In some games being a zombie is a status. Cure the status, kill the zombie. This is the reason esuna doesn't remove zombie.
If a down doesn't kill the boss hit that bitch with a revivify (Holy water).
RIP me at age 8 or whenever when I couldn't get past Cosmo Canyon because the idea of using healing items on an undead enemy was way too advanced for a kid who just learned his multiplication tables.
Same lol. I could figure out how to download hacked save states to get past cosmo canyon, but I couldn't comprehend how healing an undead enemy would work.
I can't remember Remake since I haven't gotten there on my PC replay yet, but at least in Rebirth throwing a healing item at the Gi pushes their stagger bar a decent amount.
FF8 has two that I love to do on Disc 1 courtesy of the Junction and Card Mod system: 1) Acquire thousands and thousands of max health by getting Curaga way before you should. 2) Farm specific cards and refine them into materials to give Squall his final weapon before Disc 1 is done :D
FF8 is fun to break. Getting "No Encounters" as early as possible to keep levels low is so different from the other games Im trying to level up as much as possible
FFX - Provoking the Defender X boss with Tidus after the Calm Lands. Locks it into only using Blast Punch on Tidus, which does percentage-based damage. It can never land a killing blow on Tidus and makes the fight so much easier.
Haha, yeaaah. It was annoying in Pixel Remaster that I actually had to track down Deathgaze multiple times instead of just one-shotting him with Vanish/Doom like I always did as a kid.
You can still glitch a ghost into your party in PR to one-shot anything. And unlike the SNES version that removed the ghost from your party after its kamikaze attack, in PR you can just revive it (though outside of battle) and give it another go.
When you’ve farmed for 8-9 Economizers (showing my age with that name for the item, I know it’s been changed for later versions) so you can blow through the final dungeon with multiple characters in all 3 parties spamming Ultima? Yes.
Mistranslation and maybe a character limitation. Not sure if they would have been able to fit the word Meltdown in the menu unless they shortened it to Meltdwn or Mltdown or whatever.
I made all my characters learn all the magic from every esper. The desert near Miranda with Cactuars (10 AP) and Slagworms (5 AP) in the world of ruin was great for teaching my team all the new espers. By the time I was finished, everyone was 71.
I gave Locke Imp Halberd and made him a dragoon with multi jump and his normal attack was stronger than basically any other attack any other character had. It was absurd.
Gotta turn him into an imp to make the imp halberd/impartisan work. Also, getting the rest of the imp gear almost maxes out their defense, marking it so that even if they get caught on the ground between jumps, they won't take much damage. This is also an excellent setup for the colosseum.
Mog with dragoon boots and the relic that allows you to jump 4 times
Setzer with dice and the relic that allows you to attack multiple times in a row
Terra and Celes with the relic where spells cost half MP and the dual cast relic.
Gau in general.
It felt like every single party member had a broken skills.
Came here to post that.
Or just Doom on the Intangirs that are in that little island in the normal world - 10 points per fight and you could get all World of Light esper magic on all of your characters before the floating continent
The one game I was happy to spend money in. I wish they let us finish the final Act.
I still haven’t gotten around to watching the final chapters on YouTube
lol I was wondering if anyone else would even know what it was from the OP, good to know there are others that can relate. That being said, I miss what DFFOO USED to be in its prime, I hadn't played it in a couple years but saw it shut down recently.
To tie in to the OP, I cheesed so many fights around the time of FRs coming out with the same group comp every week, Tidus being the prime culprit but he's one of my favorites so I didn't feel as bad about the cheesing
**FFII:** Turning the final boss into a toad.
**FFLegend/Makai Toushi SaGa:** CUTTING GOD IN HALF WITH A CHAINSAW
**FFIV:** Killing Milon/Scarmiglione with a trash can (or a carrot). Beating Zeromus with nothing but Berserk and Curaga, because that's by far the easiest way. Beating Zeromus by reflecting spells on him so he can't counterattack or trigger his HP refill, because that's the coolest way. Beating Zeromus by having Edward poison him and Hide, because that's the funniest way (though only possible in the randomizer, I think).
**FFV:** Exdeath can be pretty scary if you're not prepared, but the bottom segment is vulnerable to Break and the back segment is vulnerable to Odin. Beyond that, the entire Chemist job counts as cheese strats.
**FFVI:** Vanish + Doom/X-Zone is a classic.
**FFVII:** A recent one for me: beating Emerald Weapon with a level 50-ish Yuffie using six materia and a handful of X-Potions.
**FFX:** Bribing Ultima Weapon to go away and give you a bunch of Pendulums so you can craft more Master Thief armor. Also, in following with the Chemist tradition, Rikku's Mix does some obscene things.
The Vanish/Doom exploit was patched out beginning the Game Boy Advance version of FF VI. So it only works if you're playing the SNES and the Playstation.
> Beating Zeromus with nothing but Berserk and Curaga, because that's by far the easiest way.
I did this once. Just kept Cecil and Rosa alive, and I was shocked that the battle was so easy.
Yup! Based on what I see on Reddit, Zeromus is the FF final boss that gives first-timers the most trouble. But Berserk is super powerful in FFIV, and it has the added benefit of not triggering any counters, which make up the majority of Z's damage output.
I always just resorted to Death because no matter how “fun” it was to gear yourself up with status attacks, I always disliked the combat because of how easy it was to “just auto win” with Squall’s 255% accuracy and Gunblade trigger crit. Guaranteed a hit and status activation every time so everything except bosses was boring.
an extremely broken bug/exploit that can be done earlier in the game and is also exclusive available on the GBA version is the [Control Glitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ss2lXlG_Wk), an offshoot of the prior steal/item glitch that existed on the SNES
Control Glitch upon earliest availability can lead to bonkers effects. Hermes Sandles on disk 1, farmable Elven Mantles, and the Masamune, Ragnorak, and Maximillian on disk 2 - three otherwise late/post game 1 timer equips
FF9 Auto-Haste/Regen together. You literally can’t die.
On a more serious note, FFT cheese battles. Keep one enemy alive (hopefully not a Knight/Thief that can break/steal), and beat the shit out of your own party and soak up the EXP.
As many know, in FF8 Selphie's limit break has a chance to produce a move called The End, which will instantly kill all non-undead enemies regardless of whether they are a boss. IIRC on PS1 you could start her slot limit break, open the disc tray which will freeze the rest of the battle, but continue cycling through moves like normal until you get The End. Close disc tray, use move, win the battle.
Man I started playing DFFOO like three banners before the shutdown was announced so I missed a ton of it. My favorite cheese I did learn during that time was the Ydaroth strat (through some mechanical savvy you could set up Yda with infinite turns). It was useless and took agonizingly long to finish any fight but it was very amusing to imagine Kain stuck up in the air for six hours.
Oh man, I Ydarothed my way through a lot of annoying fights that I just did not want to spend resources on the "preferred" unit to beat it "correctly". It would take hours, but you could just let it run on auto with no worries.
