Final Fantasy: 10 Incredible Statistics You Won't Believe
6. The Hardiest Foe In the Series Has No Competition
Whilst it tends to be a more underrated and unloved entry in the series, Final Fantasy V is responsible for introducing an eventual series staple. Optional super bosses are for the hardened adventurer who has mastered the core of the game and pushed themselves further - grinding levels and equipment to a point that nullifies the threat of the game’s supposedly all-powerful end boss.
And so, through the series, the toughest foe in each game tends to be a completely optional beast that exists purely for the challenge of it. These, of course, typically have the highest HP. Two of the most prominent examples of this at one point were Ruby and Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII, the latter of which had one million hit points - which felt insurmountable at one stage.
But with every game for a long time, the numbers associated with enemy hit points grew. It wasn’t until FF12 that things went off the deep-end, with Yiazmat who has a stonking 50 million HP. That’s massive by any stretch, but incredibly the second-most HP in the main series seems positively nothing by comparison. FF13’s Long Gui has a "pitiful" 16 million, three times smaller than Yiazmat.
The vast majority of players who have defeated the demigod (named Yiazmat in honour of one-time FF12 director Yasumi Matsuno) do so in battles that range somewhere between two and four hours long. Some strategies from FF12 experts are said to bring things down to an hour but most people likely won’t have the gumption and dedication to achieve this, leaving them stuck with the long haul.
That is, until FF12’s 2017 The Zodiac Age rerelease, which allowed players to speed up gameplay - almost like it was designed with this punishingly long battle in mind.