That One Level/Final Fantasy

The face-meltingly popular flag-ship franchise of Square Enix has earned a reputation as being brutally hard. With levels like these, it isn't far off.


 * The Marsh Cave in Final Fantasy I. Bring tons of antidotes (and potions too, but that's a given for any dungeon in Final Fantasy -- this is just the dungeon that first suggests it). There's plenty of Goddamned Bats, but also Goddamned Spiders and Goddamned Undead. And those Goddamned Cthulhumanoid Wizards. If someone dies, you have to go all the way back to town to revive them. And the way back is looooooooong. And you'll most likely get poisoned along the way.
 * While the poison is very annoying, the Undead frequently paralyze your team. And being paralyzed means that character is now useless, and it stays that way for a long time. Add to this that most of your characters are going to die from a few hits, and that you'll be exhausted from the damned Squid-Wizard fight on your way out.
 * Oh, and the slimes and oozes. Which, due to their defense, were pretty much impossible to kill without using magic spells, which you have precious few uses of. Ask five people, and they'll come up with ten reasons why the Marsh Cave belongs on this list.
 * The Ice Cave. Disproportionally happy music: check. Birds whose touch turns you into stone: check. Mindflayers whose touch can kill: check. Dark Wizards who always get a free turn, attack in groups and have a 50% chance of attacking with the most powerful multi-target fire spell: check. No plot significance whatsoever: check. Having to get that dumb crystal out of there anyway: check.
 * What makes it even worse is that in the original NES version, there were no Gold Needles. If you got turned to stone, the only way you could be cured is if your White Mage had the SOFT spell, which didn't work in battle, or Soft potions, which were only sold in one town.
 * And many people will go into the Ice Cave far earlier than the normal plot would otherwise suggest, as it can be used in a common Sequence Break to get the airship, and thus get the class promotion before the volcano.
 * These two levels are also the most difficult areas in a Solo Character Run. Petrification is an instant game-over, and being stunned is a way to sit there and watch as your character gets slowly nibbled to death.
 * Final Fantasy III, both the original NES version and the DS re-release, has the back-to-back final dungeons Crystal Tower and Dark World. The Crystal Tower has space filling paths (of the switchback and false path variety), the most demonic of Demonic Spiders in the whole game, and an obnoxious boss at the end. When you're done with that, there's a long unskippable Cutscene, then you go to the Dark World, which has all of this PLUS a literally unbeatable boss at the very beginning, FOUR obnoxious bosses, and then the stupidly hard Final Boss after all of that. All of this which would be par for the course in any Very Definitely Final Dungeon, except as soon as you enter the Crystal Tower, there are no save points. Not a one.
 * The Cave of Darkness is bad enough with seven floors of winding paths, hidden passages and switchbacks swarming with difficult enemies. The kicker is that all the enemies split in two if you hit them with any physical weapon other than a dark sword/katana. That means you have to use Dark Knights (whose weapons and armor aren't that good until after this dungeon) or magic users (in a game where Ethers and Elixirs are in woefully short supply) to slog through the dungeon, or none of your battles will ever end; even then, the aforementioned multiplying enemies are time-consuming to kill and give lousy XP and money. Despite all this, the Sylx Tower/Dark World sequence is still harder.
 * The Temple of Time, especially in the DS version. Chimera Mages, 'nuff said.
 * The Sealed Cave in Final Fantasy IV. It is a long level that can be hard to navigate, contains several powerful enemies including literal Goddamn Bats, and is home to That One Boss, Demon Wall. Furthermore every door in the area is a Trap Door, an enemy that spams the One Hit KO attack "Ninth Dimension" and turns into a Manticore when it dies, which is also a strong enemy. To add insult to injury, many Trap Doors guard empty rooms, so you likely just wasted your time. There's also an Event Flag when you leave the dungeon, so you can't use spells to warp or teleport out, you have to take the long way. In some versions, you can Reflect Ninth Dimension, but your timing needs to be spot-on thanks to how it's cast.
 * Square-Enix must know that the Sealed Cave is That One Level and Demon Wall is That One Boss, because in The After Years and the new Interlude chapter in the PSP port, we get to experience them again! The trip through in After Years is even harder than before because you don't have Reflect this time to stop Ninth Dimension. Fortunately, you can use Stop to incapacitate the doors outright, but this means your spellcaster is going to run out of MP like she's sprung a leak.
 * The Trap Doors are so dangerous, the only way to make a solo Cecil challenge manageable in the original is to use a glitch to skip the cave. Otherwise, you need to level up into the 70s to be able to kill the doors before they kill you.
