Final Fantasy Quests That Are Practically Impossible
"Final Fantasy" is one of the most iconic gaming franchises. It has spanned almost every console generation in history, released 15 mainline entries, countless spin-offs, and more than a dozen forays into other media like movies and novels. The series is beloved by countless fans for its imaginative worlds, engaging combat systems, and emotional stories that take players on an adventure with a party of unique characters. The IP as a whole has become such a pillar of the industry that even those who have never played one of its entries know some of its characters, visuals, and concepts.
One part of "Final Fantasy" that only the most dedicated of fans will know are the extreme challenges that players face in the mainline installments. These are typically reserved for the end of a playthrough as a final test for players that want to do absolutely everything possible in the game. They are spread throughout the entire series, but some of them have taken on an almost mythological status because of how difficult they are, many times feeling impossible without external help of some kind. Any player that has managed to overcome these challenges should feel very proud of themselves. Here are the "Final Fantasy" quests that are practically impossible.
Final Fantasy IX's Excalibur II
"Final Fantasy IX" is a very long game. It is so long, in fact, that its original release on the PlayStation was spread over four discs that players had to swap between as they progressed. However, the title has a special reward for players who can speed run it and reach the end of the final dungeon within 12 hours. Doing so normally takes an average of 39 hours, but those individuals capable of pulling it off under the time limit are rewarded with the strongest weapon in the game: Excalibur II.
Given how late into the experience the weapon is unlocked it is not very impactful on gameplay but was effectively included as a way to reward hardcore players before the advent of achievements and trophies with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The sword has taken on a legendary status among "Final Fantasy IX" players, and there are many who have never obtained it even after years of trying. Some believe that the Excalibur II run is the hardest thing to do in the entire series, especially since players have to be very familiar with every section of "Final Fantasy IX" to get through them fast enough to earn the weapon. Thankfully re-releases have added an achievement/trophy for earning the weapon so that any who manage to do so have proof to show off their dedication.
Final Fantasy X's Celestial Weapons
In "Final Fantasy," players can equip their various party members with different gear to upgrade their damage and abilities alongside leveling them up like in most RPGs. These systems usually culminate in each game's Ultimate Weapons, which are party member-specific weapons that are the very best the player can give them. Ultimate Weapons are usually pretty difficult to obtain, but they are especially difficult in "Final Fantasy X." Known as Celestial Weapons, they were made even more challenging as players have to complete time-consuming tasks to obtain them and then charge them via sigils and crests acquired through more grinding and side tasks. Even looking at a guide of what this requires is imposing to consider.
While players can opt to only get the Celestial Weapons that their favorite party members need, any who want to see everything "Final Fantasy X" has to offer will have to spend hours playing side activities or completing challenges. These range from dodging 200 lightning strikes in a row in the overworld and earning first place in the Blitzball league to scoring the best possible time in the Chocobo race. There are entire forum posts filled with fans bemoaning just how hard getting the Celestial Weapons is, and it seems like every player has one that took them a particularly long time to achieve.
Final Fantasy XII's Ultimate Dagger
Speaking of Ultimate Weapons, "Final Fantasy XII" has one of the most frustrating to obtain in the form of the Ultimate Dagger. To earn it, players have to hunt down and kill an enemy called a Larva Eater. While this doesn't seem difficult on the surface, getting one to spawn is a difficult undertaking all on its own. Before a Larva Eater will appear, players have to kill 256 enemies since the last time they used a Waystone, which will then give the Larva Eater a chance to spawn at a few different locations. Then, to get it to spawn again, players have to kill anywhere from 30 to 255 more enemies.
This grind is further exacerbated by the Ultimate Dagger's low drop rate, meaning players have to grind out an undetermined number of fights between each attempt. Even years after the game's original release, players have had a hard time pinning down the enemy's odd spawning rules. Some players haven't been able to get it to spawn even once, making the Ultimate Dagger of "Final Fantasy XII'" one of the rarest and most coveted items in the entire JRPG.
Final Fantasy VII's Ruby Weapon
"Final Fantasy" is also known for having superbosses at the end of each entry that are the most difficult fights. They have millions of hit points, are usually imposingly massive, and can often kill party members with a single attack. In "Final Fantasy VII" there are two of these superbosses, but the hardest one is Ruby Weapon. Towering over the entire party, Ruby Weapon is encountered in a barren desert that makes it seem even more mammoth.
There are many aspects of facing Ruby Weapon that are punishingly difficult, but perhaps the hardest part of the fight is the superboss' incredibly high defense values. This makes dealing damage to it very hard. It also uses an ability called Whirlsand that allows it to simply remove one of the player's party members from the battle, leaving those still remaining vulnerable. Luckily, there are many guides available to help players who want to overcome this ultimate challenge in "Final Fantasy VII," but even then, it can still be difficult to finish. This has helped make the boss an iconic part of the series, so much so that it was added to "Final Fantasy XIV" as a dungeon boss.
