Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - Trial Mode Stage 100

Fight with the five Judge Magisters at the end of the Trial Mode in FFXII - The Zodiac Age.
To make this more interesting to watch (and to prove a point) I neglected using Reverse, Wither, Nihopalaoa, invisible weapons or any fixed damage attacks.
This fight is all about knowing your enemy. I start the fight by inflicting Silence on Zargabaath to prevent him from using Bravery and Berserk, and I also sleep him to take him out for a while. At the same time I have Basch attack Drace and Bergan with the Karkata as they are both vulnerable to Confuse. They hit themselves out of it soon enough, but it stalls their setup for a bit.
By far the most dangerous of the judges is Judge Ghis. He is capable of dispelling, debilitating and inflicting major magic damage on your party. The fight is twice as hard with him standing. Fortunately he has by far the lowest HP of all judges, so focus attacks on him and he's gone quickly. He uses Elixirs on himself at low HP which you can prevent by inflicting Disease on him, as I did, though it wasn't necessary in the end.
Judge Drace was my next target. She uses Hastega, Protectga and Shellga until all judges are buffed and then attacks with Shock. Through periodic Dispelgas you can keep her busy the entire time. As for taking her out, unfortunately she's in a healing pact with Gabranth and Zargabaath - she will heal them with Elixirs and get healed by them in return, practically forcing you to use Disease to prevent them from doing so. Her HP isn't too high so she will fall soon. You could also try inflicting Immobilize on her and fight on the other end of the arena to essentially take her out of the fight, but it's more trouble than it's worth.
After that, it's time to take out Bergan. He has a ton of HP but is never healed by anyone so any damage inflicted on him is definitive. By this point with Ghis and Drace gone and Zargabaath silenced the fight is pretty easily manageable.
After Bergan falls it's time to tackle Gabranth and Zargabaath. They throw Elixirs at each other and are immune to Disease, however, Zargabaath is vulnerable to Sleep for a very good reason. As long as you keep him in Sleep, you can take out Gabranth. Gabranth uses Enrage at low HP and may end up comboing any one of you to death but so long as you keep up your healing you shouldn't have any more trouble at this point.
After Gabranth, Zargabaath can be solo'd by anyone. No more danger now.
One of the most troublesome parts of this fight is the number of accessories you might want to use. Ghis can use Curse which inflicts Confuse, Poison and Disease so you want Ribbons to block that. But the judges all block attacks like crazy so you want to use Cameo Belts. But for defense you want to have Bubble Belts on anyone you use Arise on. It's a bit hard to manage if you get overwhelmed, which is another reason to take out Ghis as soon as possible.
If you Wither down Bergan and Gabranth the fight becomes much easier. Likewise, while Ghis uses Reverse on you offensively and then cripples you with Elixirs as the other judges finish you off with Potions, using it yourself as soon as Ghis is out of the picture makes the fight quite easy. And of course Dark Energy and Dark Matter are such stupidly powerful items you can pretty much beat this whole fight by spamming them quickly. There are a number of ways to cheese this fight, so if you just want the Platinum Trophy it shouldn't be a problem. I do like this fight a lot though so I went with a less conventional strategy.
Hope you enjoy it~

[@misterpayah7723]

I love how you have all these cool-sounding names like Circle of Judgment and Greater Barrier, and then suddenly "Judge Bergan readies KICK".

[@Hierotubas]

I got goosebumps when seeing all 5 judges walking towards the party at the beginning of the video. ....it's so cool.

[@jakedge3]

The ultimate "THERE IS NO MEME, DIE!" moment in final fantasy history.

[@raevethemaeve6679]

Something like that in the story would have been sweet

[@musicloverfromA45]

Got to love that this fight forces you to use disease, for probably the first and only time in the game.

