I need to make a thread (259,850 views)

[Mario the black knight]

OK, so lets actually try this dungeon for real.

Beat my first Great Malboro legit. We are ready for this now.

With my shitty understanding of armor in previous runs...how the hell did I survive this place?

Welp, got a mimic, so I guess no final prize. Apparently if you roll perfectly and get all of the chests, the last prize is 99 warp spheres, which basically means the sphere grid is totally broken and you are free to do whatever you want. So oh well.

I'm almost at Ultima with Yuna now. By the looks of the completely random low level stat increases around it, I would guess they took the section of the sphere grid Ultima was in on Standard Sphere Grid and just copy/pasted it to this random corner of Lulu's sphere grid.

Nice, just got the second cluster of three

Just absolutely wailed on a group of Demonoliths. Watching Breath just bounce right off was super nice. Still not an easy battle, but definitely much more survivable.

Went back and saved because I was low on MP, and had a ton of levels. Yuna has now surpassed Lulu on the path to Ultima, since I never use Lulu anymore, Tidus is 1 move away from the end of Wakka's grid (before he loops back and goes backwards through it to get everything else, since his grid ends near Wakka and Auron's ends) and Auron is almost at Hastega on Tidus' grid, which will give him way more utility.

Now back to find those last chests, before running from Ultima Weapon...

So I got 10 of the 12 possible chests. A little disappointed I didn't get those Warp Spheres, but it's hard to ask for much better than that given how the probabilites were stacked

Honestly this whole gimmick is bullshit. It's just random for the sake of random with no situation that favors the player or gives them any real way to counterplay the random factor, it just amounts to Russian Roulette, dumb luck with no real positive outcome. It's pretty poor game design. Like I've been saying all along, everything else about this game is incredible, but the dungeon design was so ridiculously weak.

As it stands now, I know I have no chance in hell against Omega weapon, and I'm not sure if I can take Ultima either, since I know both were buffed. I might give Ultima a try though, just to see if it's possible

I've just saved. I think I'm gonna give Tidus the Caladbolg and go ham, and try to beat this thing for real.

It really is insane JUST how much more powerful Celestial Weapons are compared to normal weapons, Auron honestly feels weak now without the Masamune compared to just the absolute havoc I can deal with the Caladbolg now. I'm doing about 20k per hit with Tidus compared to Auron who is hard locked at 9999

I almost want to hard focus on Monster catching and get the Masamune unlocked so I can maximize Auron's power before I face Ultima Weapon

I FINALLY got a piece of equipment with No Encounters on it, so now I can turn those off in places I wanna get through quickly. I really have learned to hate random encounters in RPGs. Visible encounters are always better.

I think I'll go do monster catching next time, see if I can finally secure the Mars Sigil and get Auron up to speed, before we go face Ultima Weapon.

[Mario the black knight]

And now, on the quest to catch horrifically under level monsters

I'll be starting on Mi'hiem Highroad, then I'll go to Djose, then figure it out from there

I'm at the point in the game where all those well defined roles in the beginning of the game are well and truly dead, attacking armored enemies with Tidus, killing fliers with Auron, killing flans with Wakka, nothing really matters, and it makes these battles pretty dull.

..........Fuck. One of the prizes for monster catching was 99 Petrify Grenades....I could have just done this and completed at least part of my armor set....

OH! Mars Sigil! Oh, we good to go.

And thats the Masamune done.

So now I guess my next course of action is beat Ultima Weapon, mostly just to gauge my own power. If I can manage that, maybe consider either Omega or even trying to beat Dark Valefor, my current biggest gatekeeper.

Once Dark Valefor is down, I can go get the Destruction Sphere treasure in Besaid, get the last Al Bhed primer I can still get, teach Valefor Energy Blast, and unlock the path to getting Anima.

Once I have Anima, I can go back to Remiem Temple and finish that sidequest, unlocking Magnus Sisters and the Moon Sigil. Finishing Nirvana, and unleashing Yuna as a spellcaster.

After that, I guess I should start considering Endgame armor, and hunting the big game, cleaning up the rest of the Dark Aeons and Omega.

I MIGHT finish Blitzball this time, I just never feel as motivated once I have Attack Reels

I'll decide next time.

[Mario the black knight]

I think it's time to do a little big game hunting.

First target: Ultima Weapon

I gotta get used to not having Piercing on Auron, adjusting to the Masamune is always strange.

I've made the revelation that I will probably need to complete Rikku's grid with Yuna to get all the best spells like Flare and Auto-Life, since they are located on Rikku's grid for some...strange reason.

I guess it just gives me even less reason to use Rikku ever, which is nice. I can get more steals in if I need to do more farming, which I'm certain I will, once I get into endgame armors. I also realized I had already finished most of Lulus grid with Yuna thanks to diversions along the way during the story. Made this a lot faster.

And here we go

Wow. That wasn't so bad at all

He literally never hit me and I beat him in like 5 attacks. He physical attacked 1 time with Yuna and missed.

Maybe I am stronger than I thought...

I am not too worried about Valefor now, I think she is next.

Well....I guess maybe I should have been a little more worried....

She might not be as defensively strong as Omega, but definitely way WAY more offensive.

Auto-Life feels like it might be a high priority

The tough thing is a keep getting merked by Energy Ray, which for this battle isn't an Overdrive for Valefor. It's just a 1 hit KO for the party pretty much, so I just need to get Aeons out to block it, except it's completely unpredictable.

