On the weekend I went in and took out Jecht and Yu Yevon inside Sin. I don't know if those fights are ever hard; my party didn't get attacked in any of the stages. It was actually pretty tedious having to summon in all of my aeons one after the other, watch the animations, and then have them die in one attack from Rikku. Over and over, 8 times. All told my saved game ended up with something like 94 hours played on it. In some senses this is less than my previous plays which is weird since I actually filled the sphere grid and killed extra challenge bosses this time. But it doesn't track time spent in deaths and I sure died a lot in long fights or by getting surprised by unknown challenge bosses. I do think I played a lot less blitzball than it previous games, and I didn't get Lulu's ultimate weapon which takes forever. But this playthrough was definitely well over 100 hours of actual time spent playing, which is really good for a single player console game!
Kimahri was in my party for most of the game, right up until I started really grinding out stats. Then the fact I focused him on magic first made him terrible. His ultimate weapon, which I got, doesn't have 1 mp cost on it and spells cost a lot of mana. I would definitely make Kimahri into a beater next time (or maybe a thief) and probably ignore magic entirely. It just scales so terribly!
Eventually you are going to get max stats on everyone, so the real differences between characters are their ultimate weapons and their overdrives. Yuna is the only one who can summon, which is a thing, and Tidus/Rikku/Wakka are required to use in some fights, including one of the harder arena fights. Tidus and Wakka have the multi-hit physical overdrives so they're the best. So for end game stuff I feel like you should be using 3 of Tidus/Rikku/Wakka/Yuna. Rikku's overdrive does some awesome things but it costs consumables and I hate using those even when it makes sense to do so. Lulu is terrible because her ultimate weapon is stupidly hard to get. Kimahri has bad mods on his weapon, but the counterattack stuff is actually useful on Penance so he's not a terrible option. Auron has the only ultimate weapon with first strike and he has a powerful overdrive (inflicts armour break with 100% chance on anything that isn't immune) so you can't really go wrong with him either. He definitely helps to grind stats.
I didn't like a lot of what changed in the international edition. I hate the way they implemented the dark aeons. They were often put into positions that blocked useful items and there was rarely any indication they existed. Dark Yojimbo was fine because you could run away once he spawned if you didn't want to fight him, but most of the others were game overs with no warning. I lost a lot of capture progress by bumbling into some of the dark aeons and that frustrated me. I did like that they added in really hard fights that took some planning to beat. I like ribbons.
I still like the story in this game. I guess I don't really understand why Yu Yevon wants Spira to be such a disastrous world. I guess he has everyone living in fear and worshipping him as a god so that's something. Praise Be To Yevon!
The combat system is really where this game shines. It is the best. The hot tag to bring in the right character at the right time is a really good twist. No real time element is awesome. You get to see the turn order, you get to make a plan, you get time to think.
The music is also very good. I don't think it's the best sound track of the series but it's very good. I was actually sad how fast I killed Jecht because his battle music is incredible. So much so that I'm going to link it here so you can take a listen.
I'm a little sad that the ending really seems to be the same as the last two games. The main character and the female love interest get separated right after the final boss fight... Will they ever see each other again? Then you get a normal ending cutscene where you see the cities and the other characters and stuff. Then it looks over... But wait! There's the main character after all! Hurray! You beat the game so you get handed the princess! It isn't quite the same here since Tidus doesn't reunite with Yuna. But he was supposed to disappear entirely and they do show him being alive at the very end.
The graphics in the original game were a big step up as the first game in the series on the PS2. The remade HD version, on the PS3, also has graphics that are a big step up. This game is gorgeous.
As far as mini-games go there are a ton of them in FFX. Some of them are really annoying, like chocobo racing and lightning dodging. Some of them are awesome, like catching monsters to build challenge bosses and blitzball. I still think the card game in FFVIII is the best mini-game they've ever done but FFX might well have the second and third best ones. There's a reason I keep playing this game and always end up with over 100 hours played, and it's the mini-games. And the combat system, which plays a big role in the monster catching mini-game.
I am sad that I didn't get all of the PS3 achievements for the game. I didn't dodge 200 lightning strikes. I didn't get 5 treasures in the chocobo race. I didn't play enough blitzball to get all of Wakka's overdrives. I didn't find all of the Al Bhed primers (some can be skipped if you don't find them in Home before it gets destroyed). I didn't fill the sphere grid on all 7 characters. And I haven't watched the video that bridges the plot between FFX and FFX-2. I will do that last one, but the rest get left behind for now. Maybe Byung will want to finish up the other tropheys? It is his PS3, after all!
Where should this game go on my list? Well, I know for sure it's going above everything except maybe Final Fantasy VIII. VIII has the better story, the better characters, the better music, and the better mini-game. X has the better combat system, the better leveling system, the better graphics, and has more gameplay depth with the two awesome mini-games. And it's not like each game is really bad at anything the other is best at... (Except maybe the draw system in FFVIII.) So I guess really it's going to come down to if I want to give the edge to the combat system or to the story. It turns out I just identify so much with Squall that I have to go with VIII as the top game. So Final Fantasy X gets to slot in at #2. I can't imagine it gets knocked out of that spot ever, but who knows!
Next up... Final Fantasy X-2! It's a little out of order, but I want to play it on the PS3 and keeping it extra time without using it just to play a GBA game seems pretty stupid.
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy X. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy X. Show all posts
Monday, June 23, 2014
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Penance!
It turns out that Dark Yojimbo hides one of his 5 fights down a dead-end. I checked that dead-end this time through the sealed fayth cave and was able to unlock Penance. I saved and went to give him a shot to see what I was up against. I got obliterated! Penance fired off an attack that hit me for ~80% of my health on all 3 characters and slowed Rikku. He also has 2 arms that do their own attacks, one of which attacked everyone for ~70% of their max health. I hadn't had a chance to heal up yet, so I was dead.
Ok, try again, this time without wasting time hasting Rikku. I used some defensive stuff and decided to try to burn down an arm by using a bunch of overdrives. It worked! Woo! But the other arm and Penance himself burned down the Magus Sisters that I'd busted out to overdrive. And then the arm I killed came back. I threw everything I had at it, and it came right back!
Clearly I was not strong enough to win this fight. Rikku getting slowed is too big of an issue. With the arm respawning so quickly after death this fight is going to be a DPS race and not having 3 hasted characters is game losing. So I'm going to need to build her a different suit of armour that has auto-haste on it. Oh, and none of my people could even hit any of the arms. So now that I've killed almost all of the challenge bosses that require high luck I should probably grind up a bunch of luck. Because I don't think I have time to bust out 15 uses of stat buffs in order to start killing arms.
Killing all those dark aeons actually got me a lot of master spheres which can be use to activate luck nodes. So I mostly just needed to grind up luck spheres, not luck spheres and fortune spheres. I was so close to a full sphere grid achievements so I just went and finished that off. Mostly with luck, but also with some more health. I bribed up the materials to add auto-haste to a suit of armour for Rikku (I ended up going with break hp limit, auto-haste, and auto-phoenix which was not optimal). I also looked up a list of Rikku mixes so I could actually use her limit break effectively. (One of the mixes actually gives 5 uses of aim and cheer! So for the time it would take to put up 3 buffs I could do 10.) Another mix restored everyone to max health which unfortunately isn't the case for a normal elixir. Elixirs only restore 9999 health which isn't nearly close to max when I have 620000 max health!
I also finally used some of the consumable buff items. In particular I used one that doubles my max health and one that made all my spells and abilities cost 0 mana. The second one was particularly relevant because Penance has a second form that drains all of your mana with every attack.
I did a little bit of reading on the fight and the wiki said every 19 times Penance attacks or that you attack Penance he'll cast an attack that is guaranteed to kill your party. But it doesn't dispel auto-life, so I can just put that up and hope to recover with some Rikku mixes. I did the fight a couple times learning the patterns of things and found it wasn't so bad. With 5 stacks of aim on and the luck I grinded I could reliably hit the arms all the time with Tidus and Yuna and most of the time with Rikku. It only took 6 quick hits to kill each arm and if I killed the arms right away I would have enough time for 3 actions before they respawned. Mostly that could be attacking Penance, sometimes it would have to be healing up from his attack. I have plenty of megalixirs to burn so healing up from his phase 1 attack wasn't so bad.
Note that Penance has 12 million health and I attack for 100k per attack. So if I average 2 hits per cycle I need to pull off 60 cycles to kill him. That's a long time, but it's at least plausible.
Then I hit phase 2 which had him change what attack he uses. Now instead of hitting my team for 7k each he'd hit one person for 10k and inflict a bunch of breaks on them. These breaks meant that the next time he hit the person they'd be killed. Dying is bad because I need those aim and cheer stacks and even if I had infinite overdrive power I wouldn't do any damage if I had to mix those buffs up every 2 rounds. You can remove the breaks by casting dispel on your own character, which is good. But that also takes out protect, which is bad. Without protect his attack hits for 20k and suddenly I'm stuck taking 3 actions per cycle to counter his attack. I only have 3 free actions per cycle and can no longer make progress.
Ok... I can actually generate more time per cycle if I delay killing off the arms. Final Fantasy X gives you the exact turn order for each actor in a fight. I can save the 6th hit on an arm for immediately before it would get to attack! Since it seemed to take the same amount of time to respawn the longer I can keep it alive (without letting it attack since its actions were brutal) the longer it will take to respawn. This let me stretch things out such that I'd get more like 7 free actions per cycle that weren't dedicated to killing arms. It did mean the boss would get more actions per cycle too, but it was a net gain for me. Especially since if I could set up a situation where all of my party was injured I could condense some of my healing actions together by using megalixir or Rikku's full party heal mix. I don't know if there's a window to recover from that super attack thing, but on my attempt after the one where I figured out to build longer cycles I decided to count out every single attack so I could time it out...
As an aside, this fight really reminded me of raiding in World of Warcraft. A fight that initially seemed insane but once you got the gear to overcome the DPS check and a timer to time out the powerful abilities you could work out a strategy and then try to implement it perfectly. I do miss that.