[@yeahyeahyeah688]

Why

[@apocratos0174]

To prevent the heals Otherwise the fight would take longer

[@nickllama5296]

Damn, congrats man. That was the most strategic battle I think I've ever seen in FF history. I finally managed to get them whittled down with a bunch of Gendarme-equipped characters (and 2 Khumba and a Seitengrat), together with a truckload of whithers and exposes, but you doing it without any of those items or Techniks is just stunning. I did steal your "put Zaargabath to sleep" tactic, because he and Gabrant were just driving me insane.How did you find out about all these weaknesses? Just through trial and error? I would have loved to do this battle over and over until I figured out a strategy like this, but the fact that you have to spend an hour and a half just to get to it (and have to slog through some realllllly irritating battles to do so)... blegh. The whole "so and so is now immune to damage" is the cheapest and laziest dev cheat ever imagined. It amazes me that Dev that use that cheap crap are able to come up with a battle like this that's just like a grand puzzle. It shows they CAN do it, so why they resort to cheap BS is beyond me. In any case, off my soap box, congrats on this incredible win. It was amazing to watch! :)

[@eloymm9089]

Thank you very much for the strategy, I beat this battle thanks to you.

[@adam622500]

Thanks to proove to the world that the High Juges can be defeated without Seitengrat and Dark Matter, Niho paloa ect ect

[@LittleMopeHead]

This strategy is what I need. I've gone through all the trials without Summons, Quickenings, Seitengrat, Gendarme, Nihopaoloa, Megalixers, etc. Straight surviving. Down to 30 Phoenix Downs at this level. Wish me luck!

[@TAEON_BR]

But he uses debuffs. It's not different to use Nihopaloa and Remedy...

[@Yokai_Yuri]

It can be done, but it requires you to know what the enemy does and what is your equipment. Can't expect to come here with underleveled units or with a "favorite team comp"

[@ego2133]

Well, you made it look pretty easy.

[@thestarjammer]

Great video. I just beat the trial thanks to your help. Unfortunately, I didn't have the Karkata, but was able to cast confuse on Bergan and Drace. But the biggest impact this video had was teaching me that you can rez and cure people off screen. That 100% swung the odds in my favour in a very close and nail-biting contest.

[@thestarjammer]

I should add, I did not have Nihalopaloa, but was lucky to be able to steal Bonebreaker from Trial 99, which casts disease on attack.

[@kendavis6826]

I beat the game and all the super bosses on active mode for more of a challenge, but this fight I swear you HAVE use wait mode.

[@drmanhattan8599]

I was looking for this comment. Haha so true

[@nesoukkefka1741]

By far my favorite fight in the entire series if you don't use OP method such as Invisible weapons, full power Zeromus or Dark Energy spam (I don't consider Dark Matter nearly as OP because at least for Dark Matter you to build it prior to this fight to do Full Damage and it's only one time so you can't spam it), I also don't use Wither cause I think Boss should be immune to it. But I really like how well design this fight is, I like the fact that statut effect are usefull for once, I like how they aren't HP sponge and they actually have a well build team, I really wish Square make more boss fight like this. I also realise that Zargabaath's regular attack can be blocked I wonder if Bergan's and Gabranth's one can be to would make Main Gauche + Zodiac Escutchon worth it with Decoy.

[@chocochipt260g2]

Just like baldur gate real time pause battle system is the true shiny gems in modern game industry which make the player to put afford in macro and mirco management While most of the game focus on turn base or action

[@LUDKR1]

That's why FFXII is my favorite, the battle and gambit system are just so well thought 🙂

[@yonda9E]

I just defeated the judges for the first time today and it took me over 2 hours and you just steamroll them in under 10 minutes. Nice

[@Karifean]

yonda9E dw, it took me around 2 hours the first time as well =P

[@yonda9E]

Karifean Good to hear :D They just ravaged me when they were ganging up on me as a 5 man squad. Took me forever to to get rid off the first one because I was so busy with healing. After that I thought it would get easier but they were still shanking me big time. And dumb me didnt notice its possible to disease ghis for a loooong time for whatever reason so I probably tried to kill him alone for an hour. Wither probably would have helped me out with gabranth but I couldnt come up with that idea during the fight either so he kept ragdolling me the entire time. Still had some minor issues with the last 2 when zargabaath kept waking up and healing gabranth but in the end I managed to overpower them. Yeah it was quite a ride to say the least and now after watching a few videos on this bossfight i realize how inefficient my whole setup was :D You are always smarter afterwards i guess

[@netduo8938]

This fight made me appreciate cameo belt and karkata. I wish Square used the Esper fight BGM here to make it epic!

[@spike007980]

Using some of the micromanaging of sleeping and silencing Zargabaath, and whacking the crap outta ghis and drace, and spamming a few zeromus big bangs, i emerged victorious :D i also burnt up like every single f***ing phoenix down i had ahahaha i gots a platinum though. thanks for this

[@Centrioless]

By far, the most complex superboss in this franchise (outside of the mmo).