Welp, did a little better this time. Was able to stop a few Energy Rays, just to get smoked by a poorly timed Energy Blast

I just know to summon every so often to catch the Energy Rays, though I think I mostly got lucky on the timing

I actually discovered I was one Overdrive away from Blitz Ace, so I just went and learned that real quick. Dunno how much it'll help, but it should definitely be an increase in firepower

I keep getting my ass handed to me, maybe I am not as strong as I think. I think I take one more shot at this, then maybe see if I can handle Omega instead

You know what? Fuck it, I am playing Blitzball.

No better way to feel powerful after getting absolutely decimated a dozen times then to absolutely emasculate the Ronso Fangs 6-0 in a sports game.

God, the Goers are such jobbers. Can you believe they were supposed to be the shoe in for the cup?

The Luca Goers are the Jay Lethal of Blitzball. A jobber who gets way too much screentime

I got scored on by an Ex-Auroch!

The Guados are like, legit good now, I beat them 3-1, but that 1 was by Datto, one of the old Aurochs I let go to get one of my actually good players. And now he is actually good enough to score on me!?

Also, I feel like Wedge's Dominance is starting to fall off a little bit, I couldn't score completely consistently with him in this game, I might need to start scouting for a new right striker.

That might be enough for me for now.

Next time I think I might give Omega a try, see if I have a better chance against him than I do Valefor. If not I might just need to grind until Yuna has Auto Life

[Mario the black knight]

And now, back to the cave

I think we're just gonna go hunt down Omega for real this time, and see if he is beatable with our current stats. I will inevitably level a bunch on the way there anyway, so even if I'm not strong enough now, I might be when I get there.

I'm PRETTY close to finishing Wakka's grid with Tidus, just need Dark Attack and he's done, then it's trival to get to the start of Auron's grid from here, and run through the rest of his

Yuna is super close to finishing Lulu's Sphere Grid, which was actually pretty short, but more dense with Magic upgrades, once I'm done there, I'm going to Rikku's, mostly for Flare and the oh so crucial Auto-Life, but also to give Yuna even more utility as well.

Auron is almost done with Tidus's grid. Once he reaches the beginning of Tidus', I can easily go back to the start of Auron's own grid to unlock Full Break, which is behind a few lock spheres, then hop onto the beginning of Wakka's grid.

I had a revelation. I could strategically level Rikku to get her to within striking range of Auto Life, which shouldn't be terribly hard, then use a Friend Sphere to warp Yuna to Rikku's position to go get it, then just manually move the rest of the way to Flare, which isn't far off. This might make life way easier for me for the Dark Aeons

For now though, I'm on the little boss crawl before Omega, I cleared all the other monsters, so what I might do is go back, save, then attempt this again, so I don't have to do that again....I don't think...I don't remember if you need to clear those encounters again or not....

In the meantime, Tidus now knows Full Break, one of the new abilities which is like all the breaks in one move, and Auron is right there behind him to learn it. Meanwhile Yuna has at least....partially...embraced her part Al Bhed Heritage and learned Steal.....no guns here. No. We aren't going that far....

It looks like all going well, 4 more levels with Rikku and I will have cleared an easy path for Yuna to get Auto-Life. Then I can possibly just park her there forever and not have to use her anymore. Just leveling her is a pain because shes a damn sitting duck until I can get her switched out again

Well, thats done, I got a few things I wanted on Rikku's early sphere grid, namely the Luck Special ability, should I ever want to boost crits during a fight and don't have anything better to do. Just a few moves away from Auto-Life now

Meanwhile, Auron has completed his sphere grid and is now on Wakka's, while Tidus is now on Aurons. Though, Auron's grid is super slow and doesn't have too much stat wise on it. He starts with high stats, but has much slower growth, lots of empty nodes as well.

The Celestial weapons are insane. The strategy for every fight now is just Yuna skips turn, then Auron and Tidus run roughshod on everything in like 3 seconds. I literally only skip turns with Yuna just so she gains levels.

Well, now Yuna has Auto Life, just in time to be outside Omega. Nice.

Well, that is an unforseen development, those forced encounters do infact respawn.

Given how late it is, I think I throw on no encounters and go save, and try this again next time

Well if nothing else, my characters are WAY stronger, so beating Omega should be very doable, and Valefor might even be possible now.

[Mario the black knight]

Alright, it's Omega time.

I went through all the forced encounters, and among other things, I got Flare for Yuna, so she is pretty powered up.

And now, we face the real deal.

Nice, Yunalesca fight theme.

Well that wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Definitely stronger than NA release for sure, but I was able to survive one of his Ultimas just fine. Got him with 2 Blitz Aces with a buffed up team, Auto Life came in clutch for Yuna once, it went quite well

The only annoying thing is I totally saw items in that room, then for some reason it warped me to the entrance...

Well whatever, I can save and go back

Also, I totally styled on him and brought in Kimhari to get Nova, which is his most powerful Overdrive which you can ONLY get against Omega. So that went well. I did notice I am missing an Overdrive with him....I thought I got them all from the Biron and Yenke fight.... I forget what the last one is and kinda don't care to find out, because my Kimari is totally unleveled, despite now having 50 Sphere Levels...

I'll go check that last chamber and just use this as one final grind before I take another shot at Valefor.

Valefor is the single biggest gatekeeper for me right now. Besaid Village currently has a Destruction Sphere I need to get Anima, it has the last Jecht Sphere for Auron, and it has Valefor's second Overdrive. And of course the last missing Al Bhed primer I can get in this run. So beating her opens up a lot for me.

Huh...I think I just finished Auron's Sphere Grid with Tidus faster than I was expecting...Not sure where to go next...