 * The Sylph Cave and Summoned Monsters Cave/Eidolon's Passage are candidates for this too; they're the only dungeons with damage floors (forcing you to recast Float on the party every new level, or whenever a character is knocked out), and they're full of secret passages and confusing turns (got turned around? Time to recast Float again!). The enemies are no picnic either--the Eidolon's Passage has devilish enemies that can reduce the party's HP to single digits in a single move and the one-eye enemies that are fond of Instant Death; Sylph's Cave has the infamous Malboros. Even worse, one has a number of teleport pads in it that bring you deeper in; however, there's one pad near the end that will toss you right back to the World Map with no warning, forcing you to do the whole thing over again and hope you remember where the exit one was. And finally, you've got to go through them at least three times altogether (if you're strong enough to defeat both bosses in the Summoned Monster Cave in the same trip. If not, your only option is to grind and come back later).
 * The Cave of Magnes is another difficult level (one with a far more persistent frustration factor), especially since being forced to remove Cecil's metal equipment renders him almost useless, and he is unable to act if the player does not do so. And your mage for that segment has his MP capped at 90. Even with your party losing its best physical attackers, the monsters are still a step above those of the previous dungeon, but without their elemental weaknesses.
 * This is even worse in the DS version because Cecil loses the ability to use a bow and arrows. At least in other versions of the game, you could give him a bow and some Holy Arrows.
 * The Lair of the Father in the DS remake. Every random encounter is strong enough to take out your entire party if you aren't careful. There are three Behemoth mini-bosses, which mostly just serve to drain your MP and items before you reach Bahamut. Also, there's no save points- if you die, you just wasted at least an hour. Thankfully, the behemoths don't respawn, so you can teleport out to heal after you've fought one.
 * In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, Porom's challenge dungeon. You're on a strict time limit. You have to satisfy the arbitrary desires of random NPCs, which include wasting Porom's MP on cure spells, giving away expensive armor, fighting powerful monsters, and so forth. You're only given two characters that can surpass level 20, one of which is Porom herself, who is a White Mage and can't really fight. Your party makeup and time limit would imply that you should run from battles, but then you won't have the money to buy much of that armor you have to give the greedy NPCs. And even if you satisfy the request of every single NPC on the map and make it to the final treasure in time, you're still not guaranteed to get anything worthwhile for it.
 * The Fork Tower in Final Fantasy V is a handy example of how the precise opposite of a Marathon Level can still make a player hate their life. It's very small, thus has no save points within, for one. The gimmick of this tower is that it has two forks, and your party must split into two groups of two to traverse it. One half is physical and for physical fighters, the other half is for mages, and it's the mage half that provides all the agony. One of the random encounters on the mage side is the Flaremancer. It counters non-magical attacks with two hits of 9999 damage, a surefire instakill...and it considers the Geomancer's Gaia moves non-magical. It's the only thing in the game that does, too, and being that many players will give mages the Gaia ability to save on MP...you can see where this is heading. Then there's the Chrono Controller, who is much less tricky than the Flaremancer, and will simply cast Meteor and first-turn annihilate your two-person party if he so desires. But not even running from every random encounter will save you. If you make it to the top with the mage party, then make it to the top with the physical party, then beat the physical party's boss...there's a segment where you snag the magic at the top of each tower simultaneously. And they are serious about the simultaneous part. Have to go to the bathroom? TOO BAD. You get to do the whole thing over again. And after that, once you get back up the tower, there is a boss. A boss whose attacks require Reflect/Carbuncle up on all party members at all times. Because once Reflect wears off, he can one-shot any member of your two-person party as he pleases. He hit the healer? Or the person with Carbuncle? Or both? Sucks to be you.
 * To the unprepared, the Fanatics' Tower in Final Fantasy VI can get annoying fast: long, no save points, very frequent Random Encounters, and only magic attacks allowed (by both sides) except if you berserk yourself. And at the end, the boss's dying attack is almost guaranteed to wipe out your party unless you knew about the attack beforehand and had learned and cast Life 3/Reraise or were willing to spend a long time draining his MP (or used the summon that makes your party jump...). If not, have fun traversing up the staircases all over again! (Possessing a hidden item that eliminates random encounters makes this area drastically faster.)
 * On the plus side, with some relatively easy preparation (read: equip relics that give your party members Reflect by default, and let the enemies' own stupidity do them in), it's also an excellent place to help your characters learn spells. Doesn't make it any less annoying overall, though.
 * From the same game, there's Daryl's Tomb. With one exception, each monster in the area has the ability to set the then-nearly-unseen Zombie status on your characters. Said status is pretty much a combo of Dead and Confused and your game is over if all your characters get hit with it. Factor in the fact that one enemy can Zombify as many as three of your four active characters, and you've got a pretty quick death if you didn't come prepared.
