Game - Final Fantasy X, Day 74
Hours Played/Hours Total - 27 hrs / 81 hrs
Starting Point - The Airship.
Current Goal - Complete a ton of Side Quests. Obtain and fully upgrade at least ONE Ultimate Weapon. Defeat Sin and save Spira!
What Happened - This is looking to be the final post for FFX! Wish me luck on the magical journey of all the damn side quests in the game followed by the end of the game! I'm...not looking forward to it at all, but I do believe I will obtain at least two or three fully powered Ultimate Weapons! (Actually called Celestial Weapons, but who really cares?) Without further ado, let's get on with this post!
The majority of this post is made up of side questing, so I hope you are mentally prepared for that. I can and will honestly admit that I'm using a guide for pretty much all of the side quests. It is that or spend forever trying to figure out how and where to go on a lot of it. This is where they want you to spend like...30 hours of your gameplay it seems. As I stated last time, you can unlock locations by putting in passwords or clicking around the map. To explain that a bit further, you look around on the map based on longitude and latitude, and that allows you to find new locations. In all honesty, I have no idea how you find any of these locations without someone telling you them. I guess you'd just spend forever clicking around the map. However, I didn't do that because I used the guide!
Most of the locations you unlock (whether by map or password) are one shot locations with just a single task to do. Of these one shot locations, the most notable ones included a hidden spot in Mushroom Rock Road with Rikku's ultimate weapon, Godhand, (Obtainable with the password GODHAND.) and Baaj Temple (the area where Tidus washed up to in the beginning). I'll return to Baaj Temple later, but from here on, I started just going all over the map to previous locations. I'll skip the more indulging details and just be straightforward. The first goal of the world tour was capturing monsters all over the place. Since the earliest monsters were pretty weak by this point, I was able to capture them with just single attacks.
Beyond capturing a large portion of the monsters in the game, I also was able to locate a few more ultimate weapons and a few of the Crests for those as well. Wakka's Ultimate Weapon, World Champion, is strangely located at the bar in Luca. You get it from the bartender of the bar where Kimahri was fighting with the two Ronsos. The ball belonged to the High Summoner Ohalland, who was a amazing blitzball player or something like that. (I mentioned him waaaay back in the very first FFX post.) It is Wakka's ball now!
After that, I made my way to Mushroom Rock Road. If you remember the Rusty Sword from the Calm Lands, (Regardless if you do or not, continue.) the Rusty Sword is necessary for getting Auron's Ultimate Weapon. You take it to a small hidden alcove along the road and place the sword nearby a statue. By doing such, it unlocks a secret treasure chest with the Masamune in it! Only two Ultimate Weapons remain to collect, Lulu's and Kimahri's. This doesn't include the agonizing and annoying task of getting the remaining Sigils though. I'll highlight those as I get them.
With the weapons obtained, I switched my focus and made my way back to a previously skipped area, the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth. It's the mystery cave I didn't enter back in the Calm Lands. There's really nothing special about the cave or the monsters in it, but there's an obvious story behind it all. It seems that this cavern supposedly contains a stolen fayth somewhere inside of it. A long time ago, some random person stole a fayth from a temple and hid it here. (I realize this is self-explanatory, but I'm saying it anyways.) They all wonder why anybody would possible do that. (I question how they managed to steal a massive hunk of rock, carry it OUT of a temple, and manage to get away with it...BUT MAYBE I'M BEING TOO LOGICAL FOR THIS GAME!) The prevailing opinion for the reason behind the theft is the protection of summoners. If summoners can't get all the fayth, they can't complete their pilgrimage. It makes sense in one way, but it obviously didn't stop anybody. As we come to the back of the cavern, we find that someone is here. However, that someone...isn't alive anymore.
Lulu runs up to the person and recognizes the woman as the first summoner she was a guardian for. It seems that this woman has remained down here as an unsent summoner, and she's not too happy. All the vengeance or whatever has kept her here, and she wants the group to kill her and send her away. BOSS BATTLE TIME! The woman enters the battle and summons up a killer looking Aeon called...YOJIMBO! (Japanese word for hired bodyguard. Japanesian enthusiasts may correct me, but I don't care.) Despite the ferocity of the awesome-looking Aeon, I was able to beat it with very little trouble. Such little trouble that I didn't include any actual battle details here, so...that was probably a bad decision on my part. Had I gone through this cavern earlier, I would have probably had trouble with it, but I came later instead and had zero trouble with him. With Yojimbo's defeat, the summoner is finally able to rest in peace, and Yuna does the whole Sending of her soul/whatever.
Before I continue on, I'd like to bring up something that's a bit much for the game. How come all these "dead" people are completely and utterly able to interact with everything? Dead spirit people that are all over the place and are able to do everything that a living person can do. They are having battles with monsters and killing them (Auron), able to summon up Aeons despite their dead status (summoner lady with Yojimbo), and completely able to rule an entire world/nation/country and NOBODY figures out they are dead (Mika). If you can't tell, this will probably be one of the negative points in the end review. However, this is the middle of a serious Day # post, so I'll stop here for now. /end rant
With the summoner sent to her resting place, we are allowed to enter the stolen fayth's chamber. We come up to the fayth, and he reveals himself as Yojimbo. He is very willing to work with us...for a price. Before we go anywhere though, he asks why we want his services. He presented with three options, but according to a couple guides, the best option is "To kill the toughest enemies" since that gives you a small discount. On to the bidding war! For his starting price, he asks for 250,000 Gil. Considering you can get MILLIONS of Gil in this, that's a small amount, but it also happened to be a very large amount for me at the time. I had around 220,000 Gil, so I was having to talk him down. I followed a couple different guide suggestions to talk him down in his price. If you offer half of what he asks plus 1 Gil, he will bring down his price a little. Unfortunately, I low balled him too many times, and he sent me on my way. I stupidly repeated this two more times before I finally settled on a price that was still higher than what I wanted to pay. I ended up giving him 225,000 Gil, but he was officially mine! AEON ACQUIRED! YOJIMBO. Like his name and profession, Yojimbo is a special Aeon that works a bit differently. Instead of selecting attacks and magic, you pay him so much Gil, and he performs an attack from there. There are four different attacks available, and you get different attacks based on how much you pay. The fourth, final, and super attack is only obtainable if you pay him millions of gil! (My understanding of it at least.) That's all I've got for Yojimbo, so it's time to move on to the next task.
Next up on my list is revisiting Zanarkand's Cloister of Trials. Upon re-entering the Trials area, everything lights back up, and I'm given a different objective. Before, it was about lighting up shapes on a gird based on what a screen showed me. (If you really want more details, you can look it up.) In this case, it was basically the opposite of what it wanted last time. It wanted me to light up all the other shapes that made that version of this puzzle reset. After lighting them all, I'm given a couple of spheres to use. I pick them up, move them about, and I get a Destruction Sphere. And thus...I'm rewarded the secret treasure of Zanarkand! (Forgot to write it down, but it wasn't that impressive.) With the Zanarkand secret treasure done, I was officially finished with all the Temple's secret treasures! What does this unlock? Well, you are about to find out as I head for Baaj Temple!
As I come down from the airship, I immediately recognized Baaj Temple as the area where Tidus washed up to in the beginning. Of course, as I head for the main part, I have to dive back down into the watery area. (If you forgot/don't want to look it up, he fell into water while exploring the area.) Once there, Tidus, Rikku, and Wakka take over. Tidus is all skittish at this point, and the two ask him what's up. He's looking around for the massive fish fiend that attacked him when he got here originally. We don't have to wait too long for him to make an appearance though! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
Since I'm in the water, I'm forced to use Wakka, Rikku, and Tidus. I've already done a little preparation for this fight beforehand though. A guide suggested that I put Stone Ward on everybody's armor, so I put Stoneproof instead! (If it isn't obvious, it blocks the stone status. Ward gives a good guard while proof generally guarantees.) The stupid giant fish fiend (the boss) only comes with a couple different attacks. It can strike a single character for a good amount of damage plus petrifying them. His other attack involves a two-step process where I have to make a choice. He sucks in one of the characters and swallows them inside the massive cage he has for a gut. He absorbs any buffs the character has (I only have Haste) and prepares to spit the person out soon enough. The choice I have here is to try and "struggle" my way out and lose the character OR let the character sit there and suffer worse consequences. (I was curious of the difference...It's pretty big.) If I struggle out, the character is spit out and KO'd in the process. However, if I let them sit there, he'll spit the character out and devastate the entire group. Luckily enough, I managed to survive the second version and stuck to the first one afterwards. All in all, it's not a hard battle if you are more than prepared for it. Of course, you could say that for any battle. With the fiend defeated, I'm finally free to explore Baaj Temple!
Before swimming inside the temple, I quickly look about in search of Lulu's Ultimate Weapon. It's hidden in a random corner where you can't directly see it. You just have to click around until it's opened. After getting that, I head inside the temple and go to collect my prize. Baaj Temple is the home of another fayth and can only be claimed if you obtained all six secret treasures at the cloister of trials in each temple. Every time you opened a chest, you saw a little glyph appear than disappear. I'm assuming that was supposed to symbolize something. The room in question has six statues that you can activate and upon activating all six, you are allowed entry into the chamber of the fayth.
