Final Fantasy X - Part Five
Remember how I said Part Five was probably going to be the last one? Well, I unintentionally lied. It was make more parts or have a horrendously long one, which might be kind of boring for everybody. Here goes!
There were a lot of cutscenes in this portion (which is to be expected in the last quarter, I guess?), so I spend a lot of time TL;DRing about them. If you're still reading these posts, thank you!
Where we last left off, Seymour flattened me, partly because my play session had been going on for about two hours by that point and I was just sort of tired of fighting. I didn't bother trying again for awhile; in fact, I've heard winning that battle is partly luck, which doesn't surprise me at all because the old Final Fantasy games pulled that card like no tomorrow.
Luckily for me, my BFF Matt was in town for a weekend. We had some visiting tiems, drank some cider, and did some level-grinding for something to do while we talked. Good times. We horded some enemies for that lame colloseum dealie, finished the chocobo sidequest, started that quest for those extra weapons, and got to that... um, temple thing. The one relating to the chocobos. You know the one. I totally forgot the name, since we spent a total of two minutes in it. It's related to another sidequest, I think.
Anyway, it turns out Pokemon Trainer the summoner woman from before is actually dead, which is sort of a plot hole, but it's Squeenix's game, so we'll let them do what they like, I guess.
--Okay, back on track!
Level-grinding did me some good, so I went and punched Seymour in the face with surprisingly little difficulty. Using Dispel almost makes it feel like you cheated because he wastes half his turns failing to reflect Ultima back at you. Unfortunately, this victory lead to a cutscene with Tidus doing some serious bawing. He tells now actually-dead Seymour to shut it, which does him very little good since our pal the fabulous zombie mole is gone forever. This leaves one horrible thing in the party's future: fighting Yunalesca. Oh god.
Yuna figures out Tidus is hiding something, and he and Auron then confess that Jecht is Sin. Wakka's pretty disappointed, since all this time, he was holding out hope that maybe somehow Tidus was his dead brother, Chappu. Obviously this cannot be the case. ":C," says Wakka.
The next section of Gagazet is the part that has the trials. Sadly, this set of trials doesn't involve spheres, which I find really disappointing because those trials were interesting. Instead, it mostly involves me running around in a cave and being mad about how slowly Tidus swims. This is especially frustrating because I ended up back-tracking through a watery part several times. What is wrong with meeee.
The underwater enemies are unremarkable except for this weird humanoid fish (?) thing called Achelous, which has a creepy charging chest jewel. Something about the throbbing light just really weirded me out. I use this opportunity with the Tidus/Wakka/Rikku party to actually steal some stuff, though, because I usually forget to. Here's hoping water gems make some kind of useful combination with another item!
The trials here were really unmemorable, but there was one thing where I had to have Wakka throw his blitzball at a moving target to flip a switch. I have the worst video game aim known to man, apparently, since this took me a lot more times than it should have.
My least favorite part of my excursion into the trial ends up the dark flans. They're impervious to pretty much everything and they keep using White Wind to heal themselves, and I can't silence them because White Wind is a technique and not a spell. On the plus side, I rob the sadistic jelly of this particular power with Kimhari's Lancet before I run off. (As a side note, I find it sort if pathetic how the primary thing Tidus is useful for is running away.) I get to my lovely save point, where the party discusses their upcoming encounter with Yunalesca. I love how they basically tell you nothing about that. They just sort of mention her ominously.
"OH HEY YUNALESCA TIME SOON."
"LOL UR RIGHT."
"Who's Yunale--"
"Off we go!"
By now, I'm so close to the end that I can actually count the number of bosses left to fight with one hand. Sadly, though, FFX doesn't feel any stronger in terms of story-telling than any of the other Final Fantasies I've played, even though this one is hailed as being one of the better written ones. As usual, the other party members sort of got shafted in terms of plot participation. They each got their own little piece, of course, but Tidus and Yuna were center stage. Well... mostly Tidus. I'd like to have gotten more about Wakka, but at least he got more of a backstory than poor Rikku! Yikes. She's Yuna's cousin, she's scared of lightning because of her brother, and that's about it.
Her dad is Cid, though, so I wonder if that makes up for anything. He's pretty badass.
