Despite growing up in the 90s (born in the mid 80s), who played Secret of Mana and Mario RPG during that decade, I must confess that my first Final Fantasy game was X, and I played it in my Sophomore year of college, back in 2005 or 2006. In that game, very late in it, you gain the ability to travel back to areas that you passed through on the very linear pilgrimage that makes up the essence of that journey. But along with all those old locations, you also get access to the Omega Dungeon, which is basically the super-hard area that is tougher than the endgame dungeon for the main story. I had a different level of patience back then, so even after defeating the final boss of that area, I kept wandering around grinding monsters there until I could take them down in one or two hits, which led to the most hilarious final boss experience in which I only had to smack Yu Yevon - basically the evil being who has made himself the god of that world - in two strikes.
Level caps, of course, prevent this kind of thing in more recent games. But I'm given to understand that most Final Fantasy games have that extra-hard thing you can try late in the game to give yourself a really profound challenge.
Spoilers ahead.
And I think I've found it with Gilgamesh Island.
Over the course of Rebirth, each zone has a series of four "protorelic" quests that have you acquire a piece of magical armor. Each time you do, Cloud has a vision of a strange armored warrior (/ maybe a robot or cyborg? Or just a dude in power armor?) The guy has a very Japanese, samurai aesthetic, and is simultaneously foolish and menacing, and sometimes speaks in haikus.
Anyway, once you have all the protorelics, you get access to Gilgamesh Island, where the samurai (the eponymous Gilgamesh) will challenge you to "temper" the pieces of armor you've gotten, which requires you to fight two of your summons at a time.
The fights are Phoenix and Kujata, Odin and Alexander, and Bahamut and Titan. And boy howdy are they not easy.
With Phoenix and Kujata, I might have just brute-forced it. Phoenix can raise Kujata after you defeat it, so I suspect you're supposed to focus on the bird first. Still, this was the easiest of the three.
With Odin and Alexander, you need to keep the pressure on Odin to get him pressured before he can use his Zantetsuken, which will one-shot the party. Once you pressure him (and maybe stagger him) he'll vanish for a time, allowing you to work on Alexander. As with the original fight, you want to break his arms and ensure that you clear the Judgment debuffs off your party with Esuna, or his Ray of Judgment or whatever his finisher will take you out. Odin will return after a little, so you'll want to switch back to him when he does. (You can actually summon the same beings you're fighting, so I had Odin help us fight Alexander).
Bahamut and Titan have a secondary target that you can hit to pressure them, and you'll get debuffs off of little particles on the field that can be cleared by using Synergy attacks. I think going for Bahamut first is probably smartest, though I imagine pressuring both of them to interrupt their finishers is what you're supposed to do.
Lastly, you face off against Gilgamesh, who has a mountain of HP. This one I tried once but after what felt like 20 minutes and getting him down to a tiny sliver of his health (seriously, I could barely see the HP meter anymore) I died, so I decided to take a break. I think perfect-blocking his attacks is the way you're supposed to put pressure on him, but the timing is harder than it was in Cloud's one-on-one fight. I'm planning to put the Perfect Block materia on for my second attempt and see if that makes it less painful.
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