As the group enters the chamber, the fayth is lying there in it's...statue-in-a-stone status. The aeon looks like Anima, and as I pieced together earlier, it turns out that Anima's fayth is Seymour's mother. (It was suspicion pieced together with brief evidence.) She apologizes to everyone for her son and his actions. She explains a bit of what caused all of it in the first place. Being of mixed race, Seymour was alone as a child. She wanted to help her son and to always be with him by becoming a fayth. However, the power went to his head and drove him into wanting more power. He saw that power in the form of Sin. She apologizes once again but offers us her power as Anima. So we gain another powerful Aeon on the team! Anima's pretty cool looking, and he/she is extremely powerful. With Anima in my collection, the next step is another Aeon!
I left Baaj Temple and made my way to Remiel Temple in the Calm Lands. Once there, I talked with Belgemine and set out to beat the rest of her Aeon lineup. It's almost like Pokemon! She throws out her monster, I throw out mine, and we battle to the death! Only difference here is that I can use as many as I want per battle, but she is limited to just one. I've got quite a lineup to deal with here. Belgemine has all of the Aeons available to her, and her Aeons generally have a lot more health than mine. I've dealt with Valefor, Ifrit, and Ixion, but I still lack another five Aeons! I quickly handle Shiva and Bahamut, but after beating Bahamut, I've got a little side trip to make. After beating Bahamut, I'm awarded an item called the Flower Scepter. With the Flower Scepter and Blossom Crown (obtained through catching all the monsters on Mt Gagazet), I'm able to enter the chamber of the fayth in Remiel Temple.
The Aeons obtained here are the most powerful group of Aeons you can get! And yes, I do mean group. You get the Magus Sisters, and they come in as a team of three bug-looking sisters. Each one has their strong point, but together they are ridiculously overpowered. You can't directly control the three sisters, but they are powerful enough to not need to. Instead, you give them talking commands of sorts. Examples include (but not exactly worded as) "Help one another", "Fight!", "Do as you please", "Use magic!", or finally "Combine your powers". Each one results in a different action performed, but regardless of what you tell them, there is a small chance that they take a break and do nothing. Either way, each of the sisters are capable of breaking the 9,999 damage limit from the start! I'll go into details after I finish up this next section.
With the Magus Sisters on hand, I go back to Belgemine and deal with her remaining Aeons. This includes Yojimbo, Anima, and the Magus Sisters. Despite their power in my hands, I'm able to defeat each of those with very little trouble. I think the Magus Sisters got a few of my Aeons, but they didn't do much past that. I mostly just blasted everybody with Overdrives where I could. After I defeated all of her Aeons, I was rewarded with Moon Sigil! Also, Belgemine passed on...She was dead after all. With the Moon Sigil, I was ready to fully upgrade my first ultimate weapon! I went back to Macalania Woods to the random spot where you do it. With the Moon Sigil, the Nirvana was fully upgraded and complete!
Each of the Ultimate Weapon's have a specific ability build made for each character. For Yuna's Nirvana, she gets Double AP, Triple Overdrive, One MP Cost, and Break Damage Limit. Those are all fairly self-explanatory, but I'm going to go into detail on the last one. Break Damage Limit enables the character to break past the 9,999 damage limit that exists in most of the series titles. This is an all-inclusive bonus as well! It's not just physical strikes. It even covers magical abilities. This means a well cast Holy or Flare spell can easily do 10,000+ damage! As I found out later, I was more than able to surpass the 9,999 limit with Yuna. As an added bonus, every fully upgraded Ultimate Weapon also breaks the damage limit for a selected Aeon. I don't remember whose weapon unlocks which Aeon's damage limit, but I know it does it all the same. The biggest goal accomplished here...I managed to fully upgrade one ultimate weapon! Woo! It might be the easiest to get, but it's still a goal met all the same. From here on, I'm planning to get all of the rest of them, but I have a feeling that a few are going to get skipped. Let's just move right along and see what happens.
Next on the list of "things to do" is Cactuar Hunting in the desert. I can tell you right now that this isn't a fun quest, but it's also impossible to fail! Details to come. I return to the Sanubia Desert and get to start my long journey of walking around this stupid place. Luckily, I recently acquired a "No Encounters" weapon, or this quest would have broken me quickly. I would have quit and never looked back. Going back to the quest at hand, it's almost exactly as it sounds...Cactuar Hunting. In the desert, there's a remote corner of it that's a home to the Cactuar. Inside of that area, there is supposed to be a chest for the Mercury Sigil. However, before you can enter said area, you have to be recognized by the citizens of it, the Cactuars.
Basically, you find this large stone with a Cactuar carved onto it and examine it. The stone gives you a clue to the whereabouts of a Cactuar. (They all have names, but I didn't feel like typing/remembering them all.) Using the clue, you have to run around the desert and try to find it. Once you find it, you play a little mini-game where you try to catch it. It sounds simple enough, but you only have about 15 seconds to catch each Cactuar and can only run towards them when their backs are turned. If you capture them, they give you a sphere with their name. If you fail to capture them...you still get a sphere! However, it's basically a "YOU SUCK!" sphere. After catching one Cactuar, you return the sphere to the large stone and receive a new clue. This process is repeated nine times for 10 Cactuars. (One capture nets you two Cactuars at once.)
Overall, it's a fairly easy quest, and you don't even have to fully succeed! However, getting a "Perfect" score when you capture them enables you to earn a small prize alongside the Mercury Sigil. So...glossing past the entire process, I managed to successfully capture seven of the ten Cactuars. It netted me a nice gift, but I also obtained the more important Mercury Sigil! With the Mercury Sigil, I fully upgraded Rikku's Godhand and success! Another Ultimate Weapon has been fully powered and added to the team! Rikku's Godhand comes with Break Damage Limit, Gillionaire, Double AP, and Triple Overdrive. Gillionaire increases the amount of Gil earned after battle by simply having the party member in battle. I didn't ever take the time to compare the difference though, but I can assume it's enough to be worth having!
Before leaving the desert, I took some time to capture all the monsters I could. This small and time consuming process yielded yet another Sigil! By capturing monsters, the Arena man rewards you with all sorts of items, and he creates custom super monsters for your battling pleasure. I attempted to battle a few of them, but they are insanely tough. Since I have no point in battling them though, I didn't waste a lot of time there. The point I'm getting to is that you get a Sigil out of it! If you unlock ten of the super monsters, the arena owner rewards you with the Mars Sigil. I took the Sigil and headed straight for Macalania Forest. Once there, I fully upgraded Auron's Masamune and completed another Ultimate Weapon! The Masamune comes with Break Damage Limit, Triple Overdrive, First Strike, and Counterattack. First Strike allows the character to...strike first in battle. The only flaw of the Masamune is that you don't get Double AP like most of the other weapons. Basically, Auron and many other characters start getting left behind as the others are skyrocketing through Sphere Levels.
After obtaining the Masamune, I took some time away from the Ultimate Weapons to deal with the side dungeon of the game, the Omega Ruins. The Omega Ruins is the super hard and challenging dungeon of the game. It's jam packed full of incredibly tough monsters with lots of health and crazy cheap abilities. The worst of these are the Tonberry and Malboro, but for now, let's get back to the Omega Ruins. There's a story behind this place, and surprisingly enough (NOT), it involves Yevon's teachings. Lulu explains that a monk who defied the teachings 700 years ago was sentenced to this place. His name was Omega, and it seems that his hatred of Yevon ended up turning him into a fiend. They say he's still around here, and it looks like the group's goal is to go and fight him! Of course, this is very much an optional dungeon. It's a pretty small dungeon, but there are a lot of branching pathways. Only one of them leads to the end!
I easily spent three or four hours in this dungeon. The enemies are incredibly hard, but they are well worth the effort spent here. Every enemy generally gives you enough to gain at least one Sphere Level per battle. You do have to be careful though because many of the enemies can easily catch you off guard. I quickly found out that I maybe wasn't ready for the fiends here though. The Master Tonberry makes his home here, and he's no easy foe to take down. His tactic remains about the same as it does in the past. He slowly walks towards the time and plans to strike down with vengeance With a lot of health on hand, it takes quite a bit to defeat him. He won't attack you while he slowly walks towards you, but he does counter every attack. He counters with an ability called Karma. The damage done is calculated according to the number of fiends the character has slain. This means that my main people (Tidus, Auron, Wakka) are basically useless because they've killed enough that Karma takes them down. Basically, my strategy for dealing with Tonberry is to cast Demi on them with Lulu and heal up Lulu after every strike. I never had to directly deal with the Tonberry, but I'm probably lucky. Chances are he'd have decimated everyone with Chef's Knife or something along that line. Anyways, things were good.
I had a decent system going for me (stay RIGHT next to the save point), but then the unexpected and/or expected happened. Unfortunately, I got ambushed by a Great Malboro, and he immediately ended my winning streak. That's the fun thing about these guys. Great Malboros only show up with an Ambush. As soon as they ambush you, they throw out Bad Breath and screw up basically everybody. In my case, Bad Breath poisoned, confused, blinded, and silenced everybody. This lead to everybody attacking one another and being poisoned to death. Within a matter of a few rounds, they all fell to the ground dead, and I received a very disappointing game over. I hadn't saved for a bit as it seems (only used the point to heal), so I ended up loading from a ways back. I went back to the Omega Ruins briefly to count as "visiting" and then left for now. I wasn't in the mood to get screwed over again.