Final Fantasy VII's Gold Chocobo
One of the endgame activities in "Final Fantasy VII" is breeding Chocobos. This helps the player win Chocobo races by breeding ones with better stats, as well as being used to enter Materia Caves, which are elementally locked areas with valuable loot inside. To do this, players have to navigate a complicated web of breeding interactions, capturing wild Chocobos, and feeding them specific feed items. The process is ultimately in service to try and get a Gold Chocobo, the very best version that gives players access to all of the Materia Caves as well as the best summon of "Final Fantasy VII'" called Knights of Round.
While a complicated system like this one is not strange for a "Final Fantasy" game, and is usually welcomed by fans, there is one big problem with Chocobo breeding: the extensive reliance on RNG, or randomness. There are ways to manipulate the RNG, but they are so involved that it is hardly an improvement over the randomized complexity of the base system. Fans have bemoaned having to deal with the RNG in long forum chains where they resign themselves to soft resetting their breeding attempts repeatedly until they get their desired result.
Final Fantasy XI's Absolute Virtue Boss
Before the monumental "Final Fantasy XIV," "Final Fantasy XI" was the series' first venture into the massively multiplayer sphere. It was a popular translation of the JRPG series to an MMO and grew to have a dedicated fanbase with many still playing to this day. "Final Fantasy XI" also received numerous expansions and updates to give players harder and harder content to tackle together. The most infamous of these is a boss known as Absolute Virtue. It is normal for MMO guilds to race to be the first to complete new raids or other difficult content, but Absolute Virtue was a challenge like no other.
The boss' history is well documented among fans of the MMO, as it took months for it to be defeated without the use of exploits or cheats. There were reports of teams fighting it for upwards of 30 hours only to get wiped and end up right back where they started when they tried again. A couple years after its release, Absolute Virtue was deemed too difficult by the developers and had its general stats and hit point pool decreased to allow players to kill it in less than two hours. Its status was also weakened once the game's level cap was increased from 75 at the time of its release to 99, allowing players to out level the boss.
Final Fantasy XV Adamantoise
All of the superbosses throughout "Final Fantasy" are massive and provide cinematic fights. But what if players could fight an actual mountain? That is the question answered by the "Final Fantasy XV" Adamantoise superboss, which is a massive turtle with an entire mountain on its back. Watching footage of the fight is incredible, as the pure scale of the creature has players spending most of their time attacking its feet or stomach and trying to get out of the way of its massive blows.
The difficulty of the fight comes primarily from the fact that the Adamantoise has a whopping 5.6 million hit points. Its attacks are very telegraphed, making them easier to avoid, but its hit points mean that the fight usually takes hours for most players to complete. That is an extremely long time to play as best as possible, especially when a single mistake could spell disaster for the entire party. Before the game's release, director Hajime Tabata claimed the fight would take about 15 hours to finish (via Square Portal), but that may have been a joke considering how much shorter the fight actually is. Regardless, slaying the Adamantoise is seen by many as the final challenge of "Final Fantasy XV" and for very good reason. It's hard to follow up killing a mountain-carrying turtle said to be as old as the world.
Final Fantasy VII's Sunken Gelnika
The Sunken Gelnika, a sunken submarine at the bottom of the ocean, can only be reached in "Final Fantasy VII" once players have obtained the Shinra Sub but should not be attempted until much later in the playthrough. This is because the Sunken Gelnika is filled with a gauntlet of the hardest enemies in the game. There is even a chance that the superboss Emerald Weapon will spawn just outside of the submarine, forcing players to either sneak their way around it or face it before attempting the side quest.
While the individual fights in the submarine aren't difficult for experienced players to overcome, the challenge comes from just how many of them they have to complete in a row. Going through battle after battle with some of the hardest enemies in all of "Final Fantasy VII" forces players to play extremely tactically, conserve resources, or grind for loads of money to purchase consumables. Players who do manage to brawl their way through the submarine's encounters, however, can get their hands on some of the strongest gear in the game, which makes it more than worthwhile to check out.
Final Fantasy XV's Vesper Gar
You may be wondering how any enemy in "Final Fantasy XV" could compare to the Adamantoise in terms of strength and difficulty, and the answer is that none can. However, the Vesper Gar still deserves a place on this list because it is not a combat encounter, but rather a fishing one. "Final Fantasy XV" has a few minigames for players to enjoy as they journey throughout the world, and perhaps the most detailed is fishing. As players grow more experienced at helping Noctis enjoy his favorite past time they amass an arsenal of rods, lures, and lines. These are then used to overcome specific fishing challenges, all culminating with the elusive Vesper Gar.
Even getting the opportunity to catch the Vesper Gar can be difficult, as they only spawn in particular fishing spots throughout the map and even then, only at dawn. The Vesper Gar also takes a long time to reel in and requires players to be extremely patient, as trying to rush things will see their fishing line quickly degrading and snapping, leaving them without anything for their effort. The fish has become an infamous part of "Final Fantasy XV" with fans all over lamenting how frustratingly difficult it is to catch the aquatic monster.
