Final Fantasy X

> Death Stranding
Read that sentence wrong, thought you meant "played it (i.e. Golden Sun) on the DS until the snow area" haha.

> vanilla
It's...interesting to say the least. Though if it's your first time playing the series it might not be too bad.

> Black
I think that's the best call

> Yakuza 3
Ah shame, imo that's the best one in terms of combat, though Y-zero has the absolute best meter-mechanics in the series.

> AC
Think you'll really dig this game.

> NGII
Did you have the game patched and installed?

>Did you have the game patched and installed?
That might be worth checking. I often forgot to install games since the 360 never does it automatically.

Could very well be. NGII has issues, but not so bad that Chapter 1 on Warrior should be struggling.

>Luigi’s mansion
Which one?

>don’t like yakuza
Get out.

> LM
The first one, ordered it used but it's stuck in mail-sorting, hence why I dove into GamePass for funzies.

>Get out
Make me.

>Dark Aeons
I, unfortunately (or fortunately it sounds like), never got to do these fights as I only had the lowly North American version of the game. Didn't come with Dark Aeons and some other fun. I still have only played the PS2 version fully through so haven't got to try them ever, but it sounds kind of painful :\

I saw my brother's get destroyed by them years ago. I laughed.

Once you reach max power, how are they?

> Dark Aeons
They just aren't that fun or interesting. You either grind and win or you die. There are some challenge runners that have tackled them, but they instead find ways around it i.e. not grinding their characters, but powerleveling an Aeon.

Most Dark Aeons have upwards to 100x the HP of the final boss which is a ludicurous start. Followed by them hitting for at least 20-to-30.000 damage per hit, and more with their Overdrives. It promotes either going for HP-limit break and just grinding that out, or going for auto-life and auto-phoenix to keep your party alive while spamming overdrives.

If you're fully maxed out Wakka can nearly OHKO some of them though. So the balance is really, really skewed.

> challenge runs
That said the regular NoSphereGrid/NoSummons run sounds really fun for the regular content, but I'm not interested in the grinding for items. For example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEtu2On0Rts
To get the items and weapons to make this fight possible, you're probably looking at 30+ hours of just farming materials which....isn't my jam.

Just going to start this. Some stuff I did for GoW recently (besides the testing) have burnt me out of it, even though I've yet to do runwork for GoWII. Will have to do it later. For now, I'll enter RPG land temporarily. And I figured that since everyone has generally good things to say about its main game content (especially Raeng, Infinity, SBK, etc.), even better. Bonus points for hearing that it apparently handles certain things better than V (like boss fights), which is currently my #1 favorite JRPG.

Anyway, that aside, I want to see if there's anything I should know before I start. Don't mind spoilers (if you need to use them to explain something, for some reason), so go ahead. Should be worth noting that SBK already told me a handful of good things to consider, such as what to do with Kihmari (getting Holy early, Steal *for getting Key Spheres from his rivals*, and Use), suggested that I should start with the standard Sphere and not the Expert one (not completely sure on what are the differences), some GFAQs guides (item locations and monster ability guides), some stuff about permanently missable items, some items you get from Chocobo Racing, etc.

I'm aware that it sounds like that should cover it all, but for the guides, I think I'm going to reserve them for a second playthrough. And just in case you want to note something else.

And while it may sound bad, I'm actually planning to use cheats to skip the pointless busywork (like farming) for future playthroughs. That said, I won't go overboard on anything, while remaining within the boundaries of what's legitimately possible (for example, if you can only get 5 copies of a rare item, and they have a 1% chance of being dropped/stolen, I'll get exactly 5 copies via cheats, and nothing more *in other words, I will only resort to that in order to save time, I don't plan to ever use an invincibility cheat code or anything*).

My personal only tip is to use the 'set' spheregrid on your first run, this ensures that your party is a bit as the designers intended. You can also play with the open grid in which case you can fully customize your party, but on a new run this is a messy endeavour as you don't know what half of those abilities do I reckon (I made this mistake).

Biggest recommendation though: have fun. Enjoy the story. Don't grind too much and save the end-game content until you've beaten the final boss on a seperate save first. If you do the end-game content, the final area is an absolute joke which is a shame.

>use the 'set' Sphere Grid
I presume you're referring to the 'standard' one (or that's what an excerpt of a guide says, the text is all in Japanese when trying to select a grid).

>open grid
Is there any reason not to use this once you've played the game at least once?

>enjoy the story
I accidentally spoiled some elements of the game, though I think they don't mean much. Thought that Jecht being Tidus' father was going to be some kind of revelation later, but it was one of the first things you learn when playing. By now, I know who the rest of the cast is. Not so much about their origins, though.

And in one vid about the final battle, someone included a cutscene, and Tidus said something about how... something would happen to him after fighting? I just met Wakka, and given the time travel thing, I suppose that's what he probably means.

>endgame content
You mean the Monster Arena, Dark Aeons and such? Are they available before the final fight? If so, that would explain why the final area would become a joke.

> open grid
In general, no. Once you know how to play the game then Open Grid is superior afaik.

> endgame
Yeah things like the ultime weapons, monster arena, dark aeons - you can do them all before the final boss. I would recommend getting a few of the ultime weapons since they're not that hard to get. But if you start preparing for the aeons you'll tend to be so insanely overleveled for the final boss you'll kill him in 1-2 hits. I killed only 1 (!!) dark aeon and my Tidus two shot the final boss.

I'm personally very much not a fan of the end-game content as it contains a lot of grinding just to survive, otherwise you're getting blitzed by bosses, which sucks. So I can fully understand using a cheat or two at the end to max yourself to a degree. Also Wakka's superweapon requires playing a ton of Blitzball minigame which while fun eventually REALLY starts to be annoying.

> just met wakka
The game fully opens up once you rejoin with Yuna and co. So do give it a bit.