From here, I made my way back to the Thunder Plains to try and get Kimahri's Spirit Lance. Unfortunately, it seems like I've messed it up somehow. I can't get this Cactuar ghost to appear and lead me to the chest with the Spirit Lance. I explained a while back that you get the weapon by praying to Cactuar stones throughout the Thunder Plains. You pray to three, a ghost Cactuar shows up, and it leads you to the chest. One way or another, I've messed it up though, so I decided to skip Kimahri's weapon. This is a big bonus for me because it means I don't have to waste the time. Also, my Kimahri kinda sucks because I started building him in Lulu's lane. He has spells and such, but he's not very powerful physically or magically. Overall, it's just one less weapon to get.
From here, I only lack three other Ultimate Weapons...Lulu, Tidus, and Wakka. They are also the longest and hardest to get of the weapons. Lulu's Sigil (already have weapon and crest) requires that I do the infamous "200 lightning bolt dodge", and it is easily one of the most annoying and aggravating quests in the entire damn game. Tidus's Sigil is earned after getting a perfect time of 0.0 seconds in the Chocobo Race. It's another very unfun task. Then there is Wakka...I don't even have his weapon yet! I quickly rectify that situation by heading to Luca.
In Luca, you find Wakka's ultimate weapon at the bar where Kimahri got in a fight with those Ronsos. The weapon in question is a Blitzball known as the World Champion. It belonged to the High Summoner Ohalland, who was also a star blitzball player. With the weapon and crest obtained, all I lacked was his Sigil. To get the Jupiter Sigil for Wakka though, you have to have gotten all of Wakka's Overdrives. They show up as prizes in Blitzball league or tournaments. At this point, I was lacking two of the four remaining overdrives, and that could easily extend to several dozen games. It's not super challenging really, but it requires a LOT of time. Most full games last anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes based on how fast you go and your overall success. I kinda want to just say "no" to this ultimate weapon, but Wakka is one of the better fighters in your party. It almost seems wrong to NOT get it, so I am planning to do such. However, for now, Wakka and Lulu go on the backburner, and I make my way to the Calm Lands to get Tidus's Sun Sigil in the Chocobo Race.
This Chocobo Race is a terrible quest. I'm going to try to not fully rant about it, but it just feels so badly made and very against you to boot. You race from Point A to Point B. Along the way, you are supposed to grab balloons and dodge birds. By obtaining balloons, you get to take a few seconds off of your time, and thus you can achieve the perfect time of 0.0 seconds. The birds simply stop you in your tracks briefly AND add time to your end time at the end. This is my first complaint. On top of stopping you, the trainer adds time to your end time. You lose around two seconds on the field and gain a three second penalty at the end. This means a single bird completely screws you over for FIVE seconds! Balloons only take away a couple seconds each.
According to the guide I've followed, (I'll link it here now. It is a very good guide, and I'd highly recommend it.) You have to get at least thirteen to fifteen balloons to succeed. That's based on getting a decent time for the race as is. Thus goal of the race is to quickly make it to the end while achieving the other two goals as well. This wouldn't be so bad...but you are racing against the Chocobo trainer as well. From the very start, she likes to jump in front of you and take all of the balloons she can. At the very beginning of the race tends to be like four to five easy and very needed balloons. Of course, you can use her to block a few of the birds, but it only does so much. It'd be okay if you had full control of the Chocobo, but they don't even give you that! Instead, you can only turn the chocobo right and left, and it automatically moves forward. This just screws everything up as the chocobo can tend to do different things at almost random. I'd say the race is about 60% luck and 40% skill. Luck is purely based on how often the birds launch, how many balloons are placed about, and if the trainer doesn't cheat in front of you at the beginning. It's...a very crappy side quest.
However! After several tries, I managed to luck out and succeed! With the perfect time of 0.0 seconds under my belt, I was rewarded the Sun Sigil and finally able to complete Tidus's ultimate weapon. Honestly, I got this out of NOWHERE, and I was just almost ready to quit and break a controller. Yay me! I ran off to Macalania Woods and completed the Caladbolg. Once fully upgraded, the Caladbolg comes with Break Damage Limit, Triple Overdrive, Evade & Counter, and Magic Counter. I miss the idea of Double AP, but Tidus is (more likely than not) your most used character. So...he's already ahead of everybody! From here, I only lack two more Ultimate Weapons, and these proved to be the most annoying of the bunch.
Seeing as I just got done with an annoying one, I started work on the time eating quest...Wakka's Sigil. Basically, I knew I could get it, but it required a lot of blitzball games and therefore a lot of time. I played several blitzball games at this time to try and make a dent in the overall necessary amount. I managed to get the rest of Wakka's overdrives during this time though! So one part is complete, but now it's up to purely random chance whether the rest can be done anytime soon. There is a way to cheat the random system of rewards, but it's not the most favorable. You can reset your team data. By doing so, you reset the leagues and tournaments and hopefully the prize is the Jupiter Sigil. Unfortunately, as it resets your team data, you would lose all your current levels, stats, players, and abilities. As you might realize, I've put enough time and effort in to find this the least favorable method to do so. Since I can't go any further with that right now, I decided to change gears and try for Lulu's Sigil.
And thus, we come to the worst of all the side quests...Lightning dodge. You have to go to the Thunder Plains and dodge 200 lightning bolts in a row. There are multiple guides and all forms of suggestions of how to do it, but at the end of the day, it comes down to pure luck and skill of how well you can do it. There are several rules to the lightning dodge, but the most prominent ones are that they have to be in a row, you can't leave the area you start it in (counter will reset), and you can't save your game. Basically, it's a nightmare of a side quest. I won't go into anymore detail here because the only details to add would be my anger and the swearing born from that anger. Suffice it to say, I didn't manage to complete the quest. In the end, I gave up. I wasted three hours trying to complete this task, and I never really got past about ten successful dodges in a row. Lulu's not getting her ultimate weapon fully powered so...complete failure.
However, there's a small lining of silver to this horrible cloud! During this whole lightning dodge fiasco, I managed to obtain Kimahri's Spirit Lance! I don't know what fixed it, but I was looking around the first (Southern area) Thunder Plains area, and I happened upon another glowing Cactuar stone. I prayed to it, and the Cactuar ghost came out to greet me! He's supposed to lead you to the chest, but he is almost following you as much as he's leading. Therefore, I looked up a guide to find where the chest was. I found the chest, the Cactuar unlocked it, and I obtained the Spirit Lance! Woo! Kimahri's weapon is back in the running.~ Of course, the Spirit Lance brings another insanely annoying side quest to the table...the Butterfly Catching game.
I return to Macalania Woods and give the Butterfly Catching game a shot. I'm just going to shorten this up and say...I still give up on Kimahri's ultimate weapon. I'll reiterate that he's basically my worst character, and I'm not super worried about him having his ultimate weapon. The game requires that you navigate a thin path and catch blue butterflies while avoiding red butterflies. You are timed at running through the path and hitting ANY red butterfly results in failing the attempt. You can retry it all the times you like, but it's a pretty hard task even if you memorize the map. It just comes down to luck and timing, and I had neither of those. That and my patience was really wearing thin at this point. I give up on the Spirit Lance! Time to work on something that at least gets me somewhere. Thus...I started blitzballing to the max!
Let me just say...I hate Blitzball. It's a stupid game, and the physics/mechanics of it are all wrong. Whoever made this game and decided it was awesome is a horrible person. There are just so many numerous things wrong with it that I won't go into detail. Let's just say...the computer gets to cheat constantly with the mechanics, and you just get a big pile of "too bad" presented to you. More likely than not, you'll have to resort to Tidus and his "Jecht Shot" maneuver. I'm not going to explain this sport because I believe I already have. It's underwater soccer. It feels worse and worse the more you play it though, and I'll be glad when I'm done with it. I did several games, but the Jupiter Sigil never appeared. Since that wasn't going anywhere, I took a small break and went to obtain a few other items.
The next goal was looking for the remaining Jecht Spheres. I already had 5 of the 8 on hand, but I wanted to get the rest. Of course, with the use of a guide, this was a fairly short process. I just had to think which spheres I already had and go for the rest of them. Each of the Jecht Spheres go off to explain a little bit of the trio known as Team Braska. Most of them are directly about Jecht, but Braska and Auron get a little spotlight here and there. I won't go into details on their content though because it's nothing big. Also not as good if you haven't been more or less directly playing and enjoying the game. Once you obtain all of the Jecht Spheres, you unlock Auron's final Overdrive, Tornado! I went off to test it on some monsters, and I've got to say...It is pretty powerful. Totally worth the very little effort needed to get it. After completing the little break, I went back to Blitzball to finish up that stupidity.
