can dark aeons be beaten without sphere farming / how do i make the game more challenging ?

[Mikasa Ackerman]

i kinda want a challenge in my big Booster free FFX playthrough , is it possible to beat all dark aeons without upgrading the sphere grid ? last time i played it i quickly boosted my attack , defense and agility / accuracy to over 150-180 ( attack to 255 right away) and it honestly wasnt really a challenge afterwards (accuracy so i could hit fenrir and farm agility spheres)

so i thought about only slowly upgrading the sphere grid this time , what would be best ? only
add like 10-20 spheres at first ? (also im on the expert grid so i know i will only get 74k Health if i max all other stats ( except Magic)


im currently before the sin spawn gui fight so i got enough time to think about it , but i really was disappointed how fast dark valefor and other weaker ones died with 255 Attack and ultimate weapons so i know i wont immediantly boost to the max this time ( and since i have no boosters i dont really think i could farm juggernaut quickly anyway)

what are other things i can do to make the game more challenging in post game

[ramsza]

I never tried it, but I will tell you a few guesses.
I don't think you will be able to do it without any upgrades, you will need at least some abilities and stat boost.
Some of the weaker dark aoens like Dark Ifrit might be doable with relative low stats but good equipment (e.g. auto-phoenix).. But without some serious ACC your attacks will miss most of the time starting with Shiva. And without AGI they will just pummel you to death while your charcters are waiting. And you will want to be able to output enough damage to kill the aeons before your items (auto-abilities) and meat shields aoens run out.

[Mikasa Ackerman]

Originally posted by ramsza:

I never tried it, but I will tell you a few guesses.
I don't think you will be able to do it without any upgrades, you will need at least some abilities and stat boost.
Some of the weaker dark aoens like Dark Ifrit might be doable with relative low stats but good equipment (e.g. auto-phoenix).. But without some serious ACC your attacks will miss most of the time starting with Shiva. And without AGI they will just pummel you to death while your charcters are waiting. And you will want to be able to output enough damage to kill the aeons before your items (auto-abilities) and meat shields aoens run out.

i dont want to do it nsg style , just without as much stat boosting since that really made the game too easy since i went from around 70-100 Attack to 255 at once

[Hinnyuu]

It might be possible to beat the Dark Aeons at low stats, but it will take ungodly amounts of time.

You can't beat Penance, though, since you won't have enough damage to keep both arms dead and prevent his Judgment Day.

I believe some NSG player beat all the Dark Aeons except I think Dark Anima. At some point the lack of AGI will mean you just get stuck in a revive loop until your Phoenix Feathers run out and you wipe.

Taking into account all the failed attempts you're no doubt going to incur trying to get the right strategy down, and then whittling away their HP over what might be hours per fight, you'll probably end up spending more time fighting them at low stats than you would need to level up your stats to high levels.

I suppose you can always Zanmatou your way to victory at any level, but then it's not you beating them. It's Yojimbo.

[Mikasa Ackerman]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

It might be possible to beat the Dark Aeons at low stats, but it will take ungodly amounts of time.

You can't beat Penance, though, since you won't have enough damage to keep both arms dead and prevent his Judgment Day.

I believe some NSG player beat all the Dark Aeons except I think Dark Anima. At some point the lack of AGI will mean you just get stuck in a revive loop until your Phoenix Feathers run out and you wipe.

Taking into account all the failed attempts you're no doubt going to incur trying to get the right strategy down, and then whittling away their HP over what might be hours per fight, you'll probably end up spending more time fighting them at low stats than you would need to level up your stats to high levels.

I suppose you can always Zanmatou your way to victory at any level, but then it's not you beating them. It's Yojimbo.

i just dont want to remove and replace all spheres at once since it made the game boring , i dont want to try no sphere grid yet , first i will try own sphere grid only , then rikku only and then i will try a no sphere grid challenge

[Hinnyuu]

You don't have to replace "all spheres". You might not even have to replace any, if you're just shooting for reasonable stats (and not 255 in all, which isn't needed anyway).

The superbosses are designed to be difficult, and balanced around max stats. Feel free to handicap yourself gradually and find a sweet spot where you like the difficulty, but things remain doable. But the higher you go, the more it simply turns into an exercise of patience as you scrape at astronomical HP values with your meager damage. If you really want to spend 2 hours poking a Dark Aeon to death, by all means.

[Serafie1999AD]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

ITaking into account all the failed attempts you're no doubt going to incur trying to get the right strategy down, and then whittling away their HP over what might be hours per fight, you'll probably end up spending more time fighting them at low stats than you would need to level up your stats to high levels.

Speaking of time, I'd like to ask how much FFX's postgame takes time on average? If it takes you about 50 hours to get from the beginning of the game to the final save point inside Sin (i.e. beating the main story), how long will it take until you're strong enough to beat Penance without Yojimbo and without the fight being overly hard? The howlongtobeat site claims the average completion time for main story is 49 hours, and for completionists, 175 hours. Do you really need 125 hours worth of grinding until you've beat everyone in the postgame?

Another question. FFXIII gets much more fun when you reach Pulse, and later when you start the postgame. If I thought the story portion of FFX was terrible due to linearity and long, unskippable cutscenes with bad voice acting, is there a chance that I could enjoy the postgame? The non-linear sidequest portions were also my favorite part in FFs 6 and 12.

