Let's Play Final Fantasy X: International (Expert Grid)

That sounds like the best fit for her personality. She doesn't seem like anything could hold her attention for very long.

Now imagine those lines as read by Don LaFontaine.

Imposhibibble!

In hindsight, it's rather... uh, strange that Yuna wasn't even more familiar with Rikku. ISTR they knew each other prior to the game, and all things considered (being cousins and all,) they probably did.

And her creepy, downright freaky frozen wink. Eek! Like Shala Rui in Dirge of Cerberus, half her face is disconnected from the other.

I also wonder what the world looks like when you have spiral pupils.

Recycling time!



...and Thunder, Thundara, and Thundaga magic. With Lightning Eater armor, so she heals herself with it. Mwahaha.

This.

The only thing I like about Rikku is that you can make her suffer.)

Aww yeah. This is the only correct answer.

(that thunder stuff sounds nice too!)

It's actually one of those little in-battle details that I appreciate for the attention paid to it, but which also makes me because I like all the characters. Whenever a Lightning-casting foe targeted her, and she cried out in response, I'd switch in the heaviest tank to hit it back (that is, if she wasn't already on Reflect status already.) The way she "cured" herself of her phobia by X-2 was also rather drastic.

Amusingly, her late entrance, and her ability to reduce Machina to spare parts in a single turn, meant Tidus would often serve as her main support. Shot their affinity scores through the roof even before I reached Macarena.

Black Magic Spheres would be the best way to give a tank the thunder spells, I guess. If I can hold out for a couple Friend Spheres, that'd be a nice way to send her across the board to where Lulu is floundering in Auron's path. (And return Lulu to something she can handle... -_-)

I'll look into how to go about it.

Listening to Tara Strong swear every time you use a close attack to off somebody in killer7 is almost, but not quite, as wonderful as hearing Mark Hamill yell motherfucker in Yakuza.

OMG what happened to your face?!

Sorry. Welcome to the land of the guano. They live among tree roots and appear to be part tree. Or at least have mold growing on them. Tromell, Seymour's manservant, invites Yuna (and her guardians if they insist) to visit the Shirtless One.



The troops seem to be having a disagreement. Sally ducks out of the tiebreaker vote before things get ugly.



Guado don't have paintings, they have weird squishy-looking possibly-organic panels. Sally observes Seymour looks like none of them and that's because he's a hybrid. Pre-saved, magically-badass, better gas millage, the works.



After Sally finishes gossiping and snooping around, Tromell takes the party into another room to stand around and wait while Sally talks to everybody. Rikku, at least, is simple.



Even Sally is getting tired of Lulu's travel guide shtick. She's not going to stop any time soon though.



Cue porn music.



Not if Auron has anything to say about it.



The holodeck turns on without any warning at all. Seymour is into roleplaying of the highest degree.



Persistent too. That there is Yunalesca, the white-haired naked chick who ravaged Sin for the very first time. She had the help of her boyfriend and thus the story leads into Seymour's next obscene suggestion.

Scandalous!!

Auron is the first to overcome shock, having an augment on his equipment to improve his saving throw, and points out Yuna is on a mission to save the world and doesn't have time for that shit.



"She must ease... my suffering." Ugh, Seymour's so creepy.

Auron extracts Yuna from a potentially sticky situation and the team holds a meeting out on Seymour's doorstep.



Auron: Con
Lulu: Pro?
Wakka: Con
Rikku: Pro
Sally: Con
Kimahri: Mew

Seeing there's a tie, Yuna decides to consult with a few more trusted people in the Farplain. That's the Land of the Dead hereabouts and the current residence of her daddy.



Rikku and Auron stay in the lobby while everybody goes in to watch the show. I bet they'll find all sorts of things to chat about while they wait.



Not quite the show Seymour put on but still kinda neat. Wakka's having a chat with his brother, Chappu, who does not look anything like Sally. He tells Chappu all the sordid details of his life now and Chappu just floats there. Staring. These illusions are kinda lame, though being able to replicate any dead person is mildly impressive.



