History ScrappyMechanic / FinalFantasy

* Crafting scrips, and indeed, high-level crafting/gathering and collectibles in general for the ''Heavensward'' expansion. While specialty nodes for gatherers appeared for a small window in the ARR release, these windows allowed enough time for players to travel to different zones and gather the items they needed. The new nodes, however, only appear for roughly 55 real-time seconds, and are far enough away from zone Aetherytes that it is literally impossible to gather from more than one node at a time...all of which are only available twice per in-game day.
*** This is compounded by the fact that the collectible minigame involves using a series of skills in a precise order which not only renders the item gathered unfit for use in any crafting, but each item acquired takes up a single inventory slot, and, if any deviation in said minigame occurs, means that it is impossible to recover from and either means losing another collectible or wasting the node entirely. Collectibles must be of a certain rarity value (achieved through the minigame) to have any XP value as a turn-in, or be worth any amount of end-game scrip currency.
** Collectibles also impact crafting classes, who must engage in the same type of minigame upon making an item to turn in, if they wish to see any moderately level-appropriate XP rewards or acquire any scrips. The terrible thing for crafters is that it is extraordinarily difficult to make the items needed without first having the gear and tools to acquire said items, which requires acquiring those same items to make the gear, which requires having the gear to begin with, which [[Catch22Dilemma necessitates obtaining the items...]]

* Having to give up a Relic slot on one character for the Sprint Shoes that allow you to move at a non-glacial pace on the map. At least you have double the amount of available slots compared to ''Final Fantasy V''. The Playstation release just gave you the ability to sprint by holding a button, but later releases inexplicably ''removed this''.

* In the NES version only, it was impossible to use SOFT potions (aka Gold Needles) in battle to remove petrification, the only way to remove petrification in battle was to have a White Mage cast SOFT (Stona). A White Mage got petrified? Touch luck, you can only heal them after battle.

*** Finally, you don't have much access to the Veldt. Unless you go out of your way after leaving Narshe to return there (via a long walk across the Overworld and through previous dungeons), you won't get access again until you get the airship, which you lose after the next storyline dungeon until the end of the World of Balance. And then in the World of Ruin, its non-linear nature means you'll have to keep revisiting the Veldt to learn new Rages for Gau, going back into the boredom of finding specific enemies for him to Rage. By this point, you have likely defeated well over 100-150 different enemies, so finding a specific enemy formation may take hours. And all your other party members are becoming powerhouses who can hit the damage cap with spells or their unique skills by the time you can grind for Rages on the Veldt, and they don't need to enter a Berserk state to do it. This leaves Gau without much to do unless the player has no choice but to use him, as multiple other characters can be just as powerful but far more predictable.

** Relm's Sketch ability mimics a monster's ability, which could be helpful if only most monsters didn't have her use an elemental attack they absorb or are immune to. But that happens way too often. It also hits the wrong side of the HealthDamageAsymmetry, in that it uses the ''monster's'' stats to determine damage, not Relm's, and since monsters tend to have low Strength and Magic, Sketched attacks will do pitiful damage. Not to mention if used wrong, [[GameBreakingBug Sketch can break the universe due to how badly it was programmed]].

** Shadow randomly leaving the party. The first time in Sabin's side story is workable: Shadow won't leave unless it's between the Imperial Camp and the Phantom Train; once you're on the train, he'll stick around until you reach Baren Falls (at which point the plot sees him leaving the party no matter what). However, nothing excuses the second trip. He joins up in Kohlingen, charging you 3,000 gil to join. And from there up until you meet Ramuh, he has a chance to leave after any battle. Imagine walking all the way from Kohlingen to Zozo, and as you enter town, you get into a battle after which Shadow leaves. Your choices then are to trek all the way back to Narshe to get a fourth party member then come all the way back, or traverse [[ThatOneLevel one of the hardest areas of the game]] with a party of only three people. And if you have the insane idea to recruit Shadow after Zozo and before the Opera House, he leaves during the performance, trapping you with three people all the way through the trip to Vector, ''another'' one of the hardest areas of the game. Shadow himself is a fairly solid party member, but in the early-game he's hardly worth the headache he puts you through.[[invoked]]

* [[AwesomeButImpractical Summons are cool-looking, but their MP cost is far too high to compensate for what they actually do]], being simply strong elemental magic but three times as expensive and [[BladderOfSteel taking fifteen times as long]]. Only four of the Summons in the game have much utility (Choco/Mog, Hades, Phoenix and Knights of the Round), and of those, one is only useful in conjunction with a Support Materia.
* Similarly you cannot skip the FinalBoss's Supernova animation. Two minutes of waiting for a glorified ''PercentDamageAttack''.