>open grid is superior
Noted. I'll be sure to try that on my third playthrough (going to reserve the second playthrough for something else, more on that later).

>can do them all before the final boss
I noticed. Wanted to get Tidus' Celestial Weapon after I got the airship, but the punishment for not getting the crest was too severe (a Dark Aeon, and I'm not thrilled *nor prepared* to face him this early). Thankfully, I had a save file (and the desire) to redo the Zanarkand ruins again. But I can't believe that I've gotten from one game with a Tetris puzzle (GoW1) to another (FFX).

>getting a few ultimate weapons
Already got Tidus' and Wakka's. Apparently Lulu's is... relatively easy to get (the weapon itself). Though the sigil/crest is gotten from that one lightning dodging minigame (which I've heard a lot about).

>insanely overleveled for the final boss
Yeah, I noticed the gap between the Aeons and anything I've faced this far is monstrously large.

>two-shot the final boss
Insane. Did you have Break Damaged Limit equipped, by chance?

>not a fan of the postgame content
I've not even properly dabbled into it and I can already agree with you completely. Which is why I plan to use cheats to cut the busywork (not so much about making the actual in-game fights easier with infinite codes, just leaving all the catching, rare drops, farming for materials to customize some weapons or Mix ingredients, etc. *i.e. the actual busywork* to cheats).

Though I heard someone made a save editor to help with this. Ever heard of it? Apparently they were working on Switch compatibility (though not sure if you need to do some modifications to your system in order for it to work).

>Wakka's super weapon
It's all too insane. The game itself has been really entertaining, but I wish the devs were (WAY) more sensible with all that farming. For Wakka's weapon, I just maxed out everyone (could have gotten the sigil/crest right away, but I somehow did it this way instead *not that it helped a lot, since the opponent's stats actually scale with yours, so it mostly amounted to nothing*).

>opens up
It sure did. Already want to play it again. Which leads me to the following. I want to do at least 4 more playthroughs (frame skipping speeds up a lot of the process, which can be very useful for the story content on future playthroughs *especially since you can't skip cutscenes*). Those playthroughs will consist of the following:

- A second normal playthrough with the regular Sphere Grid, but this time I'll read all the guides I mentioned above, and if you know of a good vid that goes over the mechanics in detail, please share it.

- An Expert Sphere Grid run.

- A 'No Stat' run (activating Ability nodes is allowed, but not the stat ones *this is mostly done to appreciate the strengths of the moveset without stat pumping for the main game, since the HP totals are nowhere near as bloated as they are in the 'postgame' content).

- A NSG run.

Some circumstances have led me to being limited to using the Internet mostly on weekends, so I'll almost certainly be able to post updates on weekends only... as well as post replies on said days.

Say, Raeng, would you happen to know about a guide that goes over Enemy/Boss AI? I've already found a pretty good Mix list, so I've got that part covered. The other thing I'm mostly interested about would be getting good Use items early in the game (didn't bother to do much Stealing with Kimahri early on, even though he learned Steal by Luca, I think). I've mostly overlooked Overdrive modes, they could probably be worth exploring as well to get the most out of it.

Oh, and to clarify, I haven't cleared the game yet, but I think I'm close to doing so. I'm at the part where the gang is trying to see if their plan to distract Sin with a hymn works.

Should note that I've beaten the game like 3 times in 10 years, I tend to play it casually as a fun RPG to relax, so I'm not too indepth knowledgable on this one.

> Ultimate Weapons
Even on my casual run I managed to get all of them except Wakka's. I remember the one from the forest (I think that's Kimari's?) was a pain since it required such precise inputs.

> two shot final boss
I think I had damage break limit yeah, Tidus was using his fully powered Ultimate weapon and doing an overdrive.

> postgame
Should note, a lot of the monster-arena fights are legit fun to do underleveled since most of them have a strategy to them. To that I also have the question, since you're going so fast, what did you think of the bosses so far? The maingame ones I mean. I always liked how they tended to be more puzzle like.

> overdrive modes
Some modes are pretty handy to have on characters, especially the one that goes up if a character dies. Paired with auto-phoenix this means infinite Overdrive generally.

>fun RPG to relax
Understandable.

>got all of them except Wakka's
Then I can't imagine how tedious it must be if playing normally. I really want to give this game another try, so I'm trying to minimize the time spent on things I'm really not a fan of.

>Kimahri's weapon
You mean the butterfly catching minigame? Yeah, hated that too. For me it wasn't so much the inputs, but the fact that I wasn't able to tell whether or not I'd touch a red butterfly. There were times where I was certain that I wouldn't touch one, but did so anyway, and vice-versa (but I'd get thrown off by the fact that I thought I'd end up touching it, and given the precision of the minigame, you can't afford to stop or get distracted for a second).

>Tidus used his ultimate weapon
Then yeah, you had Break Damage Limit. I also have said weapon, but I don't have a stat high enough to go above 9999. The only one who can do so is Lulu (and that's with the help of Magic Booster, which her ultimate weapon has).

>doing an Overdrive
So multiple 9999+ attacks in one turn? No wonder the boss was no match for you.

>Monster Arena fights are fun to do low level
This is highly important to me. Do you happen to remember which fights are doable with relatively low stats (what you'd have to tackle the main game)? I was searching on Google, but all I found was some people suggesting people to get, at minimum, multiple stats at 170 (my stats aren't even in the hundreds yet) for the Monster Arena in general.

On that note, at least one of the Dark Aeons wouldn't happen to be like this as well (doable at low stats)... right? I think I know the answer, but just want to confirm. I know NSG is a thing, which makes it sound that people beat these bosses (including the Dark Aeons and most of the Arena bosses) with BASE stats, but it's just Summon cheese (with... high stats to boot).