[@spyder2238]

And here I am struggling past 59.....Jesus Christ this is going to be fun of and when I get to 100

[@lanegunnell1218]

Really awesome strat! I miss when Final Fantasy had deep battle systems. Really made for some epic superboss battles and all sorts of fun combinations. Unfortunately the series has been dummied down for the masses and will never return to its more strategic-turn-based roots.

[@jonasfadi8213]

You're just mad and that's it

[@syedtcb]

Hey there! I just beat Trial 100. Then I got the congratulations screen and then went to the title screen. After that I loaded the last saved trial mode.....and now I can't see the Imperator Trophy! Almost as if I didn't even do the trial mode! Help!

[@judgegabranth2188]

Now that excalibur + white robes is possible, the knight could even become the best overall attacker. Great video!

[@blackwidow7804]

It is. Knight/Bushi = overkill.

[@nesoukkefka1741]

Actually I use it during this fight and it wasn't as strong as I thought it would it barely does as much Damage as Zodiac Spear so I end up using Masamune I for the combo, on the rest of the game especially in post-game dungeon fill with Holy-weak ennemies yes it's extremely usefull.

[@blackwidow7804]

Excalibur + White Robes is much stronger then Zodiac Spear even on foes that are not weak against Holy.

[@nesoukkefka1741]

Didn't seem to be that much of a difference on the Judges but I didn't really pay attention as I quickly trade it up for Masamune I for comboing.

[@blackwidow7804]

Maybe they have 50% resist to Holy who knows.

[@MASDesigns_]

I’m trying to beat these Judges as well. They are tough! Last thing left for me to accomplish in this game. My favorite FF of them all!!!

[@xStokaa]

You cake walked through this haha.

[@CaptainChubbyDuck]

Im not sure if I have bad gear or so but every judge keeps two shotting me, I never have time to debuff or dispel them :( Ill defo try with the indigo pendant like you use here. I also notice you have on white mage constantly casting curaja, is that the way to go? Like Ive tried to buff my party again and again but Ghis just dispels us....So whats the priority here? Thanks

[@Karifean]

Ghis cuts into your rhythm the most with his Dispelga and Curse especially, so you want him taken out very very fast. I'd say priority is Silence on Zargabaath (really just Niho+Remedy him instantly at the start to land Sleep on him as well), put up Protectga and then heal with your White Mage. If you see Dispelga being cast, quickly switch your accessories to Bubble Belt while it's going off so you at least keep the Bubble buff, and then switch back to other accessories; then switch your Knight/Samurai to the Karkata sword and Cameo Belt accessory and attack Drace and Bergan once each to put them in Confusion; this stalls them out while you get your other buffs back up. If you want to keep the two of them confused for longer you need to watch carefully as if they hit themselves, or if another Judge counterattacks them, their Confusion is gone. If you're still taking too much heat even with that you can also Sleep Zargabaath (again) which leaves _only_ Gabranth and Ghis (while he lives) as actual threats. Also if you see Drace casting Shock, you can throw a Dispelga to get her back into her loop of casting all the buffs.

[@msvelvetcrowe]

Ribbons help too since they negate status effects

[@davidcassels7312]

Not using the big Esper to constantly use his super techniques. This battle is insane. 2 and half hours first time . Lol

[@magicalduckye2356]

Ok, I don't know if your still responding to this video, but I have a save at the 5 judges... I followed your guide as closely as I could but couldn't follow threw as I didn't have enough DPS to burn down Ghis, is there a way to do it at my party's levels of 65's and 64's using any items at all? Use my 4 Dark Matters maybe?

[@Karifean]

Focus on surviving more than DPS. Your levels shouldn't matter. You can put Ghis in Disease earlier than I did. Definitely don't forget to silence Zargabaath, and if you get overwhelmed you can fixate more on keeping Drace and Bergan confused and Zargabaath slept; Ghis and Gabranth shouldn't be remotely able to take you down by themselves, especially if you also put Slow on Gabranth.

[@magicalduckye2356]

@@Karifean True, but when ever I try to do anything, its like I can't, Do any of them remove status ailments and is there anyway to occupy Ghis to strike him down or do I just have to burst hin down while Zargabaath is asleep and I'm spamming Despellga to occupy Drace? Also good to know that Slow works on at least one of them!

