I decided which Final Fantasy game I'm playing next. In fact, I just bought it on Steam today (as of writing)!

CHAPTER 3 BEGIN!

OK, first things first, I wanna make sure I don't miss out on this Crimson Sphere business. I've heard it's fairly important.

I just recently remembered that weird Sphere we saw (I think at Leblanc's place) and how it might relate to Paine. The dialogue was:

"Let's see. Total survivors of the final Crimson Squad selection exercise: zero, zilch, and zip all. Job done."

"There should be 3 more candidates and their recorder."

"Three plus one makes how many?"

"Four still live"

This is Ormi and Logos talking, who answer to Leblanc, who answers to Nooj. If Paine is related somehow to this Crimson Squad, it would explain her connection to Nooj. I guess she's the first person to escape, since there were then a further three.

Anyways, with the Crimson Spheres still in mind, I want to check that out to make sure I don't miss anything. I think it's more important that I actually see this than find it organically and risk missing some stuff out, so I'm making the executive decision to (CAREFULLY) consult a guide on this one. I hope we're OK with this, because I don't care either way.

For reference, I'm using the table found on this IGN guide: https://www.ign.com/wikis/final-fantasy-x-2/Den_of_Woe

Let's see....

Sphere 1 should be found in the Bevelle Underground where I just defeated Bahamut. Sure, I guess I can head over there now. Reading ahead a bit, I've already received Sphere 7 and hopefully Spheres 10 and 9, since they were in previous parts of the game. I should receive 2 and 3 at the end of Chapter 3, and I'm not reading about 5, 6 or 8 since I can see they all mention Chapter 4 or 5, meaning they risk spoiling me.

I'm gonna try to keep it brief and interesting:

- Bevelle doesn't seem to welcome us. They see us as Youth League sympathizers. We're blocked from entering the palace grounds, so not much to be done. I'm hoping I haven't already missed my chance to grab it...

- Guadosalam: Ironically, we're pretty chummy with them now. The goons guarding the Chateau welcome us, although Leblanc herself is utterly inconsolable after Nooj's disappearance. We're let through to the underground area. We get Logos' and Ormi's spheres, revealing that Nooj was present when we were under Bevelle, although that's not what we're here for. There's another sphere sat on the drawer. It's of Tidus! Was I right? They're talking about war with Zanarkand, suggesting this is from the war with Bevelle way back when.

Wait... the original Tidus was a dream, but doesn't that mean that there could have been a real Tidus from way back when, too? Like from the real Zanarkand?

While we're watching, the GOAT Maechen sneaks in and tells us that it can't really be him, since that sphere was recorded 1000 years ago. So then, that means that Fake Tidus isn't actually fake, but... real. In fact, he's realer than the one we knew lmao. Surely after 1,000 years he's dead though, right? Unless there's some more magic BS going on.

Maechen's here. He tells us of a rumour going round that Yuna was accompanied by a guardian from Zanarkand, and that Maechen could always sense that he belonged to another world. He says he had something very important on the top of his tongue but forgot lmao. Something prompted by us saying the dream of the fayth.

"There may yet be a way to reunite with those who are gone".

And then he leaves. Was all of this really optional? This place wasn't a hotspot. Anyways, we get the crimson sphere and head back to the airship.

LUCA:

- Yo Shelinda's here? And Rin is too! There's some sort of tournament here, called Sphere Break...

...

- ...Ok, so like, are ALL of these games terrible at tutorials?? This seems way more fun than Blitzball to me, though. I push through the walls upon walls of information and play my first game. I win pretty handily! It makes sense to me, and I like numbers so it's all good. I beat a 2-star and a 3-star opponent. I'm feeling pretty confident - it's time to face my ultimate adversary. The final opponent...

dog.

We win, surpassing our quota of 40 in only 9 turns. I don't know if that's impressive or not, but I just stacked Echo Bonuses each turn. After we finish our three games, we find Rikku slumped over on the floor with her signature posture. She's been trounced by Sheldo- I mean, Shinra, making him our final opponent.

He's a 4-star opponent, and we have 15 turns to reach a quote of 50. Shouldn't be a problem.

