Your Overconfidence is Your Weakness

So my last playthrough of FFXII I did a sort of class challenge. i say sort of because I got bored a few hours into it and just used whatever I wanted. Well I did keep Basch as a Berserker for most of the game.

Anyway I did much better in this run than I ever have before. I got some nifty new weapons, leveled up way higher than I did when I first beat the game and so I felt confident I was gonna storm the Bahamut and two shot everyone.

All went according to plan with me easily dispatching both Gabranth and Vayne using just one character. Seemed only fair since they stood no chance against my ful party.

I pulled out my whole party for Vayne Novus but still, nothing too hard.

Then The Undying comes up. No sweat I say. Then Basch keeps dying but I'm not too worried. Only he then does one of the boss super moves (I have o idea which one. Maybe it has some sort of laser gun thing? this happened a few months back) and suddenly everyone is dead.

Oh wait, my reserve party at level 15 are still alive.

...or not.

Game over man.

I'm left with a positively derpish look on my face. Apart from being a long drawn out fight, I remember having no issues with him on my very first time through the game. How I could lose when I had superior weapons, levels and knowledge of what I was doing is just...it baffles me. I can only assume I should have taken the thing more seriously.

Hence the topic at hand.

Have you ever been a bit too assured of your abilities in an FF game and it's cost you?

Maybe not overconfident, but I spent about six hours near the end of FF2 increasing my characters' stats to find out that I was still horribly underestimating the final boss :|

Happens all the time to me. The problem comes from the fact that the games are too easy in general, so sometimes I'll decide to gimp myself in certain battles. Like, not using my strongest abilities (Overdrive, Limit Break) when they become available because the boss will die in one hit. From time to time my toying around gets me killed though. Most recently it happened against both Seymour and the Sanctuary Guardian on Mt. Gagazet in FFX. Only two Game Overs I've seen this playthrough.

Yeah, I've done that before, though The Undying is actually a bit harder than most of the FF bosses since he can basically spam his defense/magic defense shields and just nuke you with his normal boss spells while you wait for one of his shields to fall.

I think the most amusing was against Kefka cause he used a move I didn't realize he even had at the time. Usually he's a one to three round kind of guy depending on how cruel I want to be but this time I decided to not use Ultima/Flare/Holy, or any of the overpowered relics like the Magic Box or Offering and just stick to either normal melee attacks and -aga spells and summons. So I toyed with him and suddenly he whips out Ultima, I kind of laugh cause I am a bit over-leveled and his big boss attack really doesn't hurt me much... then I learn that Ultima works on different properties than Goner, and my party is wiped out in a single round. For those wondering, Ultima ignores defense and split damage whereas Goner doesn't. Hence why it doesn't hit as hard.

I think I remember Kuja pulling a similar stunt in FFIX if you let him live past a certain amount of rounds.

When I first played the Japanese version of FFIV, I put the battle speed on the highest possible setting. I knew this would increase the game's difficulty. I figured I could handle it. I was wrong.

I did manage to beat the game, but it was such a giant pain.