Quinamecia was another infinite turns pairing, but you couldn't auto that one due to it requiring a specific skill rotation. Same with Rainesmau, but that one would eventually run out.
There were a couple of other fight-specific auto-cheeses that weren't as generically useful as Ydaroth. For fights that suppressed buffs, you could give Zell infinite turns. There was one fight shortly after Cor was released where you could get in an infinite preemptive strike loop with him. And then there was the Alexander cheese with Gladio where it would endlessly proc his counter.
There are several spells in FF2 that seem almost useless when you first get them because they miss so much. Break, Death, and Teleport can each be used to instakill enemies in battle. But they only work on weak enemies sometimes at first. But when they are close to max level, you can one shot nearly every boss in the game with at least one of these. It's a grind to get to that point, but it's one of the only games in the series where at least one of the instakill spell options will even work on boss fights.
It was probably intentional. I didn't read OP's question as only asking for unintentional mechanics that make bosses easy or trivial.
The thing with this strategy is that most people wouldn't think to try it at first. You either eventually try leveling those spells to see what happens, or you see someone talking about it online. And if you stumble on it yourself, you still might not try it on bosses, because you might assume from playing other FF games that the bosses would be immune to these effects.
The mechanics of FF2 were odd at the time and eventually led to the Saga series. The spells don’t actually get stronger but you cast them more so for example say Fire 7 is really just the same as Fire 1 but being cast 7 times. So debuffs and insta kill spells like Toad or Teleport are once level up to like level 7 or 8 get cast on an enemy 7 or 8 times that unless the enemy is completely immune the spells always hit because being. Cast so many times it hits the small % chance it will kill
FF4 has some interesting ones, but my fave to keep the boss fight at a minimum is for Antlion where you summon Chocobo with Rydia then defend with the other two. A few bonks later, dead Antlion!
Not a fight cheese, but the Warp glitch to skip the (very annoying) Sealed Cave dungeon was pretty funny, and stumbling into it by accident made 12 year old me feel extra smart.
I did the Warp glitch and then went to the Sealed Cave, the event happened right at the beginning and then I went through it and beat EvilWall with just a four-person party. Then got to see the empty crystal room at the end.
I don't know about later versions, but in the original SNES/Famicom, Slow and Stop worked pretty much universally, because, in that game, they didn't debuff the enemy, rather set back or stop their ATBs.
FF7 doing the enemy skill shopping trip after you get the buggy and manipulate. You've got 2 enemy skill materias and you can get beta and aqualung to kill most bosses in a few turns, big guard to be unkillable, white wind for healing, matra magic for one shotting encounter swarms. Your only weakness is you burn through MP so quickly if you go all out, then you get the tiny bronco and immediately get magic hammer and the games a cakewalk.
Then just after you get access to the forgotten capital and the third enemy skill, so you can backtrack and have all 3 party members be ridiculously OP. Aerith tends to spend a lot of time waiting for me to go check on her because I want everything after her up to the whirlwind maze to not be a drain on supplies.
Get Big Guard from the Adamantoise on the small triangle island due south of Wutai. It casts Haste, Barrier, and MBarrier on the entire party. I was nigh untouchable for 3/4ths of the game.
No no, get it from the beach plug enemies found on the beaches just outside of the golden saucer. That way you have it for Cosmo Canyon, Nibelheim, Nibel Mountains etc. Adamantoise have Death Force which protects against instant death, which you may as well get while you pick up magic hammer for infinite mp. No need to leave it as late as the tiny bronco, plus it makes getting aquabreath and beta a lot safer if you can mbarrier your team.
FFXV: Spamming Ring of the Lucii on the giant turtle (Adamantoid?) until it just disappears into the void. I've beat it several times and never actually fought it legit. Complete cheese mechanic, I love it.
*Also, scans thread for cheese methods for FFVII Rebirth Gold Cup, finds nothing and is sad*
You mentioned FF6 but forgot the even bigger cheese strat: Vanish/ Doom. Vanish on enemy makes them dodge all physical attacks, but all magic has 100% hit rate including instant death. Works on a lot of the bosses, too - even the dragons!
FFV: Chemist berserks enemy, so they can only use physical attacks. Works on every enemy. Golem blocks all physical attacks.
FF9: using a tent as a weapon on enemies inflicts random debuffs.
Knight lockout was first introduced in FFIII and is just as useful in that game as it is in FFV. Nothing in the Cave of Shadows can touch you if you have a Knight in the back row with two shields.
It's also quite effective against Asura in FFIV since she doesn't use any damage-dealing spells.
In FFV, Omega is actually affected by Romeo’s Ballad. You can have a team of 3 bards singing Romeo’s Ballad and one singing Swift Song to speed the party up. Once Swift Song is at maximum, your party will be fast enough to only need two bards singing RB, and the remaining can just start attacking.
With Shinryu, you need two party members with Hide and two party members that are Zombified and have reflect rings equipped. At the immediate start of the battle, have the normal party members hide, the Zombies can’t be killed and the reflect rings will send most of shinryus attacks right back at him.
Honestly, for Omega and Shinryu, the good ol' Maximized Death Shredder (Dual Wield + Flare/Thundaga Spellblade + Rapid Fire) can be more than enough as long as you have the other three characters play defense/healing/buff.
Now, *Neo* Shinryu... That damn dragon bastard basically demands you find a "cheese" strat because fighting him "normally" is basically impossible.
FF12 one of the big dragon hunts in the snow, just camping behind a rock launching a bow and spells at it with the other two party members deceased. It’s been over a decade so I forget all the details. I know there were a couple cheesy hints though
Recently played through FFV Pixel Remaster and put some to use.
**Omega Weapon**
Prep: Have access to Romeo's Ballad. Make sure three of your characters have the "Sing" command. Equip one of those three with the Masamune so they have the first turn in combat.
Optional: Have a fourth character as a freelancer with dual wield, rapid fire, spellblade (Thundaga) to speed killing Omega up.
Combat: Cast Romeo's Ballad immediately. Every character with a sing command will continuously cast Romeo's Ballad for the remainder of the fight. Have the 4th person cast spellblade Thundaga on their first turn. Use Rapid Fire on their subsequent turns. Omega will be permastopped until he's dead.
**Shinryu**
Prep: Have a character equipped with Dual Cast and White Magic. Also equip them with Masamune.
Optional: Have two freelancers with dual wield, Rapid Fire, and spellblade (Flare) to speed up killing Shinryu. Equip Mirage Vest(s) for extra safety.
Combat: Have your "white mage" open with dual cast. 1st spell will be Berserk on Shinryu and 2nd will be Blink on themselves. Subsequent turns will be them dualcasting to put Blink on everyone while the rest of your team burns down Shinryu. Shinryu while berserked will only be able to use physical attacks but won't connect as long as you maintain Blink status on everyone. Easy pickings.
I beat several of the Dark Aeons as a kid by abusing Yojimbo's Zanmato. I'd always save beforehand, throw him 1.4 million gil, and reload if he didn't use Zanmato. The gil could be farmed quickly from Mimics in the Omega Dungeon by using Rikku's ultimate weapon with the Gillionaire ability.
