Final Fantasy✅ has been around for 30 years now, dominating the JRPG market with compelling stories, engaging gameplay and pushing the boundaries of the systems they released on. With 15 main numbered releases, several sequels and spin-offs including side franchises that share the name, there 🅘are bound to be a couple horribly designed dungeons here and there. From the hallways and backtracking of 13, labyrinthine floors and doors from 1-3 and difficult hunts and bosses guarding them all.
As the years have passed, the difficulty curve✅ has never stayed the same, from starting dungeons being what players stop playing over due to the amount♊ of deaths or complexity of their design. Earlier entries into the franchise had hidden walls that were otherwise impossible to notice, against newer releases where “hidden” just means there is a crack in the wall or an orb to touch.
Whether you are a fan or not, there will be at least one dungeon on this list you recognise and have that feeling of worry if you had saved before entering. Get your save crystals ready, potions stocked up to 99 and several saves before entering and after ܫas we delve deep into these 15 of the worst dungeons in the Final Fantasy Franchise.
15 FFV🥃III – D-District Prison ♔
There are plenty of games that start you off in prisons or you might find yourself thrown into them during the course of the game, FFVIII is no different. Continuing after th🌸e ending cutscene of Disk 1, our party awaken within a prison situated in the middle of a desert, our gear taken away, magic nullified by a magical barrier and having to rely on Zell, the bare-knuckle boxer of this game, 𝄹to protect us.
Dropping a party of three to just one can be a heavy handicap, especially if you’ve not followed the Junction system of VIII. My first playthrough of VIII had m🔜e dying at the prison over and over again as I did not foresee ꦕthis dungeon. You eventually meet back up with your main man Squall, get your gear back and escape, but being confined to the prison can make the grind for magic and AP a hard task.
14 FFVII – The Temple of ♏the Ancients 🌟
One of the very first labyrinths players will find in the series, FFVII being one of the most popular, The Temple of the Ancients dungeon will have our party jump into and seemingly trapped within something that may have been considered for the film Labyrinth. Hard⛦er enemies, few save points with little to no rest in sight, The Temple of the Ancients brings with it a difficulty spike that many were not exp✃ecting.
Besides its design being somewhat confusing, The Temple has🌱 plenty of chests hidden around that you will want to collect, forcing more random battles on you, which include Toxic Frogs and surprise battles with ancient dragons. If you haven’t been grinding along the way or improving your equipment, then The Temple can be what drives you to stop playing. The bosses Red Dragon and Demons Gate are also infamous for their strength in battle at this part in the game.
13 FFXIII 𝔉– Taejin’s Tower
Many people weren't pleased with Final Fantasy XIII and 🍰its linearity, when in fact a lot of previous games had linear segments. However, the linearity does help to cut down on the complexity and annoyances found within its earlier dungeon designs and missable items. This is thrown out the window when you hit Gran Pulse, however, with large landscapes, backtracking and hidden items galore.
The worst dungeon that I played through in this area goes to Taejin’s Tower, as not only does it have 10 different areas to explore, but each is filled with enemies to fight through and refight due to backtracking. There are also several statues within the tower which give the party quests, mostly to kill mo🌄nsters, that will allow the party to climb higher up the tower, but due to its design, you will be doing a lot of backtracking and wasting your time.
12 FFX – All Cloister of Tr༒ials (Mostly Bevelle) 🦩
Final Fantasy X is praised by many as the best in the series, while others wince at its mention, with memories of the “laughing scene.” Combining with its new levelling system of the Sphere Grid, FFX included more “puzzles” and “trials” in the form of Cloister of Trials, a set of rooms that cha🍨llenge the party through battles and puzzles/riddles. Slowing down gameplay with rather dumb conundrums.
The majority of the puzzles involve you picking up an orb and proceeding to place it into a wall or pedestal, then moving the pedestal around until it slots into place. It doesn’t take a genius to figure these out, but the difficulty, rather annoyance, amplifies tenfold when you reach Bevelle. In Bevelle’s trials, you are given a multi-tiered dungeon, moving plaওtforms, Cross and T-junctions to decide your direction and, to top it off, tons of backtracking. It wouldn’t be so bad if you could carry more than one orb at a time, but no, you have to wait as the slow moving platforms cart you to your desired destination.
11 FF𝄹I – Chaos Shrine (Temple of Fiends)
Game design only starts to feel lazy when you have to redo an action or fight a boss with higher stats, and Final Fantasy I got hella l🍎azy at the end. Returning to the first ever dungeon in the game, you will travel back in time to stop the chaos from ever beginning, but the past is full of difficulty enemies and long dungeons.
