's but it's jot as hard as the Monk's

ah yes the "whats that thing" death. curiosity most certainly is a run killer lol

@@jerome6519 Fooled us once with FF7 and the Ruby Weapon, shame on them. Fooled us twice with FF8 and the Giant Cactuar, shame on us.

Damn 10,000 needles ☹️

The green thing 😂 his easy! Just use tsunami gf on him! I defeated him first time but like you i got close call 😅

It looked SO cool though!!!

I also used it afair immediately and for some reason won and got Diablo as one one of my first summons😆

@@NoctLightCloud Once I finally made it back to that point, I SAVED, then tried again... Got whooped again. This process repeated itself for a while until I finally got the damn thing. I thought it looked so cool and it still is among my favorite summons (read: GFs) simply because of childhood memory. As a kid I could never quite figure out why he was so weak, so I only ever got him for the abilities he could learn, and hardly ever attacked with him -- I'd occasionally use him as a shield, is all.

Gotta steal those tentacles to get Doomtrain later. I get them by modding 24 Malboro cards, cuz I just don't want to mess with the real deal.

Cid gives you a lamp THAT HAS THE DEVIL IN IT and neglects to tell you straight that IT HAS THE DEVIL IN IT!

@@c.k.mcknight8921 I find myself modding cards as well, because not only do I need the things for Doomtrain, I also need a few of those...appendages for Quistis' Save The Queen. ...Square knew *exactly* what they were doing.

Exactly how the japanese feel about smoking. You die slow and painful and everyone watches.

haha same here. Was probably my first RPG ever, I was around 7 years old. I did not use the spell junction system and spammed GFs all day lol.

@@_MotoMatt That was very similar for me. Ironically what I did was to a degree what you can do to crush the game. With the junctions I just pressed "optimize" but didn't tell GFs what to learn so they got passives that are rather bad. I also used encounter 0, didn`t draw magic or created it with other GF abilities. The ones I got at some point that I thought were good (like Firaga and such) are actually rather mediocre for most stats. But back then you didn`t really have the internet to get guides, I just played it. I did get to the last section of the game, Ultimecias castle but bosses there wrecked me HARD. With the second playthrough I leveled the characters better, got some more magic. Didn`t really break the game (which you can totally do if you want to), but it was enough to finish it. I did do a "let`s see how hard you can break the game" playthrough much later, and it is funny in it's own way.

I remember having to rely on Odin as well too. But I messed up and leveled my party up to 100.

Odin saving my ass from a Malboro was a great Odin-Fanboy moment for me as well ;-)

Oh yea wtf I remember that lol

I think the multi-chemist encounter is probably more annoying. They all have guns and basically infinite items for revival. Nowhere near as annoying as the mind-flair though, which is basically the great malboro on steroids...

I just kick their arses those damned monks are nothing 😏

It's really not even that difficult of a fight, a horde of red chocobos is worse. Against the monks? Ramza, Orlandeau, Balthier, all setup properly can solo it pretty effortlessly.

@@daethe I get that, but I was doing a run where the only special character I used was Ramza alongside a team of regular characters. All my other special characters were on the bench.

"You thought Astos was bad? Try fighting 4 of him at the same time! 😁"

*slain*

in 12 the saying is: if it doesnt attack you on sight, leave it alone.

the marsh cave in itself was a major challenge, especially in early versions of the game. the chest wizards could be problematic too if you had 4-6 spawn instead of just a couple. my problem was never getting the crown it was getting out afterwards :).

@@deekayson9637 For sure. I grew up playing the NES version and always stocked up on CUREs and HEALs till I got 99 of each lol

PTSD from being 8 years old and trying to get thru Marsh. I always ran in that place.