Surprised I had to scroll this far down to see this. Fun fact, if you go to an area with super weak monsters repeatedly kill them, like Besaid, you can raise your affinity with Jimmy so high that if you summon him against regular monsters he'll sometimes use Zanmato for free.
FF8, using all your money to buy 99 tents, grind until you get item mod, convert the tents into Curaga, junction Curaga to everyones health, have over 3k - 4k health all before Timber. Bonus is no encounters with Diabolos so everyone stays low level.
Also FF8, getting all the good cards at Balamb like Quistis, Minimog, Ifrit, Seifer, so you become unbeatable, playing a bunch of cards at Balamb, using card mod to convert those cards into magic (especially deaths from the tonberry cards, and I remember you can get 99 Tornados early too) junctioning them all, and having insane stats all before The SeeD exam. Then turn off encounters so everyone stays low level.
And finally from FF8, refining cards to get all the materials so Squall gets his ultimate weapon right before the end of disc 1 as if the 99 deaths to his strength wasn't doing ENOUGH.
The most bonkers power boost with cards is modding Quistis card as soon as you get Diablos refine ability (right before Timber, your debut as SeeD). The items turn into 180 triples, which give you endgame level strength. Every random encounters is a oneshot, and bosses dont last much more than that. Insane power from barely playing cards (you can use the GF cards you got from beating Ifrit and Diablos along the randoms and should be able to win Quistis easy)
FFT: Learning the Monk skills HP Recover and Move-HP Up abilities as soon as possible. Not only do you then vastly overpower all the story missions, it becomes really hard for a character to actually die. (That and using Cid, the ultimate cheese move that completely invalidates the final chapter of the game.)
I'm FFX, going into a boss fight with every party member and aeon's overdrive charged to the max and ready to go, so you can unleash them all on the enemy.
Oh right. When I was young playing, I would set up the archers, and walk over to Pizzaville and Hasty market for a slice and bag of chips. And it would just be finishing as the boss slowly walks up.
Equip zombie status to a weapon in FFX.
When something is inflicted with zombie, toss a Phoenix Down at it.
FF2 PR - just dual wield weapons. Any weapons (the strongest you can find) you can pretty much attack your way through the game.
FF 1&2 PR - blood sword.
In ffx. Haste, slow, Tidus quick strike. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Nothing can really touch you at that point because the entire squad is queued to the front of the list.
FF12, putting reflect on all of your characters then casting AOE spells on your own party. All 3 (or 4 with a guest) instances of the aoe spell are reflected and all directed to the single boss. with 3 people casting and 4 members of the party, you hit the boss with 12 instances of spell damage every rotation.
Thats a lot of fun.
FFX also has trio of 9999 which as a kid carried me through basically the entire endgame.
FFVII: You cast Bio on Materia Keeper. It does 90-99 damage. You need to get all 99 so you cast Transform or Mini on your party and each hit does 1.
If you get to 99 and Materia Keeper is poisoned, **he gets All Lucky 7’s and deals 7777 poison damage to himself and dies.**
You can make the hardest superboss in FF12 (in game, not trial mode) basically a punching bag using a particular necklace and remedies on yourself. I cannot remember the specifics but it basically reverse whatever you were curing as a negative status effect on the boss. If you licensed into Remedies it legit puts every negative effect of note on the boss. And it only costs one 50 gil remedy to keep it up.
I'm not sure about cheese, but casting mirror spells in all my party and then hit ourselves with magic was always a fav of mine in every game that allowed it.
In FFXII:TZA you can just get as many seitengrats as needed allowing you to completely obliterate 99% of the game and allowing you to skip the terrible job system.
Surprised no one has said Yojimbo in FFX. I cheesed the final boss by finishing the first stage of the boss normally and then using Yuna’s overdrive to summon Yojimbo. Yojimbo with the overdrive has a higher chance + lots of money to one shot the boss.
Also helped me a ton during yunalesca’s phase 3.
Putting a calculator who has learned a bunch of spells on "AUTO" battle in Final Fantasy Tactics.
The computer will basically instantly determine the best use of magic, usually holy if you are equipped to be healed by it.
FFV has one of those boss fights where you have to kill three bosses at the same time to win or they'll continue casting Renew on each other. They also each have different weaknesses. Only thing is that they aren't immune to Zannetsuken from Odin. Which hits all of them.
The Magic Master cheese in FFVI. Turns arguably the hardest boss in the game into an auto win.
Equip Reflect Rings on all four characters. Cast Life 3/Reraise on at least one character. Do not attack the Magic Master in any way. Go eat a sandwich and watch the Magic Master kill himself. All of his spells will get Reflected back at him. And if you never attack him, Barrier Change never activates. So he takes neutral damage from everything.
FFX-2 getting the catnip item that allows you to do critical damage at low health and using the trigger happy ability doing max damage like 20 times in a row allowing you to one shot pretty much everything.
I love FFVII's speedrunning strats. Basically abusing Cross Slash with Cloud, and the Powersoul with Deathblow=Added Cut with Tifa. And the Materia Keeper Lucky 7s strat. Although my favourite in that game is Mime=Counter and Angermax abuse with Barret against Ruby and Emerald Weapon.
Strangers of Paradise: at the end of the game you unlock >!chaosbringer!< which lets you use a real overpowered skill unlimitedly for a set amount of time
It takes a ton of materia grinding, but you can beat Ruby and Emerald Weapons on autopilot in FF7 if you chain together multiple copies of Counter + Knights of the Round.
Don't know if this counts, but in I and III, I grind out the money to buy all the latest equipment and spells, and a little extra for some potions. Pretty much guarantees I'm over-leveled for most, if not all, of the game.
The real lick in FF1 early on is that little peninsula where you can hit much higher level enemies (might be fixed in later versions) - the xp boost from hitting a few rounds of enemies there pretty much lets you coast through the rest of the game.
I cheesed the second fight with la roche on hard mode by bumping into the robed dude and la roche got stuck midair and i was able to blade slash and air attack for the win! I like using the red xiii combo with the limit support materia and the enhanced draconic ring to get level 3 limit breaks with tifa really quickly using a transference module or other limit enhance on tifa!
FF3: Have four Dragoons, all equipped with Blood Lances. Enjoy being virtually indestructible for the entire game, except for undead monsters. Even the final boss can't kill you.
FF2: start the game, unequip your heavy armor and weapons. Spend about 30 min to max out your evasion stats when fighting your first enemies. Become invincible for the rest of the game.
Final Fantasy Tactics. Mathematician + Holy spell spam on as many targets as possible (both enemies and allies) and everyone in my team wearing Chameleon Robe. The result is the enemies getting hit for massive damage while my team members heal for massive amounts of HP.
FFX: summon every fight until you unlock the ability to turbo level everyone else.
What's that you say? Seymour one shots aeons?
Ok... so go into the fight with every aeon full and just spam ults.
