is the optional stuff worth it?

[DigitalCow]

I just got to the point where i can start the fight against Sin and im not a big fan of grinding.
Are there some sidequests that are worth doing or is most of the stuff for completionists?

[FallenStar]

Well uh, the monster arena is the endgame, but you'll need to grind sooo... Not much to do.

[Yukimura]

if you want to beat penance and the dark aeons then you need to max your stats on the sphere grid unless you rely on yojimbo

[Purplefairy22]

Best items you get is master sphere's and Warp Sphere which are obselete anyway by the time you get them.

Long and short is NO. Not worth it at all, unless you must have every achievement.

[Purplefairy22]

Originally posted by BattleChicken24:

Short answer: Yes.

Long Answer: Yes, the sidequests are worth it. You can get Celestial Weapons, the hidden aeons, awesome items to customize your gear, fight crazy bosses, and much more. The sidequests for FFX were extremely fun for me, and I recommend that you at least try to dive into them. You can always use a FAQ/walkthrough if you don't feel like figuring things out for yourself.

Also, contrary to what the others above me say, you don't have to max your stats on the sphere grid (nor rely on Yojimbo) to beat the Dark Aeons or Penance. There is also a TON of sidequests to do that do not require any grinding whatsoever. I did all of the sidequests and got everything without having to grind a single time.

Then You're a Cheat! Because You cannot ever hit Dark Aeons without high luck And for that you gotta grind.

Getting perfect Sphere grid achievement requires filling in every node on the sphere grid.
that requires grinding.

Getting the monster arena fully open requires Grinding.

FFX is a grind fest when it comes to optional extras

[Shiny]

If you're not a big fan of grinding then probably not, although with the boosters it's a lot less annoying. Also as much as I love this game, the minigames are some of the most monotonous stuff.

[Bakou]

Originally posted by Purplefairy22:

Originally posted by BattleChicken24:

Short answer: Yes.

Long Answer: Yes, the sidequests are worth it. You can get Celestial Weapons, the hidden aeons, awesome items to customize your gear, fight crazy bosses, and much more. The sidequests for FFX were extremely fun for me, and I recommend that you at least try to dive into them. You can always use a FAQ/walkthrough if you don't feel like figuring things out for yourself.

Also, contrary to what the others above me say, you don't have to max your stats on the sphere grid (nor rely on Yojimbo) to beat the Dark Aeons or Penance. There is also a TON of sidequests to do that do not require any grinding whatsoever. I did all of the sidequests and got everything without having to grind a single time.

Then You're a Cheat! Because You cannot ever hit Dark Aeons without high luck And for that you gotta grind.

Getting perfect Sphere grid achievement requires filling in every node on the sphere grid.
that requires grinding.

Getting the monster arena fully open requires Grinding.

FFX is a grind fest when it comes to optional extras

you don't need max luck to hit dark aeons, 120-130 is enough to never miss on any side quest boss, around 100-120 should be enought for most of them (though you might miss a few hist on dark yojimbo)

what you need to max for side quest bosses: hp (to 9999 no need to go higher),strength, defense, magic defense and... that's all
get 170 agility, 130 luck, dodge and accuracy are useless , thanks to luck, magic is purely optionnal as you'll heal mostly using items, but might be usefull to increase to fight some arena monsters.

[Rukk]

Only the Celestial Weapons are worth it (except for Wakka's. Nothing is worth playing over 6 hours of Blitzball).

I'm only getting those and that's it. I'd love to do the Omega Ruins as well, but in this version of the game they unfortunately made the terrible decision of changing Omega Weapon into yet another annoying "superboss" that requires endless hours of grinding to beat.

[Arthur Morrigan]

No, it isn't worth it.

All of the minigames feel like they had no playtesting at all and are all completely miserable slogs to get through.

Almost all of the optional bosses require a metric ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of grinding materials and levels in order to stand a reasonable chance of beating them, and even when you do stand a chance the battles mostly all just amount to repeating the same gimmicky strategies over and over while whittling away at their HP.

It's a miserable boring slog.

I would recommend using a save editor to just max out your stats and give yourself all the best weapons and armor. That way to can experience all of these ♥♥♥♥♥♥ bosses without having to do any grinding or play any terrible minigames.

[Arthur Morrigan]

Originally posted by Purplefairy22:

Then You're a Cheat! Because You cannot ever hit Dark Aeons without high luck And for that you gotta grind.

