Hardest/most entertaining challenge runs of any Final fantasy, including spin offs

[Galuf]

I just had a thought, that instead of narrowing it down to a game, i would just make the entire series under this topic. I still have your answers from the old thread too, and its interesting to find out that all white mages was an easier run than most.

Same thing, just say what kinda of challenge runs you like or find hard. (totally not so i can try them and have extra fun with the games...)

[maybee]

Not really a fan of hard runs, it's cool if you are into that sort of thing, but I tried the no sphere grid and no materia challenges and just got so bored.

Might try and do a run where you have to full up everybody's expert sphere grid.

[Jinx]

Excalibur II in FFIX, before the PS4 with all of the boosts came out.

[Galuf]

Excalibur II in FFIX, before the PS4 with all of the boosts came out.
Lol, well the boosts are cheating even in a normal playthrough imo. So, even doing it on the ps4 version without boosts is still legit (especially because the pal version is harder to get the excalibur 2 in the ps1 version.)

[Rez09]

Low level, natural magic runs of FF6 are extremely enjoyable, minus a handful of end game bosses where you either have to mp stall them or push your levels to around 20~.

[Ergroilnin]

I loved doing solo Vivi FFIX run of my own. It was a really great experience. IIRC I also posted a journal about it here on forums too.

[Lord Golbez]

Low level, natural magic runs of FF6 are extremely enjoyable, minus a handful of end game bosses where you either have to mp stall them or push your levels to around 20~.

How the heck do you stay under 20 anyway unless you run from basically every fight? Which sounds like it would involve a lot of resets as you frequently get demolished while waiting to escape.

[Galuf]

I loved doing solo Vivi FFIX run of my own. It was a really great experience. IIRC I also posted a journal about it here on forums too.
ohh that is interesting... quina only run.

[Rez09]

Low level, natural magic runs of FF6 are extremely enjoyable, minus a handful of end game bosses where you either have to mp stall them or push your levels to around 20~.

How the heck do you stay under 20 anyway unless you run from basically every fight? Which sounds like it would involve a lot of resets as you frequently get demolished while waiting to escape.

It's pretty easy for the most part -- you use smoke bombs and the Charm Bangle once you get it for most of the game, then upgrade to the Moogle Charm once you reach it. Only the Phoenix Cave and Floating Continent are real problems, as certain encounters in both cannot be run from. I think my lowest level completing the game is somewhere around an average of 11~12 or something? Last fight takes hours that way though, which is why I recommend pushing up to around the 20s so you can (hopefully) survive an Ultima.

[Lord Golbez]

Sounds like a hassle. At least in FFVIII you can card enemies to keep your level low.

[Rez09]

Do you still gain AP when carding things? If so, you can probably use that to get enc-none with Diablos and skirt combat entirely fairly easily, or just run from things without taking damage due to wonky run mechanics in 8. In the case of FFVI, avoiding encounters isn't that troublesome outside of the two places I mentioned and avoiding the sprite-triggered battles in Narshe and the Opera House.

[Karifean]

Low Level is not a challenge in FF VIII, it's a game strategy >.< and yes you do get AP but no EXP from enemies by carding them, so if you use that all game plus a couple of Stone spells on enemies like guards that can't be carded, you can actually go through the vast majority of the game without getting any EXP at all. First truly forced EXP is the guard trio at the Rocket Base with Selphie I believe.

Never done an actual challenge run in any FF game now that I think about it. I did do a Final Fantasy XII Weak Mode / New Game Minus (forced 122333 levels) run once but quit at the endgame cause I wasn't feeling it anymore when Fafnir showed up. To be fair the entire run was pretty silly cause I just instakilled almost everything anyways by getting the Arcturus gun early (and later on the Fomalhaut and Mithuna) which does damage independent of your stats, making the whole game kinda similar to a normal run except for your greatly diminished HP and MP. So I wouldn't even call that a challenge run either, I eliminated all the actual challenge from it way too early for that.