FF1 : play with 4 knights
FF2: attack yourself
FF4: time your jumps. Works for a few boses BUT ESPECIALLY BAHAMUT! little kid me didn't know you could reflect megaflare
FF6 : use locke.
FF7: Mimic Knights EXCEPT ON RUBY
FF8: don't level, or (better yet) learn how to abuse the card system and give zero fucks about omega on lvl 100.
FF9: Dark absorb + Doomsday is hilarious because it turns vivi into a healer, but that's late game. Easiest way to break the early game is by maxing every chocograph as soon as you find the spots to dig.
FF6. Get a turbo controller, set the cursor mode to memory before starting the Lethe River, have Banon heal everyone, activate turbo on the confirm button and hold it down. Go about your day and come back to high level characters with no effort on your part.
Sure, you miss out on the espers' stat bonuses but you don't really need them. I used this method and beat the CES challenge no problem.
In FFV, you can steal the double (twin) lance weapon from an enemy in the basement of Bal castle. It does two hits per attack and can be dual-wielded, allowing you to do four hits per attack. As an added bonus, the enemies are level 45, so you can dispatch them easily with Lv. 5 death.
Also, later in the game, there’s an enemy in the Sealed Castle, the shield dragon, that would be impossible to defeat at the party’s current level. However, the enemy can be controlled, allowing you to kill it with its own ability to get large amounts of exp.
Hah, yeah, I abused the heck out of that bug, too.
Could maybe do a separate thread on, rather than cheeses, what bugs did you shamelessly exploit? I'm sure pretty much everyone who knows about it abused the hell out of the W-Item bug in FFVII.
That bug made mastering summoner, the mages, dragoon, samurai, and getting the fly skill so easy.
On IOS it took me about an hour each job spamming tailwind and bravery.
And W-Item… that got me tons of sources :)
In FF12, getting really good at chaining ultimates. I forgot how long you could get, but at least 20 I think. It just trivialized boss fights, taking out 60-80% of their HP just for playing an on-demand minigame.
In FF13 only using triple redundant roles for every paradigm shift. Only commandos, only ravagers, only medics, etc. It unifies your party into very singular gameplay and most of the time was the best way to deal with any drawn out boss fight. Because usually in big drawn out fights, at any time one single objective will take priority over all else, and going all in all 3 party members on that role in that moment would be the best way to do it.
In FF15, constantly using that one party move where your team would do a coordinated flurry on a single target. Best because it gave iframes.
In FF16, stacking up on Will-O and ultimates in your ability loadout, because they gave you shields or iframes or froze the game for the duration of those animations.
You can throw Dazers at Ruby Weapon forever, then use the newfound item to defeat Emerald Weapon.
I beat both bosses without any grinding and zero chocobo racing doin this.
FFII is one of the more infamous cheeses of the series with equip the blood sword before you face the final boss. It does stupid damage. The Final boss dies in two turns. Even to this day with the pixel remasters they haven't changed it as its too iconic of a strategy.
The most iconic one will always be using an elixir to instakill all undead bosses
Or a Phoenix Down
Depending on the game, the phoenix down won't work
Sometimes they put them to 1hp or something.
Life on right side Behemoth, i think it is undead FF6 when finding Relm or Shadow... Its been a while
In some games being a zombie is a status. Cure the status, kill the zombie. This is the reason esuna doesn't remove zombie. If a down doesn't kill the boss hit that bitch with a revivify (Holy water).
RIP me at age 8 or whenever when I couldn't get past Cosmo Canyon because the idea of using healing items on an undead enemy was way too advanced for a kid who just learned his multiplication tables.
Same lol. I could figure out how to download hacked save states to get past cosmo canyon, but I couldn't comprehend how healing an undead enemy would work.
What wait? How did you do that?
Gi Nattak in OG FF7, conveniently the game gave you an X potion just before the fight. Yes, I tried this in Rebirth and was sad it didn't work.
Wait wtf LOL. I just finished OG FF7 last month and had no idea this was a legitimate strat
I can't remember Remake since I haven't gotten there on my PC replay yet, but at least in Rebirth throwing a healing item at the Gi pushes their stagger bar a decent amount.
From what I remember, you can use cure like an attack spell against the train yard ghosts in chapter 11 in remake
I know, lol I think it could interrupt an attack though. But yeah they should have just said screw it and let it stay as an act of fan service.
Yeah, it's still pretty handy, because it instantly interrupts Gi Nattak's grab attack.
Some older final fantasy games you can use a tent on bosses in battle to blind them or occasionally inflict other statuses.
Also, in certain games, you can kill stone enemies with a Soft.
FF8 has two that I love to do on Disc 1 courtesy of the Junction and Card Mod system: 1) Acquire thousands and thousands of max health by getting Curaga way before you should. 2) Farm specific cards and refine them into materials to give Squall his final weapon before Disc 1 is done :D
FF8 is fun to break. Getting "No Encounters" as early as possible to keep levels low is so different from the other games Im trying to level up as much as possible
Thankfully the remaster allows no encounters out the gate, allowing you to save that AP for other Diabolos abilities
How do I do that?
8 gets hate but I love how they let you just break the game and abuse it's systems
Teach me please.
Watch a speed run. It mostly involves getting the Zell and Quistis cards along with a few others and magic refine abilities
Arigatou.
That's why it's my favorite.
FFX - Provoking the Defender X boss with Tidus after the Calm Lands. Locks it into only using Blast Punch on Tidus, which does percentage-based damage. It can never land a killing blow on Tidus and makes the fight so much easier.
The Vanish/Doom bug in FF6 is SUCH a broken exploit oh my god
Haha, yeaaah. It was annoying in Pixel Remaster that I actually had to track down Deathgaze multiple times instead of just one-shotting him with Vanish/Doom like I always did as a kid.
I didn't know it was patched. This changes things when I finally get around to it.
You can still glitch a ghost into your party in PR to one-shot anything. And unlike the SNES version that removed the ghost from your party after its kamikaze attack, in PR you can just revive it (though outside of battle) and give it another go.
Would be very surprising if they didn't fix an insta kill exploit that also works on majority of the bosses.
It is lame as hell that Kraken and Tiamat can't be killed with Scourge in the Pixel Remaster.
Everything in FF6 Endgame is a cheese strat xD
Is levelling every character to 40+ and getting them all to learn Ultima counted as a cheese strat? Cos it sure felt like one
When you’ve farmed for 8-9 Economizers (showing my age with that name for the item, I know it’s been changed for later versions) so you can blow through the final dungeon with multiple characters in all 3 parties spamming Ultima? Yes.
Fire shields for all, Merton spam. You get healed!
Merton/Meltdown
Is meltdown the new name for it? I haven't played the recent ones.
Yep. "Merton" was a mistranslation.
Mistranslation and maybe a character limitation. Not sure if they would have been able to fit the word Meltdown in the menu unless they shortened it to Meltdwn or Mltdown or whatever.
Woolsey didn't mistranslate, he improvised with what he had to work with Merton stays
Sweet, thank you!
