- In Final Fantasy, it is possible to reach the Castle of Ordeals far sooner than the developers intended. At any point after defeating the Lich and winning the canoe, instead of taking the canoe up to the volcano as the Omniscient Council of Vagueness suggests, you can simply take your ship, sail down to the southern continent, and canoe inland onto the river just north of the Castle of Ordeals. As there is nothing keeping the party from going to every dungeon but the last and get every treasure but the Masamune before defeating the second fiend. The programmers may have had that in mind, as fighting the fiends out of order changes their pre-fight dialogue (at least in the more recent versions).
- In Final Fantasy II, the town of Mysidia can be accessed earlier than you're expected to go there in the story, allowing you to purchase equipment and spells above what would otherwise be available. The land route is populated with Beef Gates stronger than the encounters around Mysidia that will absolutely destroy you if you're not prepared...or, once you have the ship, you can dock in a nearby bay and make only a short walk to Mysidia. If you can reach the Cave of Mysidia, you can also claim the Black Garb, one of the best armours in the game* .
- It's also possible to enter the Tropical Island dungeon to claim the Black Mask as soon as you get the ship, long before you even know about the Masks. Unlike Mysidia, the enemies within are only slightly above Deist's encounters.
- The SNES and PS1 releases of Final Fantasy IV:
- With careful use of Save Scumming and frame-perfect tent usage, you can shift across blocks without activating them, allowing you to slip past towns or caves without entering them. It's best use is getting past Mist and entering from the opposite side, which allows you to explore the town and enter their Weapon Shop that sells mid-game gear. With some money grinding and pawning all of Cecil and Kain's gear, you can buy weaponry for Rydia that will turn her into a Disk One Nuke capable of one-shotting pretty much any enemy until you beat Fabul.
- The "Crystal Room Warp Trick" in King Giott's throne room. Immediately after the Calbrena/Golbez boss fight, casting Warp will send you back into the Crystal Room, with an Underground Crystal still there for you to pick up. This Crystal will register as a valid Event Flag when you step on a tile just outside the Sealed Cave and Kain steals the Crystal, letting you skip the Sealed Cave entirely.
- And finally, the ever-chaotic 64 Door Hierarchy Glitch. To make things simple, the game uses a simple Census-clicker style counter to keep track of areas: 0 is world map, entering a town is 1, entering a building in the town is 2, etc, and so there are "go" doors that add 1 and "return" doors that subtract 1. However, it's possible to find ways to keep going through "go" or "return" doors (the stairs in the Lali-Ho Pub are a fine example) and get that counter up to 64, where it rolls back to 0. Now all you have to do is use a "return" door or cast Warp, and the game will have an aneurysm and go completely mental. Now things like changing menu colors, innocuous movements, and using items will flip Event Flags on and off, and while this normally crashes the game people have used them to beat large swaths of the game and beat it in a very short amount of time.
- Final Fantasy VI:
- In the very unlikely event that the player saves on the world map at the beginning of the game after leaving Narshe, then plays through the entire game without saving until they reach the Floating Continent, jump onto the ship from the continent, fly around for half a minute, get back on the continent and then die, the player can continue with all their levels and the airship. This happens because, since you access the Floating Continent from the ship without leaving it, the game assumes the player is still on it when you continue - although the airship will disappear once you land, since the player hasn't named Setzer yet (the trigger for getting to keep an airship). All sorts of chaos can be caused - take Banon to the World of Ruin or have him sing at the opera (with a sprite that explodes when he sings!). Get General Leo in your party! Have Terra take Maduin's place in the flashback, have G-Rated Sex with her own mother, and father herself!
- It was possible thanks to a glitch to skip the meeting with Celes entirely. The highly amusing result was that the game replaced her character with Kutan (Moghan in the GBA version), a moogle from the beginning. This was more funny than useful, of course, as Kutan is extremely weak, has very bad equipment until the opera scene, after which he has none at all, cannot learn magic, and cannot have his stats boosted. This is especially a problem at the start of the second half of the game, in which you have to play him solo until you reach the first town.
- The second half of the game is a Wide-Open Sandbox where you spend much of your time Putting the Band Back Together. Since all but three characters are optional, the ending sequences were set up so that each character's vignette only had the three mandatory characters as supporting cast (or has an alternate version where one of those three can replace a character you didn't recruit). Since Terra is also essential to the ending, but is optional to recruit, she awkwardly arrives at The Very Definitely Final Dungeon on her own if you don't recruit her.