In the end though, I was angry enough at blitzball that I settled with resetting my data. That made the Jupiter Sigil almost immediately appear, but that ended up causing another problem though. With my team reset, I didn't have any of their abilities or skills to win games. After several frustrating restarts, I finally managed to get somewhere. By recruiting Wakka and Brother (Rikku's brother) to my team, I was pretty much just set. A friend of mine recommended Brother for Blitzball a while back, but I never paid it any mind. I REGRET THAT DECISION! Brother is almost a one man team on the Blitzball field! He comes at level 1 with some insane stats, and he's easily the best blitzball player you can recruit. Let's just say...Brother made this whole process completely successful and fairly easy. Of course, I had to play 10 Blitzball games in the league to get the Jupiter Sigil. Let's just skip past the next two and a half hours of Blitzball (Not exagerating here, I spent nearly three hours on this shit.)...and now I have the Jupiter Sigil! With the Jupiter Sigil and a quick trip to Macalania, I'm able to fully upgrade and complete the World Champion! With it fully powered up, the World Champion comes with Break Damage Limit, Double AP, Triple Overdrive, and Evade & Counter. Nothing special there, but it's a good setup for Wakka!
From here, I decided it was time to revisit the Omega Ruins. I had a little more training since my first time in, and I figured I could handle it now! Despite this, I did spend some time leveling up near the front. If nothing else, I was going to at least obtain the last Al Bhed Primer from here. It was located near the back, and it is number 26! Once you have all the Al Bhed Primers, you get a small reward from Mr. Rin, but I'll get back to it when the time comes. Before going for the extra boss, I decided to gain some extra levels in here. As I've already stated, the enemies are fairly tough but offer quite a bit of AP for Sphere Levels. Of course, I also died several times because of bullshit on their part and bad choices on my part. Pushing beyond the many Game Over failures, I was finally satisfied with my current status. I decided to head further in and give these extra bosses a shot. I went pretty far into the place and found one! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
The first boss I ran into wasn't Omega. Instead, it was Ultima Weapon! (Yeeeaaaah, once Square finds a name/thing they like, they stick with it.) He's a massive and menacing looking monster, but as it turns out, he didn't have much to him...if you fight like I did. I did a couple of normal attacks on him, but then I summoned the Magus Sisters in to finish him off. I had only planned to take him down a notch, but I kinda unleashed two Overdrives in a row at him. I didn't think it would kill him, but it quite easily killed him. They automatically had the damage limit gone, so they were able to deal a huge hunk of damage with their overdrive! (Over 20,000 if I remember right.) As the fiend fades away into nothingness, Auron informs us that this isn't Omega. It's just an aspect or something that broke off of him. So...we continue onward!
After Ultima Weapon, I continue a little further on and find a warp pad of sorts. I jump on it, and it takes me the Omega's inner sanctum. In the inner sanctum, I'm presented with a pair of pathways with strangely set platforms at spaced intervals. I come to find out quickly that the platforms are there for set fiend battles. I get to fight all sorts of fiends from the Omega Ruins. The main ones that pop up unfortunately are Master Tonberries and Great Malboros. Despite that annoyance, I push through all of the set battles with little trouble. Finding out rather fast that Yuna's Holy spell is just ridiculous! Deals a massive amount of damage without a damage limit. I continue on down the path and finally enter into the center chamber. Once there, we come face-to-face with the big man himself! BOSS BATTLE TIME! OMEGA EDITION!
Omega Weapon actually looks almost exactly like Ultima Weapon. However, according to the guide, he comes with a lot more health and a bit more power. I started off with an odd team of Tidus, Yuna, and Kimahri. Why Kimahri? Because Omega Weapon has an exclusive Ronso Rage that can only be gotten from him...NOVA! It sounds cool, and it actually looks pretty cool. I immediately used it on him after getting it. Even for Kimahri, it's a pretty damn powerful move. Of course, after I did that, I summoned up the Magus Sisters and blew his face away! I didn't do any Overdrives this time, but you almost don't need the Overdrive with the Magus Sisters. They're pretty overpowering as is. Anyways, Omega is dooown! We have succeeded!
With that done, the Omega Ruins are finished. I would like to add one thing though...After I beat the boss, it magically threw me back to the beginning. Normally, I'd just love that, but in this case, it kinda pisses me off. As they were leaving Omega's chambers, there was a chest in the background. A DAMN CHEST IS BACK THERE! And I'd have to walk around and go get it, and guess what? I don't feel like wasting the time. It's a bit lazy, but you have to understand that at this point I've hit over 70 hours. I'm ready to wind this game down and finish it up. I head back to the airship and begin my final journey. I go and visit Mr. Rin to resupply my items. As I finish up, Tidus and he have a full conversation in Al Bhed. He's quite happy to see how well Tidus has learned it and rewards him with 99 Underdog's Secret. Underdog's Secret is one of Rikku's special items, and it can be used to make one of the awesome-est mixtures ever, Trio of 9999!
Trio of 9999 is a very interesting and powerful mix for Rikku's Overdrive. For a period of time, all of your character's attacks, magic, and other numbered-things will do 9999! (Unless it does more than that already.) It's insanely useful and can be used with pretty much everything. Yuna's Pray ability? Yup. Tidus's final Overdrive Blitz Ace? Totally! Are you confused? The idea is that anything that gives out a # is affected by this special item mixture. It's basically the best mix you can do, and it has just so many applications. Totally worth having on hand! However, that's enough about this awesome ability, and I'm ready to kick on through the final bits of the game. I finish up any supplying I needed to do and then started customizing my characters. The only real customization I had to do was armor since most of the people had their ultimate weapons. Those who didn't...(Lulu and Kimahri) has to be equipped with whatever was the next best option. I just made sure Lulu had One MP Cost for her magic spells. Anyways, my next stop was back to Bevelle!
It's been a while since we hit the real story, so I'll go over it briefly. Last time the main story came up, the group wasn't sure what to do next. Yuna, Kimahri, and Tidus talked a bit and figured to ask Maester Mika about the whole Sin ordeal. They figured he might know something they don't. I head off to Bevelle and approach the main temple. As we do, a couple of guards are there and they try to stop us! Lucky for us, an old friend appears and helps us out. It's Shelinda. She is the Yevon Acolyte who has appeared throughout the game. She's appeared pretty much all over the place, but I stopped mentioning her because...She doesn't have a lot of point outside of minor appearances. Anyways, she tells the guards to stand down and informs them that Yuna's traitor status was an Al Bhed lie and nothing more. They want to question her, but she says that Maester Mika himself informed her of this. Rikku isn't very happy to hear this lie about the Al Bhed lying, but she keeps quiet nonetheless. The guards walk away, and she starts to explain this weirdness.
Apparently, the massive uproar over Yevon teachings have caused quite a few to lose their faith. With the number of those in the faith depleting, the remaining faithful ones have been promoted to fill in the gaps. Basically, Shelinda was called up out of the blue and made a captain of the guard! The group asks her if they can meet with Maester Mika, and she goes to get it set up. A small time lapse later, and we are right in front of the head honcho himself. Mika asks if Yuna has the final Aeon now. He says we need to go and beat Sin right now! Tidus comes forward and explains that they met Yunalesca, but she's...Yuna jumps in to say that they have defeated her. Mika freaks out over hearing that and claims that we have screwed over all of them. Without the Final Aeon, there's no way to get rid of Sin. They all try to assure him that they have a plan, but he refuses to listen. He claims we are all fools for what we've done and claims that Spira's hope is gone now.
Finally after all the blaming and "hopeless" talk, he says something interesting and informative. He talks about how Yu Yevon's spiral of death will consume them all. They all just sit there for a moment, and FINALLY Tidus asks who Yu Yevon even is. (Personally, I don't get why nobody at least mentions the name connection. Teachings of Yevon...Yu Yevon...How is it NOT connected? Seriously guys!) Mika explains that Yu Yevon is "He who crafts the souls of the dead into unholy armor", and of course, he's talking about Sin. He claims that Yu Yevon is invincible inside of Sin and the only thing that can pierce that armor was the Final Aeon. And we destroyed it! (Him yell that at us.) With all their hope gone, Mika becomes a big coward and fades away. As we are standing there, the fayth (same kid I've talked about throughout) appears to Tidus and Yuna and asks to speak with the both of them. So the two head off to the chamber of the fayth in Bevelle.
Once there, he asks them if they have found a way to truly defeat Sin. It gives me a choice of what to say right here, so I go with "I think so..." When he questions how they plan to do so, I'm giving a slightly larger list of options. Basically, the first half of the plan has already been decided. They want to use the Hymn of the Fayth to slow down Sin. They figure this because Jecht likes the hymn, and they caught Sin listening to it waaay back in Macalania. The fayth tells them that it's been a long time since Jecht became Sin, and he might not even be able to hear it anymore. Tidus says that it might be true, but it's all they got and have to try anyways. The fayth agrees with that thought, but of course, that's just the start. What do they do with a slowed-down Sin? Randomly, Tidus asks the fayth out loud if he is just a dream still. Why he does this out loud and right now of all times...kinda stupid if you ask me. Yuna just goes "What?", but he deflects her question by just saying "Long story."