Anyway, fight away... I wasn't sure what was going to count as an attack or not so I counted things out separately. I hit Penance 32 times before he changed form, and then I hit him 47 times before he used his super move. In that time he'd used his immolation ability 23 times, I'd counter attacked him 7 times, and I'd used one purifying salt on him to dispel his haste. That seems like a lot more than the 19 I was promised! But considering I'd done more than 8 million damage it would probably be ok, assuming I could recover from all my characters being dead. It was truly terrible timing for me too, since his second arm had just respawned. Dying and coming back to life with auto-life seems to add a delay to your characters too, so his arms got to do their things right after my party died. On the plus side they used single target attacks on Yuna but she got right back up thanks to the auto-phoenix ability on my armour. It was tense to work out how to recover (I had to pop 2 megalixirs and let everything live another round in order to have the health to survive a combo arm AE attack + immolate, but the other arm wouldn't go until I got to go again and finish it off), but I did it! One of the great things about the FFX combat system is you can actually take the time to think through a plan given the turn order. I managed to stabilize and get back to hurting the boss.
And then it all came crashing down. I hit him 13 times, he hit me 12 times, I countered him 5 times. He was now under 2M health left. But he used his kill everyone ability, again with terrible timing right after the second arm had respawned, and this time I couldn't recover. Because the arm didn't autoattack Yuna, it autoattacked Rikku, and apparently it has a petrify component to it. Tidus and Yuna have ribbons on so they can't get stoned but Rikku could. And in this game if an attack both stones and kills you then you're permanently removed from the fight. In a DPS race situation, losing one member permanently is the end of it. I decided to try to burn the boss down because there was no other chance but it turns out Anima's overdrive does less damage than an autoattack. I'm sure I got him under a million and it's possible if I'd stopped attacking arms entirely that the extra 700k damage I wasted on them at the end was the difference.
Blerg. The fight lasted an hour and thirteen minutes! And I didn't win!
Ok, do I need to farm Rikku a ribbon? And what's the deal with that ultimate ability anyway? I tried summoning out an aeon to block it when I hit a 19 count near the end of the fight but he didn't use it and it just wasted time to bring it out. If I could get an actual counter on when it would happen then I could survive it easily. But even with a ribbon on Rikku it's no guarantee that I'd be able to recover from a single use of the ability. I had to get lucky to not have an arm use an area attack and kill me off instantly as it was!
So I turned to the internet to see if I could find a timer or something. And found someone who posted that he only uses the super powerful attack if the counter is at least 19 AND both his arms are alive. So it wasn't bad timing that caused him to use it twice when both arms were alive... It was a game mechanic. If I could have just kept going without him getting a turn with 2 arms alive I would have won. And since it turns out the amount of time it takes for an arm to get an action is exactly the same as the amount of time it takes for a dead arm to respawn I could manipulate the setup such that every time I killed one arm the other would respawn. I could make it so, if I didn't make a mistake, the entire fight would eventually take place with exactly one arm alive.
I went to sleep, got up, and got to work. I changed how my overdrive was charging just in case I needed to use extra mixes (I was on 'charge when you take damage' and switched to 'charge when you deal damage') and set to work. I screwed up counting a little at the start because I was still a little sleepy but once I got into the groove of things it was 'easy'. Just play perfectly for a little over an hour! No problem!
So that pretty much puts a cap on that. Time to beat the game I guess.
Ok, try again, this time without wasting time hasting Rikku. I used some defensive stuff and decided to try to burn down an arm by using a bunch of overdrives. It worked! Woo! But the other arm and Penance himself burned down the Magus Sisters that I'd busted out to overdrive. And then the arm I killed came back. I threw everything I had at it, and it came right back!
Clearly I was not strong enough to win this fight. Rikku getting slowed is too big of an issue. With the arm respawning so quickly after death this fight is going to be a DPS race and not having 3 hasted characters is game losing. So I'm going to need to build her a different suit of armour that has auto-haste on it. Oh, and none of my people could even hit any of the arms. So now that I've killed almost all of the challenge bosses that require high luck I should probably grind up a bunch of luck. Because I don't think I have time to bust out 15 uses of stat buffs in order to start killing arms.
Killing all those dark aeons actually got me a lot of master spheres which can be use to activate luck nodes. So I mostly just needed to grind up luck spheres, not luck spheres and fortune spheres. I was so close to a full sphere grid achievements so I just went and finished that off. Mostly with luck, but also with some more health. I bribed up the materials to add auto-haste to a suit of armour for Rikku (I ended up going with break hp limit, auto-haste, and auto-phoenix which was not optimal). I also looked up a list of Rikku mixes so I could actually use her limit break effectively. (One of the mixes actually gives 5 uses of aim and cheer! So for the time it would take to put up 3 buffs I could do 10.) Another mix restored everyone to max health which unfortunately isn't the case for a normal elixir. Elixirs only restore 9999 health which isn't nearly close to max when I have 620000 max health!
I also finally used some of the consumable buff items. In particular I used one that doubles my max health and one that made all my spells and abilities cost 0 mana. The second one was particularly relevant because Penance has a second form that drains all of your mana with every attack.
I did a little bit of reading on the fight and the wiki said every 19 times Penance attacks or that you attack Penance he'll cast an attack that is guaranteed to kill your party. But it doesn't dispel auto-life, so I can just put that up and hope to recover with some Rikku mixes. I did the fight a couple times learning the patterns of things and found it wasn't so bad. With 5 stacks of aim on and the luck I grinded I could reliably hit the arms all the time with Tidus and Yuna and most of the time with Rikku. It only took 6 quick hits to kill each arm and if I killed the arms right away I would have enough time for 3 actions before they respawned. Mostly that could be attacking Penance, sometimes it would have to be healing up from his attack. I have plenty of megalixirs to burn so healing up from his phase 1 attack wasn't so bad.
Note that Penance has 12 million health and I attack for 100k per attack. So if I average 2 hits per cycle I need to pull off 60 cycles to kill him. That's a long time, but it's at least plausible.
Then I hit phase 2 which had him change what attack he uses. Now instead of hitting my team for 7k each he'd hit one person for 10k and inflict a bunch of breaks on them. These breaks meant that the next time he hit the person they'd be killed. Dying is bad because I need those aim and cheer stacks and even if I had infinite overdrive power I wouldn't do any damage if I had to mix those buffs up every 2 rounds. You can remove the breaks by casting dispel on your own character, which is good. But that also takes out protect, which is bad. Without protect his attack hits for 20k and suddenly I'm stuck taking 3 actions per cycle to counter his attack. I only have 3 free actions per cycle and can no longer make progress.
Ok... I can actually generate more time per cycle if I delay killing off the arms. Final Fantasy X gives you the exact turn order for each actor in a fight. I can save the 6th hit on an arm for immediately before it would get to attack! Since it seemed to take the same amount of time to respawn the longer I can keep it alive (without letting it attack since its actions were brutal) the longer it will take to respawn. This let me stretch things out such that I'd get more like 7 free actions per cycle that weren't dedicated to killing arms. It did mean the boss would get more actions per cycle too, but it was a net gain for me. Especially since if I could set up a situation where all of my party was injured I could condense some of my healing actions together by using megalixir or Rikku's full party heal mix. I don't know if there's a window to recover from that super attack thing, but on my attempt after the one where I figured out to build longer cycles I decided to count out every single attack so I could time it out...
As an aside, this fight really reminded me of raiding in World of Warcraft. A fight that initially seemed insane but once you got the gear to overcome the DPS check and a timer to time out the powerful abilities you could work out a strategy and then try to implement it perfectly. I do miss that.
Anyway, fight away... I wasn't sure what was going to count as an attack or not so I counted things out separately. I hit Penance 32 times before he changed form, and then I hit him 47 times before he used his super move. In that time he'd used his immolation ability 23 times, I'd counter attacked him 7 times, and I'd used one purifying salt on him to dispel his haste. That seems like a lot more than the 19 I was promised! But considering I'd done more than 8 million damage it would probably be ok, assuming I could recover from all my characters being dead. It was truly terrible timing for me too, since his second arm had just respawned. Dying and coming back to life with auto-life seems to add a delay to your characters too, so his arms got to do their things right after my party died. On the plus side they used single target attacks on Yuna but she got right back up thanks to the auto-phoenix ability on my armour. It was tense to work out how to recover (I had to pop 2 megalixirs and let everything live another round in order to have the health to survive a combo arm AE attack + immolate, but the other arm wouldn't go until I got to go again and finish it off), but I did it! One of the great things about the FFX combat system is you can actually take the time to think through a plan given the turn order. I managed to stabilize and get back to hurting the boss.
And then it all came crashing down. I hit him 13 times, he hit me 12 times, I countered him 5 times. He was now under 2M health left. But he used his kill everyone ability, again with terrible timing right after the second arm had respawned, and this time I couldn't recover. Because the arm didn't autoattack Yuna, it autoattacked Rikku, and apparently it has a petrify component to it. Tidus and Yuna have ribbons on so they can't get stoned but Rikku could. And in this game if an attack both stones and kills you then you're permanently removed from the fight. In a DPS race situation, losing one member permanently is the end of it. I decided to try to burn the boss down because there was no other chance but it turns out Anima's overdrive does less damage than an autoattack. I'm sure I got him under a million and it's possible if I'd stopped attacking arms entirely that the extra 700k damage I wasted on them at the end was the difference.
Blerg. The fight lasted an hour and thirteen minutes! And I didn't win!
Ok, do I need to farm Rikku a ribbon? And what's the deal with that ultimate ability anyway? I tried summoning out an aeon to block it when I hit a 19 count near the end of the fight but he didn't use it and it just wasted time to bring it out. If I could get an actual counter on when it would happen then I could survive it easily. But even with a ribbon on Rikku it's no guarantee that I'd be able to recover from a single use of the ability. I had to get lucky to not have an arm use an area attack and kill me off instantly as it was!
