Now that I've finished Final Fantasy IV DS, I've started in on Chrono Trigger DS. Whereas FF4 DS would probably be classified as a remake, due the the redone graphics and all that, Chrono Trigger DS is more of a port. The sound and graphics are the same and really the only thing that's noticably different is that the UI has been updated to make use of the DS' unique features. The translation does also seem to have gotten a bit of polishing, but the only noticable thing (though I've not played Chrono Trigger in a while) is that Magus is now referred to more generically as the "Fiendlord" in the early parts of the game.
I plan to do a tongue-in-cheek style summary the way I have with the Final Fantasy series so I'll leave most of my comments on Chrono Trigger in general to whenever that gets posted. For now, it suffices to say that, even though I haven't gotten very far yet, I've already got a healthy dose of nostalgia and am remembering how much I love the game. It was an awesome game when it was first released and it's still awesome now.
Also, for this playthrough, I have named Crono "Lulz" and so far the name choice is giving me many lulz.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Moon Weasles
I finished the DS version of Final Fantasy 4 recently. As I've previously done a detailed report on FF4, I'm not going to say too much here as the DS version is largely similar to previous versions, though much prettier. Overall, though, I think it was a pretty good remake. I thought the transition to 3D graphics was well done and, as a result, it looks much nicer than the old SNES version. The general look and feel of things, including spell animations and such, was pretty faithful to the original. The redone translation was also nice, injecting some more character into some things while retaining fan favourite lines such as "You spoony bard!"
One thing I will say about the DS version is that it seemed harder than I remembered it. Monsters seemed to generally hit harder and when fighting the final boss, Big Bang hurt a lot, nearly wiping me out each time it was used. Well, keeps you on your toes at least.
Also, I still say the voice actors in the cut scenes mispronounced "Cecil"
In a not in any way related to Final Fantasy note, as I was walking to school along Erb this morning, I saw a driver at an intersection (not a major one) do a U-turn from the right-most lane into the left-most lane and proceed the wrong way down Erb for a bit. They seemed to have realized their mistake (the oncoming traffic was probably a hint) and turned around to go the correct way. I did notice that the driver was on a cell phone at the time so I don't know if they just weren't paying attention (brain melt down due to the phone or something) or if they aren't from around here and just weren't aware that Erb is a one-way street. Anyway, just a bit of a WTF moment there.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
One thing I will say about the DS version is that it seemed harder than I remembered it. Monsters seemed to generally hit harder and when fighting the final boss, Big Bang hurt a lot, nearly wiping me out each time it was used. Well, keeps you on your toes at least.
Also, I still say the voice actors in the cut scenes mispronounced "Cecil"
In a not in any way related to Final Fantasy note, as I was walking to school along Erb this morning, I saw a driver at an intersection (not a major one) do a U-turn from the right-most lane into the left-most lane and proceed the wrong way down Erb for a bit. They seemed to have realized their mistake (the oncoming traffic was probably a hint) and turned around to go the correct way. I did notice that the driver was on a cell phone at the time so I don't know if they just weren't paying attention (brain melt down due to the phone or something) or if they aren't from around here and just weren't aware that Erb is a one-way street. Anyway, just a bit of a WTF moment there.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Spam wth a Side of Spam (and a little bacon)
As is the case with many people, I suspect, I get a non-negligible amount of spam in my spam folder. Today there was one in there with a title that seems to have broken my brain:
"Your car's window broken"
The first line of the message (which my e-mail reader graciously provides me without having to actually open the e-mail) suggests it's a spam regarding cheap pharmacuticals. I don't know why this particular title/contents combination has broken my brain, but it just left me scratching my head going "WTF!?"
Oh well, at least it was mildly amusing.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
"Your car's window broken"
The first line of the message (which my e-mail reader graciously provides me without having to actually open the e-mail) suggests it's a spam regarding cheap pharmacuticals. I don't know why this particular title/contents combination has broken my brain, but it just left me scratching my head going "WTF!?"
Oh well, at least it was mildly amusing.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Reboot
Went to see the new Star Trek movie last night with the usual group and we all quite enjoyed it. It will be interesting to see where they take the franchise from here, presuming of course that they continue on with it, though considering that the movie seems to have done quite well, both critically and financially, I'd be surprised if they didn't follow up on it some how.
It was also nice to see a good Trek movie since the franchise has been in a bit of a slump for the past several years.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
It was also nice to see a good Trek movie since the franchise has been in a bit of a slump for the past several years.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Vehicular Vanity
Every now and then I comment on license plates that I see that amuse me for one reason or another. It's been a little while since I've seen one that was noteworthy (not that I actively seek these things out or anything), but today I saw one whilst biking home from school, cutting through the parking lot of the Giant Tiger as I am wont to do. It read:
EMBRO
Make of that what you will.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
P.S.
Looking at my post tags, it appears that the last post I made on this subject was about the same license plate. Huh. Well, go figure.
EMBRO
Make of that what you will.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
P.S.
Looking at my post tags, it appears that the last post I made on this subject was about the same license plate. Huh. Well, go figure.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Spira's Angels
I finished my replay of Final Fantasy X-2 yesterday. FF X-2 is unique in that it's the only Final Fantasy game that is a direct sequel to an existing Final Fantasy game, from a storyline perspective anyway. Or, at least it was the only one at the time. There's who knows how many spin-offs to FF 7 now so anything goes, or so it would seem.
But FF X-2 was a simpler time, or a less FF 7 saturated one, at any rate. I should also mention that FF X-2 has an all-female main cast, which is also unique among Final Fantasy games.
The story picks up two years after FF X left off. The game is overall a bit more light hearted and structured fairly differently than its predecessor, being more mission based rather than a more-or-less linear romp through the world. It also brought back Final Fantasy's hallmark job system for the first time since FF 5, unless you count FF Tactics. (As much as I loved Tactics it's still more of an off-shoot to the main series, but I digress...) The new twist to this incarnation of the job system is that our three lovely ladies (Yuna, Rikku and newcomer Paine) can change jobs on-the-fly in the middle of battle rather than just between battles, which can come in handy. The transformation sequences also reminded me of some of those anime-styled transformation sequences one tends to see in magical-girl type shows.
Overall, I enjoyed FF X-2 and thought it was a solid entry for the series. Not the greatest FF game ever, but fun and entertaining in its own right and a nice epilogue to FF X and also an interesting change of pace to revisit an existing world for a change. I also think I enjoyed the job transformations a bit too much. Oh well, call it a guilty pleasure.
For this play through, I did a New Game +, based on my previous (and first) time through. I achieved 95% completion this time, opposed to a measely 63% last time. I'm still missing the Mascot dresssphere though, grrrr... Perhaps next time.
This also marks the official conclusion of my replay of the series. Technically, I could still do summaries for FF XI and FF XII, but the format of FF XI is so different from the rest of the series that I think it would be impractical to do a write up for and FF XII was not out when I started the replay so I don't really feel obliged to include it. That said, I probably will do a summary for FF XII eventually, but I want to go back and do one for FF Tactics first, preferably using the retranslated PSP version, provided my budget allows it.
Anywho, enough of the preamble. The actually summary appears in the post below this one so enjoy!
Freak Out,
-TFitC
But FF X-2 was a simpler time, or a less FF 7 saturated one, at any rate. I should also mention that FF X-2 has an all-female main cast, which is also unique among Final Fantasy games.