Glossing past that, the fayth (who doesn't even answer Tidus) asks what the next aim is. Tidus figures we have to defeat Yu Yevon. The fayth completely agrees with that and asks the group what they know about him. All we know is what Mika told us though. He's what makes Sin come back, and that Sin is his armor that protects him. The fayth gives us a bit more to go on. Yu Yevon was a summoner long, long ago, and he was a very powerful one at that. (He uses the term peerless. Shit got real.) However, like all things, he died, but he has lived on for one purpose only...to summon! The fayth claims that Yu Yevon is neither good nor evil, is awake and yet he dreams. Tidus states that we are going to beat him and end that!
The fayth explains that the Final Aeon is used to beat Sin, but Yu Yevon simply joins with the Final Aeon and transforms that into a new Sin. Once merged, he recreates his armor and continues the summon from inside of his Sin protection. With him living inside of Sin, we have to get inside to kill him. We are just about ready to go do this, but the fayth tells Yuna something. He says that she will need to call the Aeons when we fight Sin because our weapons and magic won't be enough. The fayth asks her to promise that she will call them. He asks her in such a way that something is up. It doesn't explain it though, but we'll find out soon enough. The fayth then turns to Tidus and says that when it is over, the dream will end. The fayth will awaken and their dreams will vanish. Basically, DO YOU UNDERSTAND TIDUS? Tidus answers yes and says that they've been dreaming a long time after all. The fayth apologizes to Tidus, but Tidus tells him not to because he's grateful for them. Yuna questions Tidus again about what they are talking about, but he just answers that it's nothing. She knows he is hiding something and says he's a poor liar. And the scene ends...
The group is leaving Bevelle now. Shelinda has come around to bid us farewell and wishes she could do something to help us. Rikku says that she can do something! She tells her to go out and spread a message to all of the people. She is to tell people that "When the ship in the sky plays the hymn of the fayth, the people need to join in." Shelinda promises to pass on the word, and we head back to the airship. From there, I save my game and prepare for the final portion of the game. I save my game and head straight for Sin. We start flying overhead and playing the Hymn of the Fayth. All we can do from here is wait for Sin to react, but we don't have to wait too long for Sin to come in! Apparently, Sin is able to fly...Cid asks what the plan is from here on. Tidus simply says that we'll enter Sin through the mouth or make a new entrance elsewhere. Cid laughs at that and says that it's a great plan. He also promises that he's got something in store to help us with our fight. Time to go up on deck and fight with Sin!
As we get on the deck of the ship, we can hear the hymn playing from the ship, but it's also apparent that the people are singing along with it! Things are going according to plan for the moment. As the group waits for the approach of Sin, Tidus asks Yuna if she'll be needing this sphere anymore. He pulls out the one from earlier on Gagazet. She fumbles about her person looking for the sphere that he currently has in his hand, but then he tosses it overboard. After that little show of story, it seems that Sin is preparing something. A huge cutscene goes down of Sin doing something of massive and global proportions! It's hard to describe without showing an image or video really, but the easiest way to put it is that...Sin was chargin' his lazer! He starts gathering the ocean around him in a sphere that's visible from space. He blasts the sphere in all directions and it displaces everything! With some sort of super magicalness, the blast defies physics by creating multiple trenches stretching out from Sin...some of them through water! It's followed up by a massive explosion that throws the group about. As they recover, Sin charges at us for MULTIPLE BOSS BATTLE TIME!
BOSS BATTLE TIME #1 SIN'S...fin? Yeah, for the first of the multiple battles to come, we have to fight Sin's left fin. I get to experience another ranged battle on top of the ship, It goes pretty much like the previous ones. I have to get Cid to move us closer, or I'm limited to long range abilities like magic or Wakka's ball. Of course, I have to wait for Cid's turn to close in, so I get to waste several turns trying to do what I can from afar. By this point in the game, I pretty much always start off with Hastega. With everyone in haste, I can easily get off several attacks in a row before the enemy gets to even move! In this case though, it's kind of a negative since I'm waiting to move in and can't haste Cid. Once Cid finally closes the distance, there's not much more to it than a numbers game. I just keep hitting him every chance I get. Sin's fin doesn't have anything special to him. He can bump into the ship and do group-wide damage to us or cast Negation which eliminates all the buffs I have like Haste. (Except for Tidus's because he has Auto Haste! Auto abilities are insanely good in this game.) I quickly beat the fin, and Cid pulls us away from Sin. He tells us to hold onto something, and we finally learn what he had in store.
The game hits a cutscene and the giant lightning tesla cannons from earlier pop out of the ship and open fire on Sin. This blows Sin's arm/fin completely off! Next up, Cid pulls the ship up to the other side for BOSS BATTLE TIME #2! SIN'S...other fin. I won't go into much detail here, but it went faster than the previous one. Cid blows it full off with the tesla cannons as well. Unfortunately for us, the cannons borked after that last shot, so that isn't an option anymore. Cid tells the group to come back in to reformulate their plan, but Tidus says that nope! They are going for it! He goes off to say something about blitzball and having the ball and scoring. Lulu comments that a day with Tidus is never dull and leaps off the edge of the ship. Tidus and everybody else follows swiftly after and happen to land on Sin somehow. We confront a Sinspawn on Sin's head. BOSS BATTLE TIME #3! SINSPAWN PLUS EXTRA!
The Sinspawn in question is very similar to one near the beginning of the game. It's the ball-like one that looks likes kinda plant-like. It starts out in its battle mode of sorts, but I quickly force it into changing its form! It goes into defense mode and starts just healing itself. It heals pretty well though, so I'm having to really keep after it. Eventually, I break out the big gun with Yuna's Holy spell. As it turns out, she is the big gun of power on the team. Her Holy can easily and almost always deal over 10,000 damage! It only takes a two casts of Holy to kill the Sinspawn off, but then I have to deal with the thing behind it. It looks like another core of sorts just like the ones on the fins. Before I beat the Sinspawn, this core was starting to charge for some reason. I wasn't very interested in seeing what it charged into, but I quickly found out. It turns out that the charging was for Gravijia! Gravijia is a powered-up version of Demi that does three-fourths of everybody's health. (Demi is a group-wide spell in this game...fun, fun.) Alongside Gravijia, it can also groupcast the elemental magics. Lucky for me, it's all weak and low tier magic. None of it really does much, so I just start hammering away with Holy. It tries to charge up for a second Gravijia, but I defeat it with a blast of Holy! Seriously, if you build just build Yuna along her path, she gets to do some ridiculous damage with Holy.
Next thing I know, I'm already into another cutscene. Sin is seemingly falling apart and out of the sky. It jumps back to the group who is now back on the airship. Doesn't explain how they got off of the exploding and crashing Sin, but they did apparently. We're back inside, and Brother and Cid think that Sin is done for. Of course, the group knows the truth. We gotta go inside of Sin to finish it off. It's not over until we get Yu Yevon, but he's at least weakened for the moment. As it turns out, he crashed nearby Bevelle and is just out of it for the moment.
The group is all over the ship right now, and I have to go find Yuna so that I can continue. She's on top of the ship and starting to think about it all. She's wondering why the fayth seemed eager to be summoned while fighting Sin, and it's kinda suggesting that they're is something up. She says that Yu Yevon will simply join with the Aeons summoned, and that we'll have to beat those as well. She also brings up the dream thing that the fayth and Tidus mentioned. She looks over to Tidus now and asks that he won't disappear right? He doesn't really answer her at this point though. Before this goes any further, Sin makes another move and interrupts the moment.
Sin sprouts actual glowing wings at this point (didn't seem to have them before) and flies to the top of Bevelle. Tidus and Yuna have come back inside at this point, and Auron tells him that Jecht is waiting for him. Now is the time to go! We get back on the deck and have to fight Sin yet again, but this time we're going straight for the face! BOSS BATTLE TIME! SIN'S FACE! Yet ANOTHER battle on the top of the ship, but this one is a bit different from the previous Sin encounters. In this case, Sin really only has a large Overdrive meter. He sits there and stares at us as the meter slowly fills up. The goal here is to beat him before it fills up. In the beginning, he's a long range target, so I'm forced to bring in Wakka and Lulu until he gets closer. Cid can't move the ship in this case though. I just have to slowly but surely wait for him to approach. After several turns, he finally gets close enough to hit, and I begin to wail on the big guy. It doesn't take a lot to kill him though...I was kinda surprised at how quickly we took him down. I admit I used Holy a time or two, but I figured there'd be a bit more of a fight here. With Sin beaten right here, it's time to enter inside Sin and finish this fight.
We go inside of Sin, and I am finally in the final dungeon! Unfortunately for this dungeon, I'm more than prepared for it. The enemies in the initial area are fairly easy, and I'm swatting them about like flies. I could have just equipped the No Encounters weapon, but I wanted to get some last minute experience to pad the characters...just in case. The first area is a large water area with fog all about. I'm not swimming around persay, but we do have to wade through it. It's a slow walk through a maze of fog, but the map gives away most of the path. Lots of random encounters take place here, and I get to make use of Tidus's Overdrive Blitz Ace!
I made a mention of this Overdrive earlier on, but I didn't actually get it until now. Blitz Ace is almost exactly like Omnislash from FF7 or Squall's Lion Heart. He does a group of slashes (10 if I counted right), but then he throws a little twist in it! He plants the sword in the ground and leaps up into the air. A random character on the ground (selected based on how you talked with them I believe) tosses a Blitzball up to Tidus, and you have to time the hit right to kick it down for a final blast. It's the strongest portion of the attack, and if you miss it, Tidus falls back to the ground embarrassingly. As for the random character, Lulu was the one who tossed up the ball. As I reach the end of this section, I find out that it's called the "Sea of Sorrow". So...yeah. I climb up the random steps and come face-to-face with an annoying old enemy.