[ramsza]

125h for post-game might be a bit too much. But it will take a lot of time and probably more than the main story.
But it's true that there isn't much story in the FFX post-game. It's mainy mini-games (Blitzball and getting the components for the celestial weapons) and grinding (catching 10 of every monster and then stat maxing in the monster arena).

If you want non-linear story, you might be bettery of playing X-2 (the story is no master piece but not as bad as some people are saying).

[Mikasa Ackerman]

Originally posted by Serafie1999AD:

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

ITaking into account all the failed attempts you're no doubt going to incur trying to get the right strategy down, and then whittling away their HP over what might be hours per fight, you'll probably end up spending more time fighting them at low stats than you would need to level up your stats to high levels.

Speaking of time, I'd like to ask how much FFX's postgame takes time on average? If it takes you about 50 hours to get from the beginning of the game to the final save point inside Sin (i.e. beating the main story), how long will it take until you're strong enough to beat Penance without Yojimbo and without the fight being overly hard? The howlongtobeat site claims the average completion time for main story is 49 hours, and for completionists, 175 hours. Do you really need 125 hours worth of grinding until you've beat everyone in the postgame?

Another question. FFXIII gets much more fun when you reach Pulse, and later when you start the postgame. If I thought the story portion of FFX was terrible due to linearity and long, unskippable cutscenes with bad voice acting, is there a chance that I could enjoy the postgame? The non-linear sidequest portions were also my favorite part in FFs 6 and 12.

I personally liked the ff13 postgame the most, in 15 it was no different than the main game except that in 15 the adamantoise was available after traveling back with umbra

And in both x and x-2 its not really anything special

In 13 and 13-2 however theres missions and fragments to collect and other things like grinding for postgame (which is more fun than in 15 where its just stacking up xp and then sleeping in the x3 multiplier hotel

[Serafie1999AD]

Originally posted by ramsza:

125h for post-game might be a bit too much. But it will take a lot of time and probably more than the main story.
But it's true that there isn't much story in the FFX post-game. It's mainy mini-games (Blitzball and getting the components for the celestial weapons) and grinding (catching 10 of every monster and then stat maxing in the monster arena).

If you want non-linear story, you might be bettery of playing X-2 (the story is no master piece but not as bad as some people are saying).

So are you saying that if I want non-linear gameplay, FFX-2 is a better choice than FFX's postgame? I've beat FFX-2 once, when it came out for PS2. I think I had completed about 74% of the game when I finished it. It was enough to get the good ending, but I still missed most of the postgame, just like on my playthroughs of FFX.

Tbh, I don't usually mind a weak or badly designed story as long as the gameplay is good. In such cases, I can simply ignore the story and focus on enjoying the gameplay. However, if I can't stand the gameplay, I likely can't be bothered to keep playing the game, and I can simply watch YouTube playthroughs or read story descriptions online if I really want to know how the story continues.

Originally posted by Erza Scarlet Titania:

I personally liked the ff13 postgame the most, in 15 it was no different than the main game except that in 15 the adamantoise was available after traveling back with umbra

And in both x and x-2 its not really anything special

In 13 and 13-2 however theres missions and fragments to collect and other things like grinding for postgame (which is more fun than in 15 where its just stacking up xp and then sleeping in the x3 multiplier hotel

I enjoyed the Cie'th stone missions in 13, but farming Adamantoises for money was extremely repetitive. In general, I don't mind grinding if there are interesting ways to do it, but if you're just repeating the same battle for dozens of hours, it will get really tiresome. 13-2's postgame was pretty fun, except when you try to capture certain monsters for Infusion, but RNG always messes you up. FF12 TZA's postgame was amazingly fun, it was less grindy than I expected.

[Hinnyuu]

The actual grinding to max stats is probably the least time-intensive part of FFX postgame. It's much faster than people think. The exception is Luck, which is an absolute nightmare to farm and for that reason is usually raised only to about 100, 120ish and not the 255 maximum. And only on the 3 characters you plan on using for the final superbosses (Penance in particular).

What takes the most time is a) getting all the Celestial Weapons via the various quests/minigames; and b) catching 10 of each fiend. That last part in particular can take quite a while, given the elusiveness of certain fiends (e.g. Tonberry).

It's hard to give concrete numbers, but 100+ hours would be the sign of a very naive player who just discovers everything on their own. If you know what you are doing and restricting yourself to what is necessary, it's probably more like 20 hours to clear everything in postgame. A completionist playthrough with max in EVERYTHING is a different matter, of course, but then if that's your goal you're not looking at the time anyway.

X-2's postgame is more tricky to pin down, as the game is so non-linear and there's so much side content. 100% story completion is a feat in and of itself, and starts literally 2 minutes into the game so that's hard to call postgame. The Creature Creator is a vast, vast system with incredible depth if you want to see EVERYTHING; if you just want all the hidden quests and unlock all cups, it takes less time, but that process, too, can be started much earlier in the game and done alongside the main story. X-2 has a lot more to do than X in general. Even proficient playthroughs of X-2 tend to take longer than for X, and completionist runs go off the chart here due to the massive amount of extra stuff everywhere.

FFXIII's so-called "postgame" (i.e. killing one enemy 1,000 times for XP, and another one enemy 1,000 times for gear/gil) doesn't even compare.

XIII-2's postgame is designed around paid DLC, and thus an unsurprising money/time sink (where you kill 10,000 goblins to raise the stats of the enemies you had to buy and then fight 10 times to recruit).

Can't speak to XV as I haven't played it.