Final Fantasy VIII's Deep Sea Research Center
Another nautically-themed endgame dungeon, the Deep Sea Research Center in "Final Fantasy VIII" is similar to the Sunken Gelnika. It is a late-game procession of difficult encounters that feature the hardest enemies in the game. It is expected to take players at least a little over an hour to go through it if they start it at the intended level range, and even features a challenging boss fight with the series' iconic Bahamut dragon boss. While the Bahamut battle is not nearly as difficult as its other appearances throughout "Final Fantasy," it actually serves as an introduction to the true boss fight at the end of the dungeon: Ultima Weapon.
In terms of stats, Ultima Weapon is not only the strongest fight in "Final Fantasy VIII," but with the difficult path that players have to survive to even get to it, the encounter gets much more difficult than it would be on its own. By the time the player reaches Ultima Weapon they likely will have expended most of their resources, with party members wounded and low on abilities, and they themselves probably fatigued from having to think through so many difficult fights in a row. This makes the entire dungeon an ordeal that only the most dedicated of players will finish, especially on their first playthrough.
Final Fantasy X's Penance
Another superboss, Penance of "Final Fantasy X" has left a lasting impact on the series, with some fans calling it one of the hardest boss fights of the entire franchise. The encounter is especially well remembered by players because of the process to even unlock it. Before being able to face Penance itself, players have to go through a series of other superboss fights known as the Dark Aeons. This makes Penance feel like an incredibly formidable threat, especially since the superboss serves as its own location on the overworld map.
Once players make it to Penance, the fight is something to behold. The superboss is massive and towers over the player's party in the background of the screen. It is so big that each of its arms counts as an individual target alongside its core body. Using a guide can help new players figure out the boss' patterns and what strategy to use to conquer it, but anyone who didn't use a guide knows just how hard it is to figure something out while Penance is pummeling your party members to death almost every turn.
Final Fantasy X-2's Sphere Break
"Final Fantasy" is known for introducing minigames that exist in a single entry before completely disappearing. These help flesh out the identities of their individual games and give some additional character to the worlds they are set in, allowing the developers to mix up the gameplay from time to time. However, they aren't always the biggest hit amongst fans. One particularly divisive minigame is Sphere Break in "Final Fantasy X-2," a mathematical coin-based challenge that sees players placing different coins on a grid to accumulate points.
While some fans have figured out Sphere Break through workshopping their own strategies via trial and error, a simple Google search of the game's name returns countless forum threads of players searching for advice because they simply can't figure it out. The minigame is so infamously difficult and disliked by some people that there is even a fan-made website that calculates optimal strategies so that players can get through the "Final Fantasy X-2'" tournaments and side quests without having to pound their heads against a wall.
Final Fantasy IV's Adamant Armor
Adamant Armor is a reoccurring item throughout "Final Fantasy" that typically provides one of the best defensive options for players who hunt it down. It was originally introduced in "Final Fantasy IV," which also happens to claim the title for making it the most absurdly difficult piece of gear to get. Obtaining Adamant Armor in "Final Fantasy IV" allows players to take on the game's biggest challenges, but it is only achievable if the player delivers a Pink Tail item to the Tail Collector found in Adamant Isle Grotto.
The problem with this idea is that Pink Tails only have a 1/64 (1.5%) chance of being dropped by the Flan Princess enemy. To make it truly absurd, Flan Princess enemies also only have a 1/64 chance of even spawning, meaning that getting the Adamant Armor is a brutal grind of slogging through combat encounters to get one item to drop. The entire process has taken on a legendary status within the "Final Fantasy" community, as those who have achieved it tell stories of the ordeal like grizzled war veterans. Some players have even taken literal decades across multiple playthroughs to get lucky enough for a single Pink Tail to drop.
Final Fantasy XIV's Dragonsong's Reprise
MMO raids are notorious for being punishingly difficult. They often stretch across hours of gameplay, require intricate puzzle solving, and force large groups of players to work together and coordinate to survive. This is no different in "Final Fantasy XIV." One of the hardest of its selection of raids is called Dragonsong's Reprise. It was added as part of the "Endwalker" expansion and requires players to be level 90. It quickly was recognized as one of the most challenging raids of the game. In fact, one of the most dedicated guilds in the MMO, Neverland, took days following release to get the first completion in the world (via Siliconera).
The raid is difficult because of the typical raid system, which has players juggling their own role within their group, unique mechanics, and status effects that players have to keep their eyes on the entire time. These systems are cranked to the extreme in Dragonsong's Reprise with attacks that can wipe the entire party if players make a single mistake. Players must be extremely organized and perform at the top of their game to make it through each of the raid's numerous phases.
Final Fantasy XII's Yiazmat
Yiazmat is a hidden superboss in "Final Fantasy XII" that frequently comes up in discussions of the most difficult bosses across the series. The fight is so challenging because of how long it takes most players to complete it. While it is flashy and exciting, trudging through a three-to-five-hour boss encounter is a feat some players can't stomach, especially if they lose two hours in and have to restart from the beginning.
Even for players that grind to the highest levels and are skilled at the game, the Yiazmat fight takes at least an hour. It has an incredible 50 million hit points and halves most of the damage types that players deal while completely absorbing Holy. Yiazmat also has various spells and special moves that players need to plan for and adapt to throughout multiple phases. If you want to defeat Yiazmat, make sure to stock up on as many consumables as you can carry and keep your entire evening clear of other plans.