Final Fantasy X HD Remaster

<.< I remember when I overlevelled due to some training in the Omega Ruins. Wakka oneshotted the final boss with Attack Reels.

Ultimate weapon, 12 hits, ~50,000 damage per hit. Final boss only has 120,000 HP. It is CRAZY how overpowered the game lets you make your characters. Even without Wakka's ultimate weapon, just getting him up to the regular damage max of 9999 would still almost do the trick. Attack Reels is best Overdrive.

On that note, wanderlust, if you want to preserve the challenge of the final dungeon, do it before going out to do Omega Ruins and the Dark Aeons.

edited 13th May '16 7:49:54 AM by TobiasDrake

I'll probably split my save file and do it both before and after.

If it helps, you can leave the final dungeon at any time. You're not locked in once you start it.

So I bought this on Steam, my first FF, and of course I've never read any spoilers of any sort.

Poor Tidus, seeing his city destroyed must have seemed a nightmare, but it was all too real. Now his life before Spira must look like a dream.

The game is not good at explaining what to do. Main menu in English, but the game itself was in Japanese until I found a Japanese menu in which to change it. And it is definitely not suited to keyboard controls, even after some remapping. And the camera seems to have been placed by throwing a dart.

I was puzzled at being picked up by a character from the sequel, diving about some ruins with no explanations, then being taken by sin again and appearing on a shore where the real story begins. Until it occurred to me that this might be a retroactive addition from the sequel.

The costumes are ridiculous. Really ridiculous. Tidus should look out of place among the natives, but he doesn't in the least. It just looks like there was an explosion in a charity shop. However the landscapes, buildings and vehicles look wonderful. Faces still look rather uncanny in close-ups though.

Tidus is self-centred and somewhat dull, but nowhere as grating as I had feared. Most of his actions are fairly sensible and he is doing an effort to understand.

The game consists largely on wandering from one cutscene to the next... It's not as wearying as The Sith Lords can be, for a mix of reasons, one being the much lighter nature of the dialogue. I'm interested in what happens but the lack of open spaces can get claustrophobic.

There's something awry about the tone and atmosphere. This world is under the shadow of Sin, yet it is too colourful and cheerful. It seems to be hardly less well-off than in that golden age before Sin. I know Final Fantasy is never gritty or too dark, but it feels as though the world doesn't fit the main plot.

And finally, Blitzball is stupid.

You can safely ignore blitzball unless you desire to do the bonus bosses.

In which case I'm so, so sorry.

Rikku isn't a character from the sequel, she's from FFX. She just also appears in the sequel, because it's a sequel.

As for the balance of joy and sorrow: the story is clear that it's an unfortunately bleak world they live in. The people try to find happiness wherever they can, in sports, hobbies, weddings, etc.

So Rikku comes up later, but the fact that nothing of note happens on the ship and then he gets swallowed up by Sin again makes the whole sequence seem like a false start. It would help if instead the Al Bhed kept sailing and had a confrontation with Wakka's village that ended with Tidus being marooned there, it would feel more tied together.

I really like the combat. For too long it was just attacking one enemy at a time, but once I came to Mi'ihen the enemies all had weaknesses to exploit and dangers to avoid (though who my scorn goes to funguar paired up with two other magic-users). I just wish they were more intuitive instead of relying on memorising the bestiary.

I don't care for the sphere grid. It offers choices, but as a new player I have no way of knowing what those choices lead to. The Ability spheres are far too rare, and those are what I want to have, but I have to rush ahead to get a lot of stat bonuses or I'll be badly underpowered. It just feels like complexity without depth.

The temples are just really bad. They're meant to be puzzles, but there's too little sense to them and I end up running around rearranging the furniture at random. The solution to Djose was basically to think up the least sensible thing to do. I've played some very good puzzle games made by amateurs and this is just wasting time.

The scenery is beautiful and varied, and I sorely wish I could move the camera a tad. Together with the characters, the threat and mystery of Sin, and the light story approach build up to a charm that makes me want to continue. The voice acting is meh (that infamous laugh was meant as forced, but it still sounded off) but doesn't put me off. I have to say though that I don't care for any Tidus-Yuna romance; they don't feel as though they have anything on which to build a relationship.

I don't know how far you are into the game, but the first scenes with Rikku had a lot of foreshadowing, and did a lot to establish how the story and its characters interact under the dominant religion.

Interestingly enough, Tidus X Yuna really only shows up as a relationship towards the later acts.

Early on Tidus feels that Yuna is a charity case and Yuna is being a borderline fangirl. For Jecht.

@wander: And this is especially true about how most of the party trusts the theocracy itself until the Assault on Bevelle where the truth is made known to them. It also shows when the party reaches Yunalesca she states that Sin couldn't remain gone forever. At that point, it was necessary to cast aside the "hope" that had been falsely preached for so long.