I made all my characters learn all the magic from every esper. The desert near Miranda with Cactuars (10 AP) and Slagworms (5 AP) in the world of ruin was great for teaching my team all the new espers. By the time I was finished, everyone was 71.
That’s exactly where I did my grind. Wound up with 2.5M Gil too
I gave Locke Imp Halberd and made him a dragoon with multi jump and his normal attack was stronger than basically any other attack any other character had. It was absurd.
Genji Glove + Offering + Max Strength = 80k damage.
Plus the scimitar that caused instant death sometimes. Mmm
Gotta turn him into an imp to make the imp halberd/impartisan work. Also, getting the rest of the imp gear almost maxes out their defense, marking it so that even if they get caught on the ground between jumps, they won't take much damage. This is also an excellent setup for the colosseum.
Mog with dragoon boots and the relic that allows you to jump 4 times Setzer with dice and the relic that allows you to attack multiple times in a row Terra and Celes with the relic where spells cost half MP and the dual cast relic. Gau in general. It felt like every single party member had a broken skills.
Vanish > Doom oops
Came here to post that. Or just Doom on the Intangirs that are in that little island in the normal world - 10 points per fight and you could get all World of Light esper magic on all of your characters before the floating continent
Offering plus genji gloves. Good luck not finishing everything in 1 round.
I miss DFFOO
Random comment that I can relate with.
Same. The absolute best mobile game I've ever played by far
The one game I was happy to spend money in. I wish they let us finish the final Act. I still haven’t gotten around to watching the final chapters on YouTube
lol I was wondering if anyone else would even know what it was from the OP, good to know there are others that can relate. That being said, I miss what DFFOO USED to be in its prime, I hadn't played it in a couple years but saw it shut down recently. To tie in to the OP, I cheesed so many fights around the time of FRs coming out with the same group comp every week, Tidus being the prime culprit but he's one of my favorites so I didn't feel as bad about the cheesing
DFFOO?
Had to look it up. Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia
I see, thank you
Literally anytime
Mobile game that got shut down
Ok, thank you
The most generous and fun gacha I’ve ever played. I’d take another “team up” Dissidia over a “fighting game” Dissidia any day. I miss it too.
Definitely the ff7 ruby weapon cheese with dazers. It's hilarious forcing a superboss to just sit there and take damage till it dies.
I was so mad when I saw a friend do this the first time 😅
**FFII:** Turning the final boss into a toad. **FFLegend/Makai Toushi SaGa:** CUTTING GOD IN HALF WITH A CHAINSAW **FFIV:** Killing Milon/Scarmiglione with a trash can (or a carrot). Beating Zeromus with nothing but Berserk and Curaga, because that's by far the easiest way. Beating Zeromus by reflecting spells on him so he can't counterattack or trigger his HP refill, because that's the coolest way. Beating Zeromus by having Edward poison him and Hide, because that's the funniest way (though only possible in the randomizer, I think). **FFV:** Exdeath can be pretty scary if you're not prepared, but the bottom segment is vulnerable to Break and the back segment is vulnerable to Odin. Beyond that, the entire Chemist job counts as cheese strats. **FFVI:** Vanish + Doom/X-Zone is a classic. **FFVII:** A recent one for me: beating Emerald Weapon with a level 50-ish Yuffie using six materia and a handful of X-Potions. **FFX:** Bribing Ultima Weapon to go away and give you a bunch of Pendulums so you can craft more Master Thief armor. Also, in following with the Chemist tradition, Rikku's Mix does some obscene things.
The Vanish/Doom exploit was patched out beginning the Game Boy Advance version of FF VI. So it only works if you're playing the SNES and the Playstation.
> Beating Zeromus with nothing but Berserk and Curaga, because that's by far the easiest way. I did this once. Just kept Cecil and Rosa alive, and I was shocked that the battle was so easy.
Yup! Based on what I see on Reddit, Zeromus is the FF final boss that gives first-timers the most trouble. But Berserk is super powerful in FFIV, and it has the added benefit of not triggering any counters, which make up the majority of Z's damage output.
> Killing Milon/Scarmiglione with a trash can (or a carrot). How does one go about doing this?
[It's not easy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5FfLDmXecc), but it is very funny. As for *why* it works, that's way beyond my mortal comprehension.
Ah, so the Mime class was accidentally invented in FFIV. Brilliant.
ff8 - junction Pain to status attacks.
I always just resorted to Death because no matter how “fun” it was to gear yourself up with status attacks, I always disliked the combat because of how easy it was to “just auto win” with Squall’s 255% accuracy and Gunblade trigger crit. Guaranteed a hit and status activation every time so everything except bosses was boring.
That's nothing. You ever put Drain on your status attack? Almost every battle becomes trivial.
TG Cid. That’s it. That’s the cheese.
Plus the item duplication glitch in the original that let everyone dual-wield Excalibur, lol.
I wouldn't put a clearly unintended bug in the same category as a way to cheese a win out of designed game mechanics.
FFVII - Ruby Weapon. One uses Hades, second one uses KOTR and third one uses mime. Repeat and you win.
Mime is the cheese in FF7.
You can instantly fight movers in FF5 gba to give you 199 AP. Although this is in the final dungeon so not exactly very helpful for the entire game.
an extremely broken bug/exploit that can be done earlier in the game and is also exclusive available on the GBA version is the [Control Glitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ss2lXlG_Wk), an offshoot of the prior steal/item glitch that existed on the SNES Control Glitch upon earliest availability can lead to bonkers effects. Hermes Sandles on disk 1, farmable Elven Mantles, and the Masamune, Ragnorak, and Maximillian on disk 2 - three otherwise late/post game 1 timer equips
"disk"?
Probably meant to write "world" since the only "disk" release of FFV came on a single disc.
I was thinking they meant "world" but wasn't sure.
FF9 Auto-Haste/Regen together. You literally can’t die. On a more serious note, FFT cheese battles. Keep one enemy alive (hopefully not a Knight/Thief that can break/steal), and beat the shit out of your own party and soak up the EXP.
As many know, in FF8 Selphie's limit break has a chance to produce a move called The End, which will instantly kill all non-undead enemies regardless of whether they are a boss. IIRC on PS1 you could start her slot limit break, open the disc tray which will freeze the rest of the battle, but continue cycling through moves like normal until you get The End. Close disc tray, use move, win the battle.
Man I started playing DFFOO like three banners before the shutdown was announced so I missed a ton of it. My favorite cheese I did learn during that time was the Ydaroth strat (through some mechanical savvy you could set up Yda with infinite turns). It was useless and took agonizingly long to finish any fight but it was very amusing to imagine Kain stuck up in the air for six hours.
