doing a zodiac spear run of the original ff12 was some of the most fun i ever had in the game. its not just about not opening the 4 chests. you have to powerlevel your team so you can beat the king bomb to unlock the route to nabudis. and you also need to be strong enough to survive the monsters there. running past everything and swapping my party members in and out as they died and got revived was awesome. and once you get to the spear, you still have to make it to a save point and then make it out. but the closest save point is actually a fake monster, so you have to completely leave the area without game overing. and if you can survive the whole thing, you get rewarded with a sick weapon that breaks the rest of the game

things like that are what makes ff12 my favorite final fantasy game. there are so many opportunites for you to explore higher level areas that you arent suppose to go to at low levels. and if you can handle them or find a cool way around them, you can get sick rewards. the zodiac spear was just one of those things, but theres tons of other things like that in the game. none of the other final fantasies have that aspect. like everything is just linear progression and you can never truly challenge yourself