The story picks up two years after FF X left off. The game is overall a bit more light hearted and structured fairly differently than its predecessor, being more mission based rather than a more-or-less linear romp through the world. It also brought back Final Fantasy's hallmark job system for the first time since FF 5, unless you count FF Tactics. (As much as I loved Tactics it's still more of an off-shoot to the main series, but I digress...) The new twist to this incarnation of the job system is that our three lovely ladies (Yuna, Rikku and newcomer Paine) can change jobs on-the-fly in the middle of battle rather than just between battles, which can come in handy. The transformation sequences also reminded me of some of those anime-styled transformation sequences one tends to see in magical-girl type shows.
Overall, I enjoyed FF X-2 and thought it was a solid entry for the series. Not the greatest FF game ever, but fun and entertaining in its own right and a nice epilogue to FF X and also an interesting change of pace to revisit an existing world for a change. I also think I enjoyed the job transformations a bit too much. Oh well, call it a guilty pleasure.
For this play through, I did a New Game +, based on my previous (and first) time through. I achieved 95% completion this time, opposed to a measely 63% last time. I'm still missing the Mascot dresssphere though, grrrr... Perhaps next time.
This also marks the official conclusion of my replay of the series. Technically, I could still do summaries for FF XI and FF XII, but the format of FF XI is so different from the rest of the series that I think it would be impractical to do a write up for and FF XII was not out when I started the replay so I don't really feel obliged to include it. That said, I probably will do a summary for FF XII eventually, but I want to go back and do one for FF Tactics first, preferably using the retranslated PSP version, provided my budget allows it.
Anywho, enough of the preamble. The actually summary appears in the post below this one so enjoy!
Freak Out,
-TFitC
FF X-2 "Summary"
As with the previous summaries, it's actually quite long so it's probably more of an overview or something. (Unedited for grammar or spelling.)
Final Fantasy X-2 Summary
====================
It's time for some grrl power!
- Welcome to Luca! The old blitzball stadium has been revamped into a concert venue with flashing lights, roaring crowds and fancy pyrotechniques
- The music starts and the weird-ass drum machine kicks into motion and the central stage platform raises with Yuna in her summoner's garb, apparantly ready to sing
- Much to our surprise, Yuna does a strip tease for the crowd - well, not really, but she does magically change her clothes in front of a live audience into what we'll soon learn is the Songstress dresssphere (lots of s's there)
- Whilst the song is going on, Rikku (who's wearing a lot less than she used to) and some newcomer named Paine raise some ruckus back stage, knocking out guards, that sort of thing
- At the end of the song, Rikku and Paine confront Yuna on stage - apparently they didn't think much of her singing! Boooo!
- After Yuna's been slapped around for a bit, she runs off! Guess that means we've got to chase after her whilst fighting off goons.
- But wait! As we're chasing Yuna, that's when the *real* Yuna appears (cue Charlie's Angels pose), so it was just an imposter after all.
- The imposter calls out her henchmen - Solt and Peppor, I means, Logos and Ormi, but they're just typical henchmen fodderlings.
- The imposter, it seems, stole one of Yuna's Garment Grids which not only change your clothes, but they change your appearance as well. The imposter's true identity is Leblanc who has a.. um, "interesting" outfit, shall we say. Oh well, I mean, a lot of NPCs in FF X had odd and/or skimpy outfits (like Dona), so it's just continuing in the tradition, I suppose.
- After beating up Leblanc and getting the Garment thingamabobber back, the girls return to the Celcius, the airship of the Gullwings, a sphere hunting group.
- Yuna joined the Gullwings after finding a sphere containing a slightly disturbing recording of a man who looked vaguely like Tidus (he's going on about saving the summoner) and she wants to find out what's up with that. Paine is the mysterious one and Rikku is, well, Rikku.
- There's also some annoying Al Bhed along for the ride - Brother and some kid named Shinra who thinks it's still FF VII
- Our pilot soon identifies a location of another treasure sphere in some ruins on top of Mount Gagazet. After we learn to jump and climb, we get to jump and climb our way to the top before Leblanc and her cronies do to snag the sphere. It turns out to be rather unexciting (just a vista of Zanarkand), but at least it doubles as the Black Mage dresssphere.
- The Celcius comes and picks us up, and we get to walk all over brother (he's unconscious due to the unfortunate condition of being dumb) and then our pilot identifies some other stuff for us to go check out.
- First up: a trip to Yuna's old stomping ground in Besaid. Upon arrival, we learn that Lulu is pregnant and Waka's to blame (what do you know, I guess he can score after all, despite being not very good at blitzball)
- Waka is fretting about fatherhood, but then remembers something and decides to go wandering off, so Lulu asks us to find the big oaf.
- Following the islanders' vague clues about a cave and some numeric cyphers, we find said cave and Waka lurking at its entrance. He's having some second thoughts about whether or not he really wants whatever's inside.
- The girls, however, are sphere hunters so go in after the treasure anyway. The sphere has a big fiend lurking about it, of course, but after dispatching it, we obtain the White Mage dresssphere.
- On the way back to the village, Wakka talks about childhood abuse at the hands of his brother Chappu who claimed the cave had a sphere of their parents in it - it didn't, but that's life. For now, everything is happy again, more or less.
- Next, a quick stop to Luca where we get to see what Yuna was up to while Riku and Paine were crashing the concert - she was being lazy and handing out balloons while the other two were doing all the tough, dangerous stuff.
- Then we walk across the Mi'hen highroad, and nothing happens, but then we get to that Mushroom Rock place and see Logos and Ormi acting suspicious and decide to follow them.
- The two henchmen have supposedly head towards Youth League Headquarters, but we follow them into a ravine and find a cave where they're stealing spheres. They drop one so we pick it up.
- After the bumbling henchmen take off, one of Isaaru's former guardians shows up and shoos us off since they area is off limits, so we continue on to Youth League Headquarters.
- At YL HQ, we talk to Lucile, one of those Chocobo Knights, who tells us that their Leader is in meetings and is much too busy to talk to us, so we let Maechen ramble on at us about recent events.
- After that, it's back to the airship, but we take Clasko (who's been hanging out with the YL since he's still tagging along after Lucile) with us to release him from his misery where he finds... more misery. And we watch that sphere we picked up which contains voices that sound remarkably like Logos and Ormi surveying a scene with "no survivors" (dun, dun, dun)
- With that out of the way, we stop by Djose temple where various saps and ne'er-do-wells are waiting to be "interviewed" by Gippal, leader of the Machine Faction, so that he can send them to Bikkanel Desert to toil long hours for little pay. Yuna and co. decide to join in, but the jokes really on him 'cause we run off to do other things.
- Like a trip to the Moonflow where some annoying little man (boy? thing?) named Tobli has us escort his wayward Hypello assistant back with some supplies whilst being harried by bandits.
- Then a quick stop in Guadosalam reveals that the Guado have evacuated the place, most likely due to being ashamed to be associated with Seymour, and it is now overrun by squatters (ie, Sphere Hunters of questionable repute)
- Running through Macalania woods, we eventually find Seymour's old flunky, Trommel, who seems much more appologetic now and after some badgering, eventually hands over Paine's special dress sphere (Full Throttle) though why he had it is anyone's guess, really
- After some more poking about the area we run into O'aka who we then have to chase down - when he is finally cornered, we find out that he's in debt to the Al Bhed so we decide to shelter him on the airship and put him to work to pay off his debt.
