All of that was easier than getting Wakka's sigil. Blitzball never made any sense to me.
But then, every FF game has one bloody difficult task. In VIII, it was a toss-up between Omega Weapon and the final boss. In IX, it was Ozma (and if you went right instead of left coming out of Gizamaluke's Grotto, you were guaranteed to die ). XII wasn't too bad, but it was easy to get lost in the Great Crystal, and getting Zodiark was a pain, because you had to wipe out 10% of his health in one hit, or else he'd become invincible.
Hmmm, I've never had a problem with Blitzball, but that's probably because I made it harder on myself at the beginning by making sure I won that first forced game. So long as you learned Jecht Shot on the boat, you could spam that for easy wins. XP was awarded based on scoring and character possession times, so you could level up reasonably easily early on by hogging the ball and swimming around. There's also the important bit; hiring a better team
VIII proved easy for me, in a way (explained below), but it was certainly a different sort of challenge when I replayed a few years ago, after learning you should actually
avoid as many fights as possible, only leveling up on the third disc. That created a whole new set of issues. I never played IX, but remember enjoying the gameplay of XII, if not the storyline. I do remember getting lost in the Great Crystal, and I never even found Zodiark.
Being a mini-quest completionist I played the card game and had every card. Convert the Gilgamesh card into 10 Holy wars, an item which makes you invisible. In the final battle when he causes damage and everyone is in Limit Break use a holy war and spam the limit break attacks. Easiest final boss ever. Well Sephiroth in VII was easy if you did the Chocobo races and got the gold chocobo to get the Knights of the Round Materia. never stood a chance.
The card game was a huge time suck for me - I loved that thing! I had an even easier time against the hardest bosses in the game; you just opened your PS1/2, stopping the disc from spinning. The game couldn't load anything other than basic physical attacks. With Selphie in the group, cycle through her limits until you find The End, and select it. Close the tray, and any enemy is dead. Done!
Sephiroth was far easier than Ruby or Emerald. You wouldn't even need KOR for that, so long as you had Omnislash, Highwind, or any of the other multi-hit final limit breaks.