5. Final Fantasy XII: Zeromus

Of course, you could always power-level your way to victory. That’s no fun though. Zeromus is the most recent “gravity boss” in the series. The “gravity boss” deals damage by percentage instead of by force, which decreases the effectiveness of leveling up your characters.

The trick to beating Zeromus is to resurrect characters after they die instead of healing them. Because the majority of Zeromus’ attacks are based on reducing your characters to less than one fourth health, its only force-based attack will kill off any party member anyways. Zeromus is an example of a rare fight in the series where the player can exploit the enemy’s greatest strength.

4. Final Fantasy VI: Kefka

The four-part Kefka fight at the end of Final Fantasy VI is a true testament to a marathon battle. Between phases, Kefka often instantly kills a party member before receiving a killing blow. Any character that is dead at the end of a phase is replaced by a lower-powered character in the player’s queue. By the fourth and hardest phase, the player often had a party of second-tier characters for the battle.

3. Final Fantasy VII: The Ruby and Emerald Weapons

The Ruby and Emerald Weapons in Final Fantasy VII require an absurd amount of leveling up to defeat. The problem with the two bosses is that very little strategy is necessary to win either fight. Both fights require the player to use a predictable attack pattern win. The attack patterns are very easy to figure out; the real challenge is in having the patience to level your party enough to win.

2. Final Fantasy: The final area

The original is still one of the hardest to complete. The final area of the game takes about two hours to complete in a single run. Considering the entire game takes only about 20 hours to beat, the final area is comparatively massive.

After investing the two hours necessary to clear the tower, the player has to fight the final boss, Garland. Actually winning the final fight is more contingent on the characters you select at the beginning of the game opposed to how strong the characters are. To make matters worse, if you die at any time in the area, you have to start again from the beginning.

1. Final Fantasy XI: Getting anything accomplished.

It’s not that Final Fantasy XI is a bad game; it’s that it takes hours upon hours to get anything accomplished in the game. When you’ve pumped over 200 hours into the game and feel like you’ve accomplished absolutely nothing, there’s a problem.