- We decide to follow up on Gippal's desert job after all and spend a bit of time digging in the sand, but then get distracted due to having short attention spans and run off elsewhere.
- The elsewhere is Bevelle for a brief chat with Praetor Baralai of New Yevon. Given circumstances from the last game, we still don't trust them and decide we'd rather go to the Calm Lands and play some carnaval games for a bit.
- The last stop on our merry tour before going and doing what we're actually supposed to be doing is to visit the Ronso on Mount Gagazet where we get to play cousellor. Does Yuna and co. actually have a license for that?
- After all that, to Zanarkand! Now a tourist trap that's infested with monkeys and, of course, tourists. And it is, of course, all Cid's fault. Way to go Cid. The girl's give him a bit of a stern talking to. Ex-summoner Isaaru is in on the schtick as well, be he doesn't fool our intrepid group. The sphere that was here, however, turns out to be only half a sphere.
- Next, there's news of an "awesome" sphere in Kilika, so we zoom there on the Celcius. The town's been rebuilt (but kind of haphazardly - if that's any indication of its original state, perhaps Sin did everyone a favour when he levelled the place).
- Yuna and Rikku get giggly about the "awesome" sphere, but Paine's not having any of that. As the girls ransack the town of its treasures, the encounter Dona and her manmeat Barthello who've just had a spat (they've picked opposing sides to support, it seems) and then proceed out into the woods.
- At the entrance to the woods, that guy Nooj is giving a speach to the assembled Youth League members about truth, history, blah, blah, blah. All we want is that sphere so stop talking already!
- Once Nooj is done, we run through the woods around the New Yevon guards and up to the temple. That's where we dispose of some New Yevonite's pet machina and take the sphere by force and run off back to the airship.
- The sphere turns out to just have a bit of video on it - some guy who looks vaguely like Tidus muttering about saving Lenne in front of some big spooky machina thing.
- Anyway, the Gullwings then have some second thoughts about this heist they just pulled off and decide to return to sphere. Brother, whose spine seems to be made of jelly, insists that Yuna dance for them (for morale or something) 'cause he's just pervy like that.
- So after pushing around some annoying hitchhikers, Yuna obliges Brother and puts on a bit of a song and dance for the crew. She still seems to be worked up about that sphere and bursts out "Who the heck is Lenne!?" which makes everyone else stare at her thinking "OMG, crazy girl over there"
- Picking up with the crazy theme, Yuna then has a dream in which she and Tidus are running down a long hall and end up in front of that big machina thing from the sphere, just in time for the firing squad to show up. The firing squad does what all firing squads do and, since they aim better than the average storm trooper, they actually hit their marks. Yuna and Tidus fall over dead, which is when Yuna happens to wake up.
- Putting the dream aside, it is now time to return the sphere to somebody - but who? Since we're still a bit miffed about the whole Yevon thing from the last game, I just can't bring myself to side with New Yevon and decide to give the sphere to the Youth League, despite having sided with them the last time I played.
- At Youth League HQ we give the sphere to Nooj who explains that the machina is called Vegnagun, an ancient weapon basically, and that New Yevon thinks they can control it which the Youth League believes to be impossible and will aim to stop them no matter what.
- Just as Nooj finishes up his history lesson, our pilot runs in saying that there's been a break-in aboard the airship. Turns out LeBlanc's gang paid a visit (and left a very obvious calling card) and stole that half-sphere we found in Zanarkand. It's like they're begging us to come beat them up and take it back.
- Anyway, all that means is that we now get to galavant around Spira trying to find some LeBlanc syndicate uniforms to steal so we can sneak into their HQ. Wouldn't it be faster to just go in guns blazing?
- In our wanderings, we run into Ormi, Logos and some randoom goon-type lurking about on the road near Djose Temple so we, uh, beat 'em up and steal their clothes. You know, good wholesome fun.
- Took some time to drop Clasko off in the calm lands to he can become a Chocobo pimp daddy - well, after we cleaned up the old monster arena for him (I swear, the boy just can't do anything by himself) and then decided to head off to Mount Gagazet.
- Running up Mount Gagazet, we come across a couple of LeBlanc's goons lounging about in a hot spring. After scaring them
off, we nab one of their uniforms that they leave behind after which we do the only logical thing: lounge about in the
hot springs ourselves with Rikku being... a tad annoying.
- On the way back, the goons (plus Ormi) think they're going to take the uniform back, but really they're not.
- After that, we stop by Bikanel dessert where we get sent over to the oasis to investigate some strange characters which,
naturally, turn out to be yet more of LeBlanc's goons. So we teach them a lesson by stealing their clothes.
- Now with three uniforms we are ready to infiltrate Chataeu LeBlanc in Guadosalam. The guards on duty turn out to be
not too bright, or at least they don't see through our disguise, so we waltz right in.
- Inside, LeBlanc comes out of a meeting with Nooj (seems to have been exchanging info on Vegnagun) after which Logos and
Ormi instruct us to visit her chamber in order to relieave her stress... uh, oh, this seems like more than we signed up for!
- Turns out LeBlanc just wants a message (whew!), though she makes some funny noises in the process. It turns out she has
a bit of a crush on Nooj and became a sphere hunter to basically do his dirty work for him. After revealing all this to us
she drifts off to sleep so Logos and Ormi send us back downstairs to do some boring maintenance stuff.
- But it turns out the maintenance stuff gets us into some secret passages beneath the Cheateau. We take the opportunity to ransack Ormi and Logos' rooms, though they do catch us in the act, but they don't put up much of a fight.
- Then we move on to LeBlanc's room and find out they had the other half of the broken sphere that they stole from the airship. Naturally, this is when LeBlanc and her flunkies try to stop us, but again, they're not all that tough.
- After some veiled threats, we go ahead and watch the contents of the now not broken sphere. Why, look, it's that scary Vegnagun thing. LeBlanc admits she's been tracking down info on Vegnagun for Nooj so that the Youth League can destroy it, which means we're really on the same side as her. Ah nuts.
- Vegnagun is apparantly lurking underneath Bevelle, so off we go! After plowing through some guards, we enter the temple and descend to the underground. There's some weird machina stuff and we eventually get past a security system and explore some odd tunnels until we encounter Praetor Baralai
- Baralai says that Vegnagun must not be touched - it's impossible to destroy so its best to leave it be. He attempts to stop us from moving on, but it's no use as he's no match for us.
- Pushing forward, we come to Vegnagun's supposed resting place only to find that it's not there. Instead we're greated by an angry looking Bahamut. What? I'm pretty sure all these aeons were supposed to have disappeared at the end of the last game...
- Well, we beat Bahamut, but we don't have any time to contemplate the apparent contradiction as we get a call from the airship that there's trouble afoot! It appears that there are fiends pouring out of temples all over the place (that can't be a good sign), so the Gullwings decide to temporarily put their sphere hunting on hold while they help to sort all this out - for a small price, of course. Ah, the spirit of entreprenuership.
- So we basically go around being nosy for a bit - the Youth League have barricaded themselves inside their HQ and the Machine Faction claims to have everything under control at Djose Temple. Oh well, guess we'll just go around and loot stuff for a bit.
- In our wanderings we encounter the Cactaur Nation (bunch of freaks), rescue some hapless tourists and defeat dark-Yojimbo, then wander up Mt. Gagazet and put that Garik character in his place.