Hell, it's evident back at the beginning of the Mi'hen highroad that Maechen tells of the war, but doesn't fully explain the aftermath. It was then that Yevon had been established and the government sought to hide everything about Bevelle's involvement, lying about the machina and so on...

edited 14th Jun '16 5:50:23 PM by VoidsEmpathy

Please try to avoid spoilers, I'd like to use this thread.

Seymour was the first truly gruelling fight, had to use all my summons and their shields, as well as the first boss properly tied into the storyline well. However it also brought up that the plot is fine but its presentation is rather haphazard.

Auron's reveal about Sin really needed to be foreshadowed more; until now there was no hint that it was anything but a monstrous force of nature. Seymour asking for Yuna's hand also came out of nowhere, there was nothing indicating suggesting Yuna was important politically or Seymour was after such an alliance. Then just as I was hoping he would be a difficult ally or someone to subvert, his patricide comes out and he's an open enemy. This isn't really bad, just abrupt.

And the auto-save feature showed its limitation: it saved just as I entered his room, from whence I could not leave, change my setup or heal anyone before the fight. I had to backtrack a while and replay a lot of unskippable cutscenes.

Macalania temple is a bit more intuitive this time, but still annoying with how long it takes to play musical chairs with the spheres.

Yuna has been kind-of kidnapped three times by the Al Bhed... there's a bit of damsel in her.

Anyway, now the church of Yevon is pursuing us, the deeper conflict is starting to show. Overall the story is well paced, with something new coming up after every major fight or travel.

Oh jeez, I'm so sorry!!!!. -_-;

I'm generally going to defend this game's story, because it's one of my favorites:

• The Sin reveal was foreshadowed incredibly subtly. When it first attacks and absorbs Tidus, Auron asks it "Are you sure?" as if he's familiar with it, after he's established as being familiar with Tidus and not particularly interested in anyone else in Zanarkand
• Seymour's motives will eventually become clear. Also, Yuna's talented, popular, and hot, and often that's all people are looking for in a mate.
• Yuna being kidnapped will also be explained, though it is a bit unusual for someone to have so many guardians to get kidnapped so much. It's more Wakka, Kimahri and Lulu's fault for not being stronger and/or more focused, but they get better.

What point in the game are you at now?

Yuna also was looking for Cid among the Al bhed and do it away from Wakka, Yuna always has an objective when she goes off.

edited 14th Jun '16 8:52:10 PM by Memers

Having gotten through the Al Bhed city of Home (is Undertale referencing it?) I can see the plot connecting a bit better. The salvage mission, the kidnappings, the conflict with the Al Bhed all pay off. I can see that they were foreshadowed; the problem is that it was too subtle to pick up on until you go back afterwards. What comes to mind is that there should be some hint of Sin's Was Once a Man before Auron reveals who.

Things suddenly get dark. Yevonites attack and now it's war, not just pest control. The theme of self-sacrificial religious duty comes up.

The airship is pretty, but as with all these vehicles it makes me so wish I could pilot it. It had better crash spectacularly by the end. I like Rikku's role as a sort of odd jobs fighter, and pocket healer with Yuna away, but I'm perturbed by how she holds herself in battle. Given Sin's origin, maybe she's a reincarnated lepidoptera?

"If anyone has any reason to object to these two being wed..." and then we come in. I think I can formulate why this wedding subplot sits badly with me. Partly because it belongs in a romantic comedy, but mostly because it makes Yuna's active role into a typically feminine one. She is a living macguffin who is sought as a bride, kidnapped several times, and frees her allies by threatening to kill herself. I'm sure I've seen this before. It's not sexist in itself, but since she is the most important woman in the party it looks bad.

That wedding dress was really quite understated, given what celebrity marriages can go for. Was Nomura sober when designing it?

Nah, he probably just felt like giving the CG team an ounce of mercy after Lulu's belt skirt.

Rikku might lag behind stats wise for a while but try out some mixes, they can literally break the game's balance. Stealing and using though is her main role for a while, I tend to teach her magic when I can. Her casting Thunderaga is funny as hell.

Is Seymour a dead sexist pig? Yes very much so.

Also remember her goal with 'getting kidnapped' is to finally kill Seymour and her guardians basically got in her way resulting in an Indy Ploy.

edited 15th Jun '16 12:23:43 PM by Memers

To be fair, Yuna plays straight the part of a sheltered flower. That's a Japanese Trope through and through. She gets a clue after the upcoming court scene.

and by a clue I mean she gets her world view absolutely devastated by a breaking speech courtesy of the four maesters. Her opinion of Yevon goes careening downhill after that.

edited 15th Jun '16 11:06:55 PM by stevebat

Don't forget the Silk Hiding Steel aspects of Yamato Nadeshiko.