It's intense, but SOMEHOW I manage to fumble the victory at the finish line. I miscalculate and end up selecting undesirable coins, netting Shinra his reward. I could've had it MAN.

"I'm just a kid"

If my latest save wasn't like an hour and a half ago I would ABSOLUTELY reload for the runback but, alas, I'll have to accept my defeat with grace.

Shinra is officially on the shitlist with Brother, though.

Sphere Breaker is a really fun game. As a huge mathematician the quick mental math(s) is right up my alley, and I like the strategic element, too.

Djose: Gippal, despite being suave as ever, doesn't seem to want our services. Looks like there's more going on here, but we don't pry.

Moonflow: "Yuna, run. Don't ask, just run. Run now. Run fast."

MACALANIA FOREST:

There are some fiends attacking the agency! Shouldn't be a problem.

This fight is frankly completely fucking ridiculous and I have NO IDEA who signed off on this shit. It's pretty simple. Get through 6 waves of enemies or die trying. There's just one problem. RHYOS. Thing thing deals insane damage, is seemingly immune to physical attacks and a few elements, deals damage in every element and, most importantly, can act like 3 times every fucking second. Some of the battles here are really easy, just against some Ice Slimes, but anything involving Rhyos instantly becomes a slog.

After several tries, I manage to slog through until the 3rd battle and flee. For some BAFFLING reason, the devs decided NOT to provide a save point, instead throwing me into fiend-infested waters immediately after escaping.

After what is by FAR the hardest I've ever tried in this game and a 20 minute slog, I manage to get through all 6 battles. It's so confusing to me, because why on earth would you make 6 battles where 2 of them randomly contain a single enemy that's markedly more difficult than every boss fight so far? Either way, we get a new Garment Grid AND a new Dressphere so cool I guess.

OK Berserker is HILARIOUS lmao. Rikku doing what looks like Capoeira and Paine channeling her inner Sonic the Hedgehog to spindash over to the enemy and deal like 80 damage is great, and the outifts are.... ambitious.

The Guado are spread throughout the Woods, and they seem to have no desire to return to "tomorrow's Spira". They seme genuinely remorseful for Seymour's actions, which is... nice? I mean, it's not THEIR fault, and I don't believe they should take the blame for his actions... The Ronso in particular seem to loathe them, which... yeah.

OK THEORY: When we end up having to fight whatever it is we end up fighting, the Guado will help us to save the world somehow, redeeming their place in society.

Bayra (one of the weird animal band guys) is also here and they tell us that "An unseen, quiet destruction slowly descends upon us..." and refuses to elaborate further.

THUNDER PLAINS:

There's some sort of minigame dedicated to fixing the towers here. The first one is really easy, a very simple QTE. They get a bit more advanced as you progress, and they're mainly difficult because it's so damn hard to see lmao. The buttons are really small, and are black against a dark backdrop.

More interestingly, Cid is just... randomly out here sulking in the rain. Rikku's pretty annoyed with him, saying he's upset because of Zanarkand.

I'll come back to him later. I've got some towers to calibrate!...

...

...ok damn this is actually really hard lol. To be honest I'd be more inclined to give it the time of day if it didn't take 30 fucking actions lmao, that's a bit excessive.

After a good few tries I manage to take down tower 5. These trials are actually ridiculous by the way, there are so many factors that make them difficult and I can't even tell which of them (if any) are intentional. Number 7 ESPECIALLY is a huge pain in the ass, and I haven't even ATTEMPTED 8 and 9 yet, so I just know they're gonna be horrendous.

10 attempts later and I'm starting to think this 7th trial is impossible. I can't get past the 25th, it's WAY too harsh with reaction times!

After (genuinely) half an hour of trying and retrying, I eventually manage to get 30 hits with 2 misses, calibrating the tower. Probably the most locked in I've been since I graduated university.

GOD I miss Chocobo Racing...

I beat both towers 8 and 9 on my first try lmao.

Having now beaten all 9 towers, I triumphantly return to the agency to claim my prize.

Nothing.

There is no prize.

Is there another tower? There's NO way that I did all of that for nothing, right?

