History YMMV / FinalFantasyRecordKeeper

** Cyan, who can use the same equipment and abilities as Sephiroth, but who is just vastly inferior to him when it comes to stats (not to mention Sephiroth's regular Soul Break is leagues better than Cyan's, and he is able to use some Black Magic to boot). Both share the same problem though: Katanas weapons are very hard to come by, so unless you managed to get your hands on one or on a 4 or 5 stars dagger, you are probably better off using other characters.

** The Retaliate ability comes to mind. The user will cancel and counterattack every physical attack directed at him while the ability is active. However, it is possible to attack your character with your own party members, making the Retaliate user counterattacks the enemy instead of your own characters. Not only does Retaliate deal good damages, but characters who would otherwise just sit and wait until they are needed (such as your dedicated white magic user) can now make themselves useful by activating Retaliate. And if you use Double Cut on the Retaliate user, he will counterattack twice. Teams composed of one Retaliate user and 4 other characters wielding honed Double Cut abilities is very effective. The icing on the cake? Retaliate won't trigger enemies' counterattacks.

** In the Final Fantasy VIII event, Forbidden. Likely the first time newer players will encounter Instant Kill moves, and they got a few other annoying Status Effects too.

** In the Final Fantasy VIII event, Forbidden. Likely the first time newer players will encounter Instant Kill moves, and they got a few other annoying Status Effects too.

** Final Fantasy XIII: Eidolons. They cast Doom on your whole party at the beginning of the fight, making them [[TimeLimitBoss time-limit bosses]], and don't have any weakness to exploit. You better pray that you will be able to kill them in time. Odin in particular can be vicious, since he can cast Ullr's Shield, boosting his defense. On the upside, they tend to do a lot of physical attacks in the same turn, making Retaliate a very good option against them if they happen to strike the user.

** North Mountain (Elite) - Final Fantasy V: Magissa and Forza hit hard, and the conditions for mastering their fight involve silencing the former and putting to sleep the latter.
** Imperial Camp (Elite) - Final Fantasy VI: You are against 3 Magitek Armors, which can use an attack which can easily deals over 1200 damages to one character. Without using synergy and some key abilities (such as Thundara, Thundaga, Thunder Strike, Power Break, Blind strike, and eventually Aerith's 'Seal Evil' Soul Break which can inflict stop on them), your team can be obliterated very quickly.
** To slay a sorceress (Event) - Final Fantasy VIII: In the Elite version, the Archaeosaur is an insane damage sponge (over 150'000 HP). You'd better pray that Poison and Blind stick, and pack a lot of Blizzard-related abilities. Seifer is arguably worse, since he doesn't share Archaeosaur's weaknesses, and has a very high defense (though he is susceptible to Slow, and while you can't Poison him, he has a weakness to poison damage). And then you have both Iguions, who can use Magma Breath, an attack able to petrify your whole party in one go if you are unlucky, leading to a game over. Thus, you need to bring a character equipped with a honed Stona and the accessory preventing petrification. The worst part? You need to fight Iguions, Seifer and Edea all in a row. If you ever manage to reach Edea, your party will be severily exhausted, with little to no abilities left to use. Bluntly put, if you don't spend Mythril to regenerate your team and refresh your abilities, it is impossible to win those fights.
** Balamb Garden 2 - Final Fantasy VIII: Diabolos. He spams Graviga, which practically guarantees that the damage taken score requirement tanks. The move itself puts everyone at low-health and are in danger of being one-shotted; the only saving grace is that Gravity itself can't kill you, and that Diabolos can be blinded (getting that status effect to stick is key to survive this encounter). Additionally, if you expect to get anything more than novice, you'll need wind skills, which are hard to come by.

** Diabolos in the FFVIII dungeons. He spams Graviga, which practically guarantees that the damage taken score requirement tanks. The move itself puts everyone at low-health and are in danger of being one-shotted; the only saving grace is that Gravity itself can't kill you. Additionally, if you expect to get anything more than novice, you'll need wind skills, which are hard to come by.

