Tuesday, January 25, 2011

A Final Fantasy X-2 Tale



Wow, has it really been ten days since the last time I updated this blog? I've been pretty busy rocking the world's face. Soon I'll be finishing Secret of Evermore (for the ten people who read those) and posting a very belated Avatar review that will probably be read by exponentially more people. Among other good things. I return today with a tale. Not my usual substantial post. Just a tale.


I've gone on record with my belief that the Final Fantasy series is flamboyantly homosexual. Well, Final Fantasy X-2 may well set the record for the gayest Final Fantasy of all. Final Fantasy X-2 is more flamboyantly homosexual than a wrestling match pitting Japanese wrestling sensation Hard Gay against a fierce and sassy unicorn-man made of rainbow while Beyonce's "Single Ladies" drones on in the background, with the competitors only occasionally stopping to get refreshed by pouring bottles of Sailormoon Extract on each other in slow-mo. Is it in you?

Right now I'm tying up the postgame of FFX-2, something I never bothered with back in the day. Fighting the requisite "uber-bosses" that nearly every FF game has. This is usually a bit of an undertaking, and not recommended unless you or a friend sports a particularly versatile penis.


At this point I have three of the...let's say ten-ish optional bosses down. The first I took on, Azi Dahaka, was a really tough fight. Tougher than the final boss by a decent margin. 120,000 HP versus 50,000...or something like that. Then again the final boss in this game is about as easy as Megyn Kelly at a Fox News Christmas Party.

I wonder if... if Fox and Friends were to hear about Barack Obama and Michelle Obama doing the hanky-panky... would they stand around critiquing him? "Well, he handled the actual performance well. But would woman-on-top be acceptable to voters in the battleground states?" "I don't know, Steve. I think he made the wrong call on that one. This will definitely help Romney's chances in 2012." "Wait, what was he doing having sex in the first place? That's hardly presidential behavior!"

Back to FFX-2... I went for the next two optional bosses. Jumbo Cactuar might as well have been called Jumbo Loot Pinata. Probably about the same difficulty as the final boss overall. Nastier attacks, but he barely got a chance to use them before I stomped him.

After that was Angra Mainyu. Probably the most visually impressive boss in the game. Angra Mainyu is basically the game's Warmech/Weapon, and looks like some kind of death god with two liches for arm-appendages. Not the hardest boss (probably #5 in that regard) in the game, but the hardest one outside of the postgame uber-dungeon. Took me a good half hour to beat AM, since it has 380,000 HP. Wasn't that difficult, though...and that's with everyone at a mere level 65. Little bit of a letdown.

Not here to talk about Angra Mainyu, though... I'm here to talk about the events surrounding the fight.
 
First off, I headed for the desert, where there was a distress signal about a huge fiend attacking a town. I get there and see AM roaring out of the desert, wreaking havoc. Like I said, Angra Mainyu is huge and frightening, and this was some real End of the World type shit going on here.


I was all ready for some rough and tumble, Soccer Hooligan style FIGHTIN' so I ran on in there to face the beast. Now if this were a free-reign game like Fallout 3, I'd be able to just bum-rush the boss if I wanted to. Unfortunately, this isn't a game like that. So I instead get bum-rushed by cutscenes where everyone stands around talking about what to do. Next thing I know, this kid happens along who can translate human-to-cactus, and joins the party temporarily. That's...odd. He then proceeds to chase Yuna around the desert, probably staring at her ass the entire time. In any case, the kid says that Yuna has to talk to giant cactuses and get them to help with the fiend attacking the town. Just like Pippin and Treebeard! Except the giant cactuses probably wouldn't be very comfortable for Yuna to ride.
 
Yuna riding stuff, that's hot. I've never wanted to be a cactus more in my life.

So I'm talking to cactuses while this massive hell-spawn continues to wreck the town. The cactuses are all like "we can hold the demon back temporarily" and start FIRING BEAMS. I kid you not. They start blasting the demon with DBZ-style energy blasts that materialize out of thin air. ..what? Who knew the cactuses in this game were such badasses. Unfortunately, they say they can't hold on much longer because they're running out of power. No problem, Yuna and company are there for some FIGHTIN'!

...but they wouldn't let me fight the thing, you see. No, they needed more power to keep holding the demon at bay. Next thing you know, they're sending Yuna on a quest to find their 10 little cactuar who are scattered around the globe. Yuna and company start hopping around all "YAY! LET'S FIND THE LITTLE CACTUARS!" while waving their arms spastically. Meanwhile... and I KID YOU NOT... there is a CITY BURNING IN THE BACKGROUND.


................


Off our heroes go on a quest to find LITTLE CACTUARS YAYYY ^_^ and stuff, as the action grinds to a halt. Let's just say that this quest would be completely impossible without a guide. There are ten of them in all. At least the game gives you some clues, but they ain't much. The worst part is that only one shows up at a time, and every time you find one you have to bring it all the way back to the desert and return it to the cactuses before you can go get the next one. Which makes it take at least twice as long. Worse still, there's this bizarre shootout minigame every time you find one, with super happy music playing as you blast the little cactus with bullets in order to subdue it.

...................................

So finally, you get the tenth little cactus back to the desert. This took me about an hour to do, with a guide, and with no wasted motion. It was incredibly boring. But hey! Now the grownup cactuses are feeling better and have more energy to hold off the giant demon! ...and then the demon breaks free of their energy beams and charges. Wait, what? So after I did their quest that was supposed to make them powerful enough to...well...keep holding off the demon, suddenly they totally fall on their faces (so to speak)? That makes no sense! Thus, our heroes have to swing into action and fight Angra Mainyu themselves. WHY COULDN'T I JUST DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE SINCE THEY WERE ONLY HOLDING IT OFF TEMPORARILY NO MATTER WHAT ARGGGGHHHHH.

In any case, finally...finally I got to do some FIGHTIN'!

Thus, I took down Angra Mainyu, and all was right with the world.

Then after the fight, with the still-smoldering town avenged, I felt pretty good about things. That is, until this woman in a desert-bikini type leather Stupid FF Outfit™ comes running up and thanks our heroes... then offers them some food! The other townspeople then run up holding trays of food, and actually say that they were fixing it while we were fighting the monster. The one that obliterated their town, which is still smoldering in the background. And then the heroes (well, just Yuna and Rikku... Paine is actually cool) start jumping around all "YAY! FOOD!" and prancing to and fro with the happy townspeople while happy music plays.



...................why do I still play games?

4 comments:

  1. You don't like any Final Fantasy games? Tactics, Kingdom Hearts?

    Though I do agree that X-2 is a horrible title. My friends and I like to pretend it doesn't exist.

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  2. It's probably difficult to tell since I knock on the series a lot, but I'm a big Final Fantasy fan. Never played KH but Tactics is probably my favorite FF of all time. Played all of the first twelve main series games, as well, and liked most of them. X-2, however, I legitimately don't like too much, though the battle/class system is pretty fun.

    I just think the FF games in general have a lot of melodrama and pretentiousness. X-2 has those aspects plus a pretty idiotic story that makes it even worse...

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  3. Oh, they totally have a lot of melodrama and pretentiousness, but I think most of them are pretty good. Most of them do tend to lose track of what they're trying to say in the last quarter of the game, though. I would say Tactics is the best as well, with VII or IX the best of the main series.

    None of them top Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross, however.

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  4. What did I just read? This was oddly hilarious. Well done, sir.

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