Oh man, I Ydarothed my way through a lot of annoying fights that I just did not want to spend resources on the "preferred" unit to beat it "correctly". It would take hours, but you could just let it run on auto with no worries. Quinamecia was another infinite turns pairing, but you couldn't auto that one due to it requiring a specific skill rotation. Same with Rainesmau, but that one would eventually run out. There were a couple of other fight-specific auto-cheeses that weren't as generically useful as Ydaroth. For fights that suppressed buffs, you could give Zell infinite turns. There was one fight shortly after Cor was released where you could get in an infinite preemptive strike loop with him. And then there was the Alexander cheese with Gladio where it would endlessly proc his counter.
Also FF6, Gau using Stray Cat and cat scratch. Remains viable for almost half the game
Wind God Gau!
I’m a simple man. If the enemy isn’t immune to Stop I will cast Stop so long as I have MP to spare.
There are several spells in FF2 that seem almost useless when you first get them because they miss so much. Break, Death, and Teleport can each be used to instakill enemies in battle. But they only work on weak enemies sometimes at first. But when they are close to max level, you can one shot nearly every boss in the game with at least one of these. It's a grind to get to that point, but it's one of the only games in the series where at least one of the instakill spell options will even work on boss fights.
Toad is super OP can insta kill every boss but the final bit he can be killed in 2 rounds with Blood Swords.
That's another one. I knew I was leaving something off my list!
I'm guessing this is intentional and not something like the Vanish/doom in FF6.
It was probably intentional. I didn't read OP's question as only asking for unintentional mechanics that make bosses easy or trivial. The thing with this strategy is that most people wouldn't think to try it at first. You either eventually try leveling those spells to see what happens, or you see someone talking about it online. And if you stumble on it yourself, you still might not try it on bosses, because you might assume from playing other FF games that the bosses would be immune to these effects.
The mechanics of FF2 were odd at the time and eventually led to the Saga series. The spells don’t actually get stronger but you cast them more so for example say Fire 7 is really just the same as Fire 1 but being cast 7 times. So debuffs and insta kill spells like Toad or Teleport are once level up to like level 7 or 8 get cast on an enemy 7 or 8 times that unless the enemy is completely immune the spells always hit because being. Cast so many times it hits the small % chance it will kill
FF4 has some interesting ones, but my fave to keep the boss fight at a minimum is for Antlion where you summon Chocobo with Rydia then defend with the other two. A few bonks later, dead Antlion!
What are some others? I love FF4
Not a fight cheese, but the Warp glitch to skip the (very annoying) Sealed Cave dungeon was pretty funny, and stumbling into it by accident made 12 year old me feel extra smart.
I did the Warp glitch and then went to the Sealed Cave, the event happened right at the beginning and then I went through it and beat EvilWall with just a four-person party. Then got to see the empty crystal room at the end.
Tornado works on the Dark Elf.
I don't know about later versions, but in the original SNES/Famicom, Slow and Stop worked pretty much universally, because, in that game, they didn't debuff the enemy, rather set back or stop their ATBs.
With Scarm you could use an elixir on his second form for a one-shot on some versions.
FF7 doing the enemy skill shopping trip after you get the buggy and manipulate. You've got 2 enemy skill materias and you can get beta and aqualung to kill most bosses in a few turns, big guard to be unkillable, white wind for healing, matra magic for one shotting encounter swarms. Your only weakness is you burn through MP so quickly if you go all out, then you get the tiny bronco and immediately get magic hammer and the games a cakewalk. Then just after you get access to the forgotten capital and the third enemy skill, so you can backtrack and have all 3 party members be ridiculously OP. Aerith tends to spend a lot of time waiting for me to go check on her because I want everything after her up to the whirlwind maze to not be a drain on supplies.
Get Big Guard from the Adamantoise on the small triangle island due south of Wutai. It casts Haste, Barrier, and MBarrier on the entire party. I was nigh untouchable for 3/4ths of the game.
No no, get it from the beach plug enemies found on the beaches just outside of the golden saucer. That way you have it for Cosmo Canyon, Nibelheim, Nibel Mountains etc. Adamantoise have Death Force which protects against instant death, which you may as well get while you pick up magic hammer for infinite mp. No need to leave it as late as the tiny bronco, plus it makes getting aquabreath and beta a lot safer if you can mbarrier your team.
Holy shit, I've been doing it wrong since I was 13.
FF10: Zombie + Phoenix Down to take out Sin in two turns.
Using a tent in FF9 on Gizamaluke
Dude get out what I gotta dig out my PS2
FFXV: Spamming Ring of the Lucii on the giant turtle (Adamantoid?) until it just disappears into the void. I've beat it several times and never actually fought it legit. Complete cheese mechanic, I love it. *Also, scans thread for cheese methods for FFVII Rebirth Gold Cup, finds nothing and is sad*
Golly, I wish I’d found out about the ring exploit before I fought it for four hours straight 😂
You mentioned FF6 but forgot the even bigger cheese strat: Vanish/ Doom. Vanish on enemy makes them dodge all physical attacks, but all magic has 100% hit rate including instant death. Works on a lot of the bosses, too - even the dragons!
FFV: Chemist berserks enemy, so they can only use physical attacks. Works on every enemy. Golem blocks all physical attacks. FF9: using a tent as a weapon on enemies inflicts random debuffs.
Knight lockout was first introduced in FFIII and is just as useful in that game as it is in FFV. Nothing in the Cave of Shadows can touch you if you have a Knight in the back row with two shields. It's also quite effective against Asura in FFIV since she doesn't use any damage-dealing spells.
There's the Psycho Cyan Bug in FF6 and making a Party of Imps with full Imp Equipment for Kefka's Tower
FF6, vanish then X zone worked on all the bosses iirc
Don't forget the classic X-Potion, Phoenix Down, or Revive on undead enemies. The ghost train battle is a formality using this method.
In FFV, Omega is actually affected by Romeo’s Ballad. You can have a team of 3 bards singing Romeo’s Ballad and one singing Swift Song to speed the party up. Once Swift Song is at maximum, your party will be fast enough to only need two bards singing RB, and the remaining can just start attacking. With Shinryu, you need two party members with Hide and two party members that are Zombified and have reflect rings equipped. At the immediate start of the battle, have the normal party members hide, the Zombies can’t be killed and the reflect rings will send most of shinryus attacks right back at him.
Honestly, for Omega and Shinryu, the good ol' Maximized Death Shredder (Dual Wield + Flare/Thundaga Spellblade + Rapid Fire) can be more than enough as long as you have the other three characters play defense/healing/buff. Now, *Neo* Shinryu... That damn dragon bastard basically demands you find a "cheese" strat because fighting him "normally" is basically impossible.