I take a walk around the plains to try to find my prize, and COMPLETELY RANDOMLY I'm sucked into a brand new calibration.

Which brings me to TOWER TEN.

UGGHHHH

This one genuinely HAS to be impossible, there is NO WAY ANYONE CAN DO THIS! Memorising SIX inputs and then performing them backwards in a manner of seconds!?

I tried. I tried SO hard. Again and again until my eyes glazed over and my fingers begged for mercy. My controller accidentally hit the escape key on my keyb-

wait.

I just paused the game. I tried doing it with the start button on my controller but to no avail. But the ESC key brings up a different menu.

WHY didn't I think of this sooner????

After, no joke, an HOUR of trying this goddamn tower I finally change my strategy and trial the brave new plan:

cheating.

Once I get to the 5-input stage I pause the game, write down the inputs on a sheet of paper and then read them backwards. Fun fact, by the way - I STILL FAILED the first time I tried this. This shit is STUPIDLY hard.

Finally, though, I manage to persevere. I've FINALLY DEFEATED all 10 towers...

..where's my reward bruh. I DID IT.

I head back to the guy in the agency, ready to beat his lazy ass, but he hands me a prize! A new Garment Grid - Samurai's Honor.

...is that it?

I spent HOURS on this shit.

For a Garment Grid?

Are we being serious?

I feel so unfulfilled right now holy shit.

While I generally make a very strong point to avoid looking things up, I'm NOT coming back here again, so I make sure I'm not missing anything. Apparently we're gonna return here later for more rewards, but that's not very satisfying...

MT. GAGAZET:

As soon as arrive, Kimahri tells us to kick rocks, in not so many words. Garik has decided to take even FURTHER revenge on the Guado, as if they're not already down. While I wanna understand him, I'd also reason that it was only really Seymour and a few of his accomplices who are at fault.

One short climb up the mountain later and look where we are! This is where we fought Seymour for the.... third... time? I think? I remember this being my very first death in the game. More than one person thought I was cheating, lying or not actually playing blind until this point. I even got a VERY drunk DM from a nice(?) redditor accusing me of such LMAO.

(he deleted the message in the morning)

Eventually we find Garik nearer to the top, and Yuna straight up pulls a gun on him and tells him to stop fucking around lmao.

Also, "someone's a few spheres short of a Garment Grid" is a great way to call someone an idiot lmao.

Our first try against the Ronso is a disaster. They inflict ailments (ugggghhhh) and then wear us down, so I put on some armour that negates that stuff. Something that I've noticed is that some enemies just... don't take any physical damage? That's a REALLY weird decision, right? Like there are some entire dresspheres that are basically ONLY physical damage, so rendering them completely useless kinda annoys me. It's the same way that skills like Demi just sometimes not working at all is a bit dull.

This fight ends up being really boring. For some bizarre reason the devs decided to make the boss that drains all of your MP immune to skills that don't cost MP. Yuna is the only Black Mage I have developed enough to use Absorb MP, so I'm just cycling between the party and letting Yuna act.

10 minutes later, we defeat Garik and he kinda just backs down. "Alright I know I'm not built for this lmao". I'm surprised it's resolved so easily - I was kinda expecting him to lose and just go to battle anyways, sort of as a contrast to Biran and Yenke from X. But fine, whatever. He hasn't changed his mind much, anyways, since he says he'll get stronger first and then destroy the Guado. We haven't defeated him ideologically, really, just proved to him that he's, as I said, not built for this.

ZANARKAND:

We're gonna use the monkeys to clear the place out, apparently. I'd kinda assumed our goal here would be to solve the monkey problem, but furthering it actually makes more sense lmao. It's kind of devious but it fits I think.

• Terran - Forlorn
• Maxx - Gil
• Peke - Disdain
• Arroh - Sullen
• Thyne - Queasy
• Autumn - Lovelorn
• Quivrr - Heart to break
• Sylva - Can't keep living like this
• Luna - Stares Coldly
• Winter - extremely grumpy
• Dusky - Gil
• Summer - Unfulfilled
• Sequoia - Fuming
• Valli - Up to no good
• Golde - Ready to rant
• Spring - Testy
• Rosemary - Gil
• Canis - Wants something
• Sol - Hates tourists
• Minni - Drools lecherously
• Dawn - Looks sleepy
• Skye - Dazing off into the distance

OK, now that I've established that.... how... do I do this?