[@Karifean]

@@magicalduckye2356 Just keep one of your attackers on Ghis, put him in Disease and he'll go down soon enough. No you cannot keep him occupied, but while his spells are powerful (ironically especially that goddamn Dispelga) they are still manageable. They don't remove any ailments explicitly, only Slow gets overwritten by Drace's Hastega casts.

[@magicalduckye2356]

@@Karifean Good to know, Gonna have to kill Ghis then burn down Drake to win then Disease should work well and gonna have to have two healers because of level differences... Oh boy. At least I have a strat! Thanks!

[@magicalduckye2356]

@@Karifean Oh, and just curious, what gear do you recommend for folks?

[@taroupriapusxp4624]

This fight is NOWHERE CLOSE to omega mark or yiazmat in the original ps2 game

[@HellBlade-od2mf]

Question, can u conclude that this is the hardest boss in the ent- oh wait I meant to says BOSSES in the Final fantasy seris?

[@Karifean]

They're definitely up there, but I'd give that title to Major Numerus from X-2 HD still. As you can see, I beat the Judges here without leveling to max, I just did all sidequests and got Order of Ambrosia and didn't farm anything extra like additional suits of best armor, and I still beat them without cheese strategies. Try that against Major Numerus and it's not gonna go well. Though admittedly, X-2 is so stupidly easy to cheese that I have to restrict usage of a lot of basic shit to even be able to say that.

[@HellBlade-od2mf]

Acturally now that I think about it, if trials 90/91-100 in their order, would it be the The hardest?

[@Karifean]

Not really. If you can beat Trial 100 (without fixed damage spam) you should be able to take on all the previous trials without much issue. The main difficulty probably comes from Trial 99's Omega leaving you woefully unprepared for the final trial (unless you cheese him) but even that's not particularly hard to deal with if you know what you're in for.

[@adam622500]

Hi do you know who in trial mode wearultimate weapons to Steal ? I Know you can steal Durandal E and Aldebaraan Y to Rikken and Elza Masamune I from Gilgamesh Yagyu darkblade and Orochi N from Yiazmat But the other i dont know

[@akasuna1234]

what job for each pj you recomended? hihi

[@fandyramli1181]

It's up to you. But I reccomend using penelo and ashe as a mage because those two have highest mp & magick power. And don't make white & black mage in one char. You can combine white with time battle mage as a support char. Since in this game the strongest weapon is bow and 1H sword, don't combine archer & knight in one char. Uhlan too.., zodiac spear still worth it in this game.

[@str8sk8t]

so lowest hp works even when you can't libra them or w/e? that confuses me

[@Karifean]

All gambits work regardless of Libra or anything else.

[@str8sk8t]

ah i see, well nice job man what took u 8 minutes took me an hour XD

[@notsobrightxperiathemes9970]

Sorry, about Ghis. You wrote: : He uses Elixirs on himself at low HP which you can prevent by inflicting Disease on him, as I did, though it wasn't necessary in the end". How can you stop him from using Elixir/healing otherwise? Just curious.

[@Karifean]

NotSoBright Xperia Themes You just burst him fast enough. When his HP get low for the first time, he uses Chain Magick, then Greater Barrier, THEN Elixir, so you can certainly kill him before he gets to healing himself. I got my last hit on him before his Greater Barrier went through so I probably would've had the time to just kill him normally (though without Disease he would have had his critical HP armor boost)

[@notsobrightxperiathemes9970]

Awww.. Ok, thanks!! I'd rather use Disease then. 😄 I had all against him (lowest max HP gambit) and he still recovered. But two were probably doing something else (like healing/bubble/haste or else).

[@AdamNRG316]

Hold on did you just use your current party to revive a party member in reserve? How did I not know you could do this? Is that trial mode only or am I just a massive idiot? Please don't tell me it was in vanilla as well...

[@Karifean]

It was very much always possible. Not that the game ever tells you about it =P

[@AdamNRG316]

Karifean man I've put hundreds and hundreds of hours into this game over the years and never knew that. This should make my life WAY easier. Thanks for the info dude. This really is massively helpful. Congrats on stage 100 by the way.

[@notsobrightxperiathemes9970]

You must be kidding... It would have saved me soo much bitching!! lol

[@blackwidow7804]

I finished the original game 2x and Zodiac age 3x and i didnt know that.