- Finally get around to wandering over to Besaid to deal with that fiends coming from the temple thing. Turns out that Beclem guy wants burn the whole temple down, but neither Wakka nor Yuna (who's got some deep emotions scars, er, attachments to the place) are having any of that. So Yuna and company go in to investigate and end up fighting dark-Valefor, Yuna's first aeon. With the rogue aeon out of the way the problem seems to be solved - for now, at least.
- Then it's over to Kilika which is having a similar problem. Dona agrees to help sneak past the guards blocking the entrance to the forest by "distracting" them. Though by that, it seems she just means she's going to talk to one of them. How pedestrian. Guards sure are easy to distract these days.
- Once past the guards, the forest is burning in places and the are various barricades so the girls run through the treetops to get to the temple. Inside, dark-Ifrit's having a wee tantrum so we put him on ice and everything turns back to some semblance of normality, for the time being, anyway.
- Back on the airship we get a distress call from Gippal at Djose temple. Guess things turned out to be more than they could handle after all. How's 'dem apples, eh?
- We decide to momentarily leave the machine faction high and dry and go spelunking under Bevelle again, back to where Vegnagun had previously been lurking. In the process, we notice Gippal lurking about and when we arrive at Vegnagun's currently vacant spot, we find Baralai and Nooj lurking about.
- The three have a bit of a reunion, seems they know each other. Apparantly, Vegnagun can sense hostility and fled to preserve itself. The discussion gets a bit tense with accusations flying and guns being pointed. Something, which had been posessing Nooj decides Baralai would make a better host.
- Paine tries to intervene to stop the three from killing each other (seems she knows them too), though they all take off into some swirly thing and the girls go back to the airship, confused. How odd.
- Well, there's still the temple of Djose to deal with. By know we really know what to expect, rogue rampaging aeon and all that. This time it's dark-mecha-Ixion. After the fight, we look at the big hole in the ground (which was also at the other temples) and wonder where it goes. Then, mecha-Ixion explodes, sending Yuna plummetting to her doom!
- Or not, as Yuna appears to end up on what one supposes is the farplane. She follows some whistling/ghost thing with no apparent thought of self-preservation, and ends up finding the Tidus-look-a-like, Shuyin. They have a tender-ish moment in which Shuyin proclaims that the world just hasn't changed and that everything would be better off if he just blew everything up. Well, at least he's got goals. He also seems to regret being unable to protect Lenne (there's that name again) whom he seems to be mistaking Yuna for.
- It turns out the Shuyin apparition is the Baralia possessed version, and things bode ill for Yuna, but then Nooj and Gippal turn up at a convenient moment. They each give a sphere (containing some background info on the Crimson Squad) to Yuna before wandering off in pursuit of Baralai again, leaving Yuna to deal with tings "top side". Great. Thanks guys.
- Yuna manages to make it back to the airship in one piece. She goes up onto the deck to have a chat with Paine about the Crimson Squad - it was supposed to be an elite fighting force trained by Yevon (to take down Sin, it seems), only it got destroyed and even Paine doesn't really know what happened.
- Back on the bridge, Shinra's set up his spy-cams all over Spira so we now get to play peeping-Tom and see what everyone's up to.
- After snooping around for a bit, the crew cooks up the half-baked idea to have Yuna do a big concert for everyone, promote unity and all that, ya know? And of course Yuna agrees. Bunch of hippies. Except for Brother, he's just... wrong.
- Anyway, we decide to track down Tobli, who we helped sell concert tickets for before, to try and get this Bad Idea (TM) off the ground. Back to spying on the residents of Spira.
- Turns out Tobli has some bad debts and is attempting to avoid the debt collectors. So we end up chasing the annoying little bird-man back and forth along the Moonflow, eventually arriving at the entrance to Guadosalam. Guess a debt owed by Tobli a lost cause.
- The pipsqueak with the beak agrees to help promote Yuna's concert and sends his Hypello clone army to handle the PR, with the Celcius helping to rain down clones across Spira. What did the citizens of Spira do to deserve the greatest plague Spira has ever seen? Surely not even Sin was this bad.
- Yuna has a short, but thoroughly confusing, practice session with Rikku which seems to amount to little more than flailing around randomly. And then it's off to the Thunder Plains for the big event!
- One, of course, has to wonder on the logic of choosing a location with seemingly constant rain and lightning for holding a concert. Nothing like lots of water and random bolts of electricity to fire up and event and wreak havoc on the equipment!
- But oh no! There's been a big monster crashing the party so the girls are asked to go chase it into its underground lair and exterminate it before it starts eating spectators. Geez, can't somebody else do it for once? Oh well, preconcert warm-up, I guess. Though I secretly wonder if Spira might not be better off if a few of the spectators did get eaten up...
- Anywho, after killing the big old lizard, it's time for some muzak! But wait, the crowd is getting antsy and the New Yevonites and the Youth Leaguers are starting to find excuses to start a big old riot.
- Good time for Yuna to start singing and shut all the ne'er-do-wells up. However, it seems that Lenne has grown tired of being in the background and decides to take centre stage, kind-of taking over Yuna and treating us to a panoramic view of Zanarkand in its prime, big ugly Vegnagun and the last moments of her and Shuyin in front of the firing squad. How romantic.
- Well, that seems to have gotten everyone's attention. The song ends and the Thunder Plains see some sunlight for a change and all seems well, for a brief spell.
- Concert's done, back on the bridge of the Celcius, Maechen's invited himself aboard and offered to tell us something about Lenne - for once something worth listening to, so Yuna agrees eagerly.
- Turns out, Lenne was a popular songstress in Zanarkand way back when, but also a pretty good summoner so she got shipped off to the front lines during the Machina War that Zanarkand lost horribly to Bevelle. However, her lover didn't take too kindly to that and concocted some plan to try to steal Vegnagun to prevent her from getting killed and all that. Oops, kinda back-fired, didn't it? Unlike Lenne, though, his name was lost to history. (It's Shuyin, ha! We know something the old man doesn't, take that!)
- Maechen's not the only one to have invited himself onto the airship, however, as LeBlanc and her groupies have intruded as well, though they've been unceremoniously dumped into the engine room.
- LeBlanc found a sphere with Nooj on it, back from the Crimson Squad days (shows him, Gippal and Baralai in a three-way standoff after the rest of the squad has gone and killed each other) and decides to give it to us since it's not really doing her any good.
- We, however, know Nooj is now on the Farplane with Gippal pursuing the Shuyin-posessed Baralai. LeBlanc seems to think this means a full frontal charge is needed to help them out/retrieve them.
- Back on the bridge, with things calming down on the surface, the time seems ripe to journey to the Farplane. Those big gaping pits we've been seeing seem like the entrances so we just have to pick one and jump in, all foolhardy like and all.
- Yuna takes a moment to wonder how the rest of Spira is doing and wonders if they should check up on various things. Rikku rightly comments that they might not have much time, though Yuna decides to just play things by ear. Yay for last minute side quests whilst ignoring the impending end of the world!
- So, we decide to poke around Spira for a bit like a bunch of busy-bodies with nothing better to do. The first round of being nosey takes us to Besaid, where Lulu and Waka finally have their kid (with Waka showing why he shouldn't be allowed to name anything, ever), to Kilika where Dona is reunited with her man-meat, Barthello (it's clear who wears the "pants" in that relationship; hint: it's not Barthello) and then to Zanarkand where the monkies now rule and Maechen gives his final rambling speech - the old-timer turns out to be an Unsent who forgot he was dead. Funny how that works out.