** The Retaliate ability comes to mind. The user will cancel and counterattack every physical attack directed at him while the ability is active. However, it is possible to attack your character with your own party members, making the Retaliate user counterattacks the enemy instead of your own characters. Not only does Retaliate deal good damages, but characters who would otherwise just sit and wait until they are needed (such as your dedicated white magic user) can now make themselves useful by activating Retaliate. The icing on the cake? Retaliate won't trigger enemies' counterattacks.

** In Final Fantasy VI dungeons, Onion Knights. They can counterattack with the Self-Destruct move, inflicting damage proportional to their remaining HP. They are among the first enemies of the game whose role is to stop the player from simply toggling auto-combat and forget their device.
*** Though it can also work in your favor if you didn't quite kill them in one hit, dealing pitiful damage and saving you from having to use another action to finish them off.
** In the Final Fantasy VIII event, Forbidden. Likely the first time newer players will enounter Instant Kill moves, and they got a few other annoying Status Effects too.

** In Final Fantasy VI dungeons, Onion Knights. They can counterattack with the Self-Destruct move, inflicting damages proportional to their remaining HP. They are among the first enemies of the game whose role is to stop the player from simply toggling auto-combat and forget their device.

** The synergy system itself is a rather clever and interesting use of characters and equipment, allowing the player to make use of stuff which would be otherwise completly useless. However, when you are unable to use it because there is simply no equipment available to exploit for some titles, you may find some elite and event dungeons very difficult (or impossible) to defeat. That is the case, for example, for FFVIII and FFXIII, which had absolutly no random weapon or armor drop available when their dungeons were released. Some 4 and 5 stars equipment were added, but you would have to be lucky with the gatcha.

** Imperial Camp (Elite) - Final Fantasy VI: You are against 3 Magitek Armors, which can use an attack which can easily deals over 1200 damages to one character. Without using synergy and some key abilities (such as Thundara, Thundaga, Thunder Strike, Power Break, Blind strike, and eventually Aerith's 'Seal Evil' Soul Break which can inflict stop on them), your team will be obliterated very quickly.
** To slay a sorceress (Event) - Final Fantasy VIII: In the Elite version, the Archaeosaur is an insane damage sponge (over 150 000 HP). You'd better pray that Poison and Blind stick, and pack a lot of Blizzard-related abilities. Seifer is arguably worse, since he doesn't share Archaeosaur's weaknesses, and has a very high defense (though he is susceptible to Slow, and while you can't Poison him, he has a weakness to poison damages). And then you have both Iguions, who can use Magma Breath, an attack able to petrify your whole party in one go if you are unlucky, leading to a game over. Thus, you need to bring a character equipped with a honed Stona and the accessory preventing petrification. The worst part? You need to fight Iguions, Seifer and Edea all in a row. If you ever manage to reach Edea, your party will be severily exhausted, with little to no abilities left to use. Bluntly put, if you don't spend Mythril to regenerate your team and refresh your abilities, it is impossible to win those fights.

** Heroic difficulty daily dungeons, which were meant for characters who broke the level 50 limit, something not yet possible in the english version of the game. They are still doable with a fully leveled to 50 team, but expect some hard encounters. As for the Glade of Wisdom (Sunday's Exp Gungeon), it is very difficult to master it with low level characters, characters already 50 won't gain any exp, and it is the only dungeon of the game where you can't benefit from synergy.
** The "''To slay a sorceress''" Final Fantasy VIII Event. While the Classic version of the event is manageable, the Elite version gets very quickly insanely hard, with bosses with insane defense and tons of HP (the Archaeosaur alone has around 150 000 HP), and the final battle pins you against 3 boss battles in a row (Iguion, Seifer and Edea). The event was released in the west way sooner than in Japan, without its difficulty being scaled down, resulting in a challenge that most players found absolutly impossible to beat since there was next to no Final Fantasy VIII equipment to exploit for synergy, not to mention the Friend and Materia system weren't implanted yet.

