I spent 172 hours retrying the final boss fight on ff8. I mistakenly saved just before the end boss with 2 phoenix downs, a handful or potions and ethers, and not much else. It took weeks to beat her alone.

I learned many things in those multiple weeks of doing basically the same thing over and over again, with minor tweaks to strategy.. the first of which is always maintain a second save at least 3 hours prior to the current save. The second thing was never have an empty inventory even if you legit never bother using any of it. Don’t sell anything until you hit max stax.

And finally I learned that sometimes trying the same exact thing for the 20th time actually does work for reasons. And that was on like ps1 framework. A lot more stuff is a lot more random now.