I might warp to Kimhari's position, clean up his shitty little section of the sphere grid, then hop onto Rikku's with him, and pick up where I left off early on.

Auron's not far from finishing Wakkas I think too, so he might need to do something similar.

Actually, now that I am at the end of Rikku's grid with Yuna, I could warp him to her, and they could just travel together, because that sounds lovely.

Aww man, now that the forced encounters are gone, there are just regular encounters on the boss path

Oh good....THat whole long trip...for a magic sphere.....

cool...

I'm just gonna take this long walk back, and go wail on Valefor now.

On second thought, looking at the time, I think I'm just gonna round out the night with some blitzball

Destroyed the Al Bhed Psyches 6-0, their slow center is still totally killing them. I am starting to notice Wedge's dominance coming to an end, he is still really strong on Endurance and HP, but his shooting is starting to not cut it.

In the final round of the league, We absolutely violated the Kilika Beasts again, 9-0. Their shitty center is like Lv 14 and he has not gotten better AT ALL. And they keep hiring him on for like a million games at a time.

Wakka now has Status Reels and Wedge now has Sphere Shot. My only concern is maybe it's too late.

I'm probably gonna look into who I should be scouting for next.

Meanwhile, all I need is Auroch Reels then the Jupiter Sigil should be available, then maybe I'll get Wakka's ultimate weapon, because why not.

I think next time it's time to go Chicken Hunting and take out Dark Valefor for good this time, clear out Besaid Village of it's treasure, then it might be time to go get Anima.

[Mario the black knight]

Tonight, we dine on chicken soup.

But first, humble pie.

First attempt was better, but still got beat.

I was able to survive one big team wipe, but not two.

I have this situation where after the first big team wipe, I am just trying to pick up the pieces and can't really rally to do much else

OK, fuck off.

First turn Energy Ray, followed up by a Sonic Wings on the Auto Life

I might need a little more to win this.

I'm gonna have to start building real Endgame Armor

Huh, Rin had some backstory when I talked to him

He explained how Braska and Yuna's mom, even now left unnamed, met, and how she died to sin, because of course she did, and that made Braska become a summoner.

Could have been a little more fleshed out, but at least they addressed it, even if it was on a shopkeep and optional.

So looking into it, it looks like I need a few more monster catching rewards to get the materials for some of the better armors. Or at least it's the easiest way to get started

So I'm gonna have to go back to monster catching in the places I didn't go to after I got the Mars Sigil, like Thunder Plains and Macalania to get the monsters there

Finished Wakka's Sphere Grid with Auron. Now just gonna take him around Kimhari's shitty little slice of the sphere grid before going to Rikku's. After I am done with Rikku's with everybody, no idea what to do next...On one side I could get fully complete sphere grids for everyone, but that sounds annoying, especially having to page through tons of abilities I don't want.

I dunno

Also, I ran into these damn Sand Worms constantly when I first came through here, where are they now?

Well I spent like an hour just grinding for materials.

It got me thinking about how something like this could be done better. I can just vegetate and grind out materials for a little bit, but I almost always want a game to be more engaging, and less mind numbing.

Nothing really comes to mind though, most methods of gathering resources like this are repetitive.

Anyway, I have at least some resources to make late game armor, but I'm not sure of the best way to harvest more Chocobo Wings for example, or some of the other resources for the best armor skills

I also haven't really fully decided on my end game armor builds

I know Auto Haste is just a requirement, and PROBABLY Auto-Phoenix. But then it's sorta up in the air.

I'll work it out next time

[Mario the black knight]

And now, Armor Crafting

OK, so I am trying to figure out reliable ways of harvesting resources. It looks like the least expensive way to get Chocobo Wings is at the battle arena, stealing from a Superboss, though that only just barely edges out Bribing them from a rare enemy in the Omega dungeon, meaning both routes are pretty pricy and tedious...

Well I had a thought just now.....

I never tried protect against Valefor....if her attacks are physical, I might be able to survive them if we cut the damage in half...

I was thinking about it because I might put Auto-Protect on the end game armors...

I might try it for science, because that might change the way I approach this fight...

Well, I never even got to find out, Energy Ray...

Since I don't feel like getting caught in a death spiral, I'm gonna go bribe some monsters I guess, and get more powerful in the process.

Oh good....I FINALLY encountered the enemy....I paid them the bribe amount, they didn't accept it, both attacked into Auron and Auron auto countered and killed them all.....

Cool, so I am down the money and STILL didn't get the item

Guess I'm just gonna go steal from Cactar King...

But not tonight.

[Mario the black knight]

Alright, I've only got about an hour tonight, so we doin Blitz

Right now I am planning out some team reshuffling for mid game, since Wedge is starting to fall off a bit. I know he starts as an absolute animal early on, but falls off fast.

I've been researching it, and oddly enough, one of the Kilka Beasts of all people becomes one of the best forwards in the game around Lv 25, which is where Wedge is now.

I'm gonna try and snipe him. Take this jobber and turn him into a star

Oh, well I guess I have to wait until they release him from contract.... welp.

13 more games

Well the first game of the next league, nothing really of note this time for Wakka as the prizes, handily beat the Ronsos 6-0. Wedge might be slowing down a little, but Sphere Shot, which I won last league for him, will keep him in the game a little longer while I figure out his replacement. I might move him to backfield once I have a better striker.

