Final Fantasy was already full of content. And several games and rereleases included achievements that were difficult to obtain.
Final Fantasy
- The MSX ROM has an achievement called Ba-WHO-mut??, which requires beating the game without the class change. This substantially reduces the defense and attack capabilities of the party, and almost requires the Masamune to kill Chaos.
- The Dawn of Souls ROM has Bonus Beat 'Em-Up, which involves beating every enemy in the bonus dungeons. Doing this is a serious Luck-Based Mission that may require multiple visits through the Whisperwind Cove to get a specific floor on 21-29.
Final Fantasy IV
- PC port of 3D remake hands out trophies for many things that were either considered incredibly annoying in original game, or some additions of this remake that are:
- There is a trophy for getting Adamant Armor, meaning you have to complete the infamous Pink Tail sidequest. It also has one trophy for getting complete Onion set, which requires getting five different Tails, each with same non-existent drop rate as Pink Tail.
- Getting all summons also unlocks one trophy. This means getting Imp, Cockatrice, Mindflayer and Bomb as summons, which all have drop rate as Pink Tail, though finding enemies dropping them isn't as obscure.
- Another trophy requires you to uncover entirety of all maps. Last Lousy Point issue aside, there are three One-Time Dungeon, so if you fail to complete their maps that one time you are there, you're out of luck for that run. It also unlocks Treasure Hunter Augment which is more or less required for getting above achievements.
- Completing Bestiary, because there are some enemies that you can miss, and since there are some Super Boss entries that also count towards it, you won't be able to get it until New Game Plus, and even if you did one specific thing during Final Boss.
Final Fantasy V
- The Teenagers of Light achievement from the Game Boy Advance ROM required beating the game with every party member at under Level 20. Doing this requires extensive knowledge of the game, exploiting boss status vulnerabilities or using the control glitch to get 255 Masamunes and Ragnaroks. Fortunately, this one was removed from the game in a later patch.
- The Toddlers of Bright achievement from the Anthology ROM is even more of a challenge, requiring all characters to beat the game at under Level 5. Very few people have gotten this achievement, and this requires knowledge of every ability in the game, grinding ABP from the Garula outside Walse, catching certain monsters to avoid EXP and avoiding every fight that gives EXP.
Final Fantasy VI
- Both the SNES ROM and the discontinued Mobile/Steam versions have an achievement called "Beastlord" for getting every Rage in the game. Considering how easy it is to miss encounters combined with the fact that the End of the World causes many enemies to disappear means that a guide is practically required to get this achievement.
- The Master Gambler achievement on the Pixel Remaster version. Although it doesn't require you to get all the possible combinations from Setzer's Slot ability like the Wandering Gambler achievement for the defunct Steam/iOS version, you still have to get the hardest Slot combination, Joker's Death. The way Setzer's Slots work, even if you line up the slots with precision, the odds are the last row won't align no matter what, nor can it align against certain enemies, not just bosses. Worse, one wrong and more likely combination will cause the "bad" Joker's Death, which kills your entire party no matter their immunities and doesn't count toward the achievement. At least the auto-battle function will randomize the results of Setzer's Slots and still count toward the achievement, but even so, you'll be in for a long slog unless you're lucky.
Final Fantasy VII
- The PC and PS4 versions created some, including defeating Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon.
- Obtaining Aerith's Great Gospel. Becomes missable once she dies, meaning the player must perform copious amounts of grinding and backtracking during the early game. And since everything of hers becomes unavailable after her death, it feels like a moot process.
- Getting the Gold Saucer date with Barret. This requires the player to know about the Relationship Values in the game, and how to manipulate it correctly from the very beginning, to ensure getting him and not one of the three female options.
- The Steam version gave a trophy for obtaining and mastering every materia in the game. This includes mastering the Enemy Skill materia, meaning the player must learn Trine and Pandora's Box.
Final Fantasy IX
- The game was already notorious for having many hair-pulling sidequests. And when the game was re-released in the PS4, Square decided to give every sidequests its own trophy.
- The Ultimate Sword means obtaining Excalibur II, which required the player to complete this 4-disc RPG in 12 hours and meant skipping majority of the game itself. Fortunately, the new booster feature that sped the game up x3, allows you to remove random encounters and allows your characters to do max damage makes this less frustrating to get than previously.
- Another Man's Treasure trophy requires you to be a Rank S Treasure Hunter, every treasure chest you open, every item you find by finding a field icon or every time you are rewarded with items by an NPC will increase a hidden point counter, you need to find at least 374 items for you to get this achievement.