The Chaos Shrine has you fight: Lich, Marilith, Kraken, Tiamat and Chaos. Each bossღ comes from the separate shrines and appear in much stronger forms, except for Chaos. To top it off, there are eight floors full of enemies, chests to find and no place to rest. While it does allow you to exit if need be, the dungeon will wipe out a lot of supplies just getting to the final floor to fight the end boss, which requires all the resources possible.
10 ꦆ FFIII – Any Dungeon That Forces You to be 🍸Mini (Nepto Temple)
The Job System; how it is loved by many and hated by few, as allowing any player to be anything at any time sounds great... until you have to grind out their Job Level to be of any use. Final Fantasy III was the first true FF to have the job system and as such had many flaws, one being the need for certain Job specific spells to even enter dungeons. The worst of all of🌌 these is the need for the spell Mini, which shrinks one or all of your party to diminutive sizes, along with their defence and offence.
Besides having a dedicated White Magic user to even cast t🃏he spell, you will be wasting at least t🍌wo spell slots to cast it, more if you didn’t know the rest of the party needed to be mini too. The Nepto Temple is the worst of all, as it forces you to be Mini for the majority of it, including fighting a “Giant Rat.” When Mini, you will deal pretty much one damage for your melee team, along with them taking major damage from melee attacks, forcing you to rely on magic users, and if you haven’t levelled up all characters in a spell casting Job, then they will pretty much be useless cannon fodder.
9 FFIX – Oe꧃ilvert 🙈
Magic is always powerful in Final Fantasy Games, only outclassed by Ultimate weapons and unarmed attackers in earlier releases. So when a dungeon is presented to you that disallows magic use, well there goes your main damage if you’ve designed your team in that way. At some point in Final Fantasy IX,💙 you are asked to divide up your party to go to both Oeilvert and Desert Palace. Oeilvert has an Anti-🐲magic barrier, stopping White/Black/Blue/Sword Magic and summoning, forcing you to pick Zidane, Steiner, Freya and Amarant as the “best party.”
While the game does supply non-magic users, a lot of players become item hoarders or rely on magic intens𓃲ely for buffing spells and healing. Taking that away will leave the party feeling weaker, elongating battles and generally taking away from the customisation that players put into their team set-ups. Not to mention that players will always have favourites among the party, meaning other characters might be under-equipped with lesser weapons or fewer abilities. Oeilvert does contain a Moogle shop, but it doesn’t fill the void of the shops you’ve passed up till now.
8 ꧑ FFI – Cavern of Earth (Earth Cave) 🌳
The random battle, a lovely system that allows players to grind XP and Gil to their hearts content. Often bypassed by running away, riding chocobos or items, random battles can be avoided. However, when you’re in a dungeon an🌺d every step is a random battle, it becomes a nightmare. There are five floors to this dungeons with optional paths and rooms for chests, however some contain extremely high spawn rates on random battles, including Hill Gigas and Lizards.
Being one of the first releases in the Final Fantasy series, this game was never really designed♓ to be easy, forcing the player to grind for many of its bosses and dungeons or feel the wrath of the foes within. The Cavern of Earth looks unassuming, but many players have flashbacks to all the Gigas they faced within its depths. If the danger rooms weren’t enough, just walking around the dungeon will cause countless battles, both slowing down progression and annoying players.
7 FFXII – The Great Cryst🐬al
With the evolution of technology, 3D worlds and better save systems, the maps and dungeons of Final Fantasy have become larger, more complex and labyrinthine. Thankfully after IX, the games had some form𒊎 of map for its interior locations, along with world maps. What happens when a map is more of a concept piece with no real information… The Great Crystal.
The Great Crystal dungeon 🥂is full of several levels, path𝕴s and locked passages, unlocked through the use of stones dotted around the map. The downside to this puzzle is that once touched, the player has a time limit to go through and remove the gate itself. Add in battles and the map being confusing to start, and The Great Crystal will become quite annoying for fans with no real way to know where they are travelling. Included in these timed passageways are hidden enemies and a super boss, adding to the confusion on direction.
6 ꦡ FFX-2 – Via Infinito
Whilst an optional dungeon, Via Infinito is required for 100% completion in Final Fantasy X-2. In this dungeon, you need to fight through 100 floors filled with stronger enemies and five bosses, including a super boss. You can leave at every floor, save your progress and retur🍨n from the deepest part you’ve traversed, which does take away from some of the pain.
Random dungeon designs, Tonberries and increasing difficulty will put off quite a few players to even getting past floor 40 of Via Infinito. Besides the time required to complete the dungeon in its fullest, the varied strategies required for the bosses w🗹ill either force players to learn all the different dress spheres or stick to a boring overpowered one. Enemies swarm the dungeon with no way of avoidance, besides the wandering fiends. The woꦰrst part is you don’t need to 100% the dungeon to gain 100% completion in the game, you just need to fight the bosses, making the trudge through the floors to get to these feel pointless.