>what did I think of the bosses
Among other things, they're the reason that the game was able to keep me hooked. Though since it's my first time playing the game, I wasn't able to enjoy most of them to their full extent (particularly Chocobo Eater's gimmick, I ended up damage killing him, really wanted to push him into the cliff *or at least, I truly hope that's possible*). Getting (twice?) the buff you'd get via Focus/Cheer by talking to a boss (still requires commitment) is also nice, as is teleporting behind a boss so his counters can miss.

Again, I'd need another playthrough or two to be able to appreciate said gimmicks even more.

>especially the one that goes up if a character dies. Paired with auto-phoenix this means infinite Overdrive generally.
Didn't think of that. Haven't bothered to see where to find Mega Phoenix's to get Auto Phoenix onto my armor, but I'll keep that in mind. Since most of the postgame bosses love to do unlockable stuff (even things that you're SUPPOSED to be immune to), I suppose this comes into play a lot.

Note: Did a vid where I mostly use status effects to get rid of endgame mobs (some of them are open to the same thing, or fractional damage):

https://youtu.be/aznGjFeKrAU

Note that there's no reason to use Doom on Adamantoise if you can already petrify him, just showcasing that it's possible (wanted to do this on an enemy who was open to Sleep, since that's the best sort you want to use Doom on, in order to prevent him from doing anything to you while his clock is ticking). Barbatos could be another story, given his HP total.

King Behemoth normally has a 'final attack' where he uses Meteor as he dies, and that would have killed off my party without defense buffs or Auto Life, but you can avoid this by killing him with a counterattack. Good thing that you can force something to attack the character you want to get attacked via Provoke. See, it is this kind of thing that I wish the Dark Aeons/Penance were designed around; smart use of your tools leading to victory. Not just one possible solution (get high stats or go home). There was so much they could have done with the Trigger command, a combination of statuses doing the trick, making their HP totals much more sensible, etc. But alas...

----------------------------------

Still won't post a fully detailed reply on the things I liked (and didn't) about the game, I'll wait for a second playthrough and watch some videos first to form a more solid opinion. I can say that the main content was pretty interesting. Didn't play with statuses as much, but I'm abusing the Hell out of them for the endgame mobs (though I'm not overdoing it, want to conserve enough for the bosses *even though it's possible that they're immune to them*). Already said that I ran into a few Dark Aeons and they killed me in seconds. Just for payback, I just Zanmato'd them and reloaded the file.

So it looks like my opinion for the main game is the same as most people's. Pretty solid. And it's becoming clear that the Dark Aeons will just be a boring "you need to have X stat to fight me!". I'll just skip the busywork of needing to get the materials for stat maxing and obtain them directly via the save editor (Item cheats apparently don't work).

Did a few sidequests and beat Seymour again. I'll beat the game shortly. It has been a pretty fun experience so far. Regret not having played this earlier.

SBK suggests to skip NSG and jump into NSGNSNCNO (No Sphere Grid, No Summon, No Customization, No Overdrive *so no Mix*). Said that since people tend to disregard other characters in favor of stat pumping Aeons and abusing Rikku's 9999 Mixes, NSGNSNCNO would spice things up more, and boss design could be better appreciated. But I still need to know the need to throw in No Customization. Wouldn't it be good to be able to customize some status inducing equipment onto your armor to deal with mobs and bosses? There's also immunities. I'm not a huge fan of crafting, but just curious if the gear you get via drops or shops are enough (to the point that you wouldn't want to create a weapon that's better suited at handling XYZ encounter).

> Ultima weapons
Some of them are pretty fun sidequests to get, others are a nightmare of minigames and other setups that just aren't that entertaining. As you noted Kimarhi's one is more annoying than skillbased to to weird hit-detection and weird depth of field making it hard to see where the butterflies are and if you'll touch them. Eventually I just did it blind, much easier.

> Monster Arena
Sadly no, I did a few but then hit a stone-wall against a definite skill-check. A lot of the hidden and superbosses could've done with better programming I feel. For example Dark Valefor is doable if you have your gear in order...unless he does three Overdrives in a row. The chance of it happening is low, but it CAN happen and it did so for me. Dark Shiva is fun too to do at a low level, at least you think it is, until you realize she'll eventually blitz you. Think a speedcap on the game would've helped.

> autophoenix
It's a pretty common technique. If you pair it with the armorskill of "overdrive to XP" and an enemy that hits for 99.999 you can quickly max out your spheregrid that way.

> statusses
I wasn't a fan of how picky they were with them. I recall a few bosses being poisonable which is fun, but other than that most buffs don't work very well. There are also some berserk-setups which were fun IIRC.

> crafting
AutoPhoenix is nearly a given, same with auto-haste (especially auto-haste) to keep up with enemy's speeds. If you don't level up you WILL be ran circles around with some bosses getting 5+ turns before you can get a single hit in.

>some of them are pretty fun sidequests
A few of them are, yes. But you better hope you got a certain sigil/crest before a certain event, or else you must face a Dark Aeon first (impossible at your current level, unless you've been grinding your own Aeons like crazy).

>butterfly minigame
I'm just glad I did this legit. But I doubt I'll find the energy to do it again (just skip it via a cheat or the save editor). And let's not even talk about the lightning dodging. Recall that Birdman had a funny anecdote about this. But not so funny when it happens to you (no worries, my controller is fine).

On a different note, am I doing something wrong, or is Kimahri really not a good choice to have in fights? I feel that he can shine the most at the earlier parts of the game, where he starts close to the Use node in the Sphere Grid, and he can also get Holy earlier than Yuna (a pretty strong spell). That said, once you get a White Magic Sphere, Yuna herself can learn it not too long after (certainly much earlier than normal). Same for Ability Spheres in regards to Use (and Rikku herself having access to it by default).

>better programming
You bet. Give us a smartly designed boss that's open to various tricks, one of which can end up being 'da whey' to beat it under any condition, provided that you're well prepared. Don't just make us follow the ONLY available solution (pump up your stats or go home).