Yuuup, Seymour is back yet again. Despite how many times we kill him, he always comes back. For some reason, Yuna never sent him any of the previous times. I guess it takes a bit of time, and she didn't want to bother with it or something. Regardless, I'm tired of this stupid guy with his retarded hair and stupid belief. He comes up to say that he has become one with Sin! He plans to spend his everlasting time here and slowly learn to control Sin from within. He thanks the group for dealing with Yunalesca because with her gone, the Final Aeon can't stop Sin. Of course, Tidus jumps in at this point and says that they are going to stop him right here, right now. BOSS BATTLE TIME! SEYMOUR'S FINAL EDITION HOPEFULLY!
The only thing I'm going to give this fight is that it has a really cool theme music going for it. Outside of that, it's just another typical Seymour battle. Seymour takes the form of a massive invisible warrior angel thing. (It's hard to tell because of the invisibility part.) Behind his massive and invisible form are four spinning discs with four colors surrounding the edges. The secret to those is that they convey the elemental type of magic he'll be using. For his final act in this game, he has access to the -ga level of elemental magic, and he is lovingly able to cast it four times in a row (thus the four circles bit). The guide made me believe that I was in for quite a fight right here, but I quickly find out that I'm more than adequately prepared for him. I lower his physical defense and just lay into him with Tidus. I manage to pull off a couple of Blitz Ace's admits all my other attacks, and that does the trick really. Ultimate weapons might be a pain to get, but they're more than worth the effort. With Seymour defeated once again, Yuna FINALLY starts sending him. I understand that she couldn't send him the first time, but there were like two other chances to do it. Why didn't she do it then? Oh well! Not much I can do now, and Seymour is finally gone. Time to move along.
Next thing I know, I'm in a large and strange-looking city. I say city, but it's really just a bunch of blocky architecture of sorts. There are more fiends in this area, and they are a bit harder. Most of the fiends I'm seeing are powered-down versions of those from Omega Ruins, so I'm pretty much more than prepared for them. I find out from the menu that this area is called the TOWER OF THE DEAD. Now that's an ominous name for a place that honestly isn't a tower, but who is complaining? (I am...just making sure you knew.) The only worrisome thing in all of this is the Behemoth type fiend that roams the area. He's more than beatable, but he likes to cast Meteor as a counter to his death. The first couple of times I found one, I immediately threw out an Aeon to deal with him, but later on, I tackled him down with my part. Come to find out, that was almost a mistake. His Meteor spell nearly wiped out my entire party. No point hanging around here, so I continue into the heart of Sin.
We come to the end of the Tower of the Dead, and a massive tree-like object shoots down from the sky and into the ground. There's a strange glowing symbol on the bottom of it, so I touch it to be teleported away. This takes me to an area called THE NUCLEUS! (Seriously, that's what it is called.) This an interesting area to say the least. It's just a round crystal decorated area, and the camera is just slowly spinning about. There are massive crystal shards that shoot out of the ground and force me into random battles. I'll be honest though, with the end of the game so close, I just started running from some of them. None of them were necessarily hard, but my patience with FFX was growing ever thin. Apart from the crystal shards, there are also crystal eggs lying about. You have to grab them while avoiding the shards. This would be an easy task if you had some control over the camera, but instead you get to walk about and confusingly avoid the shards shooting out of the ground. Eventually, I grabbed enough of the eggs and are thrown to the final area. FINALLY!
This final area for our final battle appears to be a large and very broken down blitzball arena. Sitting on a platform in the middle of it all is...Jecht! We walk up to him, and he starts talking with Tidus. They have a nice father-son moment, and Tidus is finally able to tell Jecht that he hates him. Eventually, Jecht breaks off and says that it is time. Once he gets started, he won't be able to hold back and asks that they finish the job. Jecht backs off into the abyss and changes into his Final Aeon form. The place starts lighting up around us and reveals to be the ancient city of Zanarkand! FINAL BOSS BATTLE TIME! ROUND ONE! FIGHT!
Jecht's Final Aeon form looks quite similar to him, but of course, it's also very monster-y. He has horns and such. On both sides of him are a pair of strange towers called Yu Pagodas. Of course, I know from past experience that these are best left alone. (My last playthrough...I made it THIS far and didn't finish it.) The towers will just constantly heal him each turn. You can stop the towers by "killing" them, but they eventually regenerate with more health and can heal him even more each time. So...best to just leave those alone and focus on him. Tidus can talk with Jecht during the battle, and that causes him to lose some of his power. (Only can do it a few times, but it's worth the effort.) The first real action I take is Mixing up a Trio of 9999!
After that, I just shoot through the first round of this fight. Blitz Ace + Trio of 999 is basically just a combination of win. Once the attack finishes, Aeon Jecht reels back...and prepares for Round Two!
FINAL BOSS BATTLE TIME! ROUND TWO! FIIIGHT! The massive Aeon reaches into its chest and pulls out a massive sword to fight us. Once the round starts, I find out quickly that the sword isn't the only change here. Now Aeon Jecht has an Overdrive bar! Trio of 9999 is still in effect though, so I make the most of it while I can. Unfortunately, that deals a lot of damage and almost immediately fills up his Overdrive. He then unleashes...THE ULTIMATE JECHT SHOT! The attack was fairly massive and devastating, but I was more than prepared for this final boss ordeal. Alongside the Trio of 9999, I also used an item that doubled everybody's max HP. Both Yuna and Tidus had 9999 HP for the battle, and Rikku wasn't too far behind. After the Ultimate Jecht Shot, I quickly finish up Jecht and uh..manged to beat him super easily.
With its defeat, Final Aeon Jecht fades away, and Jecht reappears briefly. Tidus goes over to him and talks with him briefly, but then...Jecht finally passes on. As he's fading away, he tells Yuna to hurry and call the Aeons. It seems that there is a plan about to take motion. When Aeon Jecht faded away, a massive spirit ball came flying out and is currently flying over our heads. The group claims that it is Yu Yevon, and he finally comes around and charges straight at us. And now....FINAL BOSS BATTLE TIME! ROUND 3! FINAL MULTI-BATTLE! FIIIIGHT!
Going to just be straightforward and honest, this is a kinda lame final battle scenario. The idea here is that you have to summon all of your aeons and beat them each one by one. However, it's impossible to die at this point. All of your characters gain a regenerating Auto-Life that will constantly revive them if they die. Back to the battle! Every time you summon an Aeon, Yu Yevon's spirit jumps into it and changes them into evil/dark forms or whatever. I decide to start with the hardest Aeons and then slowly descend down the list. This means that the first ones up are the Magus Sisters. Despite there being three of them, I manage to finish them off rather quickly. (Rikku's Trio of 9999 is STILL in effect! I guess it lasts for so many rounds, and all these battles I guess technically count as the same one.) Unfortunately, during this Aeon slaying process, I happen to kill both of the Yu Pagodas. They didn't really change the tide of battle, but they did seem to be able to charge up the Aeon's Overdrive! This just means I have to kill them all quickly.
I could go into full detail here, but there's really not a lot to say about most of them. After the Magus Sisters, I brought out Yojimbo, Anima, and Bahamut in that order. Each and every one I was able to defeat with a single powerful strike by Tidus. The only interesting thing going on here is seeing a slightly different colored version of all the Aeons. Also, we are flying around in strange dimension place on top of Aeon Jecht's massive sword. I don't know why that happened, but no point questioning the crazy of this game. The only unfortunate part of this fight is that these Aeons are directly MY Aeons. That means they are as strong as Yuna is since they share stats. That's really the only problem, but it's technically not a problem since we have regenerating Auto-Life. (I get why they did it, but it's...still kinda lame.) As I get past Bahamut, the Trio of 9999 wears off of my team. Shiva pops up next, and she manages to drop some hurt on Tidus and actually manages to kill him! Of course...Auto-Life kicks in, so it's just a minor kickback. After that, Ixion, Ifrit, and Valefor are all beaten with very little trouble.
With Valefor's defeat, that takes care of all the Aeons. All that's left is Yu Yevon's actual spirit. It comes down and changes into...a bug? The game breaks away from the battles for a moment for Tidus to give his last minute announcement. He decides out of nowhere to be like "HEY GUYS! When Yu Yevon dies, I'm going to disappear." Apparently, he just had a "thought you should know that" moment. They all go "What?" but then continue straight on into the next battle. The only sad thing about this part is that...Yu Yevon is a massive pushover. All he does is sit there and heal himself constantly. He heals after every single hit, but my awesome power and might is able to beat him quite easily. With his defeat, it seems that everything is finally over.