I fight a dragon just outside the cave I was in, and the battle gimmick that seems wonderfully FFIV. I cast Reflect on our new pal, and it spends the rest of the battle bouncing Curaga at me while I attack. It casts Reflect on me once, too, in an effort to steal back the healing spell, but once again Dispel is the best spell ever. (As I recall, you can bounce spells back and forth a couple of times by having Reflect cast on the party and the enemy in FFIX, which makes for a kind of entertaining, if not masochistic, game of Black Magic Roulette.)
Tidus falls on his face now, and even knowing the plot of the game beforehand doesn't really help me explain why. Basically, the aeons are calling to him. Tidus finds himself in a dream that looks suspiciously like Zanarkand, mostly because it is. Bahamut's Fayth is there, whom he recognizes from back when Yuna actually got Bahamut. I try not to laugh because Bahamut's Fayth sounds like a very serious Jimmy Neutron. He tells Wanker that the aeons were the ones responsible for dreaming up the Zanarkand that Tidus lived in, and that they are responsible for dreaming up him, too. Zanarkand really is gone now; all that remains of it is their living dreams.
I have to say, Tidus has absolutely zero sense of gravity in situations like this, which is part of why I'm not particularly fond of him. He spends so much of the game bawing about his dad and ignoring other people's feelings, and then he finds out he's a dream and doesn't seem all too concerned about that, either. It's like hate for his father is all he's a manifestation of by this point, and it feels kind of shallow. I can also understand some kind of shock or disbelief at the story being presented to him, but we don't even get any amply punctuated "What?!"s, or the standard effort of the confused person to try to get anything repeated.
The Fayth tells him wearily that the aeons have dreamed for so long, upholding the memory of Zanarkand and dreaming up lame people like Wanker. "We are so, so very tired..." he says. Soon they will stop dreaming, because they can't keep this up anymore. Can't say I blame them. 8|
"Darn," Tidus emotes. I'm not even sure to what extent all of this is actually sinking in for him. You = dream. Aeons = dreamers. The dreamers are tired of dreaming. What do you think that means for you? He then wakes up to everyone wondering why he keeled over at random. Like a good RPG hero, he tells them nothing, and then we enter ~*THE LAND OF CUTSCENES*~.
As they walk, Yuna drops a sphere containing a recording of her good-byes to the party, intended for them to listen to after she's summoned the Final Aeon and died. Yuna is such a beautiful character. She has so much sadness, but so much love to give to the world. I feel doubly bad because not only is her life meant to end early, but she fell in love with Wanker and she's so, so grateful for it. Poor Yuna. You deserve so much better than Tidus and all his derping/"ITS MY STORY GAIZ"/"BAWWW DAD".
The Zanarkand Ruins are pretty depressing because of this, but I find there's an excellent balance of cutscenes and gameplay. The music shifts to "Suteki Da Ne" for awhile. I'm actually kind of annoyed that they didn't outright translate that title. For the version of the song that has lyrics (which are in Japanese), I can understand keeping the Japanese title, but for the instrumental? Maybe I'm a dork, but I get more out of a song if I know what it's called. Then you can understand more of the composer's intent. It took me awhile to figure out that title translates to "Isn't It Beautiful*?" (I- I don't know any Japanese, okay? OTL)
*Can also be interchanged with words like wonderful, dreamy, lovely, great, etc., sayeth Matcha.
The song is so sad and fitting for Yuna and her terrible circumstances; sort of sad, but pretty, and yet hopeful, too, and I appreciate it so much more understanding its meaning. Good grief, Squeenix.
A savepoint makes me very happy, and then I get to wander through more of the ruins. There are lingering memories trapped there, including those of deceased summoners and their parties, and little Seymour. Little Seymour, by the way, was a very cute and normal-looking child (excluding the blue hair, but that's acceptable in many FF canons). In the memory, he's sad because his mommy is going to die to make an aeon for him to save the worrrrrld with.
GUESS WHICH AEON THAT IS, GUYS.
I ASKED A RHETORICAL QUESTION ABOUT ITS APPEARANCE ONCE.
Anyway, along with Seymour and various other nameless people, there also exists the memory of Yuna's father, Braska, and his party, which contains a very obnoxious Jecht and a sort of sweet but pitiable younger Auron.
I find the trials, which are partly sphere-involving, but to a very simple degree. I have to make Wanker put them in various slots and then do some weird light-tile floor puzzle. Another friend was over when I got to this part. We were doing it wrong for about ten minutes, trying to memorize where to step when there's actually a little map thing to tell you. Whoops. Luckily for me, Alisa decides she loves this puzzle and does it for me. Yeah! Then I save because, bah, I am not in the mood for boss battles with floor-related gimmicks.