Agreed, and cocktrices in the earth cave turning you to stone

Near the town where you pick up the ship in FF1 there is a peninsula sticking up into the Lufen speaking area. The two tiles near the water that separates the area contained the high level monsters of the other side including a possible large pack of frost wolves zomBulls t-rex and more. If you trigger it by mistake at a lower level you're doomed. It's a great spot to power level if you're ready though.

what's annoying is that the ingame explanations can be just as bad XD They turn into babbling messes or say that they refuse to work with rabble and heretics. It's an interesting mechanic, but you have to wonder why Square thought that changing only mildly controllable stats to be game-breaking was a good thing

The ruby dragons and Malboros were the worst in that island

@@ladynikkiehvgtyu

They are but Degenerator still kills both instantly not that it matters I wanted all but Rinoa at lv100 her at lv 99 ON DISC 1.

Arent all monster levels in 8 based on your level? Or did that island have special fixed values

@@veghesther3204 OMG you're here?! Why not return to gamefaqs.

What gave it away? 🤔

@@catatonic165 🤣 ikr

Honestly, it's almost like a rite of passage for a FF player to die to a Malboro ambush.

FFX

You predicted the thumbnail :o woah

I'm not sure if you played the original nes version, but it's a hard game.

Or, just switch to Yuna and Summon. They don't use Bad Breath against summons.

Dansg08 is currently doing a challenge in the Omega Ruins, but at a lower level: the level the party is at, just before they go to the Desert. He's using Tidus' First Strike weapon & Provoke. He won't be Fleeing, and he won't have Al Bhed Potions either.

Don't forget WarMech. Yeah, it's late, but it makes the final boss look weak by comparison.

Seriously insane how it didn't make the list

U need massive AOE damage to kill this crew sir I played this religiously for years

The one at Barius Hill is brutal too where it has all 3 hydras, dragons, and some chocobos.

Guys a mathematician literally owns all in this game!

Eh screw black chocobos

@Bruce Wayne they came up with some variety to them as well. Dragons? you have to spread your party and take them out one by one or risk being overwhelmed. Chemists...nothing but overwhelming force. Funnily enough, there's actually an encounter that is even RARER than the rare encounters. I can't verify how to do this, but I had a character leave either from faith or bravery issues. Well, some time later, I encountered them in a random battle. They had all genji gear equipped and high stats. It stuck with me because genji equipment is excessively rare in this game with only 2 sets in the entire game, only exceeded by 1 of a kind items

Way too rare, you were just unlucky... badly unlucky...

I would always run into him my first attempt with a new party... every... friggin ...time...every time I played it would happen and I would have to go back up the tower... and then when I was ready to take him on with a leveled up party it would take me forever to get him to spawn

I actually farming in that location for hydras and breed them 🥰

I LOVED how they did the design on this monster... it starts out as a regular behemoth (you think) but once it's HP goes down to 50% it stands on his hind legs; breaks off its horn and uses it as a friggin sword (not to mention getting restored to full hp in the process)...How bad goes to worse is how I remember Humbaba... That...and Wladislaus from FFXIII-2 friggin mini-jojimbo's that can come in 2 at a time with a full party wipe attack... not frig-tonnes of damage...no...just charge animation...attack...game over...

Right? lol

Be a moth

me too i'm glad someone else mentioned lol

Well, Merriam-Webster seems to accept both pronunciations... ˈbē-ə-məth I prefer the H to be pronounced, though, personally.

Buh HeMith

I think that's because it's so rare to encounter him .... especially the Pixel Remaster version.

And I mean, it's not so random, you need to actually go look for him.

That was rough.

@@alexiere Please explain. In my last playtrhough i encountered "only" 10 of them (i was leveling ALL the characters at Lvl 99 doesn't seem so much for me)

@@Cloud971 there is a dinosaur forest

Hahaha; I remember him... the predecessor to Ultimate Weapon/Omega in future installments of the franchise... Warmech was a mofo if I ever saw one xD

Seriously, especially when they included much easier battles

I have beat that monster once on a rom hack it wasn't easy

I gotten econimizer once and never fucked with that dinosaur again brutal farming

Exactly at least the PS1/SNES version still has the Vanish Doom glitch to KILL them instantly without it you need 1 of the 4 Atma/Ultima weapon users to use quick on him/herself be at LVS over 80 and do 8x 9999 hits to kill them since 4x 9999 hits won't since they have 48,000 HP.