*** Finally, you don't have as much access to the Veldt as it may seem. Unless you go out of your way after leaving Narshe to return there (via a long walk across the Overworld and through previous dungeons), you won't get access again until you get the airship, which you lose after the next storyline dungeon until the end of the World of Balance. And then in the World of Ruin, its non-linear nature means you'll have to keep revisiting the Veldt to learn new Rages for Gau, going back into the boredom of finding specific enemies for him to Rage. By this point, you have likely defeated well over 100-150 different enemies, so finding a specific enemy formation may take *hours*. And by this point, all your other party members are becoming powerhouses who can hit the damage cap with spells or their unique skills, and they don't need to enter a Berserk state to do it.
** Mog is only slightly better with his Dances. Like Gau, Mog enters a Berserk state when his Dance works, and he has a chance to use one of four attacks every turn. While each Dance skillset has enough versatility that they're still useful (several include a party-healing ability, a OneHitKO move, and/or a powerful group-hitting attack), it's still random which one Mog will use each turn. It's not uncommon to see Mog using a healing ability on a party at full HP, or trying to use a Gravity-based attack on a boss (which are usually immune to such things) while he's dancing. And most of the boss enemies have unique terrains that prevent the Dance command from working anyway, so you can't use it even if you wanted to. The only reason Mog isn't a LowTierLetdown like Gau is because Mog can still attack and cast magic like almost everyone else outside of his dances, and Mog's stats boast [[StoneWall surprisingly high Defense and Magic Defense in spite of lackluster offensive stats]].

** Gau's Rages are quite possibly the worst designed mechanic in the game. Sure, it ''can'' be extremely powerful when used correctly, but doing so is practically GuideDangIt incarnate. It's no wonder that Gau ends up as a TierInducedScrappy, [[BrokenBase for some at least]], because of it.

** Mog is only slightly better with his Dances. Like Gau, Mog enters a Berserk state when his Dance works, and he has a chance to use one of four attacks every turn. While each Dance skillset has enough versatility that they're still useful (several include a party-healing ability, a OneHitKO move, and/or a powerful group-hitting attack), it's still random which one Mog will use each turn. It's not uncommon to see Mog using a healing ability on a party at full HP, or trying to use a Gravity-based attack on a boss (which are usually immune to such things) while he's dancing. And most of the boss enemies have unique terrains that prevent the Dance command from working anyway, so you can't use it even if you wanted to. The only reason Mog isn't a TierInducedScrappy like Gau is because Mog can still attack and cast magic like almost everyone else outside of his dances, and Mog's stats boast [[StoneWall surprisingly high Defense and Magic Defense in spite of lackluster offensive stats]].

* Winning fights in the Colosseum is a matter of trying your luck against the AIRoulette. Every fight in the Colosseum is [[DuelBoss a one-on-one fight between one party member of your choice and a monster]]. These fights would be over half as quickly if you could control your character, but you can't. Whichever character you pick also gets controlled by the computer, while you do nothing but sit there and watch. Expect to see characters cast Poisona and Remedy on themselves despite having good status, try to heal themselves at full health, and cast the lowest-level spells on an enemy that has long since passed the threshold for such a thing working. On top of that, some ArtificialStupidity is on display as well -- Terra will enter into Trance and then just stand there, Mog might try to dance even though it will never work, and Sabin might use the Spiraler Blitz technique and instantly die, costing you whatever item you bet through no fault of your own. The Colosseum is the one place where Umaro, normally a TierInducedScrappy, is considered viable, simply because Umaro can at least be trusted to act consistently.

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* The Pixel Remasters of FF 1 through 6 on smart phones includes a point-and-click option, where the player can click on a square, NPC, or chest and have their characters automatically travel to that position. However, this type of movement cannot be used to have your characters travel through hidden passages on the map, forcing the player to switch back and forth between manual movement when encountering these hidden areas.