- Continuing on the busy-body tour, Yuna visits various places and reminisces about stuff from her pilgramage, mostly involving Tidus (in Luca, these happen to be moogle-induced hallucinations)
- We find Cid still sulking in a rather uninspired rectilinear dungeon beneath the Thunder Plains and take pity on him and invite him aboard the airship.
- On Mount Gagazet, Khimari finally decides to beat some sense into that annoying Garik bloke. The Ronso tribe then decides to hang out up in the mountains.
- We galavant around Spira chasing down rogue cactaurs so that the Cactuar Nation can protect itself from Big Ugly Thing that's about to attack it. Only problem is, once we manage to round up all the errant cactuars, Big Ugly Thing decides to attack the nearby Al Bhed camp. It's tempting to let the Al Bhed fend for themselves ('cause the Big Ugly Thing is really nasty), but after a long, grueling battle we manage to defeat the Big Ugly Thing and save the day, just in time for dinner.
- So, having finally decided we've had enough of poking our noses into Spira's problems, it's time to head to the farplane and wrap things up. After some silly posing we pick one of those holes (where the Fayth used to be) at random and jump in!
- Travelling down the path we now find ourselves on, we get to fight Shiva, the Magus Sisters and the uglier-than-Sin Anima. After Anima is defeated, one of those hooded Fayth kids appears and appologizes for not being strong enough to stop him ("him" being Shuyin, of course). The kid says they just got dragged down into the whole mess.
- It seems that this Shuyin is "just a shadow" - a sort of condensations of the real Shuyin's lingering negative emotions. For being just a shadow, he's making a bit of a nuisance of himself.
- After the Fayth kid disappears we are now in the Farplane Glen where we find LeBlanc, Ormi and Logos. Wait, how'd they'd get here? Letting us do all the hard work again, from the looks of it. LeBlanc and her goons are hanging back since Nooj left a message for her to not follow and LeBlanc seems to always do what Nooj says. Of course, that means that it's us who get to go through the big swirly vortex thing to sort the whole mess out. Fun times.
- Through the vortex we encounter strange paths with various shock devices and spooky organs that the Phantom of the Opera might be inclined to play. Eventually we find Gippal, who's taking a bit of a breather, and LeBlanc and her cronies catch up to us. Guess she's not too interested in sitting and waiting after all. We tell her to look after Gippal and push on.
- Next up, we get to play musical floating platforms. Unlike the musical chairs variety, the penalty for losing is not just shame, but death as well. Fortunately, we're the main characters so we make it to the top through a bit of trial and error.
- Then we come upon Nooj standing in front of Vegnagun who tells us his brilliant plan: shoot Baralai so that his body is useless to Shuyin, forcing him to posses Nooj, whereupon Nooj will self-destruct. Yuna doesn't seem too fond of this idea and tells Nooj the plan sucks (no beating around the bush on this one) and then goes on ranting about how she had to just sit and watch her aeons die at the end of the last game. It's been two years, get over it already.
- That's about when Gippal and the others catch up. Since Vegnagun's just a big, ugly machina, Yuna figures we can take him apart, piece by piece, so everyone splits up into three groups - Nooj and Gippal on the torso, LeBlanc and her goons on the feet and YuRiPa on the tail to commence dismemberment.
- The gullwings make short work of the tail but, sadly, everyone else turns out to be frightfully incompetent forcing us, once again, to do all the heavy lifting ourselves. Why doesn't Yuna just take over the world? She's clearly capable of it.
- Anywho, when the torso goes down, Baralia-Shuyin pulls out the last trick wherein it turns out that Vegnagun has a really big, um, gun in its mouth. Nothing we can't deal with, however, and Ultima makes short work of things.
- Beaten, Shuyin abandons Baralai's body and Yuna goes into Lenne mode to attempt to mollify him. The shadow, however, eventually sees through Yuna's ruse and boy, does he get mad. But it's a three-on-one fight which just isn't fair. Even though Shuyin can inflict some damage here and there, he's just no match for us at this point. Here, have an Ultima to the face.
- With Shuyin basically utterly defeated, Lenne's memories actually decide to make an appearance. She succeeds in finally talking him out of his 1000 year long tantrum and the too, at long last, get to fade away together. And then Yuna takes a long, slow stroll out of the Farplane.
- A little bit later... Nooj, Baralai and Gippal hold a feel-good make-up press conference in Luca. Yuna and the Gullwings skip out on the festivities (Yuna only leaving the message that she's going home) and the Celcius blasts off with Yuna, Rikku and Paine perched on the deck, enjoying the breeze.
Final Fantasy X-2 Summary
====================
It's time for some grrl power!
- Welcome to Luca! The old blitzball stadium has been revamped into a concert venue with flashing lights, roaring crowds and fancy pyrotechniques
- The music starts and the weird-ass drum machine kicks into motion and the central stage platform raises with Yuna in her summoner's garb, apparantly ready to sing
- Much to our surprise, Yuna does a strip tease for the crowd - well, not really, but she does magically change her clothes in front of a live audience into what we'll soon learn is the Songstress dresssphere (lots of s's there)
- Whilst the song is going on, Rikku (who's wearing a lot less than she used to) and some newcomer named Paine raise some ruckus back stage, knocking out guards, that sort of thing
- At the end of the song, Rikku and Paine confront Yuna on stage - apparently they didn't think much of her singing! Boooo!
- After Yuna's been slapped around for a bit, she runs off! Guess that means we've got to chase after her whilst fighting off goons.
- But wait! As we're chasing Yuna, that's when the *real* Yuna appears (cue Charlie's Angels pose), so it was just an imposter after all.
- The imposter calls out her henchmen - Solt and Peppor, I means, Logos and Ormi, but they're just typical henchmen fodderlings.
- The imposter, it seems, stole one of Yuna's Garment Grids which not only change your clothes, but they change your appearance as well. The imposter's true identity is Leblanc who has a.. um, "interesting" outfit, shall we say. Oh well, I mean, a lot of NPCs in FF X had odd and/or skimpy outfits (like Dona), so it's just continuing in the tradition, I suppose.
- After beating up Leblanc and getting the Garment thingamabobber back, the girls return to the Celcius, the airship of the Gullwings, a sphere hunting group.
- Yuna joined the Gullwings after finding a sphere containing a slightly disturbing recording of a man who looked vaguely like Tidus (he's going on about saving the summoner) and she wants to find out what's up with that. Paine is the mysterious one and Rikku is, well, Rikku.
- There's also some annoying Al Bhed along for the ride - Brother and some kid named Shinra who thinks it's still FF VII
- Our pilot soon identifies a location of another treasure sphere in some ruins on top of Mount Gagazet. After we learn to jump and climb, we get to jump and climb our way to the top before Leblanc and her cronies do to snag the sphere. It turns out to be rather unexciting (just a vista of Zanarkand), but at least it doubles as the Black Mage dresssphere.
- The Celcius comes and picks us up, and we get to walk all over brother (he's unconscious due to the unfortunate condition of being dumb) and then our pilot identifies some other stuff for us to go check out.
- First up: a trip to Yuna's old stomping ground in Besaid. Upon arrival, we learn that Lulu is pregnant and Waka's to blame (what do you know, I guess he can score after all, despite being not very good at blitzball)
- Waka is fretting about fatherhood, but then remembers something and decides to go wandering off, so Lulu asks us to find the big oaf.
