15 Most Ridiculously Difficult Challenges In Final Fantasy History

In the days before trophies and achievements, very few games gave players a snapshot into their progress towards absolute completion. Final Fantasy XII was one that did, offering thirty challenges to complete. Most were arduous yet ultimately simple, though two stood oyt above the rest

The first of these required the conquest of the game's megaboss, Yiazmat. Given that the original release lacked any way of breaking the 9999 damage limit (6999 in his case given one of his defensive abilities), his 50 million hit points took an average of several hours to wear down, with a near-perfect Gambit setup required to ensure survival.

Second of these required the completion of the bestiary, which had 384 entries in total. 304 of these were bog-standard enemies, bosses, hunting marks and espers. The other 80 were 'rare game', variants on ordinary monsters that would either appear very rarely or only if certain conditions were met, such as waiting for the game timer to hit a specific minute on the hour.

The Zodiac Age re-release removed the den, its challenges (and delightful 8-bit avatars) replaced by actual trophies and achievements. Yiazmat was made much, much easier by the ability to exceed 9999 damage, though rare game hunting remained as frustrating as ever.