* Some of the special ability of several characters are known to be this:

* All encounters are on fixed places, even if you cannot SEE them. This means you can accidentally re-enter a "conflict" as soon as you have "resolved" another, simply because you took one step in the wrong direction. It is possible to avoid MOST fixed encounters by hugging the correct ledge/wall, but some are unavoidable, specially during "open world" maps. After hours playing the game you will likely cringe every single time you hear ''"Activating Combat Mode!"''

* The Draw System is [[GameBreaker easily exploitable]], and grinding for spells is slow and painful. There's a Magic Booster system in the 2013 PC release that gives you 100 of most low and mid level spells, but while many fans either like it or think it takes away from the challenge, others believe that its addition proves that the Draw System was poorly designed to begin with.

* The whole game is a TimedMission, with a hard limit of thirteen in-game days, and the clock never stops ticking. Take too long and you get an underwhelming Game Over. If you don't enjoy the high-stakes urgency, then you will hate being rushed when there is a world begging to be explored, as well as saved. There is a way to halt the clock for a few minutes, but you have to spend [=EP=] to to so

* Eureka: Pagos takes everything that people hated about Anemos and not only brings them back, but adds even more hated mechanics on top of it. The map design spaces everything far apart from each other, which means aetherytes and other important locations can take a few minutes to reach while you're trying to avoid every high leveled monster. Dragons are also placed in many choke points where people would frequently travel. Said dragons are always sleeping, but running past them wakes them up and they ''will'' [[OneHitKill one shot you]] unless you're at the level cap. Unlike Anemos, you can't actually begin to grind for your relic until level 25 and you can't ride your mounts until you hit the level cap of 35. EXP gains in Pagos was extremely abysmal to the point that it was faster to level up by chain killing mobs instead of farming [=FATEs=], leading many to speculate that the slow EXP gains was done as a response to how quickly people leveled up in Anemos. Pagos also has Happy Bunnies, which have to be saved during certain [=FATEs=]. Completing them gives you ''no rewards'' since you're expected to get said rewards from a hidden treasure coffer. However, it's completely up to chance if you actually get a Happy Bunny if you beat the FATE and if you do get one, you lose out on the coffer if you or the bunny dies (later patches would give you EXP if you saved the Happy Bunnies). Once you do actually start your relic in Pagos, the method of doing it is abysmal; you need to collect several frosted crystals, which can only be obtained by collecting aether from monster kills. Aether fills up your bar and a full bar gives you one crystal. Crystals then have to be taken to a forge to be smelted into usable materials for Gerolt to use, but the path to the forge is a one way trip that's guarded by a dragon and the forge itself is surrounded by hostile monsters as well. The grind for aether is heavily reliant on luck since you will not always gain aether from each kill and the amount you do get is completely random. The grind for aether was so ill received that many players [[RageQuit practically gave up on their relic and abandoned Pagos entirely.]] Later patches would buff the EXP gains as well as the amount of aether obtained.
* Eureka: Pyros does make an attempt to improve some things, such as a denser monster intensity and a better map design to get around enemies more easily. However, Pyros also retains the same mechanics from the previous iterations of Eureka (FATE grinding, level grinding, grinding for crystals, etc) as well as adding more annoying mechanics. Powering up your relic requires unlocking Logos actions from logograms. Said logorams can be earned from completing a FATE or finding them in coffers from Happy Bunnies, but they are subjected to RNG and you may never get the ones you want. There are 50 Logos actions total, but you only need 30 to upgrade your relic. Getting all 50 grants you the right to buy pretty neat looking armor, but [[GuideDangIt good luck trying to figure out which lologram combos unlock new actions]]. Even after you get your relic upgraded, you can choose to upgrade it further, but doing so ''removes all of your weapon's substats''. To get them back or get something better than what you had, you have to grind for aether in the same way you did for Pagos. Luckily, you only need two crystals to get a shot of getting better stats for your relic. Unfortunately, you can't choose what stats you can get or how much of it you want. It's purely up to luck. Don't like the results? Go back and grind aether again for another shot.

** The fact that enemies do not drop money, which means you have to choose between using gems to level up Crowns, or selling them for cash.