- Following the islanders' vague clues about a cave and some numeric cyphers, we find said cave and Waka lurking at its entrance. He's having some second thoughts about whether or not he really wants whatever's inside.
- The girls, however, are sphere hunters so go in after the treasure anyway. The sphere has a big fiend lurking about it, of course, but after dispatching it, we obtain the White Mage dresssphere.
- On the way back to the village, Wakka talks about childhood abuse at the hands of his brother Chappu who claimed the cave had a sphere of their parents in it - it didn't, but that's life. For now, everything is happy again, more or less.
- Next, a quick stop to Luca where we get to see what Yuna was up to while Riku and Paine were crashing the concert - she was being lazy and handing out balloons while the other two were doing all the tough, dangerous stuff.
- Then we walk across the Mi'hen highroad, and nothing happens, but then we get to that Mushroom Rock place and see Logos and Ormi acting suspicious and decide to follow them.
- The two henchmen have supposedly head towards Youth League Headquarters, but we follow them into a ravine and find a cave where they're stealing spheres. They drop one so we pick it up.
- After the bumbling henchmen take off, one of Isaaru's former guardians shows up and shoos us off since they area is off limits, so we continue on to Youth League Headquarters.
- At YL HQ, we talk to Lucile, one of those Chocobo Knights, who tells us that their Leader is in meetings and is much too busy to talk to us, so we let Maechen ramble on at us about recent events.
- After that, it's back to the airship, but we take Clasko (who's been hanging out with the YL since he's still tagging along after Lucile) with us to release him from his misery where he finds... more misery. And we watch that sphere we picked up which contains voices that sound remarkably like Logos and Ormi surveying a scene with "no survivors" (dun, dun, dun)
- With that out of the way, we stop by Djose temple where various saps and ne'er-do-wells are waiting to be "interviewed" by Gippal, leader of the Machine Faction, so that he can send them to Bikkanel Desert to toil long hours for little pay. Yuna and co. decide to join in, but the jokes really on him 'cause we run off to do other things.
- Like a trip to the Moonflow where some annoying little man (boy? thing?) named Tobli has us escort his wayward Hypello assistant back with some supplies whilst being harried by bandits.
- Then a quick stop in Guadosalam reveals that the Guado have evacuated the place, most likely due to being ashamed to be associated with Seymour, and it is now overrun by squatters (ie, Sphere Hunters of questionable repute)
- Running through Macalania woods, we eventually find Seymour's old flunky, Trommel, who seems much more appologetic now and after some badgering, eventually hands over Paine's special dress sphere (Full Throttle) though why he had it is anyone's guess, really
- After some more poking about the area we run into O'aka who we then have to chase down - when he is finally cornered, we find out that he's in debt to the Al Bhed so we decide to shelter him on the airship and put him to work to pay off his debt.
- We decide to follow up on Gippal's desert job after all and spend a bit of time digging in the sand, but then get distracted due to having short attention spans and run off elsewhere.
- The elsewhere is Bevelle for a brief chat with Praetor Baralai of New Yevon. Given circumstances from the last game, we still don't trust them and decide we'd rather go to the Calm Lands and play some carnaval games for a bit.
- The last stop on our merry tour before going and doing what we're actually supposed to be doing is to visit the Ronso on Mount Gagazet where we get to play cousellor. Does Yuna and co. actually have a license for that?
- After all that, to Zanarkand! Now a tourist trap that's infested with monkeys and, of course, tourists. And it is, of course, all Cid's fault. Way to go Cid. The girl's give him a bit of a stern talking to. Ex-summoner Isaaru is in on the schtick as well, be he doesn't fool our intrepid group. The sphere that was here, however, turns out to be only half a sphere.
- Next, there's news of an "awesome" sphere in Kilika, so we zoom there on the Celcius. The town's been rebuilt (but kind of haphazardly - if that's any indication of its original state, perhaps Sin did everyone a favour when he levelled the place).
- Yuna and Rikku get giggly about the "awesome" sphere, but Paine's not having any of that. As the girls ransack the town of its treasures, the encounter Dona and her manmeat Barthello who've just had a spat (they've picked opposing sides to support, it seems) and then proceed out into the woods.
- At the entrance to the woods, that guy Nooj is giving a speach to the assembled Youth League members about truth, history, blah, blah, blah. All we want is that sphere so stop talking already!
- Once Nooj is done, we run through the woods around the New Yevon guards and up to the temple. That's where we dispose of some New Yevonite's pet machina and take the sphere by force and run off back to the airship.
- The sphere turns out to just have a bit of video on it - some guy who looks vaguely like Tidus muttering about saving Lenne in front of some big spooky machina thing.
- Anyway, the Gullwings then have some second thoughts about this heist they just pulled off and decide to return to sphere. Brother, whose spine seems to be made of jelly, insists that Yuna dance for them (for morale or something) 'cause he's just pervy like that.
- So after pushing around some annoying hitchhikers, Yuna obliges Brother and puts on a bit of a song and dance for the crew. She still seems to be worked up about that sphere and bursts out "Who the heck is Lenne!?" which makes everyone else stare at her thinking "OMG, crazy girl over there"
- Picking up with the crazy theme, Yuna then has a dream in which she and Tidus are running down a long hall and end up in front of that big machina thing from the sphere, just in time for the firing squad to show up. The firing squad does what all firing squads do and, since they aim better than the average storm trooper, they actually hit their marks. Yuna and Tidus fall over dead, which is when Yuna happens to wake up.
- Putting the dream aside, it is now time to return the sphere to somebody - but who? Since we're still a bit miffed about the whole Yevon thing from the last game, I just can't bring myself to side with New Yevon and decide to give the sphere to the Youth League, despite having sided with them the last time I played.
- At Youth League HQ we give the sphere to Nooj who explains that the machina is called Vegnagun, an ancient weapon basically, and that New Yevon thinks they can control it which the Youth League believes to be impossible and will aim to stop them no matter what.
- Just as Nooj finishes up his history lesson, our pilot runs in saying that there's been a break-in aboard the airship. Turns out LeBlanc's gang paid a visit (and left a very obvious calling card) and stole that half-sphere we found in Zanarkand. It's like they're begging us to come beat them up and take it back.
- Anyway, all that means is that we now get to galavant around Spira trying to find some LeBlanc syndicate uniforms to steal so we can sneak into their HQ. Wouldn't it be faster to just go in guns blazing?
- In our wanderings, we run into Ormi, Logos and some randoom goon-type lurking about on the road near Djose Temple so we, uh, beat 'em up and steal their clothes. You know, good wholesome fun.
- Took some time to drop Clasko off in the calm lands to he can become a Chocobo pimp daddy - well, after we cleaned up the old monster arena for him (I swear, the boy just can't do anything by himself) and then decided to head off to Mount Gagazet.
- Running up Mount Gagazet, we come across a couple of LeBlanc's goons lounging about in a hot spring. After scaring them
off, we nab one of their uniforms that they leave behind after which we do the only logical thing: lounge about in the
hot springs ourselves with Rikku being... a tad annoying.
- On the way back, the goons (plus Ormi) think they're going to take the uniform back, but really they're not.
- After that, we stop by Bikanel dessert where we get sent over to the oasis to investigate some strange characters which,
naturally, turn out to be yet more of LeBlanc's goons. So we teach them a lesson by stealing their clothes.