Second round was a challenge, since the Guados are getting pretty good. Won 3-1, with one goal from their Al Bhed Striker who has a higher shot stat than Wedge and even Tidus. I was barely able to stop him. Meanwhile their defenders are getting to be a bit more serious as well, seemingly knowing that Tidus is my better striker and ganging up on him. My only goals were from Wedge because he was able to tank all of their tackles and shoot unhindered. Their goalie is actually getting decent too, making stopping him difficult as well. Really gonna have to step it up if I want to keep winning.

That is all the time for tonight. Next time, will probably have to go back to farming for late game armor.

[Mario the black knight]

Well, back to the grind...

OK, so first round against Cactuar King, got 6 wings. Basically I have to sit here, steal from him, and revive when he counters, since he counters practically everything with 10,000 needles or 100,000 needles, both resulting in instant death. I am wearing the armor I have made for Tidus so far with Auto Haste and Auto Phoenix, making the process a lot easier even with 1 set, meaning this will absolutely be worth it to get on all 3 sets.

It basically makes death impossible unless you get full wiped in one shot, like against Valefor, but Auto-Haste also saves SO much time, getting setup during a fight is so much faster and easier, and it has Slowproof basically built in as well, making it 100% the best passive in the game.

It seems like economically, about 4 steals is the most I can manage realistically before the Phoenix Down replacement costs create serious diminishing returns

So 10 runs like that gets me 1 finished piece of armor

Thats 60k gil + Phoenix down replacement, which is usually 20-30 per fight, which is 2-3k, so worst case scenario about 90k per piece of armor, a lot cheaper than the stupid bribe method in Omega dungeon which can take ages, is crazy expensive at about 160,000k per bribe, which there is 2 in the battle, and isn't even guaranteed, but can yield up to 60 Wings in one battle, which is huge. Still feel like this is better.

Both methods are incredibly tedious, this one I just know has a consistent, if slower output.

So this was infuriating because of the fact that he would always target Tidus, so I would have to constantly refresh his Auto-Life which was time consuming compared to the other two who would just get auto phoenix'd

But now I have Auron with one too, so this should be a lot less stressful this time around

SO much better, in and out in no time.

One thing that has actually been paradoxically screwing me over are rare steals. Occasionally I'll get a Designer Wallet, which is essentially a waste of a steal

The formula for stealing chance in FFX is 1/(number of steals + 1) , so it's 100% chance first steal every time, then 50% the second time, 25% the third time, and so on, halving each time. So for the 4th steal it's a 12.5% chance, which is when it starts to take a lot more time.

So getting a rare steal is what wastes 1 of those 4 steals. It's frustrating.

So that took a lot longer than I hoped it would, but now I have 3 pieces of armor with Auto-Haste on them. I don't remember how I did that last time I played, because I definitely had Auto Haste and Auto Phoenix on Tidus and Auron for sure....I must've grinded it somewhere, not sure where.

Anyway, next order of business is Auto-Regen, Not quite as powerful as the others, but still nice in fights where regular healing isn't an option, and I think it will honestly be better than Auto Potion, which is one I used last time.

I still haven't figured out my full plan. Ribbon would be nice to get for everyone, basically making me perfectly immune to literally everything and nearly invincible at that point, but the items needed for it are obscenely rare, so I'm not sure that's gonna be worth it.

I'll figure it out next time, I just spent like 3 hours stealing from the same Cactaur.

[Mario the black knight]

Now onto the next item to grind

I'm thinking next on my list is Auto-Regen, which has great synergy with Auto Haste, more turns means more healing without losing HP.

Theres 2 monsters I have unlocked in the battle arena I can steal them from, I'll try them both and see who is less of a pain in the ass to fight

Oh yeah, this should be MUCH easier than King Cactuar. Vorban looks to be a unique monster I've never seen before. But he's super slow, not that strong, and his basic steal is Healing Springs, this should be super easy

I'll try the other, but I think Vorban will be the winner here

Hmmm...Maybe not

The other one is called Catoblepas, who was a summon in FFVI, and he is basically a Behemoth Reskin. He is definitely more dangerous, but each steal yields 3 healing springs, rather than 2. MUCH more economical, even if there are Phoenix down costs.

The one trouble here is he also has a rare steal of a Stamina Tonic, which only teaches HP+30% which honestly is kind of worthless.

Even with that risk it's still probably a better proposition

Got the first one on Tidus, deliberating what his other ability should be, since Ribbon requires one of the rarest items in the entire game, x99....and the only way to get it is mostly drops, though catching 5 of everything also does it.....hmm

Anyway, might just get Auto Regen for Auron....Though if I catch a few monster inside Sin....this becomes MUCH easier...hmm...

I'm not TERRIBLY far from 99 Dark Matters either...

Though, if I can only have 1 ribbon, thats GOTTA go on Yuna.

Thinking about it...getting HP+30% might actually be a cheeky good play, it would put her just in striking range of 9999, which would help her survive a hit or two. But also for most of the late game content, everything is hitting for over 9999 anyway and the meta is just reviving. Hmmm...So many choices

For Yuna, the play might be Auto-Haste, Auto Phoenix, Ribbon, and Auto Med? That way if the party gets wiped out by an all targets Petrify or Confuse, Yuna isn't effected and instantly counters it?

While weighing my options, I saw I could teach Bahamut some VERY good moves like Protect, Haste, and Dispel. Hmm. He has good stats too. He might actually be able to contend with a Dark Aeon for a turn or two.

Hmm...

Thinking about this from a design perspective, on a much wider level, in terms of this whole process of grinding for rare materials, creates a true sense of economy, making real decisions like this interesting, but also it's tedious and not that fun

Oh, right, I was supposed to hit send.