** Dispelling one's party is a frustrating task due to requiring you to target a party member in order to do it. Not only does the game [[GuideDangIt not tell you you can do that in the first place,]] but you can't just pick a target and cast Dispel. Instead, you must cast another spell then target yourself between animations, meaning that you need a party member with Dualcast to even ''try'' dispelling yourself. Then depending on the sensitivity of one's touchscreen this is anywhere between easy to flat out impossible because of lag. Most people [[ViolationOfCommonSense opt to attack themselves with an attack that also has a dispel effect]] rather than deal with the nuisance.

** Mog being the bucket moogle isn't a problem unless you have to visit the hotter areas in which he'll tire faster than usual (even if you shave him), forcing you to balance the bucket duties along with the really nasty enemies of the area. It doesn't take long for Mog to recover (5 seconds at most by most accounts), but then you wonder why they bothered letting it tire out in the first place, as it's a real pace-breaker.
** For some reason in the remastered version's multiplayer, only the host player will get credit for completing the area, forcing players into replaying the same area up to four times with different players hosting, in order to get the credit for completing it and being able to proceed.

* The portrait system introduced in patch 6.3 was liked in concept, but disliked in execution. For each one of your jobs, you can craft a unique portrait for your character which shows up at the beginning of a duty, dungeon, or raid, as a way of adding some personality to your character. However, there's a number of restrictions and annoyances that come with it. For one, any time you change anything about your character, you also have to go into the Portraits menu to update your portrait, or else it will reset to default when a duty starts. This even includes gear that doesn't affect your appearance in the portrait, like changing your boots despite the portrait being a headshot or changing a ring when you're wearing gloves that hide the rings. Also, there's restrictions about the kinds of poses you're allowed to make, such as that your character's face must be fully visible and not obstructed. But what counts as "obstructed" is sometimes unclear; if you're wielding a weapon in the portrait, the system might arbitrarily decide that it's blocking the camera or obscuring your face, despite your face clearly being visible. Even the string of a Bard's bow might somehow register as an obstruction if it's at the wrong angle. Finally, the portraits only show up for a few seconds, players can just turn them off (making all this effort wasted), and the portraits go away the moment a boss is pulled in a raid. While the playerbase responded well to the portraits as an idea, the execution left a lot to be desired because of the busywork and frustrations involved with it.

* The portrait system introduced in patch 6.3 was liked in concept, but disliked in execution. For each one of your jobs, you can craft a unique portrait for your character which shows up at the beginning of a duty, dungeon, or raid, as a way of adding some personality to your character. However, there's a number of restrictions and annoyances that come with it. For one, any time you change anything about your character, you also have to go into the Portraits menu to update your portrait, or else it will reset to default when a duty starts. This even includes gear that doesn't affect your appearance in the portrait, like changing your boots despite the portrait being a headshot or changing a ring when you're wearing gloves that hide the rings. Also, there's restrictions about the kinds of poses you're allowed to make, such as that your character's face must be fully visible and not obstructed. But what counts as "obstructed" is sometimes unclear; if you're wielding a weapon in the portrait, the system might arbitrarily decide that it's blocking the camera or obscuring your face, despite your face clearly being visible. Even the string of a Bard's bow might somehow register as an obstruction if it's at the wrong angle. Finally, the portraits only show up for a few seconds, players can just turn them off (making all this effort wasted), and the portraits go away the moment a boss is pulled in a raid. While the playerbase responded well to the portraits as an idea, the execution left a lot to be desired because of the busywork and frustraions involved with it.

* After reaching Level 70[[note]]Granted, the game can feasibly be completed with a party that is in the low-to-mid 60s[[/note]], attribute bonuses are random when a character gains a level. You can get a decent amount of stats increased upon leveling up, maybe only one or two points in a specific stat, or even ''decrease'' stats. Fortunately, the [=DS=] version changed this to be based on the game's [[PowersAsPrograms Augment Ability]] system, but good luck figuring ''that'' thing out without [[GuideDangIt having a handy guide]]. Speaking of which...

* The fact that after the midpoint of the game [[DemonicSpider sorcerer enemies]] can both paralyze the entire party, AND their attack has a chance to instakill any character. Even without being ambushed, it is entirely possible to have a TotalPartyKill without even having a chance to run. Made even worse by the fact that the ProRing, the item that claims to protect against instant death, only works against instant death SPELLS, not instant death attacks. These enemies were so hated for their RNG chance to kill even a max-level party with no possible response, that no normal enemy encounter like them ever appeared in any Final Fantasy game again.