Until next time!
There were a lot of cutscenes in this portion (which is to be expected in the last quarter, I guess?), so I spend a lot of time TL;DRing about them. If you're still reading these posts, thank you!
Where we last left off, Seymour flattened me, partly because my play session had been going on for about two hours by that point and I was just sort of tired of fighting. I didn't bother trying again for awhile; in fact, I've heard winning that battle is partly luck, which doesn't surprise me at all because the old Final Fantasy games pulled that card like no tomorrow.
Luckily for me, my BFF Matt was in town for a weekend. We had some visiting tiems, drank some cider, and did some level-grinding for something to do while we talked. Good times. We horded some enemies for that lame colloseum dealie, finished the chocobo sidequest, started that quest for those extra weapons, and got to that... um, temple thing. The one relating to the chocobos. You know the one. I totally forgot the name, since we spent a total of two minutes in it. It's related to another sidequest, I think.
Anyway, it turns out Pokemon Trainer the summoner woman from before is actually dead, which is sort of a plot hole, but it's Squeenix's game, so we'll let them do what they like, I guess.
--Okay, back on track!
Level-grinding did me some good, so I went and punched Seymour in the face with surprisingly little difficulty. Using Dispel almost makes it feel like you cheated because he wastes half his turns failing to reflect Ultima back at you. Unfortunately, this victory lead to a cutscene with Tidus doing some serious bawing. He tells now actually-dead Seymour to shut it, which does him very little good since our pal the fabulous zombie mole is gone forever. This leaves one horrible thing in the party's future: fighting Yunalesca. Oh god.
Yuna figures out Tidus is hiding something, and he and Auron then confess that Jecht is Sin. Wakka's pretty disappointed, since all this time, he was holding out hope that maybe somehow Tidus was his dead brother, Chappu. Obviously this cannot be the case. ":C," says Wakka.
The next section of Gagazet is the part that has the trials. Sadly, this set of trials doesn't involve spheres, which I find really disappointing because those trials were interesting. Instead, it mostly involves me running around in a cave and being mad about how slowly Tidus swims. This is especially frustrating because I ended up back-tracking through a watery part several times. What is wrong with meeee.
The underwater enemies are unremarkable except for this weird humanoid fish (?) thing called Achelous, which has a creepy charging chest jewel. Something about the throbbing light just really weirded me out. I use this opportunity with the Tidus/Wakka/Rikku party to actually steal some stuff, though, because I usually forget to. Here's hoping water gems make some kind of useful combination with another item!
The trials here were really unmemorable, but there was one thing where I had to have Wakka throw his blitzball at a moving target to flip a switch. I have the worst video game aim known to man, apparently, since this took me a lot more times than it should have.
My least favorite part of my excursion into the trial ends up the dark flans. They're impervious to pretty much everything and they keep using White Wind to heal themselves, and I can't silence them because White Wind is a technique and not a spell. On the plus side, I rob the sadistic jelly of this particular power with Kimhari's Lancet before I run off. (As a side note, I find it sort if pathetic how the primary thing Tidus is useful for is running away.) I get to my lovely save point, where the party discusses their upcoming encounter with Yunalesca. I love how they basically tell you nothing about that. They just sort of mention her ominously.
"OH HEY YUNALESCA TIME SOON."
"LOL UR RIGHT."
"Who's Yunale--"
"Off we go!"
By now, I'm so close to the end that I can actually count the number of bosses left to fight with one hand. Sadly, though, FFX doesn't feel any stronger in terms of story-telling than any of the other Final Fantasies I've played, even though this one is hailed as being one of the better written ones. As usual, the other party members sort of got shafted in terms of plot participation. They each got their own little piece, of course, but Tidus and Yuna were center stage. Well... mostly Tidus. I'd like to have gotten more about Wakka, but at least he got more of a backstory than poor Rikku! Yikes. She's Yuna's cousin, she's scared of lightning because of her brother, and that's about it.
Her dad is Cid, though, so I wonder if that makes up for anything. He's pretty badass.
I fight a dragon just outside the cave I was in, and the battle gimmick that seems wonderfully FFIV. I cast Reflect on our new pal, and it spends the rest of the battle bouncing Curaga at me while I attack. It casts Reflect on me once, too, in an effort to steal back the healing spell, but once again Dispel is the best spell ever. (As I recall, you can bounce spells back and forth a couple of times by having Reflect cast on the party and the enemy in FFIX, which makes for a kind of entertaining, if not masochistic, game of Black Magic Roulette.)