[Mario the black knight]

Trying to piece together my fragmented thought from last night/this morning, I think while I find it interesting that economy is for once a consideration for a late game quest in an RPG, just in a weird way.

Like the main financial, gil based economy in FFX, and in Golden Age FF games in general are awful. In FFX, you could EASILY get through the main story without ever having to spend a single gil on anything. Most of the NPCs will stock you up with healing items for free in act 1, most of the usable weapons in the game come from treasure chests, and you get Yuna so early that most of the healing items are power crept anyway, so most of the stuff you can spend money on early game doesn't matter anyway. Gil is basically useless.

The item economy on the other hand produces actual real rarity that can only be solved by a lot of time investment, making certain decisions like this in the late game much more interesting. The only downside of it is it's not terribly engaging or fun to grind against the same monster for 4 hours straight.

Ironically, I feel like maybe the answer to this problem is the economy itself. Having better control of the money economy of the game, making money more scarce and making the prices of things cause one to make meaningful decisions rather than money just feeling completely meaningless late game

I think that is another thing Square has always been really good at, their late games have always been the gold standard. Granted, in FFX it mostly amounts to abusing dominant strategies for the most part, in games like KH2, their Superbosses were incredible. I'm not sure if Square invented the Superboss, but they definitely were the masters of it, allowing you to try and get the most out of their ability systems, even though, again, they are so often rife with dominant strategies, making it so there was never much variety for approach, but it definitely is fun to see a lot of the weird strategies people have come up with for Emerald and Ruby and so on.

Thats enough musing, onto the game

I think what I am gonna do is go gather 5 of everything to get those Dark Matters to give Yuna Ribbon. Ribbon + Auto-Med just sounds like such a powerful combo, combined with 2 characters with Auto-Phoenix. During that process I will also get the Healing Springs I need for Auron to have Auto-Regen, solving 2 problems in one, in a much less boring way.

I still need 1 more ability on each piece of armor, but that can be solved on the fly for each character, based on their needs.

Calm Lands down

The remaining locations are Macalania, Stolen Fayth Cave, and Gagazet, specifically the cave and the road to Zanarkand.

After that, I need to take a shot at Sin, get inside sin, and catch a few monsters.....though how does this guy know there are monsters inside sin....?

So farming the fayth cave so far super sucks. Not only do they have monsters from the Calm Lands mixed into their spawns that don't even count for the region, but they have so many uncatchable monsters, like the big golem guys, and the stupid pot monsters who basically amount to "guess the number I am thinking of and you win a prize!". It's goddamn moronic.

Well that was tedious.

And now I am out of time

Next time will have to be Gagazet, then Sin. Then fighting a bunch of Aeons who are stronger than Sin is....which makes me wonder why Yu Yevon doesn't just bind with them instead?

[Mario the black knight]

back to monster huntin

OK, so theres only 2 monsters left in Gagazet that I actually need. Behemoth and Giant Flan. I know most of those turn up in the caves and in Zanarkand, so I'll probably start there

UGH! I LOVE THE ZANARKAND RUINS!

I love this song, the atmosphere, and the fact that the battles all count for Gagazet's shitty mobs.

This has me thinking of yet another advantage of visible encounters. Instead of having to depend on random chance to give you the rare monsters you wanna face, you can visually know what you will be fighting when the encounter starts, and just fight what you want to fight, rather than running from a bunch of fights you don't care about

Gagazet is done, looks like all thats left is Sin...Gotta be careful not to pass the Point of No Return here. Always nervous when I do this.

I love how amused Cid is by Tidus' stupid plan, like "How we gettin inside sin?" "We blowing a hole in it!"

It's so absurd, but like, whatever just go with it

I like that this gave them a chance to reuse the Evorae Airship battle mechanics, which were really cool. In general I really like the Trigger Commands mechanic. Especially in battles where it deals with changing range and so on, making the battles more dynamic

Theres a moment on the deck of the ship, where Yuna is just staring off the ship, and realizes shes going to need to kill all of her aeons, as shes talking with Tidus. And she ponders what Bahamut meant by "the dream will end" and Yuna point blank asks if Tidus will go away. I don't know why she would ask that unless she suspects the truth already. She basically has to give up literally everything in this fight. They really drive it home in that conversation

Theres 1 or 2 monsters I am not seeing from this list, since I don't want to have to come back, I am gonna have to keep grinding to find them. I think I can progress a LITTLE farther to get the rest of the monsters, but I THINK that means encountering Final Seymour?

I might even fight him with catching weapons just to be sporting, since I could literally 1 shot him otherwise.

Eh, we'll switch out if the battle gets tough

Plus I've never heard his battle theme in this game, since I usually nuke him in like 1 hit, and I heard it in Dissdia, and it's really good

You know...I still have no idea what he is doing inside Sin....

I love the little arpeggio in his boss room. This very extra creepy, extra synthy version of his theme

Man, even with taming weapons, he's still a little bitch.

He has this little gimmick with wheels in the fight? Best I can tell something to do with elements? Didn't matter, I totally erased him with physical attacks. I even tried to see his attacks, he DOES cast Ultima at one point, but his version is so weak I barely noticed it. Like...Monsters in this dungeon are scarier than him.

This fight is so pointless. They could have had us just send him at Gagazet and it wouldn't have changed the story much.

Literally this monster I am fighting right now? More HP than Seymour. What a little bitch.

Man, this maze is GRINDY, and it is late, I just need a save point!

Oh. I guess I can go back to the one before Seymour.

They have these gates here that need monster kills to clear, and theres like 3 in a row in this opening area...I really hope they don't reset, I don't wanna do 30 battles to open this dumb gate

I swear it better be like 99 Dark Matters behind this gate...