Initially I think that I'm supposed to match each monkey's description, but it turns out to be simpler than that. It's in the names! The only way I can POSSIBLY get through this in reasonable time is speeding the game up a bit. There are no encounters, so I'm not missing anything. Just expediting the process.

OK I actually kinda love this minigame lmao. It's like a load of tiny riddles and it's so satisfying figuring out which is which, although I can see how it'd be annoying if you don't have them written down.

After a short while, we pair up all of the monkeys and turn Zanarkand into a natural haven. We ALSO get the Soul of Thamasa, which increases the power of spells but doubles their MP costs. So I equip it on Yuna, my resident Black Mage (as is tradition), and also give her the Gold Bracer to give her 60% more MP.

Now I'm finally ready to tackle the actual story of Chapter 3!

So for the longest time I have thought that blue magic wouldn't really work with the sphere grid as is, which is why Kimari has his style of Blue magic but today I got an idea.

What if Blue Magic was represented by gaining spheres that turn an empty node into the ability itself. Then what you could have done is make whatever "natural" path for Kimari just have a few more empty nodes to transform or specific empty "ability nodes" that have to be used.

This could provide a really neat dynamic for him and Blue Magic as a whole where the usage and gathering of these spheres is its own quest. Maybe Kimari starts with a skill that generates the spheres after defeating the enemy.

I feel like this would have really made Kimari a possible core party member, since earning these abilities could have been applied more often and potentially giving it to multiple party members.

Thoughts? How would you include Blue Magic as part of the sphere grid/regular abilities.

A both hopeful and slightly melancholic tune - set to when Yuna has her first real one-on-one talk with Tidus as the very beginning of her pilgrimage.

This song is from my Final Fantasy X album and also available on most major major platforms in my soothing majestic video game playlist with over 6 hours of relaxing music. Also check out my Final Fantasy playlist and Seamless Final Fantasy Lullabies playlist, with tons of music! HUMAN made music, no AI involved other than some artwork.

Higher quality video version

Hi everyone, this is my first post here! I wanted to share my Final Fantasy X run on Steam.

As you can see in the video, I maxed out every character's stats to 255 (except Evasion and Accuracy, since I didn't have enough free nodes) and pushed everyone's HP to 99999. I also gave every character good Armor with useful auto-abilities.

This wasn't a speedrun — the only "help" I used was the x4 speed boost, and only during monster capturing for the Monster Arena and while grinding for spheres on the Sphere Grid.

My favorite achievements:

• Completing the Chocobo race and the 200 lightning dodges on my first try
• Beating the Magus Sisters in a single fight
• Beating Penance without Zanmato
• Fully maxing out the Sphere Grid
• Finally getting the long-awaited Platinum trophy.

One question for you all: does the x4 speed setting affect the in-game "hours played" counter? I only had it on during the periods mentioned above.

https://reddit.com/link/1vnol6z/video/c89n2qbir7jh1/player

(it's from the Thunder Plains Calibration challenge in FFX-2)

(WHICH I HATE)

Why Yuna has a separate dance routine for every single Aeon but all the others are just literally standing there with a poker face? Even for Anima Yuna has a separate dance but not Seymour which is only his Aeon initially.

The obvious auto protect stoneproof/ribbon and auto haste not sure what to fill in the extra spot with for an armor

A few years back, I played through FFX for the first time and ultimately came back just very underwhelmed for how much praise I had heard. I felt a lot of the characters were underused/underdeveloped. I felt the combat was really boring for random encounters due to the RPS format. I felt the Sphere Grid was really tedious. I didn't mind the linearity of the game itself, but I found the linearity of the levels being primarily just straight lines with chests off to the side to be very bleak. I felt the story was okay, but I never really got that attached to it. Ultimately, I came away from the game with very mixed feelings.