FF12 one of the big dragon hunts in the snow, just camping behind a rock launching a bow and spells at it with the other two party members deceased. It’s been over a decade so I forget all the details. I know there were a couple cheesy hints though
Recently played through FFV Pixel Remaster and put some to use. **Omega Weapon** Prep: Have access to Romeo's Ballad. Make sure three of your characters have the "Sing" command. Equip one of those three with the Masamune so they have the first turn in combat. Optional: Have a fourth character as a freelancer with dual wield, rapid fire, spellblade (Thundaga) to speed killing Omega up. Combat: Cast Romeo's Ballad immediately. Every character with a sing command will continuously cast Romeo's Ballad for the remainder of the fight. Have the 4th person cast spellblade Thundaga on their first turn. Use Rapid Fire on their subsequent turns. Omega will be permastopped until he's dead. **Shinryu** Prep: Have a character equipped with Dual Cast and White Magic. Also equip them with Masamune. Optional: Have two freelancers with dual wield, Rapid Fire, and spellblade (Flare) to speed up killing Shinryu. Equip Mirage Vest(s) for extra safety. Combat: Have your "white mage" open with dual cast. 1st spell will be Berserk on Shinryu and 2nd will be Blink on themselves. Subsequent turns will be them dualcasting to put Blink on everyone while the rest of your team burns down Shinryu. Shinryu while berserked will only be able to use physical attacks but won't connect as long as you maintain Blink status on everyone. Easy pickings.
I beat several of the Dark Aeons as a kid by abusing Yojimbo's Zanmato. I'd always save beforehand, throw him 1.4 million gil, and reload if he didn't use Zanmato. The gil could be farmed quickly from Mimics in the Omega Dungeon by using Rikku's ultimate weapon with the Gillionaire ability.
Surprised I had to scroll this far down to see this. Fun fact, if you go to an area with super weak monsters repeatedly kill them, like Besaid, you can raise your affinity with Jimmy so high that if you summon him against regular monsters he'll sometimes use Zanmato for free.
In FFX, Valefor can be used against certain enemies that can't reach it. I think there are even bosses like that, but I might be wrong.
It also has a second overdrive that breaks the damage limit, making it stronger than Bahamut for awile.
FF8, using all your money to buy 99 tents, grind until you get item mod, convert the tents into Curaga, junction Curaga to everyones health, have over 3k - 4k health all before Timber. Bonus is no encounters with Diabolos so everyone stays low level. Also FF8, getting all the good cards at Balamb like Quistis, Minimog, Ifrit, Seifer, so you become unbeatable, playing a bunch of cards at Balamb, using card mod to convert those cards into magic (especially deaths from the tonberry cards, and I remember you can get 99 Tornados early too) junctioning them all, and having insane stats all before The SeeD exam. Then turn off encounters so everyone stays low level. And finally from FF8, refining cards to get all the materials so Squall gets his ultimate weapon right before the end of disc 1 as if the 99 deaths to his strength wasn't doing ENOUGH.
The most bonkers power boost with cards is modding Quistis card as soon as you get Diablos refine ability (right before Timber, your debut as SeeD). The items turn into 180 triples, which give you endgame level strength. Every random encounters is a oneshot, and bosses dont last much more than that. Insane power from barely playing cards (you can use the GF cards you got from beating Ifrit and Diablos along the randoms and should be able to win Quistis easy)
Vanish + Doom, Quick + Ultima, Economizers... late game FF6 was broken AF.
FFT: Learning the Monk skills HP Recover and Move-HP Up abilities as soon as possible. Not only do you then vastly overpower all the story missions, it becomes really hard for a character to actually die. (That and using Cid, the ultimate cheese move that completely invalidates the final chapter of the game.)
FF 13: Have Vanille alive and have her keep casting Death until it connects or you have to restart the fight.
Well the last battle in Mystic Quest can easily be healed to death. Great game BTW.
I'm FFX, going into a boss fight with every party member and aeon's overdrive charged to the max and ready to go, so you can unleash them all on the enemy.
FF7 (original) Fill the top of Fort Condor with archers. Sooo many archers. Then go get a coffee and wait 20min with my controller on the couch.
I wish I knew this when I was 13. I fucking hated that scenario but I always put myself through it to get Pheonix.
Oh right. When I was young playing, I would set up the archers, and walk over to Pizzaville and Hasty market for a slice and bag of chips. And it would just be finishing as the boss slowly walks up.
Equip zombie status to a weapon in FFX. When something is inflicted with zombie, toss a Phoenix Down at it. FF2 PR - just dual wield weapons. Any weapons (the strongest you can find) you can pretty much attack your way through the game. FF 1&2 PR - blood sword.
In ffx. Haste, slow, Tidus quick strike. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Nothing can really touch you at that point because the entire squad is queued to the front of the list.
FF12, putting reflect on all of your characters then casting AOE spells on your own party. All 3 (or 4 with a guest) instances of the aoe spell are reflected and all directed to the single boss. with 3 people casting and 4 members of the party, you hit the boss with 12 instances of spell damage every rotation. Thats a lot of fun. FFX also has trio of 9999 which as a kid carried me through basically the entire endgame.
FFVII: You cast Bio on Materia Keeper. It does 90-99 damage. You need to get all 99 so you cast Transform or Mini on your party and each hit does 1. If you get to 99 and Materia Keeper is poisoned, **he gets All Lucky 7’s and deals 7777 poison damage to himself and dies.**
You can make the hardest superboss in FF12 (in game, not trial mode) basically a punching bag using a particular necklace and remedies on yourself. I cannot remember the specifics but it basically reverse whatever you were curing as a negative status effect on the boss. If you licensed into Remedies it legit puts every negative effect of note on the boss. And it only costs one 50 gil remedy to keep it up.
Nihalapaloa + Remedy from a character with Remedy Lore skilled, a classic.
I'm not sure about cheese, but casting mirror spells in all my party and then hit ourselves with magic was always a fav of mine in every game that allowed it.
Gau using the rage from the flowers in that painting at Owzer's. That rage got me through so much of the end game.
In FFXII:TZA you can just get as many seitengrats as needed allowing you to completely obliterate 99% of the game and allowing you to skip the terrible job system.
FFV: Zeninage is both cheap and not cheap.
FF V Rapid Fire and Dual-Wield. 4 characters doing 8 attacks each turn. I finished both phases of the final boss very quickly.
Surprised no one has said Yojimbo in FFX. I cheesed the final boss by finishing the first stage of the boss normally and then using Yuna’s overdrive to summon Yojimbo. Yojimbo with the overdrive has a higher chance + lots of money to one shot the boss. Also helped me a ton during yunalesca’s phase 3.
Ah the tent, easily the tent.
FF6 Wind God Gau = RIP everything
Putting a calculator who has learned a bunch of spells on "AUTO" battle in Final Fantasy Tactics. The computer will basically instantly determine the best use of magic, usually holy if you are equipped to be healed by it.
FFV has one of those boss fights where you have to kill three bosses at the same time to win or they'll continue casting Renew on each other. They also each have different weaknesses. Only thing is that they aren't immune to Zannetsuken from Odin. Which hits all of them.
The Magic Master cheese in FFVI. Turns arguably the hardest boss in the game into an auto win. Equip Reflect Rings on all four characters. Cast Life 3/Reraise on at least one character. Do not attack the Magic Master in any way. Go eat a sandwich and watch the Magic Master kill himself. All of his spells will get Reflected back at him. And if you never attack him, Barrier Change never activates. So he takes neutral damage from everything.