@@ricardoperez9357 I found it easier to steal the ecomomizer from that bird enemy from the coliseum

I forgot about vanish xzone/death but I think I did this in the gba version where they nerf that shit and obviously I like that version better with all extra stuff in it the vanish nerf made it more enjoyable

and mind flairs were even worse. no immunity = game over

Yeah not even in Pokemon anymore

Just got a game called Octopath Traveler you should check it out it has random encounters it's made in the old school style

​@@dustinsullivan6768 only problem i have is Octopath can get tedious with its battles. Just simple enemies are as long as bosses in other games and gives you so little exp

Hama, Mudo, Mahaam and Mamudoon still have a (fairly) low chance to succeed and the anti-abilities for those spells have been in the series since forever. Usually the game also telegraphs enemies who have these abilities by having your very first encounter be with one of these (so if they do get it off you would've been near a savepoint anyways)... if you then forget or don't equip those passives afterwards that's kinda on you IMHO but a lot of people give those games flack for including that possibility...

I would level to 99 and max job skills in the first area, mandalia plains I think it is. Before the game even really started. And I would walk through the rest the game, but being a bare knuckled hardly armored samurai vs a 99 chocobo army is a pain in the &$$ in the beginning 😂

Its annoying since NOT only will it berserk all with Moon Flute NOT even a LV 45+ 4x Monk party IN the Front row do ANY damage to them only Lv 5 death 1000 Needles Aqualung can and yes all 3 CAN be learnt in world 1.

Gilgame was also fun. You find a passage with coins, you enter... and suddenly... TURTLE BATTLE you cannot win unprepared, and often even crazy prepared.

Those Greater Malboros were a right pain. But I have noticed that they only always ambush in the Omega Ruins. Inside Sin they don’t. But either way, I always make sure to go into the Omega Ruins, with at least 3 of my party, equipped with Confuse and Berserk Proof and have at least one of the three in the main party.

I got my trauma from malboros in ff8 and from then i always escape whenever i see a marlboro in random encounters 😂

@@adolcristin3526 don’t blame you. Those ones in 8, especially on the Island closests to hell sucked big time

It actually threw me off hearing how he pronounced it. I've never heard it called Be-he-moth before today.

I feel like his pronunciation of the word is almost fine but he losses the h sound when saying it so it sounds like he's saying "Be-e-moth" instead of "Be-he-moth", sorta like he has cockney accent where the h is essentially chopped of the word or is really low. Although what makes this weird is the fact he says and pronounces Bahamut perfectly fine a moment later...

Ty for commenting this. You can tell FFU looked up the proper pronunciation and I wish he didn’t😔

Oof I felt this F

Been there.

Lmao 😆

@@PetitPoneyDuVercors26 oooof that hurts lol

I used Lvl5 death which was even more efficient.

For me it's the magic pot monster. Those little things killed me more than I can remember

I really hate the the ghost that constantly warping and avoiding my attacks and keep casting their curse attcks 😅 i also really messed up when i saw the wild saurian first time in dalmasca and regretting messing with the t rex and got one shotted by it 😂

Grand dragons however are MORE Lethal then Garuda's since the GD's are at lv 60 I believe Garuda is NOT.

let freya win the tournament for the coral ring..then pass it around the party...

This sounds like a villain origin story. I don't even with those stupid jars. Just flee if they ever show up. Not worth it.

The same, i didn't know that this game could have this type of monster... This was also my first Final Fantasy.

But in FF7 not only could I have lv 60 party members with 9999 HP 999 MP but you CAN have 2 Ribbon users before fighting it they only suck in the games where Ribbons can NOT be get when they first show up IE FF4, FF8 on disc 2 WITHOUT status defense x4 FF9 you can't null ALL of Bad breath's effects no berserk immunity. FFX does have a Ribbon ability but good LUCK getting like the 99 or so required items to even do SO.