>speedcap
If Agility as a stat really needed to exist, I would have hoped it would be more weapon-dependant. But then again, weapons in FFX don't really alter your stats (it's their abilities that set them apart). FFV did this (for all stats, not just Agility), which is a significant reason as for why low level works so well there. On a side note, I'm surprised that the superbosses in VI are doable at all (given that this was the second game in the series *first was IV* where Agility could be increased via level-ups, so you'd think there would be a major gap between a base level character and a level 99 superboss, even if you use Haste).

>Overdrive to AP
Yeah, it works really well. Ended up getting lots of AP in no time. Odd method (have to let one of your characters get killed), but... well, it works.

>how picky bosses were with statuses
Yeah, bosses were another story (except Yu Yevon, but he's a joke anyway).

How would you prefer a FF boss, Roy? The contextual actions that the bosses have in X are pretty good. V's endgame bosses were open to plenty of tricks, even fractional damage (though to be fair, if you're not immune to elements in V, you're open to fractional damage). You could inflict Mini on one of them. Parts of the final boss could also be insta-killed, too.

The above is my main issue in deciding which bosses I prefer the most. Contextual actions versus a boss allowing you to use more of your kit. Would need to do more playthroughs in X (which I planned to do anyway). Well, it's probably the endgame bosses where it starts to become more restrictive. Perhaps the earlier bosses are also open to statuses, on top of the noted actions. Again, would need to experiment more.

>Berserk setups
On yourself? Or the enemy? Just wondering, since in XII Berserk seems to be the go-to ability to get the most out of a physical build (perhaps it boosts ranged weapons too). I've yet to play XII myself.

>crafting
Yeah, Auto Haste was pretty much a necessity for most of the Dark Aeons. Auto Protect worked wonders against a number of them. Auto Potion negated major damage (it mostly saw use against Dark Yojimbo, though). I crafted a few set of armor with those three abilities (and then some, like Protect + Defense+20% when I knew that Megalixirs off Quick Pockets or Auto Life would keep me out of danger if anything went wrong) in different sets of armor to figure out which was the best. Turns out there's no 'best' answer for this one (unless you go for Break HP Limit, but that would require even more days of grinding).

----------------------

Not much else to add. As I had alluded to, I have defeated the Dark Aeons. Only Nemesis and Penance remain. And so is Omega Weapon, but I honestly forgot about him (I can most likely one shot him with an Attack Reel, so at this point he doesn't count).

I'm far from done with X, but I'm already wondering what other FF title I should play next. Despite hearing good things about it (mostly from SBK), I don't really want to play Tactics just yet. Haven't played IX, but it doesn't seem all that good. XII seems really great, but I'll wait until I can get my hands on Zodiac Age. IZJS doesn't let you assign a second class, spell que is a thing, among other stuff. Been talking a lot about XIII with SBK, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I have never played FFII, but I very much doubt that it's anywhere near as good as even IV (which I didn't like all that much). Haven't heard anything about the spin-offs (IV Interlude, IV The After Years, Mystic Quest, etc).

By chance, have you played X-2, Roy? I feel like I already have asked you this a few years ago, but don't remember anymore. Recall that jobs returned, or something. Not sure if the postgame is as abysmal as X's, but if it wasn't, it would probably be what I need to try it out.

On the matter of XIII, how did you find the statuses in that game? I remember a topic where people mentioned the games where statuses saw the most use. And despite the hate it usually gets, XIII came up in a lot of different posts. Some noted that even side bosses at the end could be poisoned. Then there was a guy that said statuses weren't really something you wanted to incorporate into your playstyle, but more like something you needed to do in some cases (excluding specialty runs, that would probably be a given). Would appreciate if you could clear this out for me.

> abilities and weapons
Yeah one thing you'll notice later-on is that, the more characters max out, the more they lose their uniqueness. You can sort of see this happen in my other favourite RPG, Lost Odyssey, where the protagonists all start to edge closer to one-another. Gibari in this case is a victim, he's simply a bad Tidus. At the endline the only thing that sets characters apart here is their overdrives and weapon options(and Summon capability).

One thing I do feel is a miss is that there's no real 'move with slower speed but higher power', to offset the power of quick-hit.

>X-2
On paper I should adore it, I was always a fan of games that reuse elements from older games to give more freedom in development. That said I'm totally not a fan of ATBs. JRPGs tend to be my 'relax' games, where I can just play without stress of time and also pause to strategize (or take a shit). The only game with such a system I enjoyed was Baten Kaitos tbh.

> slots
Yeah unless you really want to go wild, the final slot is up to you. BreakHP limit is fun from what I've seen in videos, allowing you to literally tank hits from the final boss, but to me it is also just way too much time. If you have the power, use a cheat-engine.

> bosses
I think if status-effects were more consistent, I really like the way Lost Odyssey does bosses. They have cinematic elements to them and interactions, but there's always room to strategize thanks to its usage of formations and the like. Obviously also like the Rival Fights in the Pokemon games, very fun challenges.

> berserk
I recall seeing a setup where they Berserk Auron and he solos a boss, pretty neat.

> other FFs
I've only dabbled in them. I played XIII and XIII-3 for a bit, but nothing longlasting and both were ages ago so I don't remember a llot.

>the more they lose their uniqueness
Sometimes I want to travel back in time and remove VII from existence. Since it was the one who introduced Limit Breaks, and Overdrives are basically a variation of that system. Or maybe not outright remove the entire game. Just do something to prevent Limits from ever existing in FF (perhaps there's a way to implement them well, but I haven't seen such a case as of yet). That way FF can still be popular enough in the West (and I really doubt people mainly play that game for the Limits).

