I got a lucky Arcturus in Cerobi Steppe, not really farming anything, but just grabbing treasures with the Diamond Armlet on on my way through. Generally speaking, I'm sorely disappointed with the end-game grind and side quests in XII. My mind must have glossed it over after all these years, except for the Zodiac Spear bullshit which I remember clearly for obvious reasons. It's all very meta and quite clearly designed to sell guides: the completely opaque logic behind treasure farming; the 5% Poach rate for rare materials from uncommon enemies and the need to micromanage Poach, cemented by characters' delayed reactions to Foe HP = <10% Gambits (Poach rates can be higher on rare game, but they must be tediously spawned first); et cetera and so on.
The monster lore entries do give numerous recipe hints when unlocked, but even if you decipher them, you still don't know how many of each item you need, probably don't know where to get them—even if you've found them before—nor can you keep track of what you've already turned in. Hell, you won't even know exactly what kind or tier of reward you're getting. I'm far from against note-taking in games, but the logistics and note-taking overhead required to manage all that is just absurd. Not to mention, if you turn in multiple repeatable Bazaar recipes at once, the extras are all wasted. I did that with Behemoth Steaks.
Additionally, the non sequitur-like, arbitrary, unintuitive design of certain quests (also clearly designed to sell guides) is infuriating. Perhaps the best example is the medallion quest. It firstly requires you to search the entire game world for two nu mou just to begin it, since there are absolutely no hints whatsoever regarding their locations. I thought they were out in the Nabreus Deadlands at first. (I'd actually been to Old Dalan's fairly recently, just before I triggered the quest to start; so wasn't likely to revisit anytime soon, thought Dalan's house was all finished). Then, the Curious Woman with the necklace (who you must simply assume is part of the quest, merely because she wasn't there before) disappears. If you run around talking to people enough, you'll discover she's randomly being sheltered by some children in the lower city. There are no hints to that effect, there's nothing to figure out, it makes no sense, she could be anywhere... she's just there, so you either consult a guide or keep tediously looking until you find her.
Utter shit, clearly the Japanese can't into proper challenging but fair quest design that actually flows logically. Did Prima Guides send over some high-end prostitutes to suck and fuck the guys at Squeenix, or what? They sure seemed to love the guide publishers.
Anyway, I've defeated every Mark prior to Behemoth King and Phase 2 of Gilgamesh, have 5-6 trophy marks (again, these are guide-sellers), I've done most of the side quests, and I'm currently poking around in the Cataract. In my entire game I think I've had one Game Over vs. Zeromus (and haven't been back yet; fuck that gimmicky cunt until I nicely out-level it), and then I had to reload almost right away vs. some Mark or another awhile back. I wasn't even close to defeated, I just knew right away that I should go back and redo my setup. I was worried about Carrot, but actually Basch w/Decoy and Reddas blocked him (piled high with huge amounts of debuffs) while Ashe and Penelo nuked and healed from a distance. I had to seize control of them several times in a panic when they occasionally tried to run forward for no apparent reason. Easiest boss Malboro fight of all time, surely.
Fafnir was a fucking obnoxious giant white twat, but Arise spam made it a cinch.
Oh yeah, Cat-Ear Hoods on everyone + Trial Mode should make for approximately infinity gil as I discovered without a guide for once, so check that out.
Actually, what I'm doing now is playing Tactics A2 so I can play a game with a real job system.
Once I finish repairing my gaming PC, I'll probably fire up the PSX emu and play original Tactics with the War of the Lions text and dialogue fan patch, which surely is the definitive edition of Tactics, lacking both the Engrish of the original and the slowdowns/horrible sound downgrades of PSP War of the Lions.