** Another problem with the escape command arises when it is compared to one in ''Final Fantasy VI''. In both games, the characters escape individually, but how the games differ is how they treat the situation in which some party members escape and the rest get killed off - in ''VI'', the game just kicks you out of the fight with KO'd party members staying KO'd, while in ''X'', the same situation results in a Game Over.

* the Pixiv remasters of FF 1 through 6 on smart phones includes a point and click option, where the player can click on a square, NPC, or chest and have their characters automatically travel to that position. However, this type of movement cannot be used to have your characters travel through hidden passages on the map, forcing the player to switch back and forth between manual movement when encountering these hidden areas.

* While this game's levelling system, Sphere Grid, is very much fun and interesting during the normal gameplay, the amount of grinding it needs for you to be able to tackle [[BonusBoss Bonus Bosses, especially Dark Aeons]] from International/PAL/HD release requires ''much'' more time than it would just taking characters to Lv. 99 in any other game from the series. This is mainly because you have to not only [[LevelGrinding grind levels]], but also [[ItemFarming items]], seeing as you need to get spheres that fill in empty node. Later, once you unlock clear spheres, you have to clear all nodes that don't offer maximum bonus and re-fill them by above spheres, and reactivate them by everyone. Since clear sphere is accessed by beating second strongest monster from arena, you ''need'' to make a pass on weaker grid before, and seeing a single clear sphere costs '''10000 Gil''', you [[MoneyGrinding need to grind money as well]]. And let's not talk about raising Luck, which you'll need to do too at least a bit if you want to tackle Dark Aeons. The luck spheres are a pain because they're only gained by grinding the Greater Sphere; a horrid superboss with obnoxious defenses and the fortune spheres to activate said nodes come from the Earth Eater superboss. It's telling that some players just learn how to get Yojimbo's affection up very high for a potential Zanmato just to avoid having to deal with them the hard way.
** Heck, even in just regular gameplay, the Sphere grid is one of the most time consuming leveling systems in the Final Fantasy franchise, and can start to get tedious. Every time you earn a handful of sphere levels, its time to enter the menu, manually move your characters around the board, and manually open another menu and select different sphere types to activate the nodes for stat and ability gains. Sphere levels also accumulate at a much faster pace than your typical level up system (especially if you overkill enemies consistently) meaning you'll be stopping to manually level almost constantly. An auto level option might have been a welcome addition.
* The then new innovation of being able to change your party at ANY time, even during battle, was a welcome addition in this game, but the fact that only characters who take an action in battle earn experience means that players who are determined to evenly balance all their characters will have to spend a significantly longer amount of time in every battle constantly switching in every character to make sure they act to share in the exp. The [[LeakedExperience leaked experience]] common in most other Final Fantasy games can be a bit missed after a while.
* The Chocobo Race minigame, required to get Tidus' best weapon. ''No'' player has not raged at the horrible mechanics in this minigame. In the race, one rides a barely-controllable Chocobo and needs to beat the NPC opponent's time in racing - picking up balloons on the track removes 3 seconds off of your time, whereas being hit by seagulls ''who come out of nowhere'' not only adds 3 seconds to your time, but also briefly stuns you, making the actual amount of time lost almost twice that amount. And if the player wants [[InfinityPlusOneSword Tidus' best weapon]]? You need to obtain a time ''below'' 0:00 seconds! Meaning a preferably perfect run of the race, with only picking up balloons and not getting whomped by a seagull.
* Monster Catching. In order to complete the Monster Catching sidequest, the player needs to catch 10 fiends of every area in the game. Problem is that some encounters are so rare, that the player could spend ''hours'' running around and trying to find this rare monster. Tonberries are notorious, as they reside in the hardest area of the entire game and, without weapons that can break the damage cap or summoning Aeons, one is essentially screwed. Worst part is that the player needs to have specific weapons equipped for a character to even be ''able'' to catch a monster and needs to do the last hit for the monster to count as caught.
* Dodging lightning bolts in the Thunder Plains. Getting hit is bad enough, as it throws Tidus back a few paces, and the player can make it through somewhat easily enough by just dodging a few lightning bolts. But if they want [[InfinityPlusOneSword Lulu's crest to power up her best weapon]], the player needs to dodge ''two-hundred'' (200) lightning bolts. ''Consecutively''. The erratic pattern of the lightning bolts makes this obnoxious enough, ''and'' this area has random encounters, so attempting this without a No Encounters weapon is just begging for a hole in the wall. Oh, and don't even think of switching screens, because if you do, your count gets reset and you get to do that whole thing all over again. And no, nothing in the game actually tells you how many bolts you've dodged already.
** When playing this game on a CRT TV, you can reasonably dodge on reaction. On many high definition flatscreens, display lag, while unimportant for most of the game, and possible to work around for Tidus's overdrive (because it's consistent), will really trip you up here, robbing you of a good 5 or more frames to react to the flash. This brings the task from NintendoHard to completely impossible, unless you know about the [[GuideDangIt trick to triggering lightning bolts at will by looping around at one specific location]].
* Blitzball itself. The first half of the game revolves around it and the player is thrown into a tournament game of Blitzball, with no real preparation, except an in-game manual just beforehand, which is a vague description of what goes on. The player is also immediately pitted in a tournament final against the Luca Goers, a team that, stats-wise, is so much better than your team, the [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut Besaid Aurochs]] that winning the game is practically luck-based.[[note]]It's actually not that hard to win if you stall by playing defensively in the first half, abuse Tidus' Jecht Shot, which is effectively unstoppable at this stage of the game, to score enough points early in the second half (you don't get the chance to change Tidus' skill setup before the game starts and have to wait until half-time to swap in Jecht Shot) before he gets forcibly subbed out for the drastically-inferior Wakka and then stall again for the rest of the match, but the first time you play the mechanics can still be hard to grasp- plus it's [[PermanentlyMissableContent possible to miss getting Jecht Shot]] if you screw up the cutscene minigame where you earn it.[[/note]] The only upside is that winning this game is optional, so whether you lose or win makes no difference, except for one minuscule scene. And the game was inevitably soured for most players, especially when one learned that, in order to get Wakka's other [[LimitBreak Overdrives]] or [[InfinityPlusOneSword best weapon]], you have to play ''hours upon hours of Blitzball''.
* Butterfly catching. While not as unforgiving as any of the above, the mechanics behind the game are still not well executed, for lack of better term. First, the lighting of the place makes hard to distinguish blue butterflies, which you must collect, from red ones, which you have to avoid. Second, the butterflies don't produce any shadow, making hard to estimate [[DepthDeception where they are]]. Third, [[FunUnits for whatever reason]], while the butterflies move, ''[[HitboxDissonance the butterfly hitboxes do not]]'', making grabbing/avoiding them even harder. Lastly, when you trigger one of the games, butterflies spawn behind you but they don't materialize until second later or so, including a red one that spawns ''right behind you'', into which you can run even if you remember there is a blue butterfly you need to get. And yes, the whole thing is timed.