Yuna starts sending everything in sight and begins the final process of eliminating it all. As she is sending things, everybody notices that Auron is leaking pyreflies. He tells her to continue regardless, and he steps forward to finally take his leave of the world. He doesn't say much apart from a small goodbye, and then...Auron is gone. I'm not going to fully describe the ending from here though. If you want to know it, you can play the game yourself! (Or look up the ending on Youtube...) If I were to briefly run through it, all of the Aeons fade from existence and disappear. The fayth statues start to lose a lot of their power all over the place, and Sin completely fades away as well. AND SPIRA...is finally at peace. Oh! The fayths stop dreaming, Tidus jumps off the ship as he fades away, and high fives Jecht. Also Yuna admits her love for him. Yeah, I just ruined a good portion of the ending. It's better to play and see it for yourself.
And that's it! Final Fantasy X is FINALLY done! I let it ride a little longer than the previous ones, but it's done all the same. Overall, FFX is a nice Final Fantasy, and at this point, I would almost say it's the last of the GOOD ones. I'm getting ahead of myself though and being overly judging. I'll find out soon enough when I start up the next ones. FINAL FANTASY X IS OVER! As far as the forseeable future goes, I plan to never come back. I could be very wrong, but it definitely looks that way. Enough about me though, it's been a decent journey finishing up this one. I spent over EIGHTY HOURS on Final Fantasy X! That's just crazyness, and I do hope that I won't have to do it again. Unfortunately, I probably will. I'd like to thank anybody who sat through that wall of text. It was a pain to type, but it's all done now. I'll be working on the Final Thoughts post, and it should be up soon enough. Stay tuned for my exciting and in-depth opinion-izing of Final Fantasy X!
BOSS BATTLE TIME #1 SIN'S...fin? Yeah, for the first of the multiple battles to come, we have to fight Sin's left fin. I get to experience another ranged battle on top of the ship, It goes pretty much like the previous ones. I have to get Cid to move us closer, or I'm limited to long range abilities like magic or Wakka's ball. Of course, I have to wait for Cid's turn to close in, so I get to waste several turns trying to do what I can from afar. By this point in the game, I pretty much always start off with Hastega. With everyone in haste, I can easily get off several attacks in a row before the enemy gets to even move! In this case though, it's kind of a negative since I'm waiting to move in and can't haste Cid. Once Cid finally closes the distance, there's not much more to it than a numbers game. I just keep hitting him every chance I get. Sin's fin doesn't have anything special to him. He can bump into the ship and do group-wide damage to us or cast Negation which eliminates all the buffs I have like Haste. (Except for Tidus's because he has Auto Haste! Auto abilities are insanely good in this game.) I quickly beat the fin, and Cid pulls us away from Sin. He tells us to hold onto something, and we finally learn what he had in store.
The game hits a cutscene and the giant lightning tesla cannons from earlier pop out of the ship and open fire on Sin. This blows Sin's arm/fin completely off! Next up, Cid pulls the ship up to the other side for BOSS BATTLE TIME #2! SIN'S...other fin. I won't go into much detail here, but it went faster than the previous one. Cid blows it full off with the tesla cannons as well. Unfortunately for us, the cannons borked after that last shot, so that isn't an option anymore. Cid tells the group to come back in to reformulate their plan, but Tidus says that nope! They are going for it! He goes off to say something about blitzball and having the ball and scoring. Lulu comments that a day with Tidus is never dull and leaps off the edge of the ship. Tidus and everybody else follows swiftly after and happen to land on Sin somehow. We confront a Sinspawn on Sin's head. BOSS BATTLE TIME #3! SINSPAWN PLUS EXTRA!
The Sinspawn in question is very similar to one near the beginning of the game. It's the ball-like one that looks likes kinda plant-like. It starts out in its battle mode of sorts, but I quickly force it into changing its form! It goes into defense mode and starts just healing itself. It heals pretty well though, so I'm having to really keep after it. Eventually, I break out the big gun with Yuna's Holy spell. As it turns out, she is the big gun of power on the team. Her Holy can easily and almost always deal over 10,000 damage! It only takes a two casts of Holy to kill the Sinspawn off, but then I have to deal with the thing behind it. It looks like another core of sorts just like the ones on the fins. Before I beat the Sinspawn, this core was starting to charge for some reason. I wasn't very interested in seeing what it charged into, but I quickly found out. It turns out that the charging was for Gravijia! Gravijia is a powered-up version of Demi that does three-fourths of everybody's health. (Demi is a group-wide spell in this game...fun, fun.) Alongside Gravijia, it can also groupcast the elemental magics. Lucky for me, it's all weak and low tier magic. None of it really does much, so I just start hammering away with Holy. It tries to charge up for a second Gravijia, but I defeat it with a blast of Holy! Seriously, if you build just build Yuna along her path, she gets to do some ridiculous damage with Holy.
Next thing I know, I'm already into another cutscene. Sin is seemingly falling apart and out of the sky. It jumps back to the group who is now back on the airship. Doesn't explain how they got off of the exploding and crashing Sin, but they did apparently. We're back inside, and Brother and Cid think that Sin is done for. Of course, the group knows the truth. We gotta go inside of Sin to finish it off. It's not over until we get Yu Yevon, but he's at least weakened for the moment. As it turns out, he crashed nearby Bevelle and is just out of it for the moment.
The group is all over the ship right now, and I have to go find Yuna so that I can continue. She's on top of the ship and starting to think about it all. She's wondering why the fayth seemed eager to be summoned while fighting Sin, and it's kinda suggesting that they're is something up. She says that Yu Yevon will simply join with the Aeons summoned, and that we'll have to beat those as well. She also brings up the dream thing that the fayth and Tidus mentioned. She looks over to Tidus now and asks that he won't disappear right? He doesn't really answer her at this point though. Before this goes any further, Sin makes another move and interrupts the moment.
Sin sprouts actual glowing wings at this point (didn't seem to have them before) and flies to the top of Bevelle. Tidus and Yuna have come back inside at this point, and Auron tells him that Jecht is waiting for him. Now is the time to go! We get back on the deck and have to fight Sin yet again, but this time we're going straight for the face! BOSS BATTLE TIME! SIN'S FACE! Yet ANOTHER battle on the top of the ship, but this one is a bit different from the previous Sin encounters. In this case, Sin really only has a large Overdrive meter. He sits there and stares at us as the meter slowly fills up. The goal here is to beat him before it fills up. In the beginning, he's a long range target, so I'm forced to bring in Wakka and Lulu until he gets closer. Cid can't move the ship in this case though. I just have to slowly but surely wait for him to approach. After several turns, he finally gets close enough to hit, and I begin to wail on the big guy. It doesn't take a lot to kill him though...I was kinda surprised at how quickly we took him down. I admit I used Holy a time or two, but I figured there'd be a bit more of a fight here. With Sin beaten right here, it's time to enter inside Sin and finish this fight.
We go inside of Sin, and I am finally in the final dungeon! Unfortunately for this dungeon, I'm more than prepared for it. The enemies in the initial area are fairly easy, and I'm swatting them about like flies. I could have just equipped the No Encounters weapon, but I wanted to get some last minute experience to pad the characters...just in case. The first area is a large water area with fog all about. I'm not swimming around persay, but we do have to wade through it. It's a slow walk through a maze of fog, but the map gives away most of the path. Lots of random encounters take place here, and I get to make use of Tidus's Overdrive Blitz Ace!
I made a mention of this Overdrive earlier on, but I didn't actually get it until now. Blitz Ace is almost exactly like Omnislash from FF7 or Squall's Lion Heart. He does a group of slashes (10 if I counted right), but then he throws a little twist in it! He plants the sword in the ground and leaps up into the air. A random character on the ground (selected based on how you talked with them I believe) tosses a Blitzball up to Tidus, and you have to time the hit right to kick it down for a final blast. It's the strongest portion of the attack, and if you miss it, Tidus falls back to the ground embarrassingly. As for the random character, Lulu was the one who tossed up the ball. As I reach the end of this section, I find out that it's called the "Sea of Sorrow". So...yeah. I climb up the random steps and come face-to-face with an annoying old enemy.
Yuuup, Seymour is back yet again. Despite how many times we kill him, he always comes back. For some reason, Yuna never sent him any of the previous times. I guess it takes a bit of time, and she didn't want to bother with it or something. Regardless, I'm tired of this stupid guy with his retarded hair and stupid belief. He comes up to say that he has become one with Sin! He plans to spend his everlasting time here and slowly learn to control Sin from within. He thanks the group for dealing with Yunalesca because with her gone, the Final Aeon can't stop Sin. Of course, Tidus jumps in at this point and says that they are going to stop him right here, right now. BOSS BATTLE TIME! SEYMOUR'S FINAL EDITION HOPEFULLY!
The only thing I'm going to give this fight is that it has a really cool theme music going for it. Outside of that, it's just another typical Seymour battle. Seymour takes the form of a massive invisible warrior angel thing. (It's hard to tell because of the invisibility part.) Behind his massive and invisible form are four spinning discs with four colors surrounding the edges. The secret to those is that they convey the elemental type of magic he'll be using. For his final act in this game, he has access to the -ga level of elemental magic, and he is lovingly able to cast it four times in a row (thus the four circles bit). The guide made me believe that I was in for quite a fight right here, but I quickly find out that I'm more than adequately prepared for him. I lower his physical defense and just lay into him with Tidus. I manage to pull off a couple of Blitz Ace's admits all my other attacks, and that does the trick really. Ultimate weapons might be a pain to get, but they're more than worth the effort. With Seymour defeated once again, Yuna FINALLY starts sending him. I understand that she couldn't send him the first time, but there were like two other chances to do it. Why didn't she do it then? Oh well! Not much I can do now, and Seymour is finally gone. Time to move along.
