There’s a special battle in Final Fantasy Tactics that’s been punishing unsuspecting players for generations. Thanks to The Ivalice Chronicles remaster, fresh recruits can witness the joy and terror of randomly getting jumped by 11 monks in one of the strategy RPG’s lesser-known endgame challenges.
Every spot on the map in Final Fantasy Tactics comes with an array of random encounters the game can pull from depending on which side you enter from and how far along you are in the story. Once you hit Chapter 4, the game’s “rare” random encounters become accessible. These special battles are weird, hard, and memorable. None more so than the 11-Monk brawl on Grogh Heights (known in the original PS1 version as Grog Hill). They hit hard and have great range thanks to the Monk’s versatile Martial Arts abilities. God help you if you accidentally drop into the battle while trying to train your squad up on weaker jobs they don’t have many abilities for.
Fans on the Final Fantasy Tactics subreddit have been posting about these Monks for years. Every so often, someone new to the game takes a photo, uploads it in a thread, and writes something to the effect of “WTF?” Community hero Kronikle has been cataloging every instance and posting each of them under every new thread. This happened again over the weekend.
“Homie really pulled up with the receipts,” wrote one fan in response. “Dude replies this every time and adds to it. It’s my most favorite thing ever on this subreddit,” wrote another. A third chimed in, “gotta respect the dedication.”
While the Monks are arguably the game’s most absurd rare battle, there’s close to a dozen others scattered across the map, each with a chance of occurring when you walk to that specific point from the right direction. A small army of Calculators can spawn at Lenalia Plateau, Yuguo Woods can spawn seven Samurai, and Germinas Peak can spawn a group of Chemists and Orators with powerful guns worth stealing. Certain rare monsters like Tiamats can only spawn in the Bariaus Valley rare battle.
Some players seek these fights out in order to farm abilities off the crystals the enemies drop. Others just like the added challenge and variety. Most story battles in Final Fantasy Tactics only draw from a very limited pool of Jobs, making the rare battles extra fun. Fortunately, with the Enhanced mode’s ability to retry and flee battles, you’ll never have to worry about seeing hours of progress get wiped out this way.