* Bribe has a hit rate. It's quite possible in game to bribe a monster with a set amount of money and the bribe simply doesn't take. The money ''is'' memorized for subsequent bribes against same monster, meaning you can just bribe monster repeatedly with 1 gil until it ''will'' accept it, but this means bribing can quickly become a godawful time sink and [[GuideDangIt nothing in the game tells you this]], which means many players will consider that those gils are lost permanently. This is painful considering that in order to farm endgame armor for Dark Aeons and Penance, you're going to need upwards of the hundreds and thousands (396,000 for up to 60 chocobo wings from the Machea fiend) of gil to be able to craft the components multiple times.
* Linking Kimarhi's Blue Magic to his Overdrive has effectively rendered him one of the worst Blue Mages in the entire series as it diminishes the rate you can use it by an almost unreasonable degree, especially if you only have the ''Stoic'' Overdrive charge. It is also pretty hard to get around the fact that he just does not have that many Blue Magic spells he can use, and of those, half are of dubious utility in the mid to late game. Stone Breath, Fire Breath, Aqua Breath and Mighty G can be easily replicated by items and normal spells, and even Nova isn't all that spectacular when put up against Attack Reels and Blitz Ace. Compare this to Quina from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' who has several pages of Blue Magic that can be learned and is cast from his/her MP, making it usable in every battle from start to finish.
* The escape command has a random chance of not working properly, leaving your party members to visibly refuse to obey you before returning back to the fight. During normal gameplay the chances are that you won't even realise this is even a thing let alone have it impact your game as the flee command is obtained early on and is always freely available as it does not use MP. During a no sphere grid run however where you are going to be using the escape command ''a lot'' come the mid-game, and this can easily bring forth a game over. Your only hope is that you have the relevant ''proof'' or ''evade and counter'' ability customised into your armour to survive the attack long enough to try again.