- Now with three uniforms we are ready to infiltrate Chataeu LeBlanc in Guadosalam. The guards on duty turn out to be
not too bright, or at least they don't see through our disguise, so we waltz right in.
- Inside, LeBlanc comes out of a meeting with Nooj (seems to have been exchanging info on Vegnagun) after which Logos and
Ormi instruct us to visit her chamber in order to relieave her stress... uh, oh, this seems like more than we signed up for!
- Turns out LeBlanc just wants a message (whew!), though she makes some funny noises in the process. It turns out she has
a bit of a crush on Nooj and became a sphere hunter to basically do his dirty work for him. After revealing all this to us
she drifts off to sleep so Logos and Ormi send us back downstairs to do some boring maintenance stuff.
- But it turns out the maintenance stuff gets us into some secret passages beneath the Cheateau. We take the opportunity to ransack Ormi and Logos' rooms, though they do catch us in the act, but they don't put up much of a fight.
- Then we move on to LeBlanc's room and find out they had the other half of the broken sphere that they stole from the airship. Naturally, this is when LeBlanc and her flunkies try to stop us, but again, they're not all that tough.
- After some veiled threats, we go ahead and watch the contents of the now not broken sphere. Why, look, it's that scary Vegnagun thing. LeBlanc admits she's been tracking down info on Vegnagun for Nooj so that the Youth League can destroy it, which means we're really on the same side as her. Ah nuts.
- Vegnagun is apparantly lurking underneath Bevelle, so off we go! After plowing through some guards, we enter the temple and descend to the underground. There's some weird machina stuff and we eventually get past a security system and explore some odd tunnels until we encounter Praetor Baralai
- Baralai says that Vegnagun must not be touched - it's impossible to destroy so its best to leave it be. He attempts to stop us from moving on, but it's no use as he's no match for us.
- Pushing forward, we come to Vegnagun's supposed resting place only to find that it's not there. Instead we're greated by an angry looking Bahamut. What? I'm pretty sure all these aeons were supposed to have disappeared at the end of the last game...
- Well, we beat Bahamut, but we don't have any time to contemplate the apparent contradiction as we get a call from the airship that there's trouble afoot! It appears that there are fiends pouring out of temples all over the place (that can't be a good sign), so the Gullwings decide to temporarily put their sphere hunting on hold while they help to sort all this out - for a small price, of course. Ah, the spirit of entreprenuership.
- So we basically go around being nosy for a bit - the Youth League have barricaded themselves inside their HQ and the Machine Faction claims to have everything under control at Djose Temple. Oh well, guess we'll just go around and loot stuff for a bit.
- In our wanderings we encounter the Cactaur Nation (bunch of freaks), rescue some hapless tourists and defeat dark-Yojimbo, then wander up Mt. Gagazet and put that Garik character in his place.
- Finally get around to wandering over to Besaid to deal with that fiends coming from the temple thing. Turns out that Beclem guy wants burn the whole temple down, but neither Wakka nor Yuna (who's got some deep emotions scars, er, attachments to the place) are having any of that. So Yuna and company go in to investigate and end up fighting dark-Valefor, Yuna's first aeon. With the rogue aeon out of the way the problem seems to be solved - for now, at least.
- Then it's over to Kilika which is having a similar problem. Dona agrees to help sneak past the guards blocking the entrance to the forest by "distracting" them. Though by that, it seems she just means she's going to talk to one of them. How pedestrian. Guards sure are easy to distract these days.
- Once past the guards, the forest is burning in places and the are various barricades so the girls run through the treetops to get to the temple. Inside, dark-Ifrit's having a wee tantrum so we put him on ice and everything turns back to some semblance of normality, for the time being, anyway.
- Back on the airship we get a distress call from Gippal at Djose temple. Guess things turned out to be more than they could handle after all. How's 'dem apples, eh?
- We decide to momentarily leave the machine faction high and dry and go spelunking under Bevelle again, back to where Vegnagun had previously been lurking. In the process, we notice Gippal lurking about and when we arrive at Vegnagun's currently vacant spot, we find Baralai and Nooj lurking about.
- The three have a bit of a reunion, seems they know each other. Apparantly, Vegnagun can sense hostility and fled to preserve itself. The discussion gets a bit tense with accusations flying and guns being pointed. Something, which had been posessing Nooj decides Baralai would make a better host.
- Paine tries to intervene to stop the three from killing each other (seems she knows them too), though they all take off into some swirly thing and the girls go back to the airship, confused. How odd.
- Well, there's still the temple of Djose to deal with. By know we really know what to expect, rogue rampaging aeon and all that. This time it's dark-mecha-Ixion. After the fight, we look at the big hole in the ground (which was also at the other temples) and wonder where it goes. Then, mecha-Ixion explodes, sending Yuna plummetting to her doom!
- Or not, as Yuna appears to end up on what one supposes is the farplane. She follows some whistling/ghost thing with no apparent thought of self-preservation, and ends up finding the Tidus-look-a-like, Shuyin. They have a tender-ish moment in which Shuyin proclaims that the world just hasn't changed and that everything would be better off if he just blew everything up. Well, at least he's got goals. He also seems to regret being unable to protect Lenne (there's that name again) whom he seems to be mistaking Yuna for.
- It turns out the Shuyin apparition is the Baralia possessed version, and things bode ill for Yuna, but then Nooj and Gippal turn up at a convenient moment. They each give a sphere (containing some background info on the Crimson Squad) to Yuna before wandering off in pursuit of Baralai again, leaving Yuna to deal with tings "top side". Great. Thanks guys.
- Yuna manages to make it back to the airship in one piece. She goes up onto the deck to have a chat with Paine about the Crimson Squad - it was supposed to be an elite fighting force trained by Yevon (to take down Sin, it seems), only it got destroyed and even Paine doesn't really know what happened.
- Back on the bridge, Shinra's set up his spy-cams all over Spira so we now get to play peeping-Tom and see what everyone's up to.
- After snooping around for a bit, the crew cooks up the half-baked idea to have Yuna do a big concert for everyone, promote unity and all that, ya know? And of course Yuna agrees. Bunch of hippies. Except for Brother, he's just... wrong.
- Anyway, we decide to track down Tobli, who we helped sell concert tickets for before, to try and get this Bad Idea (TM) off the ground. Back to spying on the residents of Spira.
- Turns out Tobli has some bad debts and is attempting to avoid the debt collectors. So we end up chasing the annoying little bird-man back and forth along the Moonflow, eventually arriving at the entrance to Guadosalam. Guess a debt owed by Tobli a lost cause.
- The pipsqueak with the beak agrees to help promote Yuna's concert and sends his Hypello clone army to handle the PR, with the Celcius helping to rain down clones across Spira. What did the citizens of Spira do to deserve the greatest plague Spira has ever seen? Surely not even Sin was this bad.
- Yuna has a short, but thoroughly confusing, practice session with Rikku which seems to amount to little more than flailing around randomly. And then it's off to the Thunder Plains for the big event!
- One, of course, has to wonder on the logic of choosing a location with seemingly constant rain and lightning for holding a concert. Nothing like lots of water and random bolts of electricity to fire up and event and wreak havoc on the equipment!
- But oh no! There's been a big monster crashing the party so the girls are asked to go chase it into its underground lair and exterminate it before it starts eating spectators. Geez, can't somebody else do it for once? Oh well, preconcert warm-up, I guess. Though I secretly wonder if Spira might not be better off if a few of the spectators did get eaten up...