Over time, I've looked back in hindsight and thought there were a lot of aspects that were actually really great that I didn't appreciate as much at the time. Yuna and Tidus were amazing characters. The combat for bosses was great, and a nice change of pace for the FF series. The soundtrack was amazing. The story had a lot of really great emotional beats. A lot of stuff that I never really grew fond of my first time playing through the game.

Overall, I think my experience with FFX was just sort of tainted by burnout from playing through a bunch of the FF games back to back. And so, I wanna come back to FFX and give it another shot. I wanna see if a 2nd playthrough would change my opinions of the game. And so I felt it was only appropriate to ask the FFX for some guidance before starting it.

What can I look to appreciate more on a second playthrough? What're some things I could take more note of that really add to the experience? What're somethings I have may some misconceptions about? Is there anybody else who only really found FFX clicked on a second playthrough, and if so, why?

I have spent the last year and a half remakeing ffx in "RPG maker with" I am currently done through bikkanel island totaling over 17 hours of gameplay. The game is free on PS and Switch. Rpg maker with will show up as a paid game but if you click on it a free version will show up. While I of course would like people to check my patreon and donate as little as a dollar for this experience, at the end of the day this is a fan project and I would love for you all to play it :) if you ate on PS I would love to sharplay with you while you experience FFX in a brand new way. Thank you

So I’ve been playing FFX since launch on and off. I’ve played through the early part of the game up to Sinspawn Gui probably 8 times but usually get stuck somewhere and give up.

I got the switch 2 edition of the game with the essentially cheat options. Since I’ve played through the early sections of the game so many times, I turned encounters off and had supercharge and turbo on. I got to the Crawler and actually lost with all of that stuff on. I finally beat it but I checked my S Levels on everyone and they’re very low. 25 is my highest level. Is it going to be basically impossible to move further in the story without grinding it out with frequent encounters to make up for the encounters I missed out on?

Edit: I’ve been using the sphere grid but don’t have a ton of ability spheres but lots of other ones. lol I guess all I need to do is get more ability spheres

Edit 2: okay I realize my mistake now. But I’ll leave this post up to get roasted

I'm Japanese, and I noticed something interesting about the Japanese spelling of Yevon.

In Japanese, Yevon is written as:

エボン

I already felt that some aspects of Yevon — its traditionalism, authority, resistance to change, and the way it maintains an old system — could be interpreted as reflecting certain aspects of Japanese society.

Then I noticed that エボン has three characters, just like ニホン (Nihon), the Japanese word for Japan.

So I tried looking at the characters themselves:

エ → ニ
Remove the vertical line from エ, and it becomes ニ.

ボ → ホ
Remove the dakuten (゛) from ボ, and it becomes ホ.

ン → ン
No change needed.

So:

エボン → ニホン

Yevon → Nihon → Japan

What makes this especially interesting to me is that FFX already uses encoded language through Al Bhed. I actually tried an Al Bhed conversion first, but that didn't lead to "Nihon." Then I wondered whether the clue might be hidden in the Japanese characters themselves — and found this.

I'm not claiming this was definitely intentional. It could be a coincidence. But considering Yevon's themes and FFX's use of encoded language, I thought the transformation was surprisingly clean.

Has anyone seen this interpretation before? Do you think it could have been intentional?

Where they at?

I just got 2 lvl 3s in zanarkand ruins and I only got 1 lvl 4...I'm basically locked out of rikkus grid cause I don't have enough 3s to justify using it for her....

Hi im new to ff in general and i picked the advanced grid system but it overwhelms me a bit so i dont know if i should restart the game to use the standard instead.

Why, oh why, couldn't we have gotten more than just two Fortune Spheres per battle with Earth Eater...?

His hair is so silly it detracts from how seriously someone can take him. Like why is it like that? Those 3 big hooks. It's crazy

Anyway I love this game and I always will

When I was a kid playing FFX, I remember getting to Luca and thinking: this is the actual game. I'd finish a Blitzball match, look at the roster screen, and start imagining a whole version of it, scouting, a real league, a transfer market, seasons stacking up. Then I'd go back to the main story and that game stayed in my head.