Yeah, that's kind of a big obstacle. I mean, the dead don't even leave bodies behind in Spira! Sally tries to hint Lulu should hook up with her baby daddy without revealing she knows but Lulu doesn't want any of that.



Martyr much?

Sally realizes the spotlight is getting dangerously close to shifting over to Yuna entirely and the daddy issues just aren't cutting it anymore. So how about...



Mommy!!

And if it has the added effect of making Yuna think of unhappy marriages, all the better.



Eek! A ghost followed them out! Poor Auron's so scared he has a minor heart attack or seizure or something back there but everybody's too busy staring at the ghost to notice. No wonder he didn't go into the Farplain. He's scared of ghosts! Poor guy. :3



It's the ghost of Seymour's dad and per orders, Yuna resends him. He drops a brooch of some kind and which is weird because ghosts don't wear jewelry. Shoulda taken his mask off to find out who it really was.

"These things happen." Yeah right, Lulu. This is big league bad mojo here and don't even try to deny it.



You know what that means? Wander around and talk to everybody in the party again. Yay. -_-



Damnit, Lulu, stop going through your entire decision making process aloud. You're hurting Sally's head with all the contradictions and everyone knows you're gonna end up in a loveless marriage with Wakka eventually.

The kittycat disappeared without telling anyone, so Sally wanders around trying to find him for a while till I find the actual next checkpoint. Trying to leave to the next area and encountering Shelinda of all people. She reports Seymour just left a little while ago, so I assume Yuna's been snooping through his house on the pretense of looking for him this whole time. Coulda invited the rest of us...



*sigh*

By the way, Wakka finally does more damage with Fira than Lulu does with Fire. Lulu's physically damage is still ass, however.

Hooray for more Let's Play FFX! You're doing a bang-up job so far.

Hey now, don't be mean.

I like Tromell. He manages to stay a nice guy, despite his loyalty to Seymour*. He just wants what's best for Guadosalam, you know? It's just that he's a bit misguided, seeing those ends through Seymour's honeyed words instead of more saner methods.

*I only remember what he's like from FFX-2, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't a douchebag in this game either. At least... I hope he wasn't.

All the guado faces scare me! Lizard/tree/moss/monkey people! I noticed Seymour kinda has claws too... *shiver*

Maybe he just needs a nice manicure?

I can't believe I never made that connection before. I noticed the tree dwellings and I noticed that they're all lanky, but I never really put that together before. I'm retarded.

Yeah, isn't the overworld map awesome? Now entering the Thunder Plains. When signing up for this pilgrimage, you all signed a no-fault agreement. This happy place is why.



If you choose to turn back now, you'll have to wait for the next tour group to come through. Seeing as the flow of summoners has dried up since the Moonflow, you may be spending a good deal of time in Guadosalam.



Welcome to the worst mini-game ever. Dodge lightning bolts lots and lots of times in a row to win fabulous prizes, including half of Lulu's ultimate weapon. There's no point in even trying until you get equipment with No Encounters on it. The flash at the start of battle looks too much like the flash of lightning and the lightning will even happen the instant you get out of battle. No manners at all.

Much like Rikku, I will be perfectly happy to never return to this place again.



Wow, a long time ago this place was worse? That makes me feel so much better. I bet Maechen's a randomly occurring higher level sage, like Tellah. Only way to explain how he survives wandering alone in these horrible terrains.



I don't give Shelinda that much credit. High luck stat and an No Encounters augment on her funny hat. Also I'm afraid Shelinda has a better grasp on Yuna's decision-making process than Sally. Damn martyrs.

This pretty much sums up how the battles are going around here. A character gets experience so long as they perform an action in battle. Rikku only has to survive one action before I can swap her out of the active team again, yet about half the time Kimahri's obligatory action is casting life on her. Yuna has Life as well but she packs a mean Watera and is generally better served lowering the number of things that can attack Rikku when she stands back up again.