So I turned to the internet to see if I could find a timer or something. And found someone who posted that he only uses the super powerful attack if the counter is at least 19 AND both his arms are alive. So it wasn't bad timing that caused him to use it twice when both arms were alive... It was a game mechanic. If I could have just kept going without him getting a turn with 2 arms alive I would have won. And since it turns out the amount of time it takes for an arm to get an action is exactly the same as the amount of time it takes for a dead arm to respawn I could manipulate the setup such that every time I killed one arm the other would respawn. I could make it so, if I didn't make a mistake, the entire fight would eventually take place with exactly one arm alive.
I went to sleep, got up, and got to work. I changed how my overdrive was charging just in case I needed to use extra mixes (I was on 'charge when you take damage' and switched to 'charge when you deal damage') and set to work. I screwed up counting a little at the start because I was still a little sleepy but once I got into the groove of things it was 'easy'. Just play perfectly for a little over an hour! No problem!
So that pretty much puts a cap on that. Time to beat the game I guess.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Home Stretch
Byung reminded me yesterday that I'm not actually playing FFX on my own console. It's a loaner, so maybe I should pick up the pace a little bit. That was all the prompting I needed to put my nose to the grindstone and finish off catching all the monsters. This unlocked Nemesis who was the hardest fight in the original game. I killed him on my first try. I killed Omega Weapon, the second hardest fight in the original game, without him getting a turn. So, yeah, I'm pretty powerful.
I assumed that power level was going to be enough to kill off the rest of the dark aeons. I was wrong. I started by trying Dark Bahamut because I really want to get Tidus' ultimate weapon. But then Dark Bahamut shattered Yuna and I was no longer able to win. So I needed to build a better suit of armour for her. Ok, fine... Long grind, here I come. I decided to at least try the rest of the dark aeons to figure out what else I'd need to put on the armour. The first one I fought was Dark Ixion, who was trivial, and he actually dropped a ring for Yuna that already had ribbon, break hp limit, and two more slots for customization. Thanks Dark Ixion! You may well have saved me 20 hours of grinding!
The reason it's so important to have armour for Yuna is that most of the dark aeons have limit breaks that are guaranteed wipes. They do max damage and dispel auto-life so there's actually no way to avoid dying to them except to summon an aeon of your own to take the blow for you. It's a pretty silly mechanic, but it is what it is. Theoretically I could use 3 other characters and just tag Yuna in right before they overdrive but in that strategy she still needs to be hasted and have max agility... If I'm doing that then she might as well be one of the people actually fighting, too.
With my new armour in hand (I added on auto-haste and deathproof) I went around and killed off the rest of the dark aeons. Some of them were pretty annoying but ultimately having auto-life/auto-phoenix on my party and summoning in an aeon to take the kill shot was good enough to win. I got punished for not maxing my luck stat and as a result had to spam aim and luck in some of the fights in order to actually hit the enemy. You need to use each one 5 times and dying resets your buff count so some of the fights went rather long. I was never really in danger of running out of aeons so I guess they didn't go long enough for the enemies!
Supposedly there's one more challenge boss that I can access now that I killed all the dark aeons but I didn't see it. I think I only killed Dark Yojimbo 4 times and you're supposed to need to kill him 5 times. I'm not sure where the 5th fight would be, but my next step is to go back there and see if I can figure that out. Then I just need to see if I can kill Penance and then maybe I'll be able to take out Sin. Do you think I'll be strong enough to bring him down?
I assumed that power level was going to be enough to kill off the rest of the dark aeons. I was wrong. I started by trying Dark Bahamut because I really want to get Tidus' ultimate weapon. But then Dark Bahamut shattered Yuna and I was no longer able to win. So I needed to build a better suit of armour for her. Ok, fine... Long grind, here I come. I decided to at least try the rest of the dark aeons to figure out what else I'd need to put on the armour. The first one I fought was Dark Ixion, who was trivial, and he actually dropped a ring for Yuna that already had ribbon, break hp limit, and two more slots for customization. Thanks Dark Ixion! You may well have saved me 20 hours of grinding!
The reason it's so important to have armour for Yuna is that most of the dark aeons have limit breaks that are guaranteed wipes. They do max damage and dispel auto-life so there's actually no way to avoid dying to them except to summon an aeon of your own to take the blow for you. It's a pretty silly mechanic, but it is what it is. Theoretically I could use 3 other characters and just tag Yuna in right before they overdrive but in that strategy she still needs to be hasted and have max agility... If I'm doing that then she might as well be one of the people actually fighting, too.
With my new armour in hand (I added on auto-haste and deathproof) I went around and killed off the rest of the dark aeons. Some of them were pretty annoying but ultimately having auto-life/auto-phoenix on my party and summoning in an aeon to take the kill shot was good enough to win. I got punished for not maxing my luck stat and as a result had to spam aim and luck in some of the fights in order to actually hit the enemy. You need to use each one 5 times and dying resets your buff count so some of the fights went rather long. I was never really in danger of running out of aeons so I guess they didn't go long enough for the enemies!
Supposedly there's one more challenge boss that I can access now that I killed all the dark aeons but I didn't see it. I think I only killed Dark Yojimbo 4 times and you're supposed to need to kill him 5 times. I'm not sure where the 5th fight would be, but my next step is to go back there and see if I can figure that out. Then I just need to see if I can kill Penance and then maybe I'll be able to take out Sin. Do you think I'll be strong enough to bring him down?
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Dark Shiva Down!
I've had a lack of motivation to play Final Fantasy X lately. I was at the point where Tidus had 99 levels to spend but I didn't think I had any other useful spheres to farm up for him. He had max strength, agility, magic, defense, and magic defense. Because I couldn't get his ultimate weapon thanks to Dark Bahamut I had to spend a bunch of hard to get crafting materials on his weapon. This meant I didn't have them available to make a good piece of armour so I was mostly grinding easy to kill arena bosses for cash and a chance at dark matter drops. But when he stopped earning experience because the game only lets you store 99 levels up I got a little depressed and moved on to other things I guess.
Today I finally turned the game back on. It had been over a month since I'd last played which is sad. Final Fantasy X is such a good game, why would I leave it for so long? Anyway, instead of farming arena bosses when I turned the game back on I decided to go catch some more monsters in order to unlock the boss that drops hp spheres. Eventually I'd break the limit on his max health and having useful spheres to plug into the grid would be useful. I did so, and it turned out that boss counterattacked with a big damage attack (even into my max defense) and I realized I'd ignored evasion. Farming up some evasion spheres would give me something to fill in the grid with too, so I went to get those. Turns out evasion sphere guy is hard to hit and I'd also ignored accuracy. So I killed accuracy guy a bunch and then evasion guy a bunch and filled in a good chunk of the grid with those two types of nodes. Along the way I finally hit 99 dark matters (every arena boss has a 1 in 8 chance of dropping 2 of them) and was able to put ribbon on a piece of armour. That was the motivation I needed to finally sell off all the weapons I'd found and bribe a few marlboros to break my max hp limit and finish off my good armour. Ribbon/break hp limit/auto-haste/auto-phoenix. Woo!
I plowed through all the arena bosses I had unlocked and that ended up filling Tidus back up to max level again. My other characters managed to spend their banked levels down because they either gain tons of experience or do tons of damage. Tidus does both at the same time, so on 'real' fights he still gains levels while everyone else doesn't. All I have left in the arena is the guy who unlocks for catching 10 of everything I think, so I headed off to do that. One of the monsters could only be caught right outside where Dark Shiva hangs out so I decided to pay her a visit. Tidus now has max strength, agility, magic, defense, magic defense, accuracy, evasion, over 20k max health, and ribbon. So I should be good to go, right?
Wrong! Dark Shiva blew me up over and over again. Each time I'd learn something new about the fight. Eventually I made an actual plan to win and took her out. I tried lots of ways to mitigate her limit break (which hit my whole team for 80k) and eventually decided that couldn't be done and just summoned an aeon of my own for her to kill when her limit break bar filled up.
After she died I took a look at the things she can drop... For me she dropped armour for Tidus that breaks the hp limit. A little late for that, Shiva! It also only had 3 ability slots instead of 4 so it's bad. But it looks like she can drop 4 slot items with ribbon and break hp limit for all characters, or a weapon with break damage limit. Either of those things could be really useful for building up other characters. I can't fight her again unless I reload the old save... Is that worth doing?
Considering how long it took to build the items for Tidus I absolutely believe it is worth scumming Dark Shiva for drops. If I want to play with other characters. At this point I've decided the reason I got burned out was my assertion to get all of the achievements. A couple of them look to be really, really hard (possibly not even possible for me with my tv) so my motivation fell off the charts. I think I'm just going to throw that aside. Beat the challenge bosses, maybe max out just Tidus' grid so I can finally say I've done that, and beat the game. Now that I've killed one dark aeon I'm probably strong enough that with good play I can beat the rest, right? Right?
Today I finally turned the game back on. It had been over a month since I'd last played which is sad. Final Fantasy X is such a good game, why would I leave it for so long? Anyway, instead of farming arena bosses when I turned the game back on I decided to go catch some more monsters in order to unlock the boss that drops hp spheres. Eventually I'd break the limit on his max health and having useful spheres to plug into the grid would be useful. I did so, and it turned out that boss counterattacked with a big damage attack (even into my max defense) and I realized I'd ignored evasion. Farming up some evasion spheres would give me something to fill in the grid with too, so I went to get those. Turns out evasion sphere guy is hard to hit and I'd also ignored accuracy. So I killed accuracy guy a bunch and then evasion guy a bunch and filled in a good chunk of the grid with those two types of nodes. Along the way I finally hit 99 dark matters (every arena boss has a 1 in 8 chance of dropping 2 of them) and was able to put ribbon on a piece of armour. That was the motivation I needed to finally sell off all the weapons I'd found and bribe a few marlboros to break my max hp limit and finish off my good armour. Ribbon/break hp limit/auto-haste/auto-phoenix. Woo!