* Lady Luck's Reels abilities are generally quite powerful... provided you don't mess up. In must games, messing up the Slot-like abilities merely waster the user's turn. Here? It hits the entire party with Dud, dropping a washtub on them for a whopping '''''75%''''' of their current HP.

* The means of obtaining Bahamut in this game is one of the stupidest ideas ever conceived. Want to know how you get him as an Esper? You have to defeat an enemy called Deathgaze. Imagine chasing Ultima Weapon around in VII. Now imagine if Ultima Weapon was completely invisible and appeared at a completely random coordinate on the overworld map. It's possible to go through the entire game without ever encountering Deathgaze even once. The only guaranteed way of getting in a fight with Deathgaze is to fly around the map at a slight angle so that the airship is drifting ever so slightly where you'll cover every single coordinate on the map. Not only that. It isn't enough to merely fight Deathgaze and win, as Deathgaze will escape after being attacked a few times, meaning you must do this SEVERAL times, putting in enough damage until it is defeated. Thankfully, the health gauge doesn't replenish once it escapes, so you WILL inevitably kill it if you pursue. Still, it can possibly take HOURS for you to encounter it enough times to kill it.

* Loot drops. By itself, the mechanic isn't bad, but when combined with a weekly lockout for raids, it's a major pain. Said weekly lockouts make it so after you fight the bosses of the most recent patch, you can't get any more loot from them until the weekly global timer resets. If you're really unlucky, you'll probably ''never'' see the piece of gear or token that you need. The weekly look lockouts do eventually get abolished once the gear from those raids are no longer the best ones that can be obtained, but you're still subjected to the whims of the RandomNumberGodon getting specific drops.

* Trusts for the dungeons in ''Shadowbringers'' are good alternative when you either can't get a group going or just want to play alone. Trusts are basically AI controlled party members and each one acts differently from one another. Trusts aren't perfect and have quite a number of shortcomings; trusts don't react as quickly as players, so they will feel slow at times. Trusts also don't output damage as fast or heavy as a typical player, so a dungeon run can take quite a while. If there's a mechanic where you have to stack, you have to move the marker to the trusts since they won't go to you. Trusts can only be used when alone and not with other players. Using trusts also reduces the amount of loot you can get in a dungeon. Lastly, upon completing the main story of ''Shadowbringers'', unique trust allies will no longer be available as party members and the remaining trusts now have to be leveled up in order to be used in higher level dungeons. Be prepared to grind a lot since it can take around four to six runs of the same dungeon just to have a trust level up ''once'' due to the absurd amount of experience required. A later patch would rectify the EXP issue by having trusts gain a lot more than before.

* RageQuit penalties. Anyone that ditches a party on a quest or withdraws after the queue pops will be unable to sign up for anything on the Duty Finder for thirty minutes. While the mechanic helps curb rage quitting ([[AntiRageQuitting which is what it's supposed to do]]), it also punishes players that want to leave due to the party being trolls, players who can't finish the quest, or players who run out of time to complete it. The thirty-minute penalty applies globally, which means that even if you're in a pre-made party with your friends, you can't do a Duty Finder quest until the timer runs out.

* RageQuit penalties. Anyone that ditches a party on a quest will get slapped with a 30 minute timeout, which means that player cannot sign up for any quest on the duty finder until their 30 minutes are up. While the mechanic does help curb rage quitting ([[AntiRageQuitting which is what it was designed to do]]), it also punishes players that want to leave due to the party being trolls or being unable to finish the quest. The 30 minute penalty also applies globally, which means that even if you are in a premade party, you can't do a quest with your friends until the timer runs out.

* Loot drops. By itself, the mechanic isn't bad, but when combined with a weekly lockout for raids, it's a major pain. If you're really unlucky, you'll probably ''never'' see the piece of gear or token that you need. The weekly look lockouts do eventually get abolished once the gear from those raids are no longer the best ones that can be obtained, but you're still subjected to luck's mercy on getting specific drops.