Next thing I know, I'm in a large and strange-looking city. I say city, but it's really just a bunch of blocky architecture of sorts. There are more fiends in this area, and they are a bit harder. Most of the fiends I'm seeing are powered-down versions of those from Omega Ruins, so I'm pretty much more than prepared for them. I find out from the menu that this area is called the TOWER OF THE DEAD. Now that's an ominous name for a place that honestly isn't a tower, but who is complaining? (I am...just making sure you knew.) The only worrisome thing in all of this is the Behemoth type fiend that roams the area. He's more than beatable, but he likes to cast Meteor as a counter to his death. The first couple of times I found one, I immediately threw out an Aeon to deal with him, but later on, I tackled him down with my part. Come to find out, that was almost a mistake. His Meteor spell nearly wiped out my entire party. No point hanging around here, so I continue into the heart of Sin.
We come to the end of the Tower of the Dead, and a massive tree-like object shoots down from the sky and into the ground. There's a strange glowing symbol on the bottom of it, so I touch it to be teleported away. This takes me to an area called THE NUCLEUS! (Seriously, that's what it is called.) This an interesting area to say the least. It's just a round crystal decorated area, and the camera is just slowly spinning about. There are massive crystal shards that shoot out of the ground and force me into random battles. I'll be honest though, with the end of the game so close, I just started running from some of them. None of them were necessarily hard, but my patience with FFX was growing ever thin. Apart from the crystal shards, there are also crystal eggs lying about. You have to grab them while avoiding the shards. This would be an easy task if you had some control over the camera, but instead you get to walk about and confusingly avoid the shards shooting out of the ground. Eventually, I grabbed enough of the eggs and are thrown to the final area. FINALLY!
This final area for our final battle appears to be a large and very broken down blitzball arena. Sitting on a platform in the middle of it all is...Jecht! We walk up to him, and he starts talking with Tidus. They have a nice father-son moment, and Tidus is finally able to tell Jecht that he hates him. Eventually, Jecht breaks off and says that it is time. Once he gets started, he won't be able to hold back and asks that they finish the job. Jecht backs off into the abyss and changes into his Final Aeon form. The place starts lighting up around us and reveals to be the ancient city of Zanarkand! FINAL BOSS BATTLE TIME! ROUND ONE! FIGHT!
Jecht's Final Aeon form looks quite similar to him, but of course, it's also very monster-y. He has horns and such. On both sides of him are a pair of strange towers called Yu Pagodas. Of course, I know from past experience that these are best left alone. (My last playthrough...I made it THIS far and didn't finish it.) The towers will just constantly heal him each turn. You can stop the towers by "killing" them, but they eventually regenerate with more health and can heal him even more each time. So...best to just leave those alone and focus on him. Tidus can talk with Jecht during the battle, and that causes him to lose some of his power. (Only can do it a few times, but it's worth the effort.) The first real action I take is Mixing up a Trio of 9999!
After that, I just shoot through the first round of this fight. Blitz Ace + Trio of 999 is basically just a combination of win. Once the attack finishes, Aeon Jecht reels back...and prepares for Round Two!
FINAL BOSS BATTLE TIME! ROUND TWO! FIIIGHT! The massive Aeon reaches into its chest and pulls out a massive sword to fight us. Once the round starts, I find out quickly that the sword isn't the only change here. Now Aeon Jecht has an Overdrive bar! Trio of 9999 is still in effect though, so I make the most of it while I can. Unfortunately, that deals a lot of damage and almost immediately fills up his Overdrive. He then unleashes...THE ULTIMATE JECHT SHOT! The attack was fairly massive and devastating, but I was more than prepared for this final boss ordeal. Alongside the Trio of 9999, I also used an item that doubled everybody's max HP. Both Yuna and Tidus had 9999 HP for the battle, and Rikku wasn't too far behind. After the Ultimate Jecht Shot, I quickly finish up Jecht and uh..manged to beat him super easily.
With its defeat, Final Aeon Jecht fades away, and Jecht reappears briefly. Tidus goes over to him and talks with him briefly, but then...Jecht finally passes on. As he's fading away, he tells Yuna to hurry and call the Aeons. It seems that there is a plan about to take motion. When Aeon Jecht faded away, a massive spirit ball came flying out and is currently flying over our heads. The group claims that it is Yu Yevon, and he finally comes around and charges straight at us. And now....FINAL BOSS BATTLE TIME! ROUND 3! FINAL MULTI-BATTLE! FIIIIGHT!
Going to just be straightforward and honest, this is a kinda lame final battle scenario. The idea here is that you have to summon all of your aeons and beat them each one by one. However, it's impossible to die at this point. All of your characters gain a regenerating Auto-Life that will constantly revive them if they die. Back to the battle! Every time you summon an Aeon, Yu Yevon's spirit jumps into it and changes them into evil/dark forms or whatever. I decide to start with the hardest Aeons and then slowly descend down the list. This means that the first ones up are the Magus Sisters. Despite there being three of them, I manage to finish them off rather quickly. (Rikku's Trio of 9999 is STILL in effect! I guess it lasts for so many rounds, and all these battles I guess technically count as the same one.) Unfortunately, during this Aeon slaying process, I happen to kill both of the Yu Pagodas. They didn't really change the tide of battle, but they did seem to be able to charge up the Aeon's Overdrive! This just means I have to kill them all quickly.
I could go into full detail here, but there's really not a lot to say about most of them. After the Magus Sisters, I brought out Yojimbo, Anima, and Bahamut in that order. Each and every one I was able to defeat with a single powerful strike by Tidus. The only interesting thing going on here is seeing a slightly different colored version of all the Aeons. Also, we are flying around in strange dimension place on top of Aeon Jecht's massive sword. I don't know why that happened, but no point questioning the crazy of this game. The only unfortunate part of this fight is that these Aeons are directly MY Aeons. That means they are as strong as Yuna is since they share stats. That's really the only problem, but it's technically not a problem since we have regenerating Auto-Life. (I get why they did it, but it's...still kinda lame.) As I get past Bahamut, the Trio of 9999 wears off of my team. Shiva pops up next, and she manages to drop some hurt on Tidus and actually manages to kill him! Of course...Auto-Life kicks in, so it's just a minor kickback. After that, Ixion, Ifrit, and Valefor are all beaten with very little trouble.
With Valefor's defeat, that takes care of all the Aeons. All that's left is Yu Yevon's actual spirit. It comes down and changes into...a bug? The game breaks away from the battles for a moment for Tidus to give his last minute announcement. He decides out of nowhere to be like "HEY GUYS! When Yu Yevon dies, I'm going to disappear." Apparently, he just had a "thought you should know that" moment. They all go "What?" but then continue straight on into the next battle. The only sad thing about this part is that...Yu Yevon is a massive pushover. All he does is sit there and heal himself constantly. He heals after every single hit, but my awesome power and might is able to beat him quite easily. With his defeat, it seems that everything is finally over.
Yuna starts sending everything in sight and begins the final process of eliminating it all. As she is sending things, everybody notices that Auron is leaking pyreflies. He tells her to continue regardless, and he steps forward to finally take his leave of the world. He doesn't say much apart from a small goodbye, and then...Auron is gone. I'm not going to fully describe the ending from here though. If you want to know it, you can play the game yourself! (Or look up the ending on Youtube...) If I were to briefly run through it, all of the Aeons fade from existence and disappear. The fayth statues start to lose a lot of their power all over the place, and Sin completely fades away as well. AND SPIRA...is finally at peace. Oh! The fayths stop dreaming, Tidus jumps off the ship as he fades away, and high fives Jecht. Also Yuna admits her love for him. Yeah, I just ruined a good portion of the ending. It's better to play and see it for yourself.
And that's it! Final Fantasy X is FINALLY done! I let it ride a little longer than the previous ones, but it's done all the same. Overall, FFX is a nice Final Fantasy, and at this point, I would almost say it's the last of the GOOD ones. I'm getting ahead of myself though and being overly judging. I'll find out soon enough when I start up the next ones. FINAL FANTASY X IS OVER! As far as the forseeable future goes, I plan to never come back. I could be very wrong, but it definitely looks that way. Enough about me though, it's been a decent journey finishing up this one. I spent over EIGHTY HOURS on Final Fantasy X! That's just crazyness, and I do hope that I won't have to do it again. Unfortunately, I probably will. I'd like to thank anybody who sat through that wall of text. It was a pain to type, but it's all done now. I'll be working on the Final Thoughts post, and it should be up soon enough. Stay tuned for my exciting and in-depth opinion-izing of Final Fantasy X!
Ending Point - The end of Final Fantasy X!
Current Party - Doesn't really matter because they don't have actual levels. I'll make a list of things when I type up the "Final Thoughts". I guess I could put down what the final grouping was as I beat the final bit though...
- Tidus
- Wakka
- Yuna
Next Goals - Start Final Fantasy XII.
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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