The cycle of dying and being raised takes its toll on a person after a while... Having the endurance of a 1st edition D&D wizard but not the mental endurance, team newbie Rikku succumbs before any of the veteran members, only halfway through the area.

Luckily some moron built an inn in the middle of this hellhole and the group stops there to rest and try to get Rikku on some medication. It's a Rin Travel Agency so they're able to get her records from branches elsewhere in the world and sort things out in a few hours.



Begging ladypains, Yuna leaves the rest of the team to deal with the crazy girl. I think Auron's starting to doubt his ability to deal with this troupe of teenage girls. Sally's a tomboy so that's not too difficult to understand but Yuna's all girly and fragile. Hopefully Lulu will deal with... whatever so he doesn't have to figure that stuff out. And now there's Rikku. Their little chat outside the Farplain wasn't really enlightening and that was before she went all crazy-like.



Hey look! It's Rin himself! He's the kind of teacher you never want to have. If you admit to not doing your homework, he gives up on you right then and there. If you say you've been studying hard he gives you more homework. Lose-lose situation.

Rin knows Auron from way back when but when he tries to catch up, Auron doesn't want anything to do with him. What a jerk.



Speaking of jerks, Sally decides to go spy on Yuna. Badly. I mean, she heard Yuna through the door making weird... noises. Why would she try to peek? It's a good thing Yuna wasn't... you know... doing anything. Weird, you know? Um.

Flee!



Out in the lobby, Rikku's mental state has continued to deteriorate. She is now having long arguments with the storm itself. The party only stays long enough to get Rikku's prescription filled and a pill down her throat. No amount of rest is going to help her until they get her out of the stormlands.


Let's talk Sphere Grid!

I should be able to get a Friend Sphere from playing Blitzball to warp Rikku across the map to Lulu's current location. Lulu's sitting pretty next to a +4 STR spot. I won't be moving either of them until I can get that. Unfortunately that's probably a half dozen Blitzball matches away at best.

Lulu as a tank is turning out to be pure fail. She does less than 50 damage on physical attacks and I'm fighting things with at least a thousand hit points. Once Rikku is moved, I think it's time to think about what else can be done with Lulu.

Wakka does about as much damage with Watera vs these lightning monsters as Lulu does with Water. So he's not great but he's not beyond hope. Yuna, meanwhile, is doing almost three times as much damage with a single spell as either one of them.

Kimahri's path through white magic has finally brought him within spitting distance of a cure spell. About damn time. I never realized skipping Cure would hurt so much but it really wears down Yuna's MP quickly.

Auron is Auron, just with status ailments hidden in his back pocket instead of stat breaking. Sally is Sally, despite being on the thief path instead of her own. Funny how that works.

So...are many of the characters worthless without their original sphere grid? How far along is everybody on their chosen paths?

Most of it is a matter of conquering base stats. Wakka will become a decent mage over time and the difference between he and Yuna will be negligible. Kimahri doesn't have any spells that produce raw numbers to compare yet but he's a decent white mage.

A fighter can become a mage but a mage doesn't make a good fighter. Lulu's dolls and Yuna's rods are garbage for physical weapons. Auron's swords and Kimahri's spears are Piercing, which makes them superior physical attackers to start. Kimahri's physical attack is swiftly losing its usefulness. Lancet is his best bet for dealing damage now, being magic based and self-healing.

So yeah. Lulu's the only one really hurting. Yuna probably would be if she'd gone the fighter route as well.

Lulu as a white mage, then.

If the sphere grid votes are still up for grabs, I wanna see Auron turned into a red mage once you can Friend Sphere him Flare and a bunch of healing spells.

I forgot my half-finished next update on the computer at work yesterday but I promise to have something to post Sunday night.

In other news, I can't get the trick to manipulate Blitzball prizes to work. Maybe I don't understand how to do it, maybe it doesn't work on the International version. I went ahead and spent Rikku's levels on getting to the tank side of the board the long way and Lulu's a lot closer to picking up Hastega than I realized.