The best parts though about it though is in X-2 is her discarding a lot of the Yamato Nadeshiko aspects for a more modern take on things simply because she had enough of that and it was her turn to do the rescuing and yank the planet into line again. All thrown out the window with the audio thing but we don't talk about that...

edited 16th Jun '16 2:23:14 AM by Memers

We come to the Calm Lands, and as soon as I take a step three monsters attack. Not quite living up to the name. The monsters were getting easy and tedious... then Malboro pops up. Still not sure how to best counter this guy's mass confusion. I tried capturing the monsters, but stopped short of one I couldn't find. Finally the stone giant at the end cost me a lot of Phoenix Downs.

Now the mountains. The Ronso were hostile, but won over easily. Kihmari's arc felt too short and detached to have an impact, compared to KotOR's Kashyyyk plot.

The mountain paths are pretty, but labyrinthine. Again the presence of monsters everywhere undermines the desolate, empty atmosphere a tad. "The summoners have become fiends..." Good to see an explanation at least. My party actually ran out of mana running around there, and I brought my Ifrit back from the brink of death by fighting Grenades.

I was a bit puzzled By Braska's memory sphere. He's talking to Yuna, but he's telling her she doesn't need to become a summoner and go on the pilgrimage, yet she could only have found this if she did.

Seymour again, not expecting him yet. Wait, was there an off-screen genocide? Something of a failure of Show, Don't Tell. I see that the zombie spell has a thematic role here, but don't see why healing spells don't harm Seymour.

Yeah, the only way to "show" at that moment in time would've been to have the party go back down and see a bunch of Ronso corpses. The game has already pulled the whole post-battle corpses thing at that point, and there isn't a lot of flat land on Mt. Gagazet to show bodies on, so... while it was a case of Show, Don't Tell, it still sat alright with me.

As for why certain video spheres are where they are, it's best not to look too far into it.

edited 8th Jul '16 6:19:33 PM by wanderlustwarrior

The bodies would have been way past where the party was when Seymour caught up with the party.

The Zombie status effect is a case of gameplay and story segregation.

Zombie is more like a curse than an actual undead creature. Inverting the effects of Cure, Life and a few other spells, But perhaps those that are unsent are familiar with the boundary of life and death enough to abuse it to inflict these sort of things.

Seymour Flux was much harder than he should have been. Mostly because I had to play defensively with Shell, Protect and Reflect for the first time; previous enemies I could disable. Also took me a while to figure out the different effects he and that ribcage are immune to. Doesn't help that he is preceded by a long, unskippable cutscene.

The battle system is great, but the varying immunities (not only on bosses) are frustrating. It's good to mix things up, but I have to memorise every local enemy or throw everything at them. Also I can't always tell what Shell and Protect work against or know what buffs are currently up. The system is ahead of the interface.

I also found out I could set everyone's overdrive modes. I had been wondering why they only filled when under attack.

Yunalesca and Sanctuary Keeper were challenging, but fairly straightforward once I understood the principle of playing defensively. Yunalesca in particular is a matter of how long each character can stay in the fight before retiring. I should add that Yunalesca fights by turning her hair into tentacles and reclining on them, and that still looks sensible and dignified compared to her outfit.

Tidus has started talking about how this is his "story". It sounds really odd. He is a stranger in Spira, he has made decisions and learnt a lot over the journey but as a follower of Yuna. It is often said that he is a Decoy Protagonist for Yuna, but I can just as well see him as the Hero Antagonist in the last act of Jecht's tragedy. I suppose this is his chance to mature and rise to the occasion, but that makes it more a story to which his runs parallel. He is involved, but not driving it.

But that also emphasises how everyone in the party has their own involvement (except Lulu). Their collective decision to go against the Church felt like a conclusion to their experiences together. I haven't found each one of a party as distinct since Planescape: Torment, only here their combat mechanics accentuate their characters.

And we now have the airship... it feels rather redundant.

Lulu doesn't have nearly as clear a story as any of the others, and some of it is mostly related to bonus material in or near the Calm Lands. Hers is a story of coping. Not just with the loss of Chappu, but the fact that this is not her first pilgrimage. Now that I think about it, this makes her more vocal reaction to the Yunalesca reveal even more fitting.

The game's story kind of necessitates linear play, but the airship becomes more useful for bonus content. On that note, there are now certain areas in the remaster that you can't go into without facing a Total Party Wipe, namely the actual village in Besaid.

I pretty much never use Protect or Shell.

edited 16th Jul '16 12:07:46 AM by wanderlustwarrior