Maybe they could have tied the regular super attacks behind it, and leave the stuff with more potential for versatility (Mix, Blue Magic) to regular commands (and maybe make Trio of 9999 harder to get, or make us apply it multiple times to get the full power *so we'd need to commit for several turns to get that absurd power, so there would be no need to inflate HP totals*). Maybe Overdrives could break the 99.999 damage cap (so Overdrives other than Wakka's can shine, since all the damage cap does is make you favor high hitcount attacks *which kind of bypass it in a sense*, and to my knowledge, only Wakka's Tidus', and Auron's fit the bill, while Lulu's and Kimahri's are left in the dust *even though Lulu's IS a high hitcount attack but they're too weak*), and that doesn't even sound too far-fetched, since the game can display numbers above 99.999 without cheats (see Anima's shortened Overdrive animation).

>offset Quick Hit's power
And the thing is that they did nerf the move from the original version, but it's still OP.

>not a fan of ATBs
Ah, so you're more of a fan of true turn based games. Understandable.

>Baten Kaitos
Oh yeah, I need to give this a try as well.

>use a cheat engine
I used the save editor. Just so I could beat Penance in a relatively shorter period of time (less time spent in healing and reviving). But it was still a damn long fight nonetheless.

Why don't you use the save editor whenever you play this game again? Doesn't have to be used to inflate your stats for the side content (since that's not exactly fun anyway). I hear they added Switch compatibility for it.

>more consistent
I can get that for Poison (since it barely gets to catch up to your current power in most games, but it speeds things up pretty nicely) and other statuses, but what of things like Stop, Petrify, Sleep, Instant Death, etc.? Do you think it makes 'sense' to disable these statuses in particular against bosses? Or do you think they'd need to be reworked? Perhaps the bosses are immune to them initially, but working off the idea of X and contextual actions, they get to be vulnerable to them?

>Lost Odyssey
Would need to check a few vids of this.

>Pokemon games
Never played them seriously, but yes, I can see how they can devastate high leveled opponents if used well (along with buffs).

>Auron soloing a boss with Berserk
Neat. Can't say I ever thought about doing ot during regular play. I'll consider doing so on my next playthrough.

>don't remember a lot
Understandable.

Going to start the game again. This time I'll be prioritizing the items you get from Steals, hidden chests and such. Hopefully they're good Use items (what I intend to explore in this new playthrough). Feel like I have a good grasp on magic, Overdrives and Quick Hit, but Use didn't get much attention until the mid to endgame.

> pokemon
I've been replaying them recently. Doing more on the fly teams and not grinding for levels (or a single overpowered 'mon), really sees you work for it. Beating the final boss of Soul Silver while 30 levels lower than him was quite a challenge. You have a lot of % based tools like toxic, stealthrock, spikes etc to see you win. You can also use some items, but a lot of them are gated behind end-game stuff.

> cheat engine
I play on a vanilla PS2, so I don't have that option.

> FF7
I still don't get the appeal of it tbh.

> uniqueness
I feel if they'd just given each character three more unique moves, it'd have worked. Tidus has nothing unique to him outside of his Overdrives which sucks. Auron's unique shtick is him breaking enemies, which you can later-on just have on anyone. Feel they could've done more with it.

> Baten
Fantastic game, I'm sure you'll love it.

> Lost Odyssey
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZXnwDLRgOY)
^ I have a few on my channel. In this case, Bogimoray is pretty fun. He'll drain magic from his helpers per turn and once the meter is full you WILL take pain. Once the second one spanws he'll always have a full meter.
What I did was give Kaim a powerdrink which is a super-melee boost, so he can OHKO bugs. Jansen keeps nuking, while Seth buffs. I also came heavily prepared, as Kaim and Jansen have the 'ignore paralyze" ability for this fight (you can give immortals unique abilities at will).

This is a fight that most users would say "there's a spot over there where you can grind, just stay there for 5 hours and level up. It's the only way sadly". Hate that.

>really sees you work for it
Oh? That sounds promising, given that I heard the PvE is quite weak compared to PvP (which could still be true, but I interpreted it as the PvE being... well, below average).

>final boss of Soul Silver
>30 levels lower than him
Wait, what? You mean Lance, or Red? If it's the latter, congrats. Isn't he very close to the level cap? Makes it even more impressive.

>Toxic
Yeah, something I didn't really use in my playthroughs (admittedly because I played very casually, and never seriously). I can see the potential of this one. The other two aren't familiar to me. Or maybe I know them by another name.

>items
They see some use in the kind of run you did?

>vanilla PS2
The idea is to transfer your save file from the PS2 to a PC, tweak your file to your liking with the FFX save editor (get more items of what you want, maybe if it takes a lot of time to get it and don't want to invest a lot of it, or if you want something for Wakka and don't want to play Blitzball), save the changes, then transfer it back to your Memory Card.

That said, your system would likely need to be modded. So it might still be off-limits.

>don't get the appeal
"Bro?! Like, have you seen the size of Tifa's boobs?!"

Or

"How did you not find [a certain character]'s death the MOST impactful moment in the history of videogames?!"

Or something like that. Many reasons for people to question why you (or me, for that matter) don't like it.

>giving them more unique abilities
A very good idea. Shame that this wasn't expanded on in the International version of the game (XII received a lot of tweaks in the International version, and SBK said that those changes elevated the game from being outright bad, to being fantastic).

>sure you'll love it
I still remember some things that you described about the game. They seemed quite interesting, so yeah, there's a good chance that I'll like it.

>link
Always love that planning ahead can work out so well if you know what to do. Noticed that in the description you say that the third character couldn't get Anti Paralysis (was noticeable later on), so it's good to know that the strat works well enough without the need for further grinding. Very nice. I'll check out some more of your vids on the matter, though it will be a while until I can play games other than 6th gen titles (excluding OG Xbox).

>just grind for hours to win, bro
No thanks. Hate that as well.

Despite having more knowledge about the game, I didn't make much progress on my second playthrough owed to time constraints. I can just say that Use is definitely great, missed out a lot for not using it earlier on my first playthrough.