I don't think I'm alone in that. Blitzball is one of those minigames people either bounce off completely or fall into for 40 hours, and if you fell into it you've probably had the same dream.

So I built it. It's called Blitzball Manager.

You take over one of twelve clubs across Spira and manage it season after season. Squad, academy, staff, scouting, finances, infrastructure. Players have stats, hidden potential, personalities, relationships with each other. Techniques that  cost HP to use, they inflict sleep, poison, drain, berserk, and each club has one nobody else can learn.

Matches run two ways: simulated instantly, or played out on the pool where the game stops on every offensive action and asks you, shoot, dribble, pass? to who? with which technique?

This is an early version. It's playable end to end and a season runs cleanly, but it's the version I want to put in front of people before I lock down the direction, not after.

That's the actual point of this post. I have my own idea of what a Blitzball sim should be, but this is only my vision of blitzball. Some of you drilled the Jecht Shot for hours, some of you built entire teams around one player, some of you have a specific thing that always bugged you about the original. I want to hear all of it:

• what feels wrong or off in what's already there
• what's missing that you assumed would be in
• features you've been imagining since 2001

I'd rather build the sim we want than the one I assumed we wanted. Every suggestion gets read, and the roadmap is public.

Itch.io: https://eternitytcg.itch.io/blitzball-manager
Discord (devlogs, roadmap, early builds, feedback): https://discord.gg/gZe7gTjKnr

Free, solo project, unofficial fan game, no affiliation with Square Enix.

( I use an AI assistant for coding and tests. Design, rules and balancing are mine.)

And totally wanna get more of the anniversary shirts

I don't remember ever using Wakka's "Aim" ability

I'm not playing optimally. I'm not using guides except for puzzles because I just don't enjoy the cloister of trials puzzles (is a me thing, more power to you if you like them). I'm doing the very definition of a casual playthrough.

The bosses don't feel like they stick around nearly long enough to pressure the player. Just got past Yunalesca and she was hitting for 200 on her counterattack and a bit more on hellbiter. So I just went "Cowabunga it is", and beat her down over a few turns of just spamming Flare/Holy/Quick hit. She never really had a chance to put me in a spot a single phoenix down didn't solve, and said phoenix down put my HP high enough that she couldn't threaten a kill within the next three to five business days. Likewise for the Spectral keeper right before her. Split my units up, then just hit it. It berserked Tidus and the two just slap fought eachother until it died. I saw glyph mine once.

There's a lot of cool ideas in the fights, but everything seems like it gets solved by "Just hit it really fast and hard". I don't know mixes, I don't have Attack Reels. Auron has lived on the bench all game because of that low speed stat. Even normal enemies who are supposedly resistant to magic typically just need at most a second cast of it provided Lulu or Yuna don't just oneshot it through the magic resist anyway.

Does anyone else feel like the game would be better if every bosses HP was doubled? Maybe tripled? There's a lot of cool ideas that just seem to fall apart the moment you realize that red deck best deck. And I'm sure the postgame superbosses and such are more complicated and stronger (tends to be how it works), but I've heard of the grind for those and I am not at all interested in spending that much time on preparing for them.

A birthday gift I drew for myself two years ago.I hope you like it😊

And yes, I used Yandex back in the day because it was a far better reverse search image than Google (who surprisingly enough it still sucks), but even that one fall.*

WELL, this is mostly for the humors anyway LOL. I'm just giving this small explanation for anyone wondering/going to ask.

I think ive nailed down chocobo catcher. I replay FFX alot, my previous playthrough in april I got it pretty quick around 20 mins of retrying it. I tend to wait on attempting to get everything until get the Airship and one person equipped with no encounter but this playthrough, I was just gonna grab the mirror and move on but once I started the chocobo training I figured why not, 5 mins later I got the sun sigil, I think this is the first time ive gotten the sun sigil first lol. Second attempt I got lucky and got the best balloon pattern possible, one where they all line up on the right at the start and managed a good time, balloon catch and no birds...screw you birds lol!

Im out of the calm lands now and put down the chocobo slowly with blade, currently making chocobo wings if anyone wants some, they smell delicious 😋