- Even some quests that the player wasn't even aware were quests to begin with got trophies, like Beach Bum having the player visit every beach in the world or even achieving 1000 jumps without tripping in the jump rope minigame.
- To Ozma and Back requires the player to defeat Ozma. Which requires hours of leveling up a Chocobo, which has its own trophies tied to it.
- Bloodlust requires you to kill 10,000 enemies, on average an entire playthrough will net you approximately 1,000 kills on average, which means that you will need at least 20-30 hours of grinding to get this achievement without any boosters, with the help of the speed boosters that the game provides you, this trophy can be done in 10-15 hours.
Final Fantasy X
- The HD Remaster version caused several already obnoxious-to-obtain Celestial Weapons to become this, as it now tied trophies to them. The Weapon Master trophy requires the player to obtain all of those weapons, which becomes annoying because of the below mentioned achievements.
- Chocobo Rider requires the player to beat the infamous chocobo race with a total time of 0:00:00 to obtain Tidus' Celestial Weapon. Yes, that chocobo race.
- Lightning Master requires the player to have dodged 200 consecutive lightning strikes. Nothing in the game mentions this to be a goal, nor that switching screens resets the entire counter, and the Thunder Plains are an enemy-heavy area. There's little reason to attempt this without a No Encounter weapon equipped.
- Sphere Grid Master and Perfect Sphere Grid Master get unlocked upon completely filling out the Sphere Grid with one character and all of them, respectively. The Sphere Grid is huge, with many empty nodes that will end up having to be filled with other Spheres that the player needs to grind to obtain and fill up. And this includes needing the AP to actually move around the Sphere Grid as well, which requires a ton of points to even move one space. One can use the Don Tonberry trick to make this a little easier, but some characters cannot take advantage of this trick. The Steam version makes it a little easier if the player uses boosters, but even the use of Teleport Spheres means the player is simply replacing mind-numbingly tedious grinding with mind-numbingly tedious button pressing.
- Perserverance means the player needs to defeat Penance. Which means all the Dark Aeons have to be defeated, which can be a challenge in themselves, and the only upside is that they don't have their own achievements tied to defeating them.
- In a similar vein, Overcoming the Nemesis means defeating Nemesis. Outside of being a pretty tough opponent in itself, it also requires a lot of work in catching all the monsters in the various locations for the Monster Arena, as well as having to fight the other creations there.
Final Fantasy X-2
- Full Chain requires the player to reach a max chain of x99 in one battle. It can be difficult to achieve a chain above 10 without having the time down or making use of the Lady Luck's Dice or the Gunner's Trigger Happy ability. But even with the timing down, there's also the fact that it's rare to find an enemy that can survive that many hits. Chances are, the player won't obtain this trophy until the lower levels of the Bonus Dungeon.
- Sweet Perfection means the player obtained 100% Completion for the game. Can be achieved through several playthroughs, but many things in the game that give completion points are so far out of the way or have tiny details added to them, many players will just grab a guide and follow that.
Final Fantasy XI
- The Xbox360 version has an achievement that has become nigh impossible to obtain nowadays. The Gold Ballistar requires gaining max rank on one of the few PVP events in the game, and one that almost nobody does anymore.
- Past Vana'diel Nation Quests requires the player to have completed all of the Wings of The Goddess missions for each of the three nations.
Final Fantasy XII
- Filling the Sky Pirate's Den requires doing a ton of things in the game, all with their own achievements. And then there's an achievement for doing all of that and defeating an annoying Marathon Boss, all in one playthrough.
Final Fantasy XIII
- Treasure Hunter requires the player to have possessed every single weapon and accessory available in the game at one point. This requires insane amounts of grinding for materials and money, as well as knowing how the EXP multiplier for upgrading works. And there's also certain unique accessories that can be upgraded into other unique accessories.
- Floraphobe gets obtained after the player completes the mission of beating a Gigantuar. Its main attack is 10,000 Needles, which does immense and unblockable damage every time it hits, and has a very high chance of causing Pain and Fog, meaning the inflicted character cannot perform physical or magical attacks. And getting a 5 Star rank on this mission can be difficult because of its rather low target time.
- L'Cie Paragon unlocks upon getting a 5 Star rank on every single Cie'th Stone mission. Aside from the abovementioned battle for Floraphobe, this also includes missions against Raktavijas, who have an intertial barrier that causes nothing but scratch damage unless they are staggered, and the final mission against Vecingetorix.