 * Zozo is one of the first large challenges in the game. Despite being a town, it has random encounters, though the music and dreary appearance may be a warning. However, the enemies found there are incredibly dangerous for that point of the game, and you still don't have basic Esper taught magic. Outside the Hill Gigas will randomly cast Magnitude 8 when it dies, doing around 200 damage to the entire party, while inside buildings the Veil Dancer casts Fira, Blizzara or Thundara--against the entire party that's 200 damage, on a single target it's an instant kill. If you didn't bring Celes (read: the only party member with Cure by this point) with your party, you're pretty much screwed because you'll need constant healing and all you'll have for such is items. Later, Mt. Zozo has enemies with very high physical evasion, though a Sniper Eye to guarantee all attacks hit makes them more manageable.
 * The Phoenix Cave also has deadly enemies, but also features a very confusing double-party puzzle involving spiked floors, a two layered dungeon, and a pool of water that needs to be drained to open more paths.
 * The true scrappy of the Phoenix Cave, at least in its original SNES incarnation, was that this dungeon was where the critters with '1000Needles' showed up and corrupted your save.
 * If you don't have an Amulet or a Ribbon, the first part of the World of Ruin, before getting Sabin or Edgar (depending on if you're going for the Celes, Edgar, Setzer or minimum-steps chcallenge), is essentially a Luck-Based Mission. And more often than not, you're out of luck as they hit you with a zombie attack that almost always hits, ending your game.
 * Especially the collapsing house. Not only is there an unforgiving time limit, but its full of both random encounters and chests with excellent loot. However, there's more Chest Monsters here than anywhere else, and getting into a fight with one of them will waste precious time. You either have to go by trial and error or just ignore all the chests. Equipping Celes with Sprint Shoes and RunningShoes will give you a little breathing room, but getting everything will still be tricky and it opens you up to petrification from randomly encountered Hermit Crabs.
 * The Floating Continent. The enemies are more than a match for even overleveled characters. Ninjas will spam powerful elemental attacks that hit your whole party. Brainpans use Blow Fish when alone and can inflict Stop. Behemoths have powerful counterattacks like Take Down and Meteo. Apokryphos have level-based, Status- and Instant Death-inflicting counters when they're alone. Dragons have Revenge, which can do absolutely insane damage, and can blow you out of battle with Sneeze. Misfits will shred you apart with Lifeshaver (although having Gaia Gear equipped makes it actually beneficial). Also, there's a brutal Chest Monster halfway through, and it ends with a vicious fight with Atma Weapon, and a timed Collapsing Lair sequence with another boss at the end. This is the first big test for your character planning; if you haven't used the Espers intelligently, you'll get stuck.
 * The big problem with the Floating Continent is the arbitrary character limit; when you start the approach, the game only lets you take three characters and puts you through a series of fights, ending with two boss fights in quick succession (although having a Tent means you can heal up as soon as you land). You pick up Shadow right after landing, but if you didn't know this was coming and grind him on Crescent Island when you got the chance, he'll be underpowered, lacking any magic, and probably poorly equipped as well. If you give him an Esper with good growth rates right off, you can get some spells on him pretty quickly, but he'll still be weaker than anyone else in the party. Shadow gets replaced by Celes for the last segment, who is less underpowered, but still pretty weak.
 * Climbing Mt. Gaea in Final Fantasy VII. The icicle battles, the requirement to keep up your body temperature, that damn two-headed dragon and the Malboros...dear God, the Malboros!
 * Final Fantasy IX has the Desert Palace. Unnecessarily complicated light puzzles, completely full of extremely deadly random encounters, and finished with a potential That One Boss, who can be almost unkillable if you missed a few of the "bloodstones", completely optional item pickups that the game doesn't tell you about. Oh, and to make matters better, if you listened to 's suggestions about party formation for the other dungeon, you probably sent all your heavy hitters there instead, leaving a bunch of undertrained characters and Squishy Wizards behind. The hardest monsters in the Oelivert run are found in the short segment leading to the airship dock. Which, incidentally, is the Desert Palace.
 * And who thought Fossil Roo was a good idea? It separates two great portions of the game, causing the player to deal with puzzles where flipping switches will cause giant ants to take you to different places. Don't forget that if you miss an item and try to leave to reset the puzzle, it doesn't work. Random encounters occur every three steps, and the enemies all have annoying status effects; there are so many that you probably won't be able to block them all.
 * The Pharos in Final Fantasy XII, an exceedingly long slog through Demonic Spiders and strange puzzles, one of which will cause you to be transported to a room with monsters that will kill you or wipe out half your party. King Raithwall, the last person to ascend the Pharos, left a message IN HIS OWN BLOOD by the entrance that pretty much said "Don't fuck around with the Pharos". Initially, it seems rater innocuous, but later on gives way to sheer obfuscation and ruthless enemy ambushes. A puzzle halfway up requires you to get rid of either your magic, physical attacks, items, or minimap, leaving you to wander aimlessly through blind corridors and dead ends as powerful enemies cut you to ribbons. The Third Ascent is essentially a twenty-minute boss fight, and discussing it would take several pages of text. All you need to know is that there are no save points, and the people at Square Enix are sadists - yes, real sadists - for what they put the hapless player through.