Also dabbled a bit more in Blitzball (to a degree). Realized that you can get Dark Matters, Return Spheres, Teleport Spheres, and Three Stars (besides Wakka's Reels).

Dark Matters are basically the strongest Use item for raw damage. Does 10K+ damage to every enemy (ridiculous for this part of the game *if you do play Blitzball at the earliest instance you can*), even without Break Damage Limit. Blessed Gems, Shining Gems, and Supreme Gems are all available at the endgame (so does Dark Matter outside Blitzball), and are weaker. Sounds too good to be true? Because it is. The catch of getting such a strong item this early is... playing Blitzball. You probably need to spend 90 minutes in Blitzball JUST to get one. You can get more later on, but none of it is desirable if you hate busywork, and absolutely none of the methods let you get it at any point before the endgame (catching all monsters to get 99 Dark Matters is faster than playing Blitzball for 100 hours... but that's if you have the patience to catch EVERY single monster... 10 times EACH... or you could also bribe a monster to get these... pretty fast on paper, except that monster is only available past the point of no return in the final area of the game... or you could fight the Dark Aeons... at low level *yeah, good luck with that*, but if you're fighting them at all and are able to beat them reliably, why in the world do you need Dark Matters for damage?).

A combination of Return + Teleport Spheres lets you go to any other character's current position on their respective grids (Teleport), activate a desirable node on their grid, and return to the character's normal path (Return). This way, I had Kimahri and Tidus go into each other's routes to learn Haste, Steal, and Use. I left it at that, though, since Rikku has Use by default, and you can get her (and everyone else with access to Use) to use Haste via items (which aren't available just yet, hence why I taught these two characters the actual spell) anyway.

Three Stars reduce MP costs to 0, for the duration of the fight. This item is pretty useless early on (at least on normal play), since the mage characters aren't really using a lot of MP expensive spells, to the point that you need to use Ethers 5 times per boss fight. Maybe when Kimahri learns Holy early (way earlier than facing Biran and Yenke, by the way), then it could see some use (but he can use it at least twice before running out of MP, and due to Holy's high power, pretty sure that's just enough to make short work of bosses, even if they're not weak to it, OR Mental Break). And even then, you can get 60 Three Stars pretty easily in a minigame later on, so perhaps outside of one challenge run, getting Three Stars from Blitzball is pointless.

On a side note, it's surprising how early they introduce 9999+ HP bosses into the game. Not sure if the SNES games were like this for their... what, 8th boss? I forget.

Anyway, one thing I didn't like about this is that a boss has an armor gimmick, has no elemental weaknesses, is immune to almost every status effect, and part of what makes his armor gimmick to work are two 'arms' which can regenerate over time. That, along with the HP total, means that you'd be spending a notable amount of time on this boss, at least in comparison to earlier bosses (even moreso if you don't have Use or Haste, like I did when I first played this game).

This is pretty unlike the boss before that one. While he also had an armor gimmick, he was weak to Fire elemental stuff (spells, Use items, Ifrit's Overdrive), and his gimmick also involved the ability to 'ring him out'. He was also vulnerable to Slow, Poison, and Delay (the latter doesn't really come into play, but it may be of some use in a specific restricted run). If you had the right strategy (delaying your own turns and going into full offensive at the right time), you could even prevent him from attacking you at all. I wanted to do a little experiment with Lulu, and she handled herself really well on her own (she was fighting the boss for 2/3rds of the fight, I purposely killed off the other characters for the sake of the experiment). She didn't even take any damage at all. Hell, she didn't even know Fira. I was stuck with the weaker fire elemental spell in... Fire

If I had more time to play, I could probably have beaten 3-4 more bosses.

Not much to add this weekend. My time is pretty limited and wasn't able to play much. Just got to Seymour 1. Use has been devastating everything I have encountered thus far (including mobs *obviously*).

SBK already told me about this before I even played the game, but forgot about it. Fortunately, I got to use it at the earliest instance you could (at least where bosses are concerned) in this playthrough. Evade & Counter. In SBK's words, it's basically an immunity for physicals, but it has special rules for activation (then again, according to some random GFAQs posts, the ability has a huge coverage for the main game). A pretty good way to evade attacks. It doesn't even care if your Evasion is low. IF the attack can be evaded, you will ALWAYS evade it. Exceptions are magical attacks, and attacks that hit the whole party, so it's not brainless. Which is neat.

This seems like an alternative for Image (from V). Image works against more stuff, but this is seemingly still plenty useful (just different).

So I've got two things to focus on from now on. Keep abusing Use, and see if Evade and Counter really works on a lot of stuff.

I do think it's pretty interesting that the game has all these tools to tinker with, but on your first run it feels like a run of the mill RPG. I never used "Use" on my first run since I didn't grasp it, let alone Mix (nobody has that sheet on hand the first time). Think that's pretty interesting design.

>all these tools
Been appreciating them even more, by the way. For better or worse, it also made me think of the possibilities if they had expanded on the boss gimmicks. You know that there's a Float status effect in the franchise (just not present in X), right? Well, to give one example, you could probably use that to make Gravity do more damage, or perhaps force a boss to crash into a ceiling with spikes. Sadly, they dropped this from the series (not even X-2 does this, as far as I'm aware), and XII onwards are more real time based, so while the noted could work even better on such systems, I really wanted to see the full potential of something like what X does with these gimmicks, but in a turn based RPG. This may sound weird, coming from an Action fan, but that's how I feel at present (it may also have to do with the fact that Action already has a number of games where we can see environmental hazards being great as is).

>a run of the mill RPG
On the surface, yeah. It doesn't help that the game is also pretty easy. There are some things that separate it from the rest (particularly the context sensitive actions against bosses), and the 'tic' turn based system that the game uses (though that's not immediately apparent).

>never used Use
It was a bit hard to overlook for me, since SBK mentioned it quite a lot, in our conversations about X. That said, I used it pretty late in the game on my first playthrough.