Final Fantasy XIII-2
- Clock Stopper requires the player to have gotten 100 consecutive Preemptive Strikes on enemies. It's not very difficult to do, but very tedious. And sometimes a strike misses or the enemy spawned are small and get a hit in before the player can do anything.
- Serendipitous requires the player to have gotten 10,000 coins from the slot-machines. The slot-machines already had an annoying fragment to collect called Lucky Coin, and this trophy means to further play on them.
- Giant's Fist is the obligatory achievement of hitting the damage cap of 99,999 in one strike. Compared to some of the previous games, it's much more difficult in this game because very few enemies even have the HP to survive a maxed out stagger chain gauge, and only a few attacks in the game can even reach the cap.
- Defragmented means obtaining all 160 fragments in the game. This requires a ton of things to do, including having defeated every enemy in the game — including any Optional Boss, bosses for the Paradox Ending, and many rarely-spawned enemies, completing each map to 100%, finishing the Brain Blitz questions, tracking down Captain Cryptic and answering his questions correctly.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
- Desert Dragonslayer means having defeated Aeronite. The dragon spawns in the Desert Dunes and its exact location depends on the time. The problem with the battle is that it has a very annoying mechanic. The player must manage to stagger Aeronite within three minutes or it will simply leave the battle, and any damage done to him doesn't carry over for the next encounter. And this mechanic counts for the entire battle. Stagger him or he'll leave.
- Harbringer of Death requires the player to have defeated every Last One in the game. Most enemies have Last Ones, which appear after defeating every other member of that monster species, and defeating the Last One means that particular enemy type is extinct for that playthrough. Most can be done rather easily, though the Meonekton has a spawn count of 65535, making it mathematically impossible to make extinct the normal way before you run out of time, meaning the only way to do so is to defeat the Last One in the Bonus Dungeon. Said Bonus Dungeon is the best way to get about doing it, as it houses most of the Last Ones, as well as Ereshkigal. And that one is part of this quest, too. The only problem is that the final dungeon has three Last Ones in it that need to be defeated the old-fashioned way. Fortunately, the final area has no time limit to it, giving the player ample time to work on this.
- Unearthly Apothecary unlocks when the player obtains an Elixir. Those can only be obtained through very rare means, like trading 100 Soul Seeds with the merchant. And those can only be obtained in areas filled with Chaos, which spawn once an in-game hour, and might spawn a few of them.
Final Fantasy XIV
- One achievement required completing 3,000 levequests. The player got about 6 levequest allowances per day, making this achievement a very tedious and long-running one to obtain. Fortunately, a patch was released to fix it.
- There are several achievements tied to FATEs, which are events in the overworld that involve battling swarms of enemies. Several achievement titles and a robe are locked behind achievements that require several thousand completed FATEs.
- The chain of "The Kindness of Strangers" achievements requires you to revive knocked out players that are not in your party. Since player death in the overworld is extremely rare and the fact that reviving people in alliance raids don't count, it's nearly impossible to earn the achievements.
- This has since been helped by a number of FATEs which have several instant-kill mechanics, as well as by Eureka, but it's still quite a lot to grind.
- Several of the achievements for mining, harvesting, and fishing require the player to hit a node X times in a certain zone. Not 'gather X materials'. Actually hit the node. (Or 'catch a fish', which is possibly worse.) Further, much of the time, the only nodes which are available for gathering are basically just shards and crystals — in the rare case that there even is anything else, it's not worth it because the market is flooded from players doing this very achievement. Auto-harvesting has made this simpler, but it's still hard to get excited about spending 24,000 swings on level 41-50 nodes.note The exception are the 71-80 achievements, oddly, because a good deal of Shadowbringers content and achievements happen to include hitting nodes of those levels. But that just leads to...
- Just about everything related to The Diadem. The good news is the gathering requirements are "gather X materials" this time, which also means stuff collected with the aether cannon counts. The bad news is that X in this case equals 50,000 for Miner and Botanist. And there are three of these for each gatherer. The Grade 2 and 3 crafting achievements don't require anywhere near that amount and aren't worth many Skybuilder Points, so most of it is vendor trash once again. And speaking of crafting, the achievements for 500,000 Skybuilder Points in every Crafting job is similarly absurd. At bare minimum this requires making 3,352 collectiblesnote , and that's if every collectible is perfect (they won't be). Even the improved gear and revisions from Endwalker can only help so much.
