If you expand your character beyond the feasable limits provided by the linear storyline, does this game retain a sense of balance and proportion?

You can kill the final boss in a single blow. You can cut through sin's armour in two blows, totalling over 140, 000 HP. Yet the strongest monsters in the game have millions upon millions of HP.

When I hold these figures in my mind the integrity of the game-world breaks down in my mind, and I can no longer suspend disbelief.

The Dark Aeon's are especially tacky and criminal: (which is a good reason they were never in the original game); not only are they many many times stronger than your own summons can ever be, but they are multiple times stronger than Sin. And in fact they're the exact same pallette-swapped models used for when Yu Yevon possesses your Aeon's on the penultimate battle, combined with some re-used sound effects from elsewhere in the game (For instance, when the summoner of Dark Valefor confronts you in Besaid, he says "Infidel!" and "Prepare to charge!", lines which are uttered by Yevon guards preventing the heroes from reaching Maester Mika, and re-use the same sound effects). The only unique audio for the dark aeons seems to be the Guado who confronts you before you meet Dark Shiva.

Even without the Dark Aeons we have the arena bosses. I understand what they were trying to do in order to extend the life of the game and provide a bit of freedom, but I think that uber-strong monsters should have some reasonable justification for existing, and they should require cunning and planning moreso than ridiculous stats in order to defeat them. I'm so glad they didn't have a break damage limit in X-2 (though I've lost the will to complete that game for other reasons, not the least of which is that I attained level 60+ with moderate ease in the first chapter!).

Furthermore, isn't raising your HP beyond 9, 999 almost completely redundant? Any attack that factors defense into account will do less than 9, 999, and any attack which doesn't usually deals a guarranteed 99, 999 (like Thuban's "convergence"), which is enough to take you to KO even if you have the maximum number of HP, also 99, 999. The only reason I can think of to invest all that effort to reach maximum HP is that it looks "cool"; but next to any monster you'd face where that HP would be useful it actually looks pitifully low.

Not only that, but you have to sacrifice/waste an armour slot to break the HP limit for any character that you want to have the extra HP, which could be occupied by something far more useful like Auto-Phoenix, Ribbon, and I could go on.

They're not dissimilar to the strongest arena bosses in power. Perhaps a little faster and deadlier, I'm not sure. They also seem a little "hacked" and do things which are normally illegal for monsters to do. For instance, Dark Ifrit does "Thundaja", which is not lightning damage and seems to bypass any attempt to shield against it, and Penance (I've heard, since I've not fought him) has an attack that exceeds 99, 999 in a single blow.

Over 9999 and less than 99, 999 with a defense/magic defense of 255? Which monster is that?

My main point, by the way, was that there game-world lacks credibility and that I can't suspend disbelief with the disproportional numbers. I suppose if your emphasis is on gameplay rather than story, then this is less of a problem. But then, if I played Final Fantasy for the gameplay I'd be out of the door, since juggling numbers is not very challenging and is also very predictable when you've beaten the rest of the game and know all the tricks.

I've never bothered to beat Nemesis or Penance because I can easily see myself doing it, sitting there for 4+ hours repeating the same proceedure, instead of doing something better with my time, and then being rewarded with an animation and a heap of AP and gold that cannot be used for anything since I've beaten every monster in the game. I have all but three arena monsters left to unlock and slain all the dark aeons, and I lost the will to go any further.

In other words, it's off-putting when achieving a certain goal feels like "work" rather than "fun", and you can foresee the whole process without any unpredictability. The final optional stages of FFX are like that for me.

I can see why people like to try NSG, but I have a problem with imposing artificial restrictions like that on myself. If there had been a NSG option actually built into the game, then I would have gotten a kick out of it.

Well I said they were the same or a little stronger than most arena monsters. I doubt they're stronger than Nemesis; haven't fought that one. Also I beat most of the Dark Aeons when I was a lot weaker than when I got the final arena monsters.

I would neglect to use the word 'balanced' when speaking of the latter part of this game - simply because the power you can obtain far outweighs that of any boss and the resilience they may have; making it all... painfully easy.

No monster in the game could even remotely be considered a challenge, due to the ridiculous armour-ability combinations which are possible to obtain. It's easy to see on the likes of YouTube how easy it is to beat the professed "strongest monsters in the game" with no effort during battle, and requiring nothing more than patience to actually attain the items needed for outstandingly over-powered upgrades for armaments and protectives. Of which, I have noted, are obtained in abundance for the most part... except Dark Matter for the Ribbon ability.


I like the game, but not beyond the point where you complete each characters individual sphere path. It's pathetic how much power is offered to you on a platter... making even these bonus bosses beatable in mere minutes. What happened to spending half an hour to even knock them down to half health? What happened to applied pressure? Both of which have been completely revoked by the simplicity of the sphere grid system. Sadly enough...