Getting perfect Sphere grid achievement requires filling in every node on the sphere grid.
that requires grinding.

Getting the monster arena fully open requires Grinding.

FFX is a grind fest when it comes to optional extras

Stop capitalizing random words.

[gecko]

Originally posted by Zera:

I'd love to do the Omega Ruins as well, but in this version of the game they unfortunately made the terrible decision of changing Omega Weapon into yet another annoying "superboss" that requires endless hours of grinding to beat.

Omega Weapon International is definitely a lot harder than in the original US/JP releases, but it's still quite doable without any form of active sphere grid altering. In fact, if you've started the stat maxing process (by having the default grid layout completed on 2 characters) then it's already a complete pushover of a boss. You really need to treat it like a superboss if you're not grinding though: use all abilities, make sure you have some decent gear, having a celestial weapon or two isn't a bad idea but also isn't really mandatory, use Aeons and Auto-life liberally to soak hits.

Amusingly, it's perhaps the only such boss in the game. The other superbosses are of the "grind stats/gear for 30 hours (at x4) and they fall over when you look at Quick Hit them" variety, and I don't think they're worth the grind at all, unless you're really bored.

[Bakou]

It's definitely not the funniest part of the game and brings nothing story wise.

[Enfys Ellezard]

The game really turn into a grind-fest until you reach the point where it becomes Quick-hit + res + proper armor only until something is dead even on the super bosses. Like, they even offer you the parameter thing and even built-in speeder just to help you deal with those. Those doesn't even disable the achievement either!

So ask yourself.

How much time do you plan on wasting on this game and for what?

If you want to actually to do some grinding and feel like playing the game, you can just set a goal and play normally until that goal is met before you just use the built-in tools to deal with the rest.

For example, I set my goal to

1) Max Kimahri stat and unlock the grid achievement without using the parameter changes to skip right to the end of the task.
2) No Zanmoto on any of the special bosses so I actually have to grind some of the stat

The moment I get my "Fill the whole board" achievement on Kimahri and kill Penance + Nemesis, I'm toggling on the item parameter to get the "7-man board" achievement so I can save myself 40-50 hours of grinding for a single no-life achievement.

If you want to make grinding less of a pain, you can do the same thing with the goal above. Set a certain requirement that you must fulfill before you can turn on the quick grind option for that task.

For example, Yojimbo grinding armor is 20% defense, auto-protect, auto-haste and auto-potion so he can't Wakibullshi your whole team. The grind is also required for ribbon on 4-slot armor to have easy time with Anima and so on.

However, I'm already on my 3rd run doing the same thing of quick hit spam for nearly 2 minutes a fight 100% chance of winning. With that, I decided I might as well turn on 4x speed, supercharged + auto attack bot and build a new armor with 20% defense, auto protect, auto haste and stone proof and leave the game to do the killing. Superchaged is like auto-potion just without the animation and having to refill and stone proof is there so you don't have to waste time going through the inventory to use "Soft".

The difficulty isn't changing when Yojimbo is dead for the 150th time. Why waste 4-5x as much time for the exactly result that won't kill future tasks?

[SenMithrarin85]

Originally posted by turtley turtle:

Originally posted by Zera:

I'd love to do the Omega Ruins as well, but in this version of the game they unfortunately made the terrible decision of changing Omega Weapon into yet another annoying "superboss" that requires endless hours of grinding to beat.

Omega Weapon International is definitely a lot harder than in the original US/JP releases, but it's still quite doable without any form of active sphere grid altering. In fact, if you've started the stat maxing process (by having the default grid layout completed on 2 characters) then it's already a complete pushover of a boss. You really need to treat it like a superboss if you're not grinding though: use all abilities, make sure you have some decent gear, having a celestial weapon or two isn't a bad idea but also isn't really mandatory, use Aeons and Auto-life liberally to soak hits.

Amusingly, it's perhaps the only such boss in the game. The other superbosses are of the "grind stats/gear for 30 hours (at x4) and they fall over when you look at Quick Hit them" variety, and I don't think they're worth the grind at all, unless you're really bored.

I did it back on the EU PS2 version so unless there was more than one version of the PAL release, I beat the 999,999 version befroe finishing the story. I can't remember how though. Think I used mighty guard and stamina tablets to get 9999 on everyone and soften ultima and nova.

[DigitalCow]

Thanks for all the answers.
Glad that i can skip that grind.

[nephalim]

I'd love to see a less grinding mod for this game. Reduce monster arena catch requirements and increase item drops.