 * Throughout the Pharos, you have a Guest Star Party Member who you can't control and will attack the enemies you're supposed to leave alone. And they usually place the good and bad enemies right next to each other, so while you're killing the right enemy Reddas is off killing the wrong one. Your options are to equip your lead character with a long-range weapon and snipe at it from a distance or just kill Reddas until you're done with that section. (But then Reddas is a very welcome addition to your party because of the super-strong monsters.)
 * The Pharos is an instance of well-applied Refuge in Audacity. In a game that's full of long, difficult dungeons, Pharos makes for an excellent climax simply by being so breath-taking. The dungeon is so huge it could just about pass for a game in its own right; it feels like it's the sort of trial you'd really have to face in order to challenge the will of the gods. It becomes portentous and atmospheric and awesome by the token of its sheer size and the quantity of challenges stacked against you.
 * There's also a Bonus Level of Hell, Subterra, in the basement, that somehow goes Up to Eleven by doubling the enemies' stats and placing you in near-total darkness. The minimap is ineffective, one enemy likes to become invulnerable while nuking you (a Puzzle Boss in itself) and the Bonus Boss is That One Flunky Boss. The boss' flunkies are also bosses, meaning ones that you just fought on your way.
 * The Great Crystal, where the minimap is disabled, the main map is completely useless, and most of the enemies are Demonic Spiders, especially the cougar-type Oses, which use an attack that removes 75% of your current health and inflicts every single one of the game's myriad status debuffs. It's essentially a modern-day Magical Mystery Doors level, too, which is a huge pain when you accidentally start running in loops and don't notice because the area names are a code. In SANSKRIT.
 * Those who dare venture past the Scorpio Gate into bonus-level territory face bombs that explode in packs, spell-spamming ghosts that sometimes spawn infinitely, zombies that enjoy inflicting multiple annoying status conditions and MP-stealing reapers. Often in groups of four or more. This gets to the point where finding a mini-boss enemy is actually a relief, because there's usually nothing else in that room. To progress toward one of the two optional bosses, you must make timed races through the area - through heavy enemy fire - to a force field. There is only one save point in the area, and accessing it pretty much requires a guide. Or a map. Or both.
 * The Necrohol of Nabudis. Optional, sure, but being swarmed by invisible Baknamies sucks. So much, in fact, that even Level 99 characters often die to ambushes. This is where the game's Infinity+1 Sword, the Zodiac Spear, is housed, and just running through the area to where the treasure chest is makes for more of a challenge than getting the other ultimate weapons.
 * Final Fantasy XIII has a segment where your party is ditched by Lightning, leaving you with Sazh, Vanille, and Hope, none of whom have the Commando role yet. Several of the enemies you'll encounter in this area have high defense and HP, so the easiest way to defeat them is to Stagger them, which is very difficult without a Commando. You could ostensibly avoid these enemies, but then you'd miss out on necessary CP. Granted, two members of your party have access to the Medic role, so you won't likely die. You can also Deshell the enemies (as they're very weak to it), which makes things significantly easier. Not that there's any hint given that they're weak against it.
 * Vanille is a Saboteur, they take the place of Commando when it comes to maintaining the stagger gauge. On top of that, the AI is actually very good, especially after scanning an enemy to reveal it's weakness, so Deshell is pretty much guaranteed.
 * The Fifth Ark, the location for the entirety of Chapter 10. Not only is it visually unappealing (it's a giant sewer/subway system, for God's sake), it's crawling with all sorts of Demonic Spiders and Goddamn Bats. On top of that, you basically do nothing but walk through tunnels, with the occasional enemy/treasure/switch popping up here and there. Lastly, there's barely any cutscenes; the most that happens is, which are the only redeeming moments throughout the whole chapter. They said this place was for the Sanctum to test l'Cie? It probably motivated them to just shrivel up and go Cie'th.
 * Falls Basin from Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, consisting of very obnoxious Block Puzzles that give virtually no hint about how to even get started on them. It also has Lamias.
 * Falls Basin is also the only area in the game which you can't return to. Which sucks for you if you didn't get the Heal spell and left (though its kind of hard to miss, being right below the boss.)
 * The Thunder Plains in Final Fantasy X. Even if we overlook how frustrating the lightning bolts are, there's also the large population of annoying thundery lizards, known as Kusariqqus, that can wipe an injured or unprepared party in one shot, sometimes before you actually get to attack. Oh, and they're heavily armored, so only Auron and Kimahri are able to seriously hurt them.
 * There's also Home, which can be extremely challenging if you haven't been leveling up that much. In addition to the fact that there are Chimeras everywhere, they are often accompanied by Guado guards, and you can't escape certain fights. Good luck getting through this place without saving at least once.