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The Al Bhed Potions are a literal game changer. I'm not sure if you mentioned it, but you can't multi-target spells in this game. Spells either hit one target or everything. That limits healing your party to Mega Potions, Megaelixers Al Bhed Potions, the Pray special (which heals jack poo poo), and a few select Mixes. And while none of the above are buyable, the enemies in this location drop Al Bhed Potions by the bucketful. There's a lot more attacks that target all your characters and lot of status causing attacks also cause damage, so they're a great way to take care of that.
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Apr 19, 2021 05:56
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The only real complication is that they have to be used via the Use command from Rikku's slice of the sphere grid, instead of the normal Item command. (Which is a good reason to have sent Kimahri that way!) They're a good reason to keep an Alchemy weapon handy, too. Quantum Toast fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Apr 19, 2021 |
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Apr 19, 2021 09:49
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Falconier111 posted:
Feel like something got pretty mangled here. FFX is one of those fascinating examples of a game that got a lot of extremely mechanical propositions extremely right but was brutally let down by the parts of the game outside the battle system. Oh yes, it's the unskippable cutscenes complaint. This is a game that wants you to fail and retry and learn an encounter and has the design chops to make it's battle-puzzles work as things you can satisfyingly solve, and if it were only a matter of the bits between the battle transition and the victory theme it would be a smash hit, but alas; they couldn't escape the gravity of the game's save system and cutscenes, and now the one thing everybody remembers about the game is how poo poo it was to lose to certain bosses that shall go unnamed for now but which definitely are a plurality. Similarly, the Sphere Grid is a decent idea primarily let down by the foibles of its practical operation. It's a fun visual representation of an otherwise aggressively ordinary progression system. It can eventually be taken to some fun places that kind of hazily align with other Final Fantasy job system paradigms where everybody can be crossclassing a little, but (expert grid aside) it takes far too long to open up and doesn't open up enough until you hit the literal actual endgame, and there rapidly comes a point where there just isn't anywhere interesting to take the system other than its logical and obscene conclusion, the point everything has always been trending towards, and there's not even anything interesting enough about that point to justify the effort it takes to get there.
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Apr 19, 2021 13:06
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Fedule posted:Feel like something got pretty mangled here. Plus the lovely minigames. Who thought Lightning dodging was fun?
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Apr 19, 2021 17:59
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Violet_Sky posted:Plus the lovely minigames. Who thought Lightning dodging was fun? The thing that gets me is the sheer leaps in difficulty between them. Most of the minigames that unlock Sigils are pretty straightforward or can be brute forced if you level up enough but then Lightning Dodging and [the other horrid minigame from later on] represent hours upon hours of hell and fighting against the RNG.
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Apr 19, 2021 18:24
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Violet_Sky posted:Plus the lovely minigames. Who thought Lightning dodging was fun? As much as everyone complains about the lightning dodging (including myself, make it non-consecutive and it is almost reasonable), at least it could sort of be gamed a bit with that map spot in the Thunder Plains that forces a lightning strike. For me getting 0:00 in Chocobo Racing was the most rage inducing. I've only accomplished it once and it only takes a few failures to feel like way too much work in subsequent playthroughs.
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Apr 19, 2021 18:24
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Geshtal posted:As much as everyone complains about the lightning dodging (including myself, make it non-consecutive and it is almost reasonable), at least it could sort of be gamed a bit with that map spot in the Thunder Plains that forces a lightning strike. For me getting 0:00 in Chocobo Racing was the most rage inducing. I've only accomplished it once and it only takes a few failures to feel like way too much work in subsequent playthroughs. no no. it's getting UNDER 0:00. friend of mine nearly threw a controller at the screen when she got exactly 0:00
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Apr 19, 2021 18:29
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silvergoose posted:no no. it's getting UNDER 0:00. friend of mine nearly threw a controller at the screen when she got exactly 0:00 Well maybe she ended up with 0:001 and the display just didn't show anything smaller.
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Apr 19, 2021 21:59
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cant cook creole bream posted:Well maybe she ended up with 0:001 and the display just didn't show anything smaller. I mean, I guess? Same thing from an observability standpoint.