I plowed through all the arena bosses I had unlocked and that ended up filling Tidus back up to max level again. My other characters managed to spend their banked levels down because they either gain tons of experience or do tons of damage. Tidus does both at the same time, so on 'real' fights he still gains levels while everyone else doesn't. All I have left in the arena is the guy who unlocks for catching 10 of everything I think, so I headed off to do that. One of the monsters could only be caught right outside where Dark Shiva hangs out so I decided to pay her a visit. Tidus now has max strength, agility, magic, defense, magic defense, accuracy, evasion, over 20k max health, and ribbon. So I should be good to go, right?
Wrong! Dark Shiva blew me up over and over again. Each time I'd learn something new about the fight. Eventually I made an actual plan to win and took her out. I tried lots of ways to mitigate her limit break (which hit my whole team for 80k) and eventually decided that couldn't be done and just summoned an aeon of my own for her to kill when her limit break bar filled up.
After she died I took a look at the things she can drop... For me she dropped armour for Tidus that breaks the hp limit. A little late for that, Shiva! It also only had 3 ability slots instead of 4 so it's bad. But it looks like she can drop 4 slot items with ribbon and break hp limit for all characters, or a weapon with break damage limit. Either of those things could be really useful for building up other characters. I can't fight her again unless I reload the old save... Is that worth doing?
Considering how long it took to build the items for Tidus I absolutely believe it is worth scumming Dark Shiva for drops. If I want to play with other characters. At this point I've decided the reason I got burned out was my assertion to get all of the achievements. A couple of them look to be really, really hard (possibly not even possible for me with my tv) so my motivation fell off the charts. I think I'm just going to throw that aside. Beat the challenge bosses, maybe max out just Tidus' grid so I can finally say I've done that, and beat the game. Now that I've killed one dark aeon I'm probably strong enough that with good play I can beat the rest, right? Right?
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Damage Scaling
Last week I talked a bit about agility in Final Fantasy X and how if I spent 18 levels worth of stats on Rikku that I could get her to take 33% more actions in the same span of time. I mused a bit about how I could probably take 18 levels worth of strength and probably do more than 33% more damage for the level investment. So I went to look up the damage formulas to see how true that was going to be. Just as a gut feeling Rikku seemed terrible for the longest time (except at killing robots and getting me the stealing achievement) even though she got to take the most actions. Even black mage Kimahri was significantly outdamaging her!
Anyway, it turns out that there's a bunch of complicated calculations in how much damage is done on a given physical attack but strength only factors in one spot so it's pretty easy to compare the damage done with X strength and the damage done with X+Y strength as a relative matter. The damage formula cubes your strength. CUBES! In the original Final Fantasy your strength was a linear factor in terms of damage done. Cubing is... Insane? It explains why Wakka seemed to be so much worse than Tidus and Auron despite only having a little bit less strength than they had. If Wakka has 20 strength and Tidus has 25 strength then Tidus will do twice as much damage. Not 25% more. Not less than that, which would be expected if weapons had any game effect.
So what happens if we give Rikku 72 bonus strength? Well, it depends on her current strength but it's always going to be _way_ more than 33% more damage. If she started at 10 strength then she'd do 552 times as much damage. If she started at 50 strength then she'd do 15 times as much damage. Even if she started at 183 (the highest she could have and still get benefit from 72 bonus strength) she'd just do 2.7 times as much damage.
This formula is completely ridiculous, and it goes to explain why my damage always seems to get out of control in a real hurry. You go through most of the game doing reasonable damage, but then around the time you unlock the ultimate weapons you find yourself starting to run into the 9999 barrier. Break that limit with a weapon and it isn't much longer before you're doing 99999 damage. It feels like a big difference and like there should be a more gradual growth between the two but there really isn't.
Magic damage works similarly, except your magic stat is only squared, not cubed. It's divided by a smaller number too so it works out pretty comparable at lower levels, but the insane scaling at higher stat values isn't quite as insane. Still pretty insane, but not as off the charts. Magic is also gated by having the magic sphere boss be significantly harder than the strength sphere boss. (Mostly because he's immune to physical damage entirely which shuts off being able to use the magic break skill while the strength guy can be hit with the armour break skill.)
I've reached the point where I've gone off the rails in terms of power. I farmed the strength sphere boss until I was able to hit 255 strength with Tidus and Rikku. I'm struggling with coming up with a way to max my magic without it taking forever and I think I've settled on just power leveling Yuna and letting her get all the magic on the real grid first. Kimahri does way more damage because he's already done most of that but he doesn't have 1MP cost on his ultimate weapon so he's actually a terrible caster. His spells cost 90 times as much mana so he runs in 4 or 5 rounds while Yuna can double cast ultimas all day long. So what I'm doing right now is farming a fast boss for money and dark matter. One-Eye dies in two attacks, so I can have Yuna wait and still kill the boss before he takes an action. This lets her score up a silly amount of experience since I built her a triple AP, triple overdrive, overdrive->AP weapon. (One-Eye drops 2 or 3 socket weapons with triple AP so it's easy to build an experience gaining weapon as long as you don't need it to break the damage limit.)
Anyway, it turns out that there's a bunch of complicated calculations in how much damage is done on a given physical attack but strength only factors in one spot so it's pretty easy to compare the damage done with X strength and the damage done with X+Y strength as a relative matter. The damage formula cubes your strength. CUBES! In the original Final Fantasy your strength was a linear factor in terms of damage done. Cubing is... Insane? It explains why Wakka seemed to be so much worse than Tidus and Auron despite only having a little bit less strength than they had. If Wakka has 20 strength and Tidus has 25 strength then Tidus will do twice as much damage. Not 25% more. Not less than that, which would be expected if weapons had any game effect.
So what happens if we give Rikku 72 bonus strength? Well, it depends on her current strength but it's always going to be _way_ more than 33% more damage. If she started at 10 strength then she'd do 552 times as much damage. If she started at 50 strength then she'd do 15 times as much damage. Even if she started at 183 (the highest she could have and still get benefit from 72 bonus strength) she'd just do 2.7 times as much damage.
This formula is completely ridiculous, and it goes to explain why my damage always seems to get out of control in a real hurry. You go through most of the game doing reasonable damage, but then around the time you unlock the ultimate weapons you find yourself starting to run into the 9999 barrier. Break that limit with a weapon and it isn't much longer before you're doing 99999 damage. It feels like a big difference and like there should be a more gradual growth between the two but there really isn't.
Magic damage works similarly, except your magic stat is only squared, not cubed. It's divided by a smaller number too so it works out pretty comparable at lower levels, but the insane scaling at higher stat values isn't quite as insane. Still pretty insane, but not as off the charts. Magic is also gated by having the magic sphere boss be significantly harder than the strength sphere boss. (Mostly because he's immune to physical damage entirely which shuts off being able to use the magic break skill while the strength guy can be hit with the armour break skill.)
I've reached the point where I've gone off the rails in terms of power. I farmed the strength sphere boss until I was able to hit 255 strength with Tidus and Rikku. I'm struggling with coming up with a way to max my magic without it taking forever and I think I've settled on just power leveling Yuna and letting her get all the magic on the real grid first. Kimahri does way more damage because he's already done most of that but he doesn't have 1MP cost on his ultimate weapon so he's actually a terrible caster. His spells cost 90 times as much mana so he runs in 4 or 5 rounds while Yuna can double cast ultimas all day long. So what I'm doing right now is farming a fast boss for money and dark matter. One-Eye dies in two attacks, so I can have Yuna wait and still kill the boss before he takes an action. This lets her score up a silly amount of experience since I built her a triple AP, triple overdrive, overdrive->AP weapon. (One-Eye drops 2 or 3 socket weapons with triple AP so it's easy to build an experience gaining weapon as long as you don't need it to break the damage limit.)
Friday, April 11, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Crafting Weapons
Final Fantasy X actually has an equipment crafting system where you can spend items (mostly stolen or bribed by Rikku) to add abilities onto your gear. Each character can equip one weapon and one piece of armour and each of those can have up to 4 abilities on them. The abilities range from the mundane (do 3% more damage) to the absolutely incredible (break the damage cap so you can deal 99999 damage per hit instead of 9999). Of course the incredible stuff is really hard to come by, but with enough farming you can totally get it done.
Normally I'll craft some armour because there is no other way to get really good armour, but I don't think I've ever tried to craft a really good weapon. The reason for this is each character has an ultimate weapon that can be earned in the world by obtaining three items and combining them at a quest globe thing. These ultimate weapons come with 4 really good abilities on them and also let you ignore enemy armour. So while they may not be perfect, they're really strong and you don't need to worry about making enough money to bribe up a ton of crafting materials. The pieces for the ultimate weapons also tend to involve doing some side quests or mini games and we all know how much I love to do those, so I'm probably going to end up with the weapons anyway. Especially since there's an achievement for getting them all!
Anyway, yesterday I complained about the really powerful dark aeons that were added in this version of the game which keep showing up in random spots and ruining me. I looked up where they all were so I could avoid them going forward, which is fine. What isn't fine is that I didn't pick up a piece for Tidus' ultimate weapon when I first had the chance to pick it up. (You need to backtrack right after killing Yunalesca.) That shouldn't be a problem since I can just go back in and pick it up now. Except Dark Bahamut lives there. So I can't go get the piece to make Tidus' ultimate weapon until I'm strong enough to beat one of the hardest fights in the game. My whole plan this playthrough was to kill the hard stuff with Tidus! I'd sent him down the tree to get quick hit and he's the only character I have right now who could hit for more than 9999 damage if he had his ultimate weapon.
I've even done the hard part of getting his weapon! I got super lucky and beat the chocobo racing minigame! Now I just need to go pick something up off the ground. But I can't.
I was lamenting this fact on Facebook. What can I do now? I could power someone else up, someone who I could get their ultimate weapon. I already have Yuna's ultimate weapon, and I have all the pieces for Kimahri's. Realistically I think I could get them all right now except for Lulu's. (Dodging 200 lightning bolts... *shudder*) So I could do that. Also apparently Yojimbo's top attack will one shot the dark aeons. That seems cheesy and stupid, but if doing so lets me play the game the way I want to then it may be a reasonable thing to do. Last night while sleeping I came up with a third option... I could actually craft Tidus a weapon! It'd be worse since it wouldn't have the armour ignoring aspect but maybe I could choose 4 abilities that really make it close enough? It certainly seems like I should look up what it would take to do, anyway.