That being said I do usually shake up the way I play the games every time I play them. Last time I played FF VIII I figured the game would be paced better if I limited myself to only drawing with one character at a time max and used the others for attacking, which turned out very true. And with games like FF XII I just naturally gravitate towards using different jobs and combinations every game.

Despite my lack of challenge runs of entire games I've done a number of challenge boss fights though, and those are often really tense and entertaining, bringing out the best of the combat system of any individual game in a single hard as nails encounter to overcome.

[Lord Golbez]

I know that. I don't care about adding challenges, unless there's a fun roleplaying reason like using suboptimal characters (which isn't much of a challenge unless there's a really crappy character). I mentioned it by comparison because keeping low levels in FFVIII is something I've done and wouldn't have bothered with if it meant running from everything.

And yes it's best to limit drawing to the characters with the highest magic stat. Then you can shuffle the spells around.

[Wolf Kanno]

Generally speaking, for games like VI-VIII the most fun challenges are sticking to a strict job system. So you pick out who does what and simply build them towards that. VI is a lot more interesting when you only have two dedicated healers out of a cast of fourteen or one person who can cast Time Magic or only one person who knows Ultima. This is also true for Final Fantasy II and VII as well. I've been meaning to do a CES Run for my next file on VI as it feels like it would be pretty challenging.

For VIII, I think one of the more interesting challenges is simply limiting your party to having only set of every spell. What I mean is that you collect 100 Blizzard spells but you'll either have to split it among the playable three or only let one person use all 100. In addition, if you want to make VIII more challenging, then simply don't use any of the stat boosting passive skills like Str+30% skills. You probably doin't realize how badly they nerf the difficulty until you rely solely on spells. Course if you want a real challenge for VIII simply do a Magic only run. You can't use GF's or Limit Breaks, only magic spells.

For FFIX, I've been meaning to try the Lv. 1 Challenge.

I think the one run I've been really meaning to try is an A.I. Only run on FFTactics. There is an A.I function I never use, but I think it would be interesting to try it out as it would seriously put my knowledge of the job system to the test.

[Rez09]

The CES challenge seems interesting, but I imagine you'd have to combine it with some restrictions to keep the difficulty up -- those three are basically the backbone to my games without levels or magic, so one can only imagine what they'd be like with both.

Level 1 FF9 is a ride, man. It's almost fine until you hit that tree and the black mages start dropping in and your head explodes. > .<

Also, Final Fantasy V Ancient Cave is a blast if you like that game's mechanics, which basically everyone does. :D There's also an FF6 Ancient Cave, but I don't think it is as good, especially since it is random who gets Shadow's 'leave after random battles' flag, and life is kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind of hot garbage when Terra dips out on you.

[Lord Golbez]

I don't. I prefer set classes over the job system and the only game I really liked the job system in was FFT, which had better skill customization than FFV, IMO.

[Galuf]

That last challenge for FFT sounds pretty damn cool Karifean! I am pretty rubbish at FFT but i hope you have goodluck with it.

I may try a level 1 run of FFIX since its my favourite game and its less stressful than the Excalibur 2 run. Im liking all the challenges posted, they are all pretty cool. Might have to give them all a go at some point!

[I Took the Red Pill]

One of my first memories of EoFF is reading thru and being enthralled by Necronopticous's FFX NSGIENC [(N)o (S)phere (G)rid, (I)nitial (E)quipment, (N)o (C)ustomization] challenge. Turned out to be impossible, couldn't get past Seymour Omnis. But the sheer persistence was super impressive. I was 13 yrs old and a lurker then, wow.

Found the thread for anyone interested: http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/50414-Final-Fantasy-X-NSGIENC-challenge-(This-whole-thread-may-contain-spoilers)

[Lord Golbez]

Given the behavior of Guest party members, I'm a little surprised an AI run is even possible.

[Wolf Kanno]

Given the behavior of Guest party members, I'm a little surprised an AI run is even possible.

You never know until you try it out.