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Apr 19, 2021 22:41
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Unskippable cutscenes are a drag, but IIRC they were pretty much the norm at the time. I've played a handful of JRPGs of the era, and none of them let you skip movies. Granted it was only a handful. I definitely did my share of dying to some later bosses, and yeah watching the same cutscene for the 6th time was a drag, but I just kind of resigned myself to it. As far as minigames go, that was probably a carryover from previous FF games. I remember 7 in particular being full of annoying one-off activities. They generally weren't optional, but neither were they particularly difficult or frustrating. FFX made them optional, but also really irritating, so it probably worked out to be a step backwards. Not sure if they kept the minigame tradition going afterwards, I dabbled for a few hours with XII and haven't played an FF game since. It'd be interesting to know what lessons, if any, they took from the reception to lightning dodging.
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Apr 19, 2021 22:53
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EggsAisle posted:Unskippable cutscenes are a drag, but IIRC they were pretty much the norm at the time. I've played a handful of JRPGs of the era, and none of them let you skip movies. Granted it was only a handful. I definitely did my share of dying to some later bosses, and yeah watching the same cutscene for the 6th time was a drag, but I just kind of resigned myself to it. The one thing that's really unforgivable is that when they did the remaster they didn't program in skippable cutscenes.
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Apr 19, 2021 22:58
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vyelkin posted:The one thing that's really unforgivable is that when they did the remaster they didn't program in skippable cutscenes. This sucks but I know just enough about video games and software to sympathise. Skipping an in-engine cutscene is a very deceptively complicated proposition and very difficult to reverse-engineer into a production that did not originally support it.
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Apr 19, 2021 23:10
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vyelkin posted:The one thing that's really unforgivable is that when they did the remaster they didn't program in skippable cutscenes. I don't think they could have if they wanted - a lot of old games can't skip cutscenes (especially in-engine ones) because the game was programmed under the assumption those scenes would always happen and if they were skipped then important flags wouldn't get set and model positioning wouldn't be updated, which could crash the game or get the player stuck. The solution would be to reprogram those sections, but there's so many in this game that removing them would likely involve enough dev time that it wouldn't be worth the effort over just remaking things from the ground up. And they aren't willing to put that much money/effort into a budget title. EFB ^^^
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Apr 19, 2021 23:15
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Is Seymour actually perma-dead, or is he gonna be a reoccurring boss fight in the future?
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Apr 20, 2021 00:09
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For adding cutscene skips in rereleases, remember also that this is the game where due to the way it was programmed, the English voice lines had to be the exact same length as the Japanese ones or the game would crash.
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Apr 20, 2021 00:33
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Procrastine posted:For adding cutscene skips in rereleases, remember also that this is the game where due to the way it was programmed, the English voice lines had to be the exact same length as the Japanese ones or the game would crash. This one I always kinda question because they didn't change the lip flaps, sure, so the sound files have to stay the same length. But surely they can be allowed to go under time and just add dead air to the end of the voice line?
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Apr 20, 2021 00:51
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bewilderment posted:This one I always kinda question because they didn't change the lip flaps, sure, so the sound files have to stay the same length. But surely they can be allowed to go under time and just add dead air to the end of the voice line? Probably, but it doesn't help with anything where the natural English line would be longer than the original
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Apr 20, 2021 01:01
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Procrastine posted:Probably, but it doesn't help with anything where the natural English line would be longer than the original See: Yes and Hai
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Apr 20, 2021 01:33
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Is Seymour actually perma-dead, or is he gonna be a reoccurring boss fight in the future? Auron's line before his body gets dragged away is foreshadowing
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Apr 20, 2021 03:08
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Is Seymour actually perma-dead, or is he gonna be a reoccurring boss fight in the future? Seymour was not sent by Yuna. Make of that what you will.
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Apr 20, 2021 03:20
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Fedule posted:Feel like something got pretty mangled here. Fixed, thanks. I have yet to figure out how the devs managed to hit home runs 50% of the time and nail themselves in the face for the rest. It’s like whoever did the design was constantly breaking up with whoever did the story and made decisions based on whether they’d hosed in the last three days. bewilderment posted:This one I always kinda question because they didn't change the lip flaps, sure, so the sound files have to stay the same length. But surely they can be allowed to go under time and just add dead air to the end of the voice line? They resort to this in the last hours of the game. It sucks. It’s a lot more noticeable than you’d think. Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Is Seymour actually perma-dead, or is he gonna be a reoccurring boss fight in the future? I bet you thought I’d spoil that here, didn’t you.
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Apr 20, 2021 04:31
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Falconier111 posted:I have yet to figure out how the devs managed to hit home runs 50% of the time and nail themselves in the face for the rest. It’s like whoever did the design was constantly breaking up with whoever did the story and made decisions based on whether they