As an aside, it turns out the quick hit plan wasn't as good as it used to be. It turns out they nerfed it pretty badly in this version! The mana cost tripled (from 12 to 36) and it now has a base speed of 2 instead of 1. This means that in the old version you could use quick attack 3 times in the span of a normal attack. Now you can use it 1.5 times. That's a pretty big difference and maybe means building a caster with double cast and ultima is a fine plan. Or having Yuna murder things with a really twinked out Magus Sisters summon or something?
Anyway... What can I add on to a weapon that would be really, really good?
First Strike - go first in a fight
Deathstrike - insta kill any enemy that isn't immune
Strength +20% - 20% more damage
Strength +10% - 10% more damage
Strength +5% - 5% more damage
Evade & Counter - lets you dodge attacks and hit them back
One MP Cost - lets me actually use quick attack without running out of mana
Triple AP - tons of experience
Overdrive -> AP - Tons of experience
Triple Overdrive - TONS of experience
Break Damage Limit - do 99999 damage max instead of 9999
What would Tidus' ultimate weapon have on it? Break damage limit, triple overdrive, evade & counter, and magic counter. That actually doesn't seem like a terribly interesting list of abilities. Magic counter means you counter attack when they hit you with a spell so I guess this weapon means you just keep hurting the enemy on their turn if they try to hurt you. That could be really good. But many of the other ultimate weapons have double AP on them, which would let the user level up quicker instead of counterattacking which is probably good for everything until you're really super twinky.
So maybe it's actually for the best that I can't go get the item from under Dark Bahamut? The counter attack weapon feels really end game. I'm only at mid-end game... Maybe I should look into building the ultimate leveling weapon? I'd need break damage limit so that I can do good damage but beyond that using the 3 leveling abilities might be a really good idea. I think if I was going full on damage I'd probably want break damage limit, one MP cost, strength +20%, and evade & counter? I guess it probably depends on if I'm hitting the 99999 damage cap or not with max strength? If I am then strength +20% and strength +10% are bad. If I'm not then they're pretty good. Though One MP Cost could well be seen as '50% more damage' if it lets me use quick hit.
One crucial thing to point out is break damage limit costs 60 dark matter and this version of the game added ribbon back in for armour. It costs 99 dark matter and is something I really want on everyone's armour! How would I go about getting me some dark matter...
Turns out you get given 99 dark matter after catching 5 of every monster in the game. Beyond that you can get more rarely from blitzball tournaments, or as a rare drop from killing the challenge bosses in the arena, or as a drop from killing the dark aeons. So realistically I can make one weapon, or I can make one ribbon armour, but I can't do both until I'm strong enough to farm some of the bosses in the arena. It sure seems like a good weapon for Tidus would go a long way to making that happen though... But I shouldn't be planning on making a leveling weapon and a damage weapon since that amount of dark matter just isn't going to come up. His ultimate weapon is a fine damage weapon though... So leveling weapon it is!
What do I need to add on triple AP, triple overdrive, and overdrive-> AP? Triple AP takes 50 wings to discovery. Triple overdrive takes 30 winning formula. Overdrive -> AP takes 10 doors to tomorrow. Two of those seem to have no other good use, so that's fine. 30 wings to discovery are needed to add break HP limit to armour which seems like it's really important eventually, but right now no one is even close to that cap anyway.
Unfortunately it looks like while most of that stuff is trivial to get a starting number of, wings to discovery you can only get 30 from a quest. Getting the last 20 is hard. It's a drop from one of the challenge bosses I can't beat. Or you can bribe them from a monster in the world for an amount of money I can't possibly fathom at this point, but I can see farming it up if I really need to.
Well, the bottom line is it's going to take a bunch of work to build a really good weapon, but it seems feasible. Probably more feasible than killing Dark Bahamut, anyway, and I don't really want to give up on using Tidus, so it's what I've got to work with. The first step is going to be capturing at least 5 of every monster in the game to get my free dark matter. I was going to want to do that anyway, so no worries!
Normally I'll craft some armour because there is no other way to get really good armour, but I don't think I've ever tried to craft a really good weapon. The reason for this is each character has an ultimate weapon that can be earned in the world by obtaining three items and combining them at a quest globe thing. These ultimate weapons come with 4 really good abilities on them and also let you ignore enemy armour. So while they may not be perfect, they're really strong and you don't need to worry about making enough money to bribe up a ton of crafting materials. The pieces for the ultimate weapons also tend to involve doing some side quests or mini games and we all know how much I love to do those, so I'm probably going to end up with the weapons anyway. Especially since there's an achievement for getting them all!
Anyway, yesterday I complained about the really powerful dark aeons that were added in this version of the game which keep showing up in random spots and ruining me. I looked up where they all were so I could avoid them going forward, which is fine. What isn't fine is that I didn't pick up a piece for Tidus' ultimate weapon when I first had the chance to pick it up. (You need to backtrack right after killing Yunalesca.) That shouldn't be a problem since I can just go back in and pick it up now. Except Dark Bahamut lives there. So I can't go get the piece to make Tidus' ultimate weapon until I'm strong enough to beat one of the hardest fights in the game. My whole plan this playthrough was to kill the hard stuff with Tidus! I'd sent him down the tree to get quick hit and he's the only character I have right now who could hit for more than 9999 damage if he had his ultimate weapon.
I've even done the hard part of getting his weapon! I got super lucky and beat the chocobo racing minigame! Now I just need to go pick something up off the ground. But I can't.
I was lamenting this fact on Facebook. What can I do now? I could power someone else up, someone who I could get their ultimate weapon. I already have Yuna's ultimate weapon, and I have all the pieces for Kimahri's. Realistically I think I could get them all right now except for Lulu's. (Dodging 200 lightning bolts... *shudder*) So I could do that. Also apparently Yojimbo's top attack will one shot the dark aeons. That seems cheesy and stupid, but if doing so lets me play the game the way I want to then it may be a reasonable thing to do. Last night while sleeping I came up with a third option... I could actually craft Tidus a weapon! It'd be worse since it wouldn't have the armour ignoring aspect but maybe I could choose 4 abilities that really make it close enough? It certainly seems like I should look up what it would take to do, anyway.
As an aside, it turns out the quick hit plan wasn't as good as it used to be. It turns out they nerfed it pretty badly in this version! The mana cost tripled (from 12 to 36) and it now has a base speed of 2 instead of 1. This means that in the old version you could use quick attack 3 times in the span of a normal attack. Now you can use it 1.5 times. That's a pretty big difference and maybe means building a caster with double cast and ultima is a fine plan. Or having Yuna murder things with a really twinked out Magus Sisters summon or something?
Anyway... What can I add on to a weapon that would be really, really good?
First Strike - go first in a fight
Deathstrike - insta kill any enemy that isn't immune
Strength +20% - 20% more damage
Strength +10% - 10% more damage
Strength +5% - 5% more damage
Evade & Counter - lets you dodge attacks and hit them back
One MP Cost - lets me actually use quick attack without running out of mana
Triple AP - tons of experience
Overdrive -> AP - Tons of experience
Triple Overdrive - TONS of experience
Break Damage Limit - do 99999 damage max instead of 9999
What would Tidus' ultimate weapon have on it? Break damage limit, triple overdrive, evade & counter, and magic counter. That actually doesn't seem like a terribly interesting list of abilities. Magic counter means you counter attack when they hit you with a spell so I guess this weapon means you just keep hurting the enemy on their turn if they try to hurt you. That could be really good. But many of the other ultimate weapons have double AP on them, which would let the user level up quicker instead of counterattacking which is probably good for everything until you're really super twinky.
So maybe it's actually for the best that I can't go get the item from under Dark Bahamut? The counter attack weapon feels really end game. I'm only at mid-end game... Maybe I should look into building the ultimate leveling weapon? I'd need break damage limit so that I can do good damage but beyond that using the 3 leveling abilities might be a really good idea. I think if I was going full on damage I'd probably want break damage limit, one MP cost, strength +20%, and evade & counter? I guess it probably depends on if I'm hitting the 99999 damage cap or not with max strength? If I am then strength +20% and strength +10% are bad. If I'm not then they're pretty good. Though One MP Cost could well be seen as '50% more damage' if it lets me use quick hit.
One crucial thing to point out is break damage limit costs 60 dark matter and this version of the game added ribbon back in for armour. It costs 99 dark matter and is something I really want on everyone's armour! How would I go about getting me some dark matter...
Turns out you get given 99 dark matter after catching 5 of every monster in the game. Beyond that you can get more rarely from blitzball tournaments, or as a rare drop from killing the challenge bosses in the arena, or as a drop from killing the dark aeons. So realistically I can make one weapon, or I can make one ribbon armour, but I can't do both until I'm strong enough to farm some of the bosses in the arena. It sure seems like a good weapon for Tidus would go a long way to making that happen though... But I shouldn't be planning on making a leveling weapon and a damage weapon since that amount of dark matter just isn't going to come up. His ultimate weapon is a fine damage weapon though... So leveling weapon it is!
What do I need to add on triple AP, triple overdrive, and overdrive-> AP? Triple AP takes 50 wings to discovery. Triple overdrive takes 30 winning formula. Overdrive -> AP takes 10 doors to tomorrow. Two of those seem to have no other good use, so that's fine. 30 wings to discovery are needed to add break HP limit to armour which seems like it's really important eventually, but right now no one is even close to that cap anyway.
Unfortunately it looks like while most of that stuff is trivial to get a starting number of, wings to discovery you can only get 30 from a quest. Getting the last 20 is hard. It's a drop from one of the challenge bosses I can't beat. Or you can bribe them from a monster in the world for an amount of money I can't possibly fathom at this point, but I can see farming it up if I really need to.
Well, the bottom line is it's going to take a bunch of work to build a really good weapon, but it seems feasible. Probably more feasible than killing Dark Bahamut, anyway, and I don't really want to give up on using Tidus, so it's what I've got to work with. The first step is going to be capturing at least 5 of every monster in the game to get my free dark matter. I was going to want to do that anyway, so no worries!