I am almost done with the grind though, a few more King Behemoths and these Barbatoses and I am good to go

I don't plan on coming back here until I want to actually beat the game, so I'm gonna make sure to grab everything I can before I leave, then I'm gonna make this top tier armor, then FINALLY go beat Dark Valefor

[tim]

aw damn, final fantasy x? i really wanna replay the great final fantasy games. haven't played 10 since we did that replay on PD i think in summer 2008.

[Mario the black knight]

Sept 28, 2022 18:37:57 GMT -5 tim said:

aw damn, final fantasy x? i really wanna replay the great final fantasy games. haven't played 10 since we did that replay on PD i think in summer 2008.

Yeah, the HD edition has.....some good some bad. The audio is TERRIBLE. Thankfully in the PS4 version at least lets you use the original soundtrack instead of the shitty "remastered" soundtrack that is objectively terrible.

The only real benefit besides the HD aspect ratio and improved menu graphics is the all of the International Edition content like the Professional Sphere Grid and Dark Aeon battles, as well as buffing up Omega Weapon, which make the game a lot better

I go into a ton of detail about it in the last like 3 pages of this thread. Pretty much scene by scene through the entire game, every observation.

I am basically going back and playing the classic RPGs as research for my game. The last few summers I've done an RPG as my summer game, and plan on revisiting all the golden era FFs again.

Oddly enough, speaking of our 2008 playthrough on PD, the last RPG I played before this was Legend of Dragoon, the game Xion wanted us to play after. It is....something. I've detailed that as well, but a quick summary is it isn't the FF killer it wished it was. But it wasn't completely terrible.

Theres other RPGs I plan on visiting from that era, I've been trying to snag the original PS1 disks. I got my hands on Breath of Fire 3, gonna try that eventually. I also kinda wanna get another copy of Dragon Warrior VII, the one I lent you years ago, revisit my first RPG and see what I can learn from it. They're doing a remaster of Suikoden 1 and 2, and I'm hoping that helps bring down the prices of the original PS1 disks to see if I can get that.

[Mario the black knight]

Now onto tonights grind, and possibly the end of the grind.

With Tidus and Yuna, I am pretty much done with Rikku's grid, and only really have little bits of cleanup left to do with little stats here and there. Auron still had a little work to do at the end of Rikku's grid, after that he is basically done as well. After that...not really sure what to do with any of them.... Not that they need much, they are all pretty much strong enough to take on anything.

Looks like I got everything, time to go back and claim my rewards

Interesting, back on the airship, Auron actually tells us his motivation for bringing us to Spira. He was just gonna live in the dream world with us forever, but decided he wanted Tidus to have a shot at real life, because he saw that was what Jecht wanted, through Sin's eyes. Kinda cool. I think about the old thing that hasn't been explained is how Jecht maded it to Spira, that still somehow feels like a mystery. Like why him? Nothing else has been an accident. Maybe it has and I've forgotten, or it will be explained in the Jecht scene.

Anyway, all three of my endgame armors look pretty good. Tidus and Auron have Auto Haste, Auto Phoenix, and Auto Regen, and Yuna has Auto Haste, Auto Med, and Ribbon, which I see as a good synergy, since she will be immune to statuses, and can just Tidus and Auron of statuses if we get Bad Breath'd or something.

I'm not really sure what should go in each of their 4th slots yet, nothing really jumps out. As far as I can tell, Break HP limit doesn't matter, since in most of the superboss encounters everything is pretty much a 1 shot kill anyway, even over 9999 HP.

The only play I can think of with Yuna is getting her Auto-Regen, basically having the whole party passively recover HP, but I'd need to grind for that again against the Behemoth.

For Tidus and Auron, I am stumped.

What I am thinking I'm gonna do is go have a rematch with Valefor, and see if any needs make themselves apparent. I think I've got the fight in the bag now, I am much stronger and even with this armor incomplete I am insanely powerful. And this opens up a ton of stuff, a bunch of overdrives, and Anima

Also, at this stage of the game, I can pretty much turn off random encounters with the Peaceful armor and travel in peace, which is SO nice.

Wow.

Yeah, I just completely merc'd his ass first try. Like Auron died once. I even landed Blitz Ace.

This armor just saves so much ingame time, you can spend your turns doing more damage instead of rebuffing or reviving, which makes such an insane difference, it's honestly kind of broken.

I literally got one sphere level for that on everyone. Yeah, I'm kinda strong...

Huh. I got the Jecht Sphere...but Auron didn't learn his last Overdrive...I got all 10, right?

OH NO, theres one on one of the boats, shit. Gotta go get that after this

I STILL don't know how Valefor learns a second overdrive from some random mangled item a dog found.

Anyway, time to redo dumbass put ball in hole game again

Gotta get the destruction sphere if I want to get Anima

Yaaay, I did the thing, I put the ball in the hole...

Oh yeah, I forgot, theres special scenes for visiting the Fayth again, cool!

We get to see each Aeon's true form. And theres treasure! Worth it.

So I gotta ride the boat to get the last Jecht Spheres, So I'm gonna start in Luca and ride the boat backwards

While I'm at it....I might as well grab Wakka's ultimate weapon, since I think I can get it here, I think the Sigil is the only thing I have to play Blitzball for, after I get Auroch Reels

Got the World Champion, the Jupiter Crest, and Tornado fpr Auron

I guess the next order of business is going to get Anima, then finishing Remiem Temple to get Magnus Sisters and the Moon Sigil, basically finishing up Yuna's stuff.