Tidus falls on his face now, and even knowing the plot of the game beforehand doesn't really help me explain why. Basically, the aeons are calling to him. Tidus finds himself in a dream that looks suspiciously like Zanarkand, mostly because it is. Bahamut's Fayth is there, whom he recognizes from back when Yuna actually got Bahamut. I try not to laugh because Bahamut's Fayth sounds like a very serious Jimmy Neutron. He tells Wanker that the aeons were the ones responsible for dreaming up the Zanarkand that Tidus lived in, and that they are responsible for dreaming up him, too. Zanarkand really is gone now; all that remains of it is their living dreams.
I have to say, Tidus has absolutely zero sense of gravity in situations like this, which is part of why I'm not particularly fond of him. He spends so much of the game bawing about his dad and ignoring other people's feelings, and then he finds out he's a dream and doesn't seem all too concerned about that, either. It's like hate for his father is all he's a manifestation of by this point, and it feels kind of shallow. I can also understand some kind of shock or disbelief at the story being presented to him, but we don't even get any amply punctuated "What?!"s, or the standard effort of the confused person to try to get anything repeated.
The Fayth tells him wearily that the aeons have dreamed for so long, upholding the memory of Zanarkand and dreaming up lame people like Wanker. "We are so, so very tired..." he says. Soon they will stop dreaming, because they can't keep this up anymore. Can't say I blame them. 8|
"Darn," Tidus emotes. I'm not even sure to what extent all of this is actually sinking in for him. You = dream. Aeons = dreamers. The dreamers are tired of dreaming. What do you think that means for you? He then wakes up to everyone wondering why he keeled over at random. Like a good RPG hero, he tells them nothing, and then we enter ~*THE LAND OF CUTSCENES*~.
As they walk, Yuna drops a sphere containing a recording of her good-byes to the party, intended for them to listen to after she's summoned the Final Aeon and died. Yuna is such a beautiful character. She has so much sadness, but so much love to give to the world. I feel doubly bad because not only is her life meant to end early, but she fell in love with Wanker and she's so, so grateful for it. Poor Yuna. You deserve so much better than Tidus and all his derping/"ITS MY STORY GAIZ"/"BAWWW DAD".
The Zanarkand Ruins are pretty depressing because of this, but I find there's an excellent balance of cutscenes and gameplay. The music shifts to "Suteki Da Ne" for awhile. I'm actually kind of annoyed that they didn't outright translate that title. For the version of the song that has lyrics (which are in Japanese), I can understand keeping the Japanese title, but for the instrumental? Maybe I'm a dork, but I get more out of a song if I know what it's called. Then you can understand more of the composer's intent. It took me awhile to figure out that title translates to "Isn't It Beautiful*?" (I- I don't know any Japanese, okay? OTL)
*Can also be interchanged with words like wonderful, dreamy, lovely, great, etc., sayeth Matcha.
The song is so sad and fitting for Yuna and her terrible circumstances; sort of sad, but pretty, and yet hopeful, too, and I appreciate it so much more understanding its meaning. Good grief, Squeenix.
A savepoint makes me very happy, and then I get to wander through more of the ruins. There are lingering memories trapped there, including those of deceased summoners and their parties, and little Seymour. Little Seymour, by the way, was a very cute and normal-looking child (excluding the blue hair, but that's acceptable in many FF canons). In the memory, he's sad because his mommy is going to die to make an aeon for him to save the worrrrrld with.
GUESS WHICH AEON THAT IS, GUYS.
I ASKED A RHETORICAL QUESTION ABOUT ITS APPEARANCE ONCE.
Anyway, along with Seymour and various other nameless people, there also exists the memory of Yuna's father, Braska, and his party, which contains a very obnoxious Jecht and a sort of sweet but pitiable younger Auron.
I find the trials, which are partly sphere-involving, but to a very simple degree. I have to make Wanker put them in various slots and then do some weird light-tile floor puzzle. Another friend was over when I got to this part. We were doing it wrong for about ten minutes, trying to memorize where to step when there's actually a little map thing to tell you. Whoops. Luckily for me, Alisa decides she loves this puzzle and does it for me. Yeah! Then I save because, bah, I am not in the mood for boss battles with floor-related gimmicks.
Until next time!