[@alissiahubble4306]

Same here mind blown

[@D2FFDK]

The game just seems so much easier since jobs can be combined now :/ And the IZJS version was already a lot easier than the original in my opinion. Awesome fight though! Happy to see you weren't using the OP invisible gear/weapons.

[@ariangeldelascartasmarquez2490]

Si es mucho mas fácil ya que en la versión IZJS la barra de acción con los personajes tarda un año en castear por culpa de los jueces que ocupan todo los turnos. En cambio aquí no

[@fenrir517]

Sad you cant keep tournesol

[@ZguegBoy]

Tu connais le sort leurre?

[@adam622500]

ZguegBoy Bh il en a pas eu besoin puis les juges ont tendance a attaquer la même cible donc leurre est inutile

[@nesoukkefka1741]

C'est surtout que si tu n'utilises pas Affaiblir ou Paradoxe (après avoir buté Ghis) avec Bergan et Gabranth ton Leurre ne fera pas long feu.

[@zemm9003]

With Chaos this fight becomes super easy because unlike the "super bosses" 3 of the Judges have only less than 200k (which is the game is not very much at all).

[@dvdmethod2]

Lol they REALLY wanted Penelo dead.

[@domikarus5237]

Judge Drace wont die and I don't know why. I made about 30.000.000 dmg and she wont fall the same with the other 2 left judges. I bet it's the 1hp bullshit but I can't see the health neither. Please help

[@Karifean]

Drace, Zargabaath and Gabranth are in a healing pact, where they will each throw an Elixir at either of the other two when below half HP. To prevent that, you can inflict Disease on Drace and then take her out, then keep Zargabaath asleep while killing Gabranth.

[@domikarus5237]

@@Karifean thank you

[@felixhalim7272]

Hi Karifean, what's that shield for Penelo?

[@michaelreichhold7177]

Can someone help me pls, the last 3 judges gabrath drace and Zara use Elixier's i can't beat this guys :(

[@nesoukkefka1741]

Put Disease on Drace (Meteorite B or Niho + Vaccin) this way they can't heal her so focus on her when Gabranth and Zara are left you must put Zara to sleep and make sure he stays asleep until you finish off Gabranth, then just finish Zara.

[@RealKilkam]

I spammed 12 zodiark on them, still gabranth and zargabath were alive. Did I do something wrong? I don't think they have more than 720000hp

[@Karifean]

Gabranth and Zargabaath throw Elixirs at each other if they are below a certain HP threshold. In theory you can burst them hard enough to prevent it, but by far the easiest way to deal with it is to repeatedly cast Sleep on Zargabaath like I did here.

[@puffingpanda7003]

Why dont you just decoy & bubble basch, let penelo do constantly heal basch, and fran from afar do black magic. Like put some other judges to sleep first and focus on one.

[@Karifean]

I mean you can do that, sure, but it's neither necessarily "better" nor is the fight demanding enough to force you to truly optimize. Basch not being the tank at least means he gets bonus damage from being at full HP for the majority of the fight, and Penelo is more than tanky enough to work. You could Sleep Zargabaath, Slow Gabranth and keep Bergan and Drace confused to make the fight more focused on individual targets, but keeping that up costs time in and of itself and outside of challenge runs the fight just isn't threatening enough to warrant that level of caution, especially once Zargabaath is silenced which takes their only source of Bravery, Berserk and Faith - I did inflict Sleep and Confusion once at the start, but it doesn't last very long and wouldn't have been worth reapplying I think.

[@Miumiu0404]

I just spam Zodiark and his final eclipse. lol Use megalixir and summon Zodiark again. 60,000 aoe damage. It was done after 7 summons.

[@frozenfusion6072]

Or be like me and hoard all the elixirs because “I might need them later”.

[@1stNumberOne]

This game had some baddies 😏

[@finaltime21]

Never mad pass stage 90 something cause of that stupid cat in a pot

[@deatharg]

Gotta give the Magik pot an elixir before hitting him

[@KayderimGameplays]

lol

[@iamshank6463]

Meh alright I guess. Still kind of amateur

[@Kytes93]

You're sooooo sloooow, i finished them in 2 mins

[@fabianocgrj]

I thought the guy in this video was good. until i see this ---> Trial Mode 100 in New Game Minus: v=aq5dIvAs32E