After that, we go Dark Aeon hunting. I'm pretty confident I should be able to handle most of these fights, the big guys like Bahamut and Anima will still be a challenge, but I think the lower level ones should be easy to deal with, since these combos are just so insanely powerful, and I've mostly just run out of Sphere Grid for everyone.

[Mario the black knight]

And now, time to go visit Seymour's mama.

I wonder if she'll have something to say because we killed him before finding her

Absolutely merked the first boss of the game in two hits with Tidus. The Hunter becomes the Hunted.

Got the Onion Knight, because why not. No idea where the Venus crest is, and fuck the Venus Sigil. Also, fuck Lulu and Kimhari.

Fuck. I need to get the Zanarkand Destruction Sphere. Fuck.

That one is so annoying.

Finished the worst game of minesweeper ever

Now to go get Anima

I love that Anima doesn't have a generic model. I kinda like her voice actor. Also, her version of the Hymn is so somber, it's great

Now it's time to go merc Belgamine real quick

With Anima this should be trival to get the Nirvana

WHAT!?

Anima doesn't have her roar anymore!

FUCKING SQUARE ENIX NOT HAVING AUDIO ENGINEER BITCH ASSES

HA. I literally overkilled Bahamut in one physical attack. 99999

Hilarious. I am WAY overpowered for this.

Obliterated Yojimbo.

Now we gotta beat Anima without Anima. Should still be no big deal with Bahamut.

Yep, overkill in one hit with Bahamut.

Maybe I should be using my aeons more....

That or maybe Belgamine ain't shit. Yeah, probably that.

Got Magnus Sisters, not sure if they got buffed like Anima did. I hope so, otherwise they suck.

Now we gotta wreck them with Anima real quick...

....annnnd done.

I like that I actually get the reference with Magnus Sisters, they made lots of references to the older games in this one. They were a boss in FFIV.

Now to go get the Nirvana and really get the most out of Yuna.

I didn't realize 1 MP cost was the only good ability on Yuna's weapon. If I had those Dark Matters still, I could have literally built her a better weapon than Nirvana, but whatever, this whole game smells like teen spirit

Well, I guess we now take a shot at the next big target, Dark Ifrit. If elements still work against him, this shouldn't be too bad.

Huh. Blizzaga does nothing. Interesting. Looks like Nulblaze doesn't work either

Shouldn't be too surprised, this will be interesting.

Definitely not easy, but definitely felt like I was kind of on rails. It still requires high level strategy, like summoning when he is gonna overdrive, but the equipment is just so overpowered, and HP is so pointless, it just feels like the pace is a little too fast. Like all I did in that fight was attack for 99999 damage, get countered, die instantly, get revived by auto phoenix, and repeat. I casted Auto-Life with Yuna on the chance of an errant Hellfire, which did save me 1 time, since Auto-Phoenix doesn't seem to work if you just revive someone with it with auto life, so I was able to get Tidus and Auron back up quick

If I was designing these Dark Aeon fights, I would have themed each one around pushing the existing mechanics to the limit. In the elemental fights I would have had it so you needed to strategically use the Nul spells to protect yourself from their attacks, but had them nulling their opposing element, so you would need to create openings for yourself.

Granted, that just pushes the focus from one dominant ability to another, but this is why I have multiple ways of dealing different types of damage.

I guess next we give Ixion a try. I know he's in Thunder Plains somewhere

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....

I think my game just froze....

Oh yeah, that totally crashed.

Like there was a cutscene, then Kimhari's head like jerked around weirdly, then like, the screen flashed white, then the game froze......

That was creepy.

Soo uhh, lets try that again.

Well it turns out that shitty head turning animation wasn't the game bugging out, it really did do that in the cutscene, this time it started the fight normally.....why is that animation so bad!? ha ha

Ixion uses a 4th level spell, Thundaja. I'm not sure if that had a precident in FFX, I know later they came up with 4th level spells in XII, not sure if this is where it started

The spell is exactly the same as Thundaga, but does like 99999 damage, sooo yeah...

So I beat him....but something feels fishy...I might have to fight him again, some weird shadow boy with lighting skills is flying around and this is all trippy as fuck, even by this games standards

I'll revisit this tomorrow...this took a while...

[Mario the black knight]

Back on the hunt for Ixion

So as I thought, there was a second phase

...and he got me

This time he can use Thor's Hammer, but he doesn't counter everything, so this makes the fight interesting...

But he nuked me when I didn't have a chance to use Auto-Life

That time I got him pretty quick.

I was a bit quicker on my buffs, Cheer and Reflex make such a HUGE difference. I also blocked Thor's Hammer with my Ixion, hoping it would absorb it. It didn't. Still, he died protecting me.

Well, onto the next I guess. Dark Shiva

I know shes right outside Macalania Temple, so ain't nuttin to it but to do it.

Annnnd we're dead.

Boy she is a bit stronger. And faster, than the last ones....

I will say, at least they recorded new dialog for this. Pretty cool.

AND AGAIN

Damn. Even Autolife is a bit lacking.

I am noticing that dying actually has an inherent time penalty associated with it, similar to Delay Attack. With a character as fast as Shiva, this is much more apparent, because she can just get you into this stunlock cycle where you just can't act because she has such a high agility stat that she gets turns as if she was in Haste, even Auto Haste really isn't doing much other than evening the odds.

This is gonna be interesting.

Well I've just had my ass reamed like 3 or 4 times in a row, same way every time. This feels like the first time I faced Dark Valefor, so maybe I'm just at a bit of a power wall.