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Frustrating 'Game Over's
The HD version of Final Fantasy X is a remake of the international version of the game, so it included a bunch of content that never made it to North America the first time around. I knew some of the new stuff revolved around new even more challenging challenge fights but I didn't know what they were going to be and intentionally kept myself from looking it up so I could work it out on my own. I was expecting something like a new challenge dungeon or something like that. At the very least I was expecting some kind of warning that I was about to get obliterated...
I got the airship yesterday and decided the first thing I was going to do was go back and capture the monsters from the starting areas. I'd go through the zones pretty carefully to make sure I hadn't missed any Al Bhed primers or other stuff since I didn't want to look that stuff up either. So I went back to Besaid and killed everything on the way back to town. I actually hadn't even talked to everyone in town at the start of the game so it's entirely possible I missed something in there. So I walked into town and was immediately thrown into an encounter with a scary looking version of the first aeon, Valefor. He went first and attacked someone for 9999 damage. I tried to run, realized I couldn't, and tagged in Yuna to cast life on the dead person. Valefor then killed my whole party with one attack. Game over, man. I actually hadn't saved in quite a while (why would I save when I was just going to the starting town to capture enemies that can't kill me?) and I had a lot of cutscenes to get through before I could even get back to flying around on the airship again. At least I'd saved right after the Yunalesca boss fight since that thing took a long time!
Ok, fine... So the challenge bosses are twinky versions of the aeons? The guy who brought Valefor out made it clear he was from the temple (which is inside the town of Besaid) and they were out to get me for being a traitor. Ok, makes sense. I can see making twinky versions of the aeons. I probably would have put the fight in the temple itself to let me go back to the town of Besaid but I can live with this. I was annoyed I hadn't saved in a while but it's time to move on. Later I found a second twinky aeon, inside a temple this time, and I'd saved right before I went in. Shiva also blew me up, but I was expecting it and had saved so it was all good.
Then I ran into a third one... This one was on the thunder plains, and it was triggered by just walking up (and maybe talking to) a guy standing under a lightning tower. I wasn't anywhere near a temple. There was no indication that this was going to be a challenge fight (except maybe that the guy was dressed up like a temple monk I guess). I exploded. I once again hadn't saved in a while. Why would I save when I was just running around the thunder plains catching monsters? I'm really annoyed because I'd caught a full 10 cactuars.
I then found a fourth one, this time just on a road at the end of the Mi'hen Highroad. I had thankfully just saved so I didn't lose any progress this time, but it was still a little frustrating. This time it was a twinky version of an aeon I don't even have myself! It was the Magus Sisters, and one of their attacks hit poor Rikku for 599994 damage. She has around 2500 health, so I was overkilled by a factor of 240. I don't think you needed to be quite that twinky, Magus Sisters!
Anyway... While the hard fights were in a challenge dungeon I was fine with not looking them up. If they were contained in the temples I could accept losing progress once and then avoiding them. But if they're just going to stick them on a road, or in the middle of a zone I need to play in, I have to know what to avoid. So instead of playing the game right now I'm going to go look up the changes in the international edition. That makes me sad, but what else can I do?
I got the airship yesterday and decided the first thing I was going to do was go back and capture the monsters from the starting areas. I'd go through the zones pretty carefully to make sure I hadn't missed any Al Bhed primers or other stuff since I didn't want to look that stuff up either. So I went back to Besaid and killed everything on the way back to town. I actually hadn't even talked to everyone in town at the start of the game so it's entirely possible I missed something in there. So I walked into town and was immediately thrown into an encounter with a scary looking version of the first aeon, Valefor. He went first and attacked someone for 9999 damage. I tried to run, realized I couldn't, and tagged in Yuna to cast life on the dead person. Valefor then killed my whole party with one attack. Game over, man. I actually hadn't saved in quite a while (why would I save when I was just going to the starting town to capture enemies that can't kill me?) and I had a lot of cutscenes to get through before I could even get back to flying around on the airship again. At least I'd saved right after the Yunalesca boss fight since that thing took a long time!
Ok, fine... So the challenge bosses are twinky versions of the aeons? The guy who brought Valefor out made it clear he was from the temple (which is inside the town of Besaid) and they were out to get me for being a traitor. Ok, makes sense. I can see making twinky versions of the aeons. I probably would have put the fight in the temple itself to let me go back to the town of Besaid but I can live with this. I was annoyed I hadn't saved in a while but it's time to move on. Later I found a second twinky aeon, inside a temple this time, and I'd saved right before I went in. Shiva also blew me up, but I was expecting it and had saved so it was all good.
Then I ran into a third one... This one was on the thunder plains, and it was triggered by just walking up (and maybe talking to) a guy standing under a lightning tower. I wasn't anywhere near a temple. There was no indication that this was going to be a challenge fight (except maybe that the guy was dressed up like a temple monk I guess). I exploded. I once again hadn't saved in a while. Why would I save when I was just running around the thunder plains catching monsters? I'm really annoyed because I'd caught a full 10 cactuars.
I then found a fourth one, this time just on a road at the end of the Mi'hen Highroad. I had thankfully just saved so I didn't lose any progress this time, but it was still a little frustrating. This time it was a twinky version of an aeon I don't even have myself! It was the Magus Sisters, and one of their attacks hit poor Rikku for 599994 damage. She has around 2500 health, so I was overkilled by a factor of 240. I don't think you needed to be quite that twinky, Magus Sisters!
Anyway... While the hard fights were in a challenge dungeon I was fine with not looking them up. If they were contained in the temples I could accept losing progress once and then avoiding them. But if they're just going to stick them on a road, or in the middle of a zone I need to play in, I have to know what to avoid. So instead of playing the game right now I'm going to go look up the changes in the international edition. That makes me sad, but what else can I do?
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Count Time Battle
For a long time (6 games in a row, going from FFIV to FFIX) the Final Fantasy games used a combat system called ATB (Active Time Battle) where characters and enemies would charge up a meter in real time and could then take actions when their meter filled up. While that action was going on, or while you were thinking about what to do with that action, or while you were manually entering the commands to take the action everyone else's meters would keep charging up. In theory this was a system that was designed to make character speed matter (the older games gave each character exactly one action per round and speed only determined order in the round if anything at all) but in practice everyone's bars would just fill up while you were entering in commands anyway. Unless you played on a slow speed I guess, or are really fast at entering commands, or cheesed the system out by pretending to use an item since the ATB bars would pause when using an item in some games. I liked the idea of the ATB system, and liked it when I was a kid, but when you really dig into how it works it gets a little disappointing.
Final Fantasy X switched it up and went to a system more like Final Fantasy Tactics. In FFX the game pauses when it's someone's turn to take an action. You can use all the time you want to think about what you want to do, or to enter the command in, or to doze off. That happened to me the other day and in an ATB game it would have meant game over. Here the game just assumed I was thinking really hard about what to do with Kimahri. (What am I going to do with Kimahri?!?) When I woke up I was able to finish the fight, meander to a save point, and go to bed. Perfect!
But I digress... The system works by assigning every action in the game a number from 1 to 8 indicating how fast it is. Then you multiply that number by a value determined by your agility. That's how many ticks will pass before you get your next action. Monsters work the same way. The game has a nice list ordering all of the upcoming turns so you can see who is going to go next and what the ordering will be assuming everyone takes a standard speed action. I'd assumed agility was going to be a linear relationship with how often you get to go but it's really, really not. Early on the steps are in increments of 1 or 2 agility but the later steps are huge. There's no difference between 44 agility and 61 agility, but that 62nd agility gives you 20% more actions! The 98th agility is worth 25% more actions and the 170th agility is worth 33% more actions! But is it really worth spending all the levels to go from 98 to 170? Even if every node was a 4 agility node that would be 18 levels worth of agility, and they're not all going to be 4 agility nodes until you've reached the point where you're destroying the monster arena. Aiming for 44 or 62 seems pretty reasonable but if Rikku has hit those breakpoints she really needs to teleport out of her agility area and go find some strength or something! She can probably spend 18 levels on strength and end up doing more than 33% more damage per action...
There's one other aspect to the CTB system used in FFX, and that's the ability to tag in characters from the bench. Any time it's your action you can swap out the current character for one of the four characters not currently on the field. They come in and get to immediately take an action. Anyone who participated in the fight gets full experience too, so there's an incentive to tag in characters to do something, anything, in order to keep leveling up. This also let the game design monsters that are really hard to deal with, with one critical weakness, since you're guaranteed to have that tool in your toolbox. There are robots that are pretty tough, except if Rikku steals from them they instantly die. If this was a normal Final Fantasy game and there was a chance Rikku wasn't in your party this would be a bad design, but here it's awesome. It always feels like there's a reason to use each person, which makes you use your whole team for the whole game, which is a really different change of pace.
Everyone except Kimahri. All 6 other characters have something they do best. (Tidus hits evasive ground monsters, Auron pierces heavily armoured monsters, Rikku kills robots, Wakka hit evasive flying monsters, Lulu casts elemental spells on super tough monsters, and Yuna is the healer and can summon in aeons to deal with tricky fights.) Kimahri has no niche. He's the jack of all trades in a game where you can make the hot tag to the expert in every situation. He's the second best at piercing armour, sure... But when Auron one shots the enemy why do we need the second best one? I frequently send him down the black mage area since he starts with an ability that restores his mana, but then he's strictly worse than Lulu for pretty much the entire game. Maybe you make him into a healer? He's terrible compared to Yuna though, and do you really need two healers in a three person group? (It actually can help to have a second person with the life spell, but eventually you get some white magic spheres so that person could be anyone!)
I still use Kimahri. He needs experience because he never gets tagged in to do anything and I feel bad for the guy. And in a normal system he'd probably be the best character! He can do a little bit of everything so he'd be able to deal with the huge variety of problems the random encounters can throw at you. But the tag in system obsoletes the jack of all trades and that makes Kimahri sad. Don't worry Kimahri. I'll still use you.