- Final Fantasy VII:
- It is possible to avoid watching the Nibelheim flashback sequence in Kalm. Normally, the party will refuse to cross the Mythril Mine on the way to Junon unless Kalm and the flashback are visited. But by manipulating a Chocobo, the Midgar Zolom, and a mountain range, the player can glitch Cloud into a river on the world map, from which he can walk to Junon.
- It is also possible to bypass the sequence where Cloud sees the Zolom corpse on the tree through beginning to take a step and then summoning the menu repeatedly to inch through the trigger zone. This is useless, but it can be fun to come back and trigger the scene later with Yuffie in your party, as she has dialogue written for the scene despite it not being possible to have her as a party member at the time you're supposed to see it.
- The entire ending setpiece of Disc 2, the return to Midgar, can be skipped due to a cutscene programming error that hid Cloud but left the Cloud movement flag on. This allows the player to merely run right from a cutaway scene in the Shinra tower, into the scene with Hojo, and at which point the pre-boss cutscene is triggered by Cloud's presence.
- A glitch in the PC version known as the "Yuffie Warp" allows you to bring your party into a totally different save file by killing Yuffie. This can allow you to get to the bottom of the Northern Crater with Cloud at Level 11, Aeris still alive, and an invisible Cait Sith going by Cloud's name and permanently stuck at Level 1 (thanks to him sharing a party slot with the 16-year-old Cloud, and his data not overwriting the slot until Cait Sith is encountered legitimately).
- In one of the first towns of Final Fantasy IX, it is possible to view certain cutscenes out of sequence merely by going to part of the town in the wrong order. This will cause Zidane to already know about things he shouldn't, only to be clueless later.
- It's easy to exploit a bug in disc three by getting a gold Chocobo early, then skipping nearly to the end of the disc while skipping a few Scrappy Levels and messing your plot up. This results in the resident White Magician Girl staying in a state where she randomly fails to use her commands for the rest of the game unless you hack it back to how it should be at that point.
- Final Fantasy XII absolutely breathes this trope, and is one of the reasons why a "122333" game is possible. As a simple example, one can fight (and defeat) Cuchulain before even leaving Dalmasca for Jahara. There are countless other examples of sequence breaking into high-level areas or gaining endgame equipment as well.
- Final Fantasy XIV has consistently been ripe for players trying to find the fastest way through dungeons. Square-Enix often tried to prevent these speed runs by putting in barriers, but geared players still found ways to rush them. Early dungeons could be cleared without killing fighting a single trash mob by exploiting the boss room "door" mechanics to train and then reset all trash before each boss.note
- One popular way of completing Trials/Savage Raids is to skip phases - many mechanics are triggered when the boss hits certain HP thresholds. However, if the team's DPS is high enough, the boss's HP drops so fast that mechanics aren't triggered before another threshold is reached. An example of this is Glasya Labolas in Syrcus Tower. Usually, the alliance is forced to jump to the outer platforms to avoid an attack, but killing him fast enough will skip this phase completely. One trial punishes players for killing the boss too fast - if Ifrit EX's HP drops too quickly, it will enrage, become invincible, and wipe the party.
- Final Fantasy Legend III:
- By taking advantage of a timing/movement bug, it's possible to cross the barrier that is supposed to keep the Talon out, and disembark on the ground there. You can then fight Agron without having been through the Underworld. You mostly don't gain anything from this, since the Underworld is full of valuable equipment and doesn't have a boss fight; skipping it isn't really helpful. However, it is possible to complete one of the Mystic swords a bit sooner, by collecting the last piece of it from a town inside the barrier.
- Inverted with the E-Ray unit. Once you find it in the Underworld, you're supposed to continue onward, trick your way past the Dwelgs, defeat Agron and bring down the barrier, before attaching the E-Ray to the Talon and enjoying the power of your new weapon against the upgraded random encounters. However, there is nothing stopping you from grabbing the unit and then retracing your steps, back out the way you came in. You can then attach the E-Ray to the Talon without random encounters being upgraded — which means that the Talon can defeat them all by itself in the surprise round. Eventually you'll have to go through the Underworld properly, but you can get a lot of Level Grinding done very quickly in the meantime.
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