I figured it all out by myself!

[Flying Mullet]

Actually, not even close!

Is there anyway anyone could come close to finding all of the hunts, little inane sidequests and rare loot without a strategy guide or an online resource like gamefaqs? I'm starting to get disillusioned with the fact that it's very difficult to discover all of the little, and some not so little, secrets of the game without having to turn to external resources for help. It takes a lot of the fun out of the game having to look these things up but I don't think anyone could figure them out through avenues in the game. I played through until the Bahamut without any guides but at that point I knew I was missing a lot and ended up turning to a guide to figure out some of the tricks and secrets to unlocking some of the later sidequests.[/rant]

[Marky Tee]

ive thought about this a lot before
same could be said for x and x2 aswell
kinda sucks cause if i start without the strategy guide then i jus worry about the http://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gifhttp://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gifhttp://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gifhttp://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gif im missing out on
and if i play through the first time with one it jus feels so artificial and less meaningfull

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Is there anyway anyone could come close to finding all of the hunts, little inane sidequests and rare loot without a strategy guide or an online resource like gamefaqs?

Finding and completing all the hunts without a guide is easy. And farming rare drops is strictly for crazy people, anyway.

[The Watcher]

Know how to get the Zodiac Spear yet?
I swear, some of the things SE comes up with are truly ridiculous.

[Big D]

Getting the Zodiac Spear without a guide would be virtually impossible. You'd have to be either very negligent about opening treasure chests, or exceptionally lucky to get it from that chest where it's got one chance in a thousand of randomly spawning.

But aside from all that... most of the stuff could be found quite easily without a guide. I used guides as little as possible for the Hunts, only resorting to hints when I got bored or frustrated with dicking around in enormous, difficult dungeons looking for something elusive.

However, without GameFAQs, I'd never have known about the fishing mini-game. Not that I ever play that anymore, anyway...

[Bolivar]

Finding and completing all the hunts without a guide is easy.

I don't know about that, many of the hunts only spawn under certain conditions the average gamer would never think of, and in many cases, you're only given the name of the map location, not a specific zone. And in some extreme cases, you still need to trigger the appearance.

I kind of feel this way about alot of games today, and XII is probably the one in recent memory that I've most felt this sentiment towards. But when it comes to RPG's, that's the nature of the beast.

[Flying Mullet]

Finding and completing all the hunts without a guide is easy.

I don't know about that, many of the hunts only spawn under certain conditions the average gamer would never think of, and in many cases, you're only given the name of the map location, not a specific zone. And in some extreme cases, you still need to trigger the appearance.
Exactly. I wasn't referring to the assigned clan hunts, those are easy to find. I'm referring to the rare hunts where the weather conditions have to be just right and you enter from a specific screen and you have to kill so many of one type of enemy for the rare hunt to appear. There are some clues for some of these, but I don't see how you would be able to learn about half of them without dumb luck.

[Karellen]

Those are usually referred to as "rare game" rather then "rare hunts". I don't think anyone would debate that some of the rare game is impossible to find without a guide.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Yeah, rare game is a whole different matter.