- Anywho, after killing the big old lizard, it's time for some muzak! But wait, the crowd is getting antsy and the New Yevonites and the Youth Leaguers are starting to find excuses to start a big old riot.
- Good time for Yuna to start singing and shut all the ne'er-do-wells up. However, it seems that Lenne has grown tired of being in the background and decides to take centre stage, kind-of taking over Yuna and treating us to a panoramic view of Zanarkand in its prime, big ugly Vegnagun and the last moments of her and Shuyin in front of the firing squad. How romantic.
- Well, that seems to have gotten everyone's attention. The song ends and the Thunder Plains see some sunlight for a change and all seems well, for a brief spell.
- Concert's done, back on the bridge of the Celcius, Maechen's invited himself aboard and offered to tell us something about Lenne - for once something worth listening to, so Yuna agrees eagerly.
- Turns out, Lenne was a popular songstress in Zanarkand way back when, but also a pretty good summoner so she got shipped off to the front lines during the Machina War that Zanarkand lost horribly to Bevelle. However, her lover didn't take too kindly to that and concocted some plan to try to steal Vegnagun to prevent her from getting killed and all that. Oops, kinda back-fired, didn't it? Unlike Lenne, though, his name was lost to history. (It's Shuyin, ha! We know something the old man doesn't, take that!)
- Maechen's not the only one to have invited himself onto the airship, however, as LeBlanc and her groupies have intruded as well, though they've been unceremoniously dumped into the engine room.
- LeBlanc found a sphere with Nooj on it, back from the Crimson Squad days (shows him, Gippal and Baralai in a three-way standoff after the rest of the squad has gone and killed each other) and decides to give it to us since it's not really doing her any good.
- We, however, know Nooj is now on the Farplane with Gippal pursuing the Shuyin-posessed Baralai. LeBlanc seems to think this means a full frontal charge is needed to help them out/retrieve them.
- Back on the bridge, with things calming down on the surface, the time seems ripe to journey to the Farplane. Those big gaping pits we've been seeing seem like the entrances so we just have to pick one and jump in, all foolhardy like and all.
- Yuna takes a moment to wonder how the rest of Spira is doing and wonders if they should check up on various things. Rikku rightly comments that they might not have much time, though Yuna decides to just play things by ear. Yay for last minute side quests whilst ignoring the impending end of the world!
- So, we decide to poke around Spira for a bit like a bunch of busy-bodies with nothing better to do. The first round of being nosey takes us to Besaid, where Lulu and Waka finally have their kid (with Waka showing why he shouldn't be allowed to name anything, ever), to Kilika where Dona is reunited with her man-meat, Barthello (it's clear who wears the "pants" in that relationship; hint: it's not Barthello) and then to Zanarkand where the monkies now rule and Maechen gives his final rambling speech - the old-timer turns out to be an Unsent who forgot he was dead. Funny how that works out.
- Continuing on the busy-body tour, Yuna visits various places and reminisces about stuff from her pilgramage, mostly involving Tidus (in Luca, these happen to be moogle-induced hallucinations)
- We find Cid still sulking in a rather uninspired rectilinear dungeon beneath the Thunder Plains and take pity on him and invite him aboard the airship.
- On Mount Gagazet, Khimari finally decides to beat some sense into that annoying Garik bloke. The Ronso tribe then decides to hang out up in the mountains.
- We galavant around Spira chasing down rogue cactaurs so that the Cactuar Nation can protect itself from Big Ugly Thing that's about to attack it. Only problem is, once we manage to round up all the errant cactuars, Big Ugly Thing decides to attack the nearby Al Bhed camp. It's tempting to let the Al Bhed fend for themselves ('cause the Big Ugly Thing is really nasty), but after a long, grueling battle we manage to defeat the Big Ugly Thing and save the day, just in time for dinner.
- So, having finally decided we've had enough of poking our noses into Spira's problems, it's time to head to the farplane and wrap things up. After some silly posing we pick one of those holes (where the Fayth used to be) at random and jump in!
- Travelling down the path we now find ourselves on, we get to fight Shiva, the Magus Sisters and the uglier-than-Sin Anima. After Anima is defeated, one of those hooded Fayth kids appears and appologizes for not being strong enough to stop him ("him" being Shuyin, of course). The kid says they just got dragged down into the whole mess.
- It seems that this Shuyin is "just a shadow" - a sort of condensations of the real Shuyin's lingering negative emotions. For being just a shadow, he's making a bit of a nuisance of himself.
- After the Fayth kid disappears we are now in the Farplane Glen where we find LeBlanc, Ormi and Logos. Wait, how'd they'd get here? Letting us do all the hard work again, from the looks of it. LeBlanc and her goons are hanging back since Nooj left a message for her to not follow and LeBlanc seems to always do what Nooj says. Of course, that means that it's us who get to go through the big swirly vortex thing to sort the whole mess out. Fun times.
- Through the vortex we encounter strange paths with various shock devices and spooky organs that the Phantom of the Opera might be inclined to play. Eventually we find Gippal, who's taking a bit of a breather, and LeBlanc and her cronies catch up to us. Guess she's not too interested in sitting and waiting after all. We tell her to look after Gippal and push on.
- Next up, we get to play musical floating platforms. Unlike the musical chairs variety, the penalty for losing is not just shame, but death as well. Fortunately, we're the main characters so we make it to the top through a bit of trial and error.
- Then we come upon Nooj standing in front of Vegnagun who tells us his brilliant plan: shoot Baralai so that his body is useless to Shuyin, forcing him to posses Nooj, whereupon Nooj will self-destruct. Yuna doesn't seem too fond of this idea and tells Nooj the plan sucks (no beating around the bush on this one) and then goes on ranting about how she had to just sit and watch her aeons die at the end of the last game. It's been two years, get over it already.
- That's about when Gippal and the others catch up. Since Vegnagun's just a big, ugly machina, Yuna figures we can take him apart, piece by piece, so everyone splits up into three groups - Nooj and Gippal on the torso, LeBlanc and her goons on the feet and YuRiPa on the tail to commence dismemberment.
- The gullwings make short work of the tail but, sadly, everyone else turns out to be frightfully incompetent forcing us, once again, to do all the heavy lifting ourselves. Why doesn't Yuna just take over the world? She's clearly capable of it.
- Anywho, when the torso goes down, Baralia-Shuyin pulls out the last trick wherein it turns out that Vegnagun has a really big, um, gun in its mouth. Nothing we can't deal with, however, and Ultima makes short work of things.
- Beaten, Shuyin abandons Baralai's body and Yuna goes into Lenne mode to attempt to mollify him. The shadow, however, eventually sees through Yuna's ruse and boy, does he get mad. But it's a three-on-one fight which just isn't fair. Even though Shuyin can inflict some damage here and there, he's just no match for us at this point. Here, have an Ultima to the face.
- With Shuyin basically utterly defeated, Lenne's memories actually decide to make an appearance. She succeeds in finally talking him out of his 1000 year long tantrum and the too, at long last, get to fade away together. And then Yuna takes a long, slow stroll out of the Farplane.
- A little bit later... Nooj, Baralai and Gippal hold a feel-good make-up press conference in Luca. Yuna and the Gullwings skip out on the festivities (Yuna only leaving the message that she's going home) and the Celcius blasts off with Yuna, Rikku and Paine perched on the deck, enjoying the breeze.
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