Those things are easy if you have enemy skill equip with aqua lung and they will die in 1 or 2 turns and will probably be immune if you have ribbon equip from temple of the ancients when you face them in the glacier making it easy to get bad breath as a enemy skill

The ff8 Marlboros are the worst for me 😫 with their creepy laugh and screams

Rip

The ones in the clam lands could ise bad breath? I never saw them use it

Malboro's in any game can use it so yes the ones in The Calm Lands can use it.

@@dantevic They can use it, but way less often and I think with less status effects than the Great version found in Omega Ruins and final Sin dungeons.

@@lifewithoutfudge Alright.

Was it a mimic? WIKI says they are only encountered in Burmecia disguised as chests.

My memory says mimic, I know for sure it was disc 2 and in a Forrest. I lost like 5 hours of progress lol, you only have to make that mistake once. This was also 20 years ago.

I remember one time getting dangerously close to losing on my way to Treno in Disc 2 by a Mandragora. They aren't really strong, but they have Chestnut, which basically is Minus Strike, and it proceeded to wreak some havoc with that once I had whittled it down to low HP.

That sucks but most of the time you can have Steiner whom SHOULD be at least lv 10 on the Front row do enough damage to kill those instantly.

@Veghesther I only had this problem on my first playthrough without guides or prior knowledge of the game. Steiner was level 8 or so, I think, and I had bad equipment. Just an illustration that some random battles can catch you flatfooted if you don't know the game already.

Yeah, that thing is nuts, especially if you get one at level 99. I think they made them pseudo superbosses in TZA because they gave Emperor Scales a stronger purpose in the Mithuna, which didn't exist in the original PS2 game, and Mithuna is an "ultimate weapon." In the PS2 game, they were just a little stronger than everything else in the cavern rather than completely shredding everything in their path.

Probably the scariest part of the whole game. At least with superbosses you know what you're getting into. That asshole just shows up

My favorite part was the one where it ambushes you, uses bad breath, making every character unable to be controlled, die, all without a single button press. Very fun.

heck, the one that is a part of the story is somewhat difficult too because almost every enemy you have faced thus far has slow speed stats with the only fast characters being achers and thieves....now you get ninjas that hit hard and fast XD

@@nathanielbass771 and twice! Hahaha As a kid I was like: "I WANT THAT JOB" 😂

Yeah, Grand Dragons can also inflict Venom. A fully venomed party is a game over, too, surely as a fully stopped party. Antibody is easier to get than Locomotion, I suppose, but those all-Thundagas are going to wipe out a disc 1 party just as easily as any of Garuda's moves, and Grand Dragon has quite a bit more HP. But, it's their list. Maybe they're saving Grand Dragon for another one or something.

WarMech, yes, and the placement of Tiamat, 3 or 4 tiles from the exit, was ALWAYS a butt clencher after killing him.

Dang man I have a similar story I got to the demon wall had trouble beating it I luckily had a saved file before I entered the Temple Of The Ancients so I trained my party up more got more accessories

Adamantoise in ff15 is bounty however, not a random encounter + you can 1 shot it

He kept saying beahmoth I was away from my phone listening on headphones and trying to think of what beast he was talking about I'm like what is a beahmoth

yeah, damn dinosaur forest!!! double painful was back in the day the rumor was complete 4000 consecutive wins in the dinosaur forest and receive an item to resurrect General Leo... i put so many hours into attempting this... obvious lie... but.. i mean... what if, right... i got 7,000 hrs to kill dammit, we were so gullible....

The celestriad dinos i also trying to make gau learn it in his rage ability.

Yeah the FF8 Malboros do use Bad Breath as their first turn, you have to either have high Speed, the Initiative ability, or get lucky with ATB bars to get a move in before that!

You died to magic pot didn’t you

It's only one per game and the fat grey squirrel was more noteworthy. You do have to be creative to kill either of them without being way over leveled.