Final Fantasy X switched it up and went to a system more like Final Fantasy Tactics. In FFX the game pauses when it's someone's turn to take an action. You can use all the time you want to think about what you want to do, or to enter the command in, or to doze off. That happened to me the other day and in an ATB game it would have meant game over. Here the game just assumed I was thinking really hard about what to do with Kimahri. (What am I going to do with Kimahri?!?) When I woke up I was able to finish the fight, meander to a save point, and go to bed. Perfect!
But I digress... The system works by assigning every action in the game a number from 1 to 8 indicating how fast it is. Then you multiply that number by a value determined by your agility. That's how many ticks will pass before you get your next action. Monsters work the same way. The game has a nice list ordering all of the upcoming turns so you can see who is going to go next and what the ordering will be assuming everyone takes a standard speed action. I'd assumed agility was going to be a linear relationship with how often you get to go but it's really, really not. Early on the steps are in increments of 1 or 2 agility but the later steps are huge. There's no difference between 44 agility and 61 agility, but that 62nd agility gives you 20% more actions! The 98th agility is worth 25% more actions and the 170th agility is worth 33% more actions! But is it really worth spending all the levels to go from 98 to 170? Even if every node was a 4 agility node that would be 18 levels worth of agility, and they're not all going to be 4 agility nodes until you've reached the point where you're destroying the monster arena. Aiming for 44 or 62 seems pretty reasonable but if Rikku has hit those breakpoints she really needs to teleport out of her agility area and go find some strength or something! She can probably spend 18 levels on strength and end up doing more than 33% more damage per action...
There's one other aspect to the CTB system used in FFX, and that's the ability to tag in characters from the bench. Any time it's your action you can swap out the current character for one of the four characters not currently on the field. They come in and get to immediately take an action. Anyone who participated in the fight gets full experience too, so there's an incentive to tag in characters to do something, anything, in order to keep leveling up. This also let the game design monsters that are really hard to deal with, with one critical weakness, since you're guaranteed to have that tool in your toolbox. There are robots that are pretty tough, except if Rikku steals from them they instantly die. If this was a normal Final Fantasy game and there was a chance Rikku wasn't in your party this would be a bad design, but here it's awesome. It always feels like there's a reason to use each person, which makes you use your whole team for the whole game, which is a really different change of pace.
Everyone except Kimahri. All 6 other characters have something they do best. (Tidus hits evasive ground monsters, Auron pierces heavily armoured monsters, Rikku kills robots, Wakka hit evasive flying monsters, Lulu casts elemental spells on super tough monsters, and Yuna is the healer and can summon in aeons to deal with tricky fights.) Kimahri has no niche. He's the jack of all trades in a game where you can make the hot tag to the expert in every situation. He's the second best at piercing armour, sure... But when Auron one shots the enemy why do we need the second best one? I frequently send him down the black mage area since he starts with an ability that restores his mana, but then he's strictly worse than Lulu for pretty much the entire game. Maybe you make him into a healer? He's terrible compared to Yuna though, and do you really need two healers in a three person group? (It actually can help to have a second person with the life spell, but eventually you get some white magic spheres so that person could be anyone!)
I still use Kimahri. He needs experience because he never gets tagged in to do anything and I feel bad for the guy. And in a normal system he'd probably be the best character! He can do a little bit of everything so he'd be able to deal with the huge variety of problems the random encounters can throw at you. But the tag in system obsoletes the jack of all trades and that makes Kimahri sad. Don't worry Kimahri. I'll still use you.
Tuesday, April 08, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Calm Lands
Sometimes people complain that the later Final Fantasy games are too much 'on rails' meaning that you don't really have any choice in the matter on where to go or what to do. The story tells you to do something, NPCs block the way to walk in any other direction, and you go do it. FFX has definitely been like that this far, but I've never really understood the complaints. For the most part Final Fantasy IV was every bit as 'on rails' as this game, it just also gave you the option of meandering around aimlessly accomplishing nothing until you found the right way to go. Sure, when you unlocked the hovercraft you could go towards Fabul, but you'd get stuck behind a wall of ice until you went back, saved Rosa, and had her give Rydia a pep talk to learn fire and melt the ice. (Hilariously, if you use a game genie and gain max levels Rydia will naturally learn fire 2 and fire 3 but won't use those to melt the ice!)
The way I see it, as long as the plot is interesting you shouldn't mind being 'on rails'. And if the plot isn't interesting in an RPG maybe you should put it down and find some other way to spend your time... I understand the allure of a good side quest, don't get me wrong, and having some 'open world'ness going on can be pretty good. But to this day I still don't know what was going on in Oblivion because why would I bother trying to do the main plot when I could become The Grey Fox and the head of the assassins guild?
Anyway... Yuna has finally visited all of the temples (that we know of) on her pilgrimage and it's time to head to Zanarkand. Along the way we need to pass through the Calm Lands and Auron makes an ominous remark about how so many summoners lose their way here even though it just seems like a nice peaceful reminder of a previous battle with Sin. I don't know if they threw that line in as a warning to people who get trapped doing side quests or not... But that's what always happens here! The Calm Lands has the chocobo riding side quest to get a piece of Tidus' ultimate weapon, and it has the extra temple with the Magus Sisters summon, and it has the extra temple with the Yojimbo summon, and it has the monster arena. Oh, the monster arena! I think this may be the greatest side quest of all time. Why don't you go to every zone in the entire game and grind random encounters over and over until you catch 10 of every single monster that can spawn? If you do we'll unlock challenge bosses you can fight... Challenge bosses that are the only way to really, really twink out your stats... I know you like challenge bosses. I know you like maxing out your stats. I know you like collecting things...
Big battle to save the world from evil? Screw that! I want to collect some things and kill some hard dudes and max out some stats. Sin can wait.
The game was on rails, but now it's not (well, as soon as I go through another zone or two and get my airship, anyway), and the very interesting plot is now a thing of the past. So I don't know... Part of me thinks it's fine that a game is on rails, but as soon as there's a way off of them I'm grabbing my capture sword and jumping clear. I'll be back, rails. Promise. But first I need to catch all of the things. Oh, and maybe play some more blitzball...
The way I see it, as long as the plot is interesting you shouldn't mind being 'on rails'. And if the plot isn't interesting in an RPG maybe you should put it down and find some other way to spend your time... I understand the allure of a good side quest, don't get me wrong, and having some 'open world'ness going on can be pretty good. But to this day I still don't know what was going on in Oblivion because why would I bother trying to do the main plot when I could become The Grey Fox and the head of the assassins guild?
Anyway... Yuna has finally visited all of the temples (that we know of) on her pilgrimage and it's time to head to Zanarkand. Along the way we need to pass through the Calm Lands and Auron makes an ominous remark about how so many summoners lose their way here even though it just seems like a nice peaceful reminder of a previous battle with Sin. I don't know if they threw that line in as a warning to people who get trapped doing side quests or not... But that's what always happens here! The Calm Lands has the chocobo riding side quest to get a piece of Tidus' ultimate weapon, and it has the extra temple with the Magus Sisters summon, and it has the extra temple with the Yojimbo summon, and it has the monster arena. Oh, the monster arena! I think this may be the greatest side quest of all time. Why don't you go to every zone in the entire game and grind random encounters over and over until you catch 10 of every single monster that can spawn? If you do we'll unlock challenge bosses you can fight... Challenge bosses that are the only way to really, really twink out your stats... I know you like challenge bosses. I know you like maxing out your stats. I know you like collecting things...
Big battle to save the world from evil? Screw that! I want to collect some things and kill some hard dudes and max out some stats. Sin can wait.
The game was on rails, but now it's not (well, as soon as I go through another zone or two and get my airship, anyway), and the very interesting plot is now a thing of the past. So I don't know... Part of me thinks it's fine that a game is on rails, but as soon as there's a way off of them I'm grabbing my capture sword and jumping clear. I'll be back, rails. Promise. But first I need to catch all of the things. Oh, and maybe play some more blitzball...
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Achievements
One of things you can count on being added to a remade version of an old game is achievements. Everyone loves achievements, right? Little things to give you some added direction on what you could be doing. I took a look at them to see if there was something I should be doing and they mostly seemed like things I was going to do anyway. Collect all the ultimate weapons, beat the new challenge bosses, follow the plot...
There are two, however, that seem both easy and like things I was not going to do. Steal 200 times, and bribe for a large amount of money. These are both things that center around using Rikku and are the ways to get lots of items to power up her awesome but spreadsheet heavy limit break. Now, I normally like stealing things, and I really like Rikku as a character, but I've never really used her in this game. I think it's probably because she's abysmally bad at doing damage when she joins up and I'm dragging the distinctly mediocre Kimahri around because he wants experience. Well, I must do any achievement that's even vaguely feasible so I'm now stealing from all the fights on top of using Kimahri. I've reached the point where by feeding him all the experience and basically ignoring Lulu entirely that they do about the same amount of damage. That's something, right? Anyway, I don't like rotating everyone in on every fight so I pretty much only level a few people at a time. Now that Rikku's in the rotation I'm using a rotating 4 person party with Tidus and Yuna. Auron is the big loser here, since normally I use him because he's pretty awesome too.
As far as bribing goes I decided to go read a guide about it and it sounds like I can get the achievement in one fight if I want to since you can bribe any amount of cash at once? So I just need to have a ton of money and learn the bribe skill? I guess Rikku can use all these levels I'm generating and try to head towards bribe. I feel like it should be somewhere in her section of the expert sphere grid. Apparently you can bribe up some level 3 and level 4 keys, too, so maybe bribing is something I should be doing anyway. But if not for the achievement I probably wouldn't have known. Hurray achievements!
There are two, however, that seem both easy and like things I was not going to do. Steal 200 times, and bribe for a large amount of money. These are both things that center around using Rikku and are the ways to get lots of items to power up her awesome but spreadsheet heavy limit break. Now, I normally like stealing things, and I really like Rikku as a character, but I've never really used her in this game. I think it's probably because she's abysmally bad at doing damage when she joins up and I'm dragging the distinctly mediocre Kimahri around because he wants experience. Well, I must do any achievement that's even vaguely feasible so I'm now stealing from all the fights on top of using Kimahri. I've reached the point where by feeding him all the experience and basically ignoring Lulu entirely that they do about the same amount of damage. That's something, right? Anyway, I don't like rotating everyone in on every fight so I pretty much only level a few people at a time. Now that Rikku's in the rotation I'm using a rotating 4 person party with Tidus and Yuna. Auron is the big loser here, since normally I use him because he's pretty awesome too.