I'm gonna try some of the others.

I feel like Yojimbo should be pretty beatable....maybe...

Or you know...he could just ambush us and hit an insta-team kill. Yeah. Cool Thats fun.

Apparently one of the easier ones is Magnus Sisters, since you can split them up. Maybe I'll try that.

Well they all caught us together, which is annoying, but the fight still feels more winnable than Yojimbo or Shiva...

Well escaping them is really tough, and they enter the fight with overdrive, and Delta Attack wipes out Auto-Life....so cool...

I'm playing Blitzball.

Oh! Auroch Reels is in the Tournament! lets go get it!

First round of the tournament was a real barn burner, came down to overtime against the Al Bhed Psyches

I am REALLY starting to feel how weak my defenders are, and Wedge is really starting to be an issue now that the other teams are catching up to him...

I went and picked up a couple of new defenders, one fresh out of a contract with the Guados, they're pretty promising prospects.

Also, Bickson somehow got one by Jumal. He might be starting to plateau as well. But not much I can do about it until Nimrook gets out of his contract with the Psyches, which eliminates two problems in one.Both giving me a good goalie and taking away the Al Bhed's goalie.

Ended up beating the Luca Jobbers 5-1.

Gotta beat the Guados next time to win Wakka's Final Overdrive.

[Mario the black knight]

I kinda hope I can finish out Blitzball tonight. If I get Auroch Reels, the next big prize is the Jupiter Sigil which lets me finish the World Champion for Wakka, then Blitzball is basically done

The finals of the tournament are against the Guados, and they are like, actually pretty good now, Mostly because, ironically, they signed a ton of Al Bhed, ha ha

They have a REALLY good center right now, one of the fastest players I've seen, he's so dangerous. They also have a super good Al Bhed shooter

Ended up winning 5-1, and now Wakka has all of his Overdrives. Now we wait until Jupiter Crest turns up

I'll have to play leagues until theres another tournament I guess

I just took an absolute steaming shit on the Kilika Beasts and didn't flush, 9-0

Their center kept doing that thing where he'd just swim over to Wedge and basically hand him the ball, since his stats are so completely shit theres literally nothing he can do to escape from Wedge, even now

Now against the Al Bhed, the Al Bhed are just too good

I BARELY squeaked in a Jecht Shot at the Halftime Buzzer.

Beat em 4-0, they're tough, but their center still sucks.

Oh....Jecht Shot 2?

Never seen that before. It's the top prize for a tournament. Gotta win that! Can't have someone else learning that from....who?

beat the Goers again, 4-0.

This league is not nearly big enough. To be fair though, this is a post apocolyptic universe where pretty much all major human settlements are regularly under attack by a giant kaiju monster, so like, I guess they are doing their best...

Beat the Guados 5-1. They got rid of most of their guados and now they're kinda scary.

But now, in some miracle, the Ronsos somehow beat the Al Bhed and are in the finals. In the last trading session they replaced two of their ronso with one of the former Guados, and one of the Kilika players. We'll see how that effects things...

...So it didn't go well for them.

I absolutely eviscerated them, 11-0.

The Kilika player they picked up was a REALLY shitty goalie with like 9 CA. Combine that with the already slow Ronso center and it was just target practice.

The Al Bhed must've not even showed up to the Semi Finals

WAIT WHAT!?

Apparently no player on the Aurochs could learn Jecht Shot 2........uhhhh...what?

Jecht himself must be the one deciding who gets the skill and won't teach Tidus. Asshole.

Huh. Apparently Tidus needs to know Anti-Venom 2 to learn Jecht Shot 2........huh. That is so weird....

Well, I think I am good on Blitzball for now, next I think I am gonna level grind a little. But I think I am gonna build some Triple AP weapons to do that

Apparently theres a way to farm them from one of the monsters in the battle arena, might try that first, and test my power level as is

So this was actually insanely profitable. I have ended up with 3 weapons with Triple Overdrive, Triple AP, and Overdrive to AP, allowing me to effectively level like crazy, but in the process I actually got a ton of extra armor with super valuable abilities I can now sell for hundreds of thousands of gil, more than paying for each fight 3 fold.

One other thing I got from this was a ton of Magic Defense Spheres, which makes me want to go fight the other monsters who drop these sorts of spheres that convert empty nodes, and super boost up my stats, getting everybody as strong as possible.

So I guess next time I'll grind out some spheres, then start getting sphere levels, so maybe I can hang with Shiva and the higher level Dark Aeons, then maybe keep at it with Blitzball

[Mario the black knight]

So I'm gonna start with strength spheres

These require beating a pretty beefy boy, about 1mil HP, but he's not anything I can't handle

I've gotten 2 so far, so this should be very doable. I'll get a couple, then move onto Defense Spheres

I got a little bit into this and got very bored. Maybe I just play some Blitzball...

Beat the Goers 4-2. They have a good striker now

Yeah, bored with that too.

[Mario the black knight]

So I put down FFX in the fall because I was getting bored, and I have trouble playing that game in winter anyway

But I found this image, and I think it really drives home how shitty the HD remaster really was....



Like I definitely noticed that the faces looked pretty weird and not great, but like....looking at them net to each other.....yikes.....

HD in this context clearly means "HURRRRR DERP"

If it wasn't for the fact that it offers easier access to playing the game on modern hardware, access to the Professional Sphere Grid, and the nice new UI, I would have never touched this remaster. The Audio is dogshit, the FMVs are compressed into oblivion, and the models look weird and derpy as shit. Also, they digitized all the character portraits, and they look awful