>let alone Mix
I just looked for a list online. I think there's 10000+ possible combinations (not results). No way I was going to find all of that by myself.

Well, going against what I have thought for a while, I decided to beat the lesser Dark Aeons with low-ish stats (below 70). Turns out it's pretty doable, but I used Trio of 9999 to speed things up (no way I was going to slowly chip away at such tanky foes *I was probably going to run out of Phoenix Downs and materials for Mixing Hyper Mighty G, either way*).

Shiva, as you said, is just too fast. If she didn't kill Rikku when I don't want her to, it may be possible to defeat her with low stats. But as it is, the fight is too luck-based for me to bother. I'm willing to bet that the stronger Derp Aeons aren't any better.

> Shiva
Yeah they are simply DPS and speedchecks. I once had Dark Valefor in a semi loop, but suddenly he decided to overlimit twice in a row, which I had never seen him do, losing me the fight.

In general I feel that the end-game isn't all that worth it, especially when you consider it:
a) takes way too much time to level up, and I mean physically i.e. going through all the menus
b) a lot of the content is just stat-checks
c) it negates the actual final segment of the game, which you'll be far too powerful for now. It legit sucks that you'll be so powerful that those cool fights change into "use a single attack, on to the next one".

>DPS and speed checks
Quite so. Sometimes I wonder if the endgame content was handled by different people in the International version, but then you have the stronger Arena monsters in the original version. Nemesis in particular isn't too far off from being as unreasonable as the stronger Derp Aeons.

>Dark Valefor
What I did was to use my own Aeons as meatshields every time Valefor was going to get a turn. That way, I was guaranteed to get some turns (but if you die and get revived via Auto Life, you risk Valefor using her 'Overdrive' attack once again, killing you on the spot). I had almost used up all my Aeons, and that's also considering that I hadn't gotten Yojimbo or the Magus Sisters yet. But this trick doesn't work against Shiva; she'll just immediately get a turn once your meatshield dies.

>way too much time to level up
Indeed. Having to activate all the nodes for ALL characters takes infinitely more time compared to standard level up systems.

>just stat checks
If only they weren't immune to trickery (statuses). Most of the Arena bosses are open to Doom, but the counter is set to something ridiculous (200+ turns to die). Or, Hell, if only there was some noteworthy gimmick to them like the main game bosses.

>negates the final segment
Yeah, but at least I'm grateful that the final boss wasn't designed with that mentality. The obvious solution would've been to simply:

- Design the endgame bosses around the final dungeon's stats.

And/or:

- Put a 99 cap to all stats. Would definitely keep things way more reasonable, and people who love to decimate stuff via grinding will still be able to scratch that itch (since the final dungeon is pretty doable with stats on the ballpark of 40-50, and doubling that makes a lot of difference, but not enough to create a stat check if everything was designed around stats in the ballpark of 60-99).

Made some marginal progress. Got to Seymour Omnis. I didn't really bother with Magic Counter, but in here, it's funny how you can punish Seymour severely (if you have the stats, that is *but not anything crazy*) with a full party having Magic Counter equipped. This is the first time I've seen the characters countering one after another, normally it was just someone getting struck and countering, or against party-wide attacks, the counter wouldn't even trigger.

Anyway, during his opener 4x Firaga, you can laugh at it with elemental absorption, and then watch how two of your three characters attack him for 9999 damage each (again, if you have the stats), and the final character (the one struck twice with Firaga) countering twice. Basically a punish worth 40K damage at most (half of his HP total, so that's quite monstrous for him).

Just one more boss to go to complete the game. Yu Yevon doesn't exist.

It's hilarious how you can break bosses in that sense. Overal I'm curious, what's your stance on the title so far? I know you were a big FFV fan so interested in hearing how this one compares in your eyes.

From my experiences, I'd say that V has more depth to its system. For example:

- There's three ways to inflict Death on an opponent, if it is immune to one, the second may work, and if it's immune to both, you can try the third method.

- Various superbosses in V are open to trickery (read: statuses *yeah, a superboss being open to these isn't something you see every day*), and the postgame doesn't fall apart (no stat checks).

- There's options upon options (fixed damage cases, damage bonuses against certain enemy types, immunities, ways to 'dodge' unblockable attacks, and many more).

- There's only one single instance of this, but a fun quirk of an otherwise harmful' status effect (Mini) is that while your Defense is set to 0 (understandably so, as you're basically an ant), your evasion also gets doubled.

However, that's not to say X doesn't have its own set of interesting stuff:

- It probably has access to the most potent fixed damage cases via Use (while there's a fixed 9999 case in V, it's mostly tied to RNG, and the non-RNG case only goes as high as 3000). Guess you can count Sunburst, which deals 19998 damage, regardless of your lack of any Break Damage Limit ability (but that's an Overdrive, and not something you can use all the time). HP totals in X are higher compared to V's to compensate, but still.

- The gimmicks to cripple certain bosses are an interesting little concept (as I said a few times by now), and certainly something I'd pick if someone were to ask me which element from X would I like to see in V. And I don't mean just being able to deal loads of damage, kill them outright, or limit them to one out of five attacks. Geosgaeno in X can swallow characters, and gain any statuses they have, both positives and negatives (even if he was immune to those *which is what made its gimmick interesting on paper*).

- Allowing you to get Rare steals 100% of the time is a good QoL aspect.

- While I'm not a fan of fighting 10 of each monster to unlock things in the Monster Arena, the Arena itself could still work as a concept (that way, you don't have to go through random encounters to fight the monster you want *for material grinding purposes or whatever*, you just select the monster, and that's it). Being able to fight tougher versions of existing bosses could also work, just don't make them unreasonably strong.

In summary, V has more depth, but X is still a good JRPG in its own right, and I'd certainly play it again in the future (once I'm done with it).