As far as bribing goes I decided to go read a guide about it and it sounds like I can get the achievement in one fight if I want to since you can bribe any amount of cash at once? So I just need to have a ton of money and learn the bribe skill? I guess Rikku can use all these levels I'm generating and try to head towards bribe. I feel like it should be somewhere in her section of the expert sphere grid. Apparently you can bribe up some level 3 and level 4 keys, too, so maybe bribing is something I should be doing anyway. But if not for the achievement I probably wouldn't have known. Hurray achievements!
Friday, March 28, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Blitzball
Blitzball is the primary mini-game in the Final Fantasy X universe, replacing the card games from FFXIII and FFIX. It's essentially an underwater soccer game where you have a team management aspect, a leveling aspect, and a game playing aspect. You can wander the world recruiting players for your team. As players play games they can earn experience and level up to get better stats. They can also learn abilities by playing against opponents who use those abilities in a game. The games themselves are longer than a card game from the previous games but still reasonably short and it's not hard to start playing, lose track of time, and have played through a full tournament.
As an aside, I don't think they ever explain the physics of the game. You've got a bunch humanoids who walk on land and breath air who suddenly get completely submerged in a crazy magical sphere of water. Do humans in Spira have gills or something?
Anyway, I've been playing some blitzball. I lost the first story game, barely, 4-3 in overtime. I lose because I forgot how that first game worked and turned the ball over in the first half when I went up for to score and didn't realize you can't actually equip any abilities until the second half. If I'd played safer I would have won easily. So I reset and did it again and won 4-1. Woo!
I know the first time I played the game I didn't learn Tidus' best shot because I failed the quick time event on the boat and didn't know I needed to succeed. I still played a ton of blitzball in that playthrough and had a lot of fun. This time I beat the quick time event (first try!) and as such learned the Sublimely Magnificent Jecht Shot Mark III. It's stupidly powerful. Most people with good strategy can score against one defender, maybe two if they get lucky. With Jecht Shot you can trivially score against two defenders without any thinking at all. Scoring on three defenders is pretty easy, and four is entirely plausible. Considering you play 5 on 5 and the AI likes to actually cover the rest of the team too... Every time I get the ball I'm basically guaranteed to score.
When I first started out my team was so bad the AI was basically guaranteed to score whenever it wanted to as well. But sometimes the AI decided it didn't want to score. Instead of swimming the ball up right beside my net and scoring they'd shoot from mid field through a defender or something stupid and give me the ball. So I'd still win, because I score every time I get the ball, they score only some of the time they get the ball, and you alternate possession after someone scores.
And then my guys started leveling up, because it turns out you earn more experience when your team is doing things. So even though my team started with a bunch of losers (and a ringer) it's become a ridiculous ringer and a bunch of pretty ok dudes. I can expect to pass the ball through one defender now so I don't need to abuse the AI in order to score with Tidus. And sometimes I even force a turnover on the opponent because my defenders have gained 9 levels and their scorers have only gained 3.
In short... The game has become pretty trivial. There isn't actually anything anyone can do. I don't need to play perfectly to win. Not terrible is good enough. I thought I was going to play a ton of blitzball this time playing the game but I'm starting to feel like I'll probably just look up what exactly I need to do to get Wakka's ultimate weapon and do just that.
For now I actually can't play anyway. My worst player had his contract expire and I gave him the boot so I could go get someone new. But now I don't have enough players on my team, so I can't play any games. I need to find someone, anyone, to sign to a contract before I can play again. Oh well.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Plan
Byung is awesome and his PS3 hooked up to my tv just fine so I was able to plug in my shiny new Final Fantasy X HD disc last night. It brought up a menu with 4 options, 2 of which I'd never heard of, so I was forced to head off to the internet before I'd even started to figure out what I was supposed to pick. It turns out they made some extra cutscene videos for after each of the games and that's what the extra stuff was. No problem! Into the game I went, and after the intro video I was presented with a choice of sphere grids. What? Ok, internet, help me out again... Turns out the 'expert' grid was added in the international version and is just a different layout with the same stuff on it or something. I didn't dig too deep, but I figured different sphere grid was a good way to shake things up so I went with it. I am an expert, after all!
Anyway... Do I have a plan? Do I even need a plan? Doing a solo character Kimahri challenge does hold some appeal, as does going fast, but I feel like a new sphere grid, way better graphics, and the extra hard bosses are probably enough of a shakeup. I still want to play blitzball and catch all the monsters and twink out my party. I believe I've played this game three times before with each playthrough clocking in over 100 hours so there's plenty of stuff to do without going with some crazy plan.
So I'm just going to play the game, likely collecting all the things because that's just who I am. I will be using Kimahri, but not just Kimahri. Who knows, maybe the expert grid actually makes him better than the old grid where he was stuck in the middle with no actual place to go. Everyone seems to start in the middle now... So maybe everyone is 'bad'? Who knows!
One thing I wouldn't mind doing is hanging out and watching other people play as well. I miss that about living with other people and FFX may be the game I most miss watching people play. So if anyone wants to just come over and give it a play and I'm awake that's just fine by me!
Anyway... Do I have a plan? Do I even need a plan? Doing a solo character Kimahri challenge does hold some appeal, as does going fast, but I feel like a new sphere grid, way better graphics, and the extra hard bosses are probably enough of a shakeup. I still want to play blitzball and catch all the monsters and twink out my party. I believe I've played this game three times before with each playthrough clocking in over 100 hours so there's plenty of stuff to do without going with some crazy plan.
So I'm just going to play the game, likely collecting all the things because that's just who I am. I will be using Kimahri, but not just Kimahri. Who knows, maybe the expert grid actually makes him better than the old grid where he was stuck in the middle with no actual place to go. Everyone seems to start in the middle now... So maybe everyone is 'bad'? Who knows!
One thing I wouldn't mind doing is hanging out and watching other people play as well. I miss that about living with other people and FFX may be the game I most miss watching people play. So if anyone wants to just come over and give it a play and I'm awake that's just fine by me!
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Final Fantasy X HD
Yesterday saw the release of the high definition remastered versions of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. Today I went to the post office to pick up my copy. They tried to deliver it yesterday at 4pm but I was asleep. I decided I liked these games so much and had interest in the collector's edition bonuses (an art book, some small posters, and the sound track) that I ordered it directly from Square-Enix since it isn't available in stores. In retrospect I think that was probably a mistake because it turns out I had to pay the post office an extra $21 to get my package. $11 in import taxes and $10 in service fees that I wasn't told about until today. This was on top of the $13 shipping and handling that Square charged themselves. If I'd gone and bought it at EB in town today instead I probably would have had to pay $45 for the games, $6 in taxes, and $6 for the subway for $57 total instead of the $114 it ended up costing me this way. Double the price to get the sound track and some cool art. I was ok with it for an extra ~$30, but the hidden stuff at the end is really annoying. I guess maybe they had to charge tax because this specific item isn't being sold in stores in Canada? It still seems pretty silly to me, but what's done is done.
I don't actually have a PS3 so I can't play it yet. Byung is going to lend me his PS3 next week which is going to be awesome! I'm not quite done Kingdom Hearts yet anyway, so even if I had a PS3 I shouldn't be playing FFX quite yet. Sephiroth still needs to die!
What I was able to do is pop the Blu-ray sound track into my computer and give it a listen. Each song has some video accompanying it, mostly concept art for the area or character featured in the song. One of the songs, my favourite one from the original sound track, has a FMV from the game playing instead of just concept art. The song is Otherworld and the scene is from the start of the game where Sin attacks Tidus playing blitzball in Zanarkand. It looks absolutely incredible. Now maybe it's just because it's a Blu-ray and I'm used to PS1 and PS2 quality graphics but the level of detail compared to what I normally see on my tv is insane. Obviously I don't know how the game itself will compare to this but it _really_ has my hopes up now. There was a second FMV for another song too, where Yuna is sending souls out from an ocean, so I don't think it's just that they made this one video really good for the 5th song on the soundtrack. But it could be that the graphics detail in the FMVs blow the gameplay away like I thought they did in my recent play of FFIX.
The game itself is a remastered version of the International release which means it has a bunch of extra stuff in it that wasn't in the version I've played. I don't know all the details, and I'm intentionally not looking them all up, but I know there's a bunch of even harder challenge fights because the really hard arena fights just weren't hard enough
I don't actually have a PS3 so I can't play it yet. Byung is going to lend me his PS3 next week which is going to be awesome! I'm not quite done Kingdom Hearts yet anyway, so even if I had a PS3 I shouldn't be playing FFX quite yet. Sephiroth still needs to die!
What I was able to do is pop the Blu-ray sound track into my computer and give it a listen. Each song has some video accompanying it, mostly concept art for the area or character featured in the song. One of the songs, my favourite one from the original sound track, has a FMV from the game playing instead of just concept art. The song is Otherworld and the scene is from the start of the game where Sin attacks Tidus playing blitzball in Zanarkand. It looks absolutely incredible. Now maybe it's just because it's a Blu-ray and I'm used to PS1 and PS2 quality graphics but the level of detail compared to what I normally see on my tv is insane. Obviously I don't know how the game itself will compare to this but it _really_ has my hopes up now. There was a second FMV for another song too, where Yuna is sending souls out from an ocean, so I don't think it's just that they made this one video really good for the 5th song on the soundtrack. But it could be that the graphics detail in the FMVs blow the gameplay away like I thought they did in my recent play of FFIX.
The game itself is a remastered version of the International release which means it has a bunch of extra stuff in it that wasn't in the version I've played. I don't know all the details, and I'm intentionally not looking them all up, but I know there's a bunch of even harder challenge fights because the really hard arena fights just weren't hard enough
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