** Page 64 in the Final Fantasy V Elite dungeon Library of the Ancient: they can cast [[OneHitKill Level 5 Death]]. Considering most players will have a couple of characters (if not all characters) at level 50 when attempting that dungeon...

** The most criticized aspect of the game is the slow user interface, which becomes bothersome when scrolling through equipment lists. Or any other list, for that matter. Depending on which device you are using, this aspect can be just midly annoying to make the game barely playable. Any collection event becomes especially tedious because of this, since the player has to buy items one by one.

** The most criticized aspect of the game is the slow user interface, which becomes bothersome when scrolling through equipment lists. Or any other list, for that matter. Depending on which device you are using, this aspect can be just midly annoying to make the game barely playable.

** Coeurls in Final Fantasy IV dungeons, who can counterattack with Blaster, paralysing a character at best, outright killing it at worst.

* ThatOneLevel: The "''To slay a sorceress''" Final Fantasy VIII Event. While the Classic version of the event is manageable, the Elite version gets very quickly insanely hard, with bosses with insane defense and tons of HP (the Archaeosaur alone has around 150 000 HP), and the final battle pins you against 3 boss battles in a row (Iguion, Seifer and Edea). The event was released in the west way sooner than in Japan, without its difficulty being scaled down, resulting in a challenge that most players found absolutly impossible to beat since there was next to no Final Fantasy VIII equipment to exploit for synergy, not to mention the Friend and Materia system weren't implanted yet.

* ThatOneLevel: The "''To slay a sorceress''" Final Fantasy VIII Event. While the Classic version of the event is manageable, the Elite version gets very quickly insanely hard, with bosses with insane defense and tons of HP (the Archaeosaur alone has around 150 000 HP), and the final battle pins you against 3 boss battles in a row (Iguion, Seifer and Edea). The event was released in the west way sooner than in Japan, without its difficulty being scaled down, resulting in a challenge than most players found absolutly impossible to beat since there was next to no Final Fantasy VIII equipment to exploit for synergy, not to mention the Friend and Materia system weren't implanted yet.

** To slay a sorceress (Event) - Final Fantasy VIII: In the Elite version, the Archaeosaur is an insane damage sponge (over 150 000 HP). You'd better pray that Poison and Blind stick, and pack a lot of Blizzard-related abilities. Seifer is arguably worse, since he doesn't share Archaeosaur's weaknesses, and has a very high defense (though he is susceptible to Slow, and while you can't Poison him, he has a weakness to poison damages).
* ThatOneLevel: The "''To slay a sorceress''" Final Fantasy VIII Event. While the Classic version of the event is manageable, the Elite version gets very quickly insanely hard, with bosses with insane defense and tons of HP (the Archaeosaur alone has around 150 000 HP). The event was released in the west way sooner than in Japan, without its difficulty being scaled down, resulting in a challenge than most players found absolutly impossible to beat since there was next to no Final Fantasy VIII equipment to exploit for synergy, not to mention the Friend and Materia system weren't implanted yet.

* ThatOneLevel: The "''To slay a sorceress''" FF8 Event. While the Classic version of the event is manageable, the Elite version gets very quickly insanely hard, with bosses with insane defense and tons of HP (the Archaeosaur alone has around 150 000 HP). The event was released in the west way sooner than in Japan, without its difficulty being scaled down, resulting in a challenge than most players found absolutly impossible to beat since there was no FF8 equipment to exploit for synergy, not to mention the Friend and Materia system weren't implanted yet.

* ScrappyMechanic: The most criticized aspect of the game is the slow user interface, which becomes bothersome when scrolling through equipment lists. Or any other list, for that matter.
* TierInducedScrappy: The 'Core' characters are seen as vastly inferior to their named character counterparts, with only a few, if any, being worth using.