Finished the game a second time. Concluded that Use isn't tops if you have the stats to spam Magic, Overdrives, or Quick Hits, but it's still a very neat way to deal major damage without grinding for stats too much.

And speaking about stats, I decided to start my No Stat run. Skipped the Expert Sphere Grid run, since I don't think I can stomach another vanilla playthrough (just took a quick glance at the new grid, advanced the plot for a bit, and took this decision), since I need to vary things up, and a new grid isn't going to change this.

However, I'm still using the new grid for this run, because I noticed that Use is no longer behind any kind of lock at all, and is relatively closer to your characters compared to the original grid, which means I can get both Steal and Use before Mi'ihen. Hell, you could even get it at Besaid or even the submerged ruins, but I'm not up for such heavy grinding (at least not against the lowest tier foes). In any case, if the path I've chosen for this new grid + No Stat run is suboptimal (owed to not having experience with the new grid), I can always revisit it later (and I mean after taking a long break from the game, not immediately after this playthrough), though I'm fairly sure that if most characters know Use, I shouldn't encounter any major roadblocks.

Magic and physicals would be underwhelming with base stats (Use already outclasses Attack Reels by a notable margin, for example), same as any non-Mix Overdrive, and I'm thinking of banning Summons, since they passively gain more stats the more fights I win (so using Summons would defeat the point of the run), and like prior FF titles, I have no say on whether I want to increase their stats or not. Though there's going to be run exceptions, such as forced instances where I'm forced to use Summons. I suppose this could be avoided if I simply flee from fights to prevent those passive stat gains, but I would be missing out on testing how good Use can be with super low stats. So perhaps I should think of another name for this run, just to keep everything consistent.

I haven't seen anyone else do this kind of run, or even any mention of it, probably because it's straight easier than plain old No Sphere Grid (No Stat allows you to use the grid, but you can only learn abilities, you're just never allowed to increase your stats at all, whereas NSG bans both of those things). Why am I doing this light challenge run? Because it's the closest to low level in other games (not allowed to increase your stats past a certain threshold *in games where you can't avoid EXP*, but you can still learn abilities by way of purchasing magic in shops, learning abilities with Ability Points, which is separate from Experience Points, and typically there's ways to get only the former, and not the latter, which is basically what No Stat in FFX is, except you can directly control if you want to increase your stats for each 'level' you gain or not), so this would be the perfect way to compare how each title handles low level/minimal stats by doing this.

This update came up pretty late (had to get back to quite a few people last week, and the  power outages, plus a few other things that I needed to attend to, certainly did not help).

In any case, my No Stat Run/Ability Nodes Only run is done. Here are some thoughts:

- Use is definitely the ability you want to be using at low level. It just wrecks things all around. Bosses? Toss powerful items at them. Are they vulnerable to any statuses? You're in luck, because Use guarantees status affliction (so long as the enemy isn't completely immune, but it will work even if the enemy has a 90% resistance). Mobs? Petrify Grenades (instant death by way of petrification *duh*), Doom (if counter reaches 0, the enemy will die), Shadow Gems (HP% damage based on current HP), and to a lesser extent Poison, plus your stronger items (though since most mobs tend to job to instant death, it's better to save these and let petrification or Gravity to do the job).

-Evade and Counter is a nice way to dodge certain physicals, though in most cases this wasn't necessary. Just a nice extra.

- Mix is still great. Particularly the buff Mixes (x5 of most buffs with one use), and the 19998 Mix (even though it gets less and less relevant the more HP bosses have *but it can still help if you want to save a couple of gems, if you so desire*). And if you want to cheese things, Trio of 9999 is always there. If you don't feel like learning Attack Reels, there's always Tidus' Overdrives. If not, then the Overdrives that Lulu starts with (provided that the enemy isn't immune to/absorbs all elements).

- Not sure if I should hold it against the game for this, but defensive measures are pretty good for the maingame content. But that says a lot on how weak attacks tend to be even at the endgame (ignoring postgame). Only the final boss can kill most characters in 2-3 turns (but since he can inflict Delay, and because there is sadly no protection against this *why, though*, you may as well say you're dead). Omega can kill everyone except Auron when you use every defensive buff on him, which leads me to my next point.

- Omega himself was a tad interesting to do under No Stat conditions. You need full knowledge of his AI (not even exaggerating) in order to be able to best him. By switching characters at the right moment, you can prevent a game over, as well as trying to optimize your damage output. Keeping track of a hidden counter will allow you to know exactly when he will use an attack that kills everyone (including your 'tankiest' character *Auron*), so you can properly prepare against it.

That said, the catch is that you need Trio of 9999 to make this tolerable. And even with Trio, this fight takes approximately 15 minutes. I was also not a fan of Omega suddenly being immune to all elements (when he wasn't in the original version of the game *but he's a pushover in there, so not sure which is worse*), as well as pretty much every status effect (Ultima Weapon could at least be Silenced and Blinded, which made quite a big difference). If you were able to negate his attacks (if you had better moves) or at the very least cripple him (if he was vulnerable to a few statuses), as well as having either a more sensible HP total, and/or being vulnerable to elements (so you can bring him down with gem spam, which would make this 15 minute affair a 5-7 minute one) this would likely be up there among the 'good' bosses (probably not favorite tier, but I'll have to play that hypothetical scenario to be sure).

I also did this run to see how this title fared against VI's low level run. To keep this bit short, you get to use a bit more stuff against enemies in terms of offenses, but there's more moment to moment fun in X (since there's nothing comparable to the Minecart ride, IAF, Floating Continent, or the Opera scene *in other words, nightmares in low level* in X).

So, my (subjective) ranking of the games I've played is the following:

V > X = VI > IV > the rest (I, III, VII, and VIII)

Haven't played the rest enough to properly say how I feel about them. If we're counting Chrono Trigger, it would probably be a bit better than X and VI.