Quote Originally Posted by Formalhaut View Post
The Monster Arena is good in principle... but it gets so convoluted and super super endgame that it basically turns into a mess. Seriously, you pretty much need maxed sphere grid, with most if not all the empty nodes coloured in to have any hope of doing well in the later creations/Dark Aeons/Penance. You might cope with the species creations at a lower grid though: I beat Chimerageist my first time in the Calm Lands actually. Really tricky to beat him during the first visit though, but I did it.

Pretty much every other creation requires further, advanced levelling. The Magus Sisters can act as a crutch of sorts for awhile, but eventually you won't need them. After that, it's just mindless farming for spheres. It gets dull, incredibly early. The music is dull, combat is dull, everything is dull.

FFX's main sidequest turns the battle system, which was fine and dandy, into abit alot of a chore.
I don't agree. Yes there is a bit of farming, but you usually get 99 of something when you "create" a new monster. These give your weapons and armour crazy abilities and are just - or even more - important than sphere levels. The balance between leveling and customization is pretty well done and you always have a feeling you've accomplished something.

And the AP farming; it's all in being smart. Customize wisely, get a weapon that has triple overdrive, triple AP and overdrive = AP and you burn through the sphere grid like it's nothing. Point being, there are ways around a lot of the farming parts as you name it. But I can't deny you'll have to beat some monsters quite often to get their strength spheres to drop. And luck. Luck was a pain. But if you don't have the Dark Aeons I don't suppose you need that.