We're less than twenty yards from the far end of the Thunder Plains and Yuna wants to stop to chat. Maybe she likes to watch Rikku suffer. She wouldn't be the only one...



Lulu collects from the betting pool and everybody else argues against Yuna's decision.



Auron's argument is very brief. Being Ye Grande Olde Guardian, his saying she can go ahead and marry fizzles everybody else's protests.



In a brief moment of lucidity, Rikku expresses her support of Yuna, then resumes shouting at the weather. Poor girl, I hope she gets better or we might have to put her down...



HOORAY! Out of the Thunder Plains and into the Shiny Forest. So pretty!

Auron explains Yuna isn't getting married for love but for some strange plot she's hatching on her own. It must be a pretty bad plot, since she's not telling her guardians. Her guardians would probably be obligated to stop her if they knew she was going to do something suicidally stupid.

The chocobo girls have caught up and have been hired to help with the wedding. Seymour's told an awful lot of people about this wedding considering Yuna still hasn't told him yes. He probably knows she'd rather go through with it than disappoint everyone and is making sure everyone knows.

Further into the forest, we encounter a familiar face.



He's so much more likable when it's just him and Dona's nowhere to be found. Unfortunately "nowhere to be found" is the problem.



Just as a guardian must guard his summoner, a guardian does not guard anyone else's summoner. Rikku awakens from her madness just enough to feel a pang of guilt over Dona's fate.



The totem pole harpist lives here and introduces a poetic nature-happy mini-game. It's not as bad as the lightning dodging mini-game but still pretty horrible. You run into blue butterflies and avoid red butterflies, trying to collect all seven blue butterflies in thirty seconds. This is another one not worth trying before getting No Encounters equipment but my main problem is getting lost in this forest all the time.



This time it's Auron who wants to take a detour. He hacks through a fallen tree in about three swings and leads everybody into a hidden grotto for an educational segment.

I don't really know what this is but it's really pretty. A twisty tree growing out of a small lake and with a bubble up in the middle of the tree. The water can also be walked on even though I don't think it's frozen. It might be like when Yuna danced on water way back when but for everybody.

Magic makes you float!



Auron you asshole! This is one of the worst boss fights if you don't know what to do, too. If you physical attack, it magics you. If you magical attack, three out of four times it'll heal it. And if you happen to pick the right element, it'll scramble which element does damage.

I ended up using only four characters in this fight. Sally casting Haste on Auron and Yuna, Kimahri curing, Auron attack baiting, and Yuna casting black magic every time it reveals its weakness by magicing Auron.



The prize! It's a video sphere made by Jecht when he was traveling with Auron and Braska ten-plus years ago.



Jecht made it to show his little girl what daddy was up to when he disappeared. Young Sexy Auron, by the way, is the real reason everybody wants Squenix to make Final Fantasy X-0.



Jecht added to his recording as they traveled. By the time he reached this grotto, he'd given up ever getting home and left it here in case Sally ended up in Spira too.

Yep.



It's probably fate I got an error message when I tried to take a screenshot of Auron telling Sally Jecht loved her. So let's assume that didn't happen and continue whining.

Jecht made a bunch of these spheres and each one you find opens up another super attack for Auron. Finding all of them is the key to getting Auron's ultimate weapon, making it the only one that's not too much trouble to get.



Just around the bend, the party takes a break at the local Rin's. Everybody's talking about the wedding and O'aka is most upset because Rin is the only person around to have set up a shop nearby. O'aka's inventory is a lot cooler than Rin's though.



*coughShivacough*



Clasko's getting tired of chasing the lesbian bird-fetishists around all the time and considers switching his career path. Looking forward to getting a gold chocobo, Sally encourages him to go into breeding.

I really liked FFX's graphics when you were in the Macalania Forest.

Macalania's gorgeous, no doubt about that.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

There's a Jecht sphere behind a post-game boss that appears when you get Shiva - and it's impossible to beat those bosses without the other ultimate weapons. This is one of the nastier changes in the International Version.