* In pre-''Pixel Remaster'' versions at least, due to how status immunities work (they give immunity to the ''element'' that abilities usually use to inflict said status) enemies that inflict status effects when attacking will still inflict them even if the target is immune. Normally not that problematic, except when facing Pyrolisks ([[TakenForGranite Petrification]]) or Mindflayers ([[OneHitKO Instant Death]]), where the fact that immunities don't protect transcends annoyance into scrappiness.

* StatusEffects being applied on normal enemy physical attacks in ''Pixel Remaster''. In all previous versions enemies only inflict status effects with normal attacks occasionally, so it's possible to deal with even nastier effects, since the chance for enemies to hit the entire party with it are low. Not so much in ''Pixel Remaster'' where, for whatever reason, enemies have near 100% chance to inflict whatever it is they inflict. The result is that enemies that can paralyse/confuse you can ''very'' easily lock you into an inescapable CycleOfHurting, while a simple group of [[DemonicSpiders Cockatrices]] can result in a single-turn TotalPartyKill simply because your evasion isn't high enough to dodge all hits. This essentially turns high defense/low evasion armors into SchmuckBait, since attacks that do 0 damage still inflict status effects.

* Like Charge, most offensive spells have a charge time which makes them similarly (and literally) hit-or-miss. While spells can be targeted at a unit instead of a tile, the AI has a [[SpitefulAI devious tendency]] to send targeted units straight towards your army so that your own units get caught in the blast radius. This ironically makes single-tile spells like Holy and Ultima more useful than [[HerdHittingAttack herd-hitting spells]] because they don't have the risk of collateral damage, even though this artillery-like property is the main reason why spells have a charge up time in the first place.

* Winning fights in the Colosseum is a matter of trying your luck against the AIRoulette. Every fight in the Colosseum is [[DuelBoss a one-on-one fight between one party member of your choice and a monster]]. These fights would be over half as quickly if you could control your character, but you can't. Whichever character you pick also gets controlled by the computer, while you do nothing but sit there and watch. Expect to see characters cast Poisona and Remedy on themselves despite having good status, try to heal themselves at full health, and cast the lowest-level spells on an enemy that has long since passed the threshold for such a thing working. On top of that, some ArtificialStupidity is on display as well -- Terra will enter into Trance and then just stand there, Mog might try to dance even though it will never work, and Sabin might use the Spiraler Blitz technique and instantly die, costing you whatever item you bet through no fault of your own. The Colosseum is the one place where Umaro, normally a TierInducedScrappy, is considered viable, simply because Umaro can at least be trusted to act consistently.[[invoked]]

* The adjustment period when changing jobs in the DS version, which replaces the capacity point system, is no better. It varies in length; as low as two for transitions between jobs of similar specialty, but up to ten if you're switching from a magic-oriented to a physical-oriented job, during which time the character has lowered stats. Combined with the fact that jobs have levels independent of character levels, it rather encourages players to lock into a handful of preferred jobs rather than sink time into experimentation.
* The fact that in the NES version "[[DefendCommand Defend]]" and "Escape" are regular commands that are subject to "no more than 4 commands" limit. This means that certain (mostly magical) jobs are incapable of defending, while some (like Scholar or Bard) are incapable of fleeing the battle should the situation turn sour. The DS version changes this so that every job can defend or flee.
* In the NES version, attempting to flee with anyone but a Thief will cause that character's defense stat to drop all the way down to zero, meaning that if you have every member of your party try to flee while facing four or more enemies, it can very easily result in a TotalPartyKill. The DS version got rid of this mechanic, mercifully.

* The process to obtain the best armor in the game (or, in the DS version, continue one of the game's most amusing added sidequests) combines all the most loathed mechanics in the game - you need to get a Pink Tail, a 1/64 rare drop from the equally rare Flan Princess, found in the very last dungeon of the game. And you're never given the means to defend more than one or two of your party members from the all-party Berserk spell Flan Princesses cast as soon as you encounter them. The only way to speed up the grind is... with another 1/64 rare drop. Even the most ardent fans of ''FFIV'''s (otherwise rock-solid) battle mechanics find this quest too tedious to bother with.

* To some extent, the ban on item usage in hard mode. It increases difficulty for a certainty, but when starting on a NewGamePlus, results in an entire inventory of [[UselessItem useless items]].