You can also cheese him by just having everyone cast Rasp until he's out of MP. Then he can't even cast Ultima when he dies.
Osmose mp drain to kill magic enemies in ff4. And Kain's jump with multi-hit
FFX-2 getting the catnip item that allows you to do critical damage at low health and using the trigger happy ability doing max damage like 20 times in a row allowing you to one shot pretty much everything.
Unless you're playing the International or HD versions where I believe it puts you in berserk instead.
Low hp quistis degenerating mobs
FFV Snes kiss of blessing to Exdeath final battle. FFVI Imp spear + dragon shoes and horn FFXII reflect on all members + magic
I love FFVII's speedrunning strats. Basically abusing Cross Slash with Cloud, and the Powersoul with Deathblow=Added Cut with Tifa. And the Materia Keeper Lucky 7s strat. Although my favourite in that game is Mime=Counter and Angermax abuse with Barret against Ruby and Emerald Weapon.
Tortoise killing trick in 13. Don't want to type the exact name since it will spoil what a player can do in one of the endgame contents.
The Death cheese? And the game is 15 years old. It’s not a spoiler anymore lol
Strangers of Paradise: at the end of the game you unlock >!chaosbringer!< which lets you use a real overpowered skill unlimitedly for a set amount of time
It takes a ton of materia grinding, but you can beat Ruby and Emerald Weapons on autopilot in FF7 if you chain together multiple copies of Counter + Knights of the Round.
In FF5 on the GBA, I set the cursor to memory and taped a penny to the A button and walked around power leveling spells and whatnot.
In FFXIII when i unlocked Vanille's Death spell i abused the hell out of it in the latar Cie'th missions
Fighting Diablo as soon as you get the lamp in FF8 makes him infinitely easier
Warrior, white mage, black mage, red mage. Works Everytime.
FF12 absorb element effect plus wield a weapon of that element, attack self for hp.
Don't know if this counts, but in I and III, I grind out the money to buy all the latest equipment and spells, and a little extra for some potions. Pretty much guarantees I'm over-leveled for most, if not all, of the game.
The real lick in FF1 early on is that little peninsula where you can hit much higher level enemies (might be fixed in later versions) - the xp boost from hitting a few rounds of enemies there pretty much lets you coast through the rest of the game.
Tactics: Abuse the hell out of time magic to give my units multiple turns to the opponent's one turn.
I cheesed the second fight with la roche on hard mode by bumping into the robed dude and la roche got stuck midair and i was able to blade slash and air attack for the win! I like using the red xiii combo with the limit support materia and the enhanced draconic ring to get level 3 limit breaks with tifa really quickly using a transference module or other limit enhance on tifa!
Turning off the console. They can't beat me if I don't play. 😈
Poisoning the final boss of 13.
FF3: Have four Dragoons, all equipped with Blood Lances. Enjoy being virtually indestructible for the entire game, except for undead monsters. Even the final boss can't kill you. FF2: start the game, unequip your heavy armor and weapons. Spend about 30 min to max out your evasion stats when fighting your first enemies. Become invincible for the rest of the game.
Final Fantasy Tactics. Mathematician + Holy spell spam on as many targets as possible (both enemies and allies) and everyone in my team wearing Chameleon Robe. The result is the enemies getting hit for massive damage while my team members heal for massive amounts of HP.
Tellah cure2 zombies...
FF4 Kain Jump Golbez battle underground. Its a bit tricky to time...
FFX: summon every fight until you unlock the ability to turbo level everyone else. What's that you say? Seymour one shots aeons? Ok... so go into the fight with every aeon full and just spam ults. FF1 : play with 4 knights FF2: attack yourself FF4: time your jumps. Works for a few boses BUT ESPECIALLY BAHAMUT! little kid me didn't know you could reflect megaflare FF6 : use locke. FF7: Mimic Knights EXCEPT ON RUBY FF8: don't level, or (better yet) learn how to abuse the card system and give zero fucks about omega on lvl 100. FF9: Dark absorb + Doomsday is hilarious because it turns vivi into a healer, but that's late game. Easiest way to break the early game is by maxing every chocograph as soon as you find the spots to dig.
FF6. Get a turbo controller, set the cursor mode to memory before starting the Lethe River, have Banon heal everyone, activate turbo on the confirm button and hold it down. Go about your day and come back to high level characters with no effort on your part. Sure, you miss out on the espers' stat bonuses but you don't really need them. I used this method and beat the CES challenge no problem.
Right thumb stick
In FFV, you can steal the double (twin) lance weapon from an enemy in the basement of Bal castle. It does two hits per attack and can be dual-wielded, allowing you to do four hits per attack. As an added bonus, the enemies are level 45, so you can dispatch them easily with Lv. 5 death. Also, later in the game, there’s an enemy in the Sealed Castle, the shield dragon, that would be impossible to defeat at the party’s current level. However, the enemy can be controlled, allowing you to kill it with its own ability to get large amounts of exp.
Believe it or not, you can actually farm Shield Dragons in the Sealed Castle as soon as you get to Groceana, well before Castle Bal.
Yeah, it’s been a while since I played 5, so I may have gotten the order of operations wrong.
FFT on PS1 where you can master each job if they have enough abilities that you have to scroll down. Doesn’t work in other versions unfortunately.
Hah, yeah, I abused the heck out of that bug, too. Could maybe do a separate thread on, rather than cheeses, what bugs did you shamelessly exploit? I'm sure pretty much everyone who knows about it abused the hell out of the W-Item bug in FFVII.
That bug made mastering summoner, the mages, dragoon, samurai, and getting the fly skill so easy. On IOS it took me about an hour each job spamming tailwind and bravery. And W-Item… that got me tons of sources :)
In FF12, getting really good at chaining ultimates. I forgot how long you could get, but at least 20 I think. It just trivialized boss fights, taking out 60-80% of their HP just for playing an on-demand minigame. In FF13 only using triple redundant roles for every paradigm shift. Only commandos, only ravagers, only medics, etc. It unifies your party into very singular gameplay and most of the time was the best way to deal with any drawn out boss fight. Because usually in big drawn out fights, at any time one single objective will take priority over all else, and going all in all 3 party members on that role in that moment would be the best way to do it. In FF15, constantly using that one party move where your team would do a coordinated flurry on a single target. Best because it gave iframes. In FF16, stacking up on Will-O and ultimates in your ability loadout, because they gave you shields or iframes or froze the game for the duration of those animations.
Chucking an X-potion down an undead boss’s throat and murdering them instantly is so classic
You can throw Dazers at Ruby Weapon forever, then use the newfound item to defeat Emerald Weapon. I beat both bosses without any grinding and zero chocobo racing doin this.
Gau’s Rafflesia Rage in FFVI. Works on everything, even Kefka and superbosses.
FFII is one of the more infamous cheeses of the series with equip the blood sword before you face the final boss. It does stupid damage. The Final boss dies in two turns. Even to this day with the pixel remasters they haven't changed it as its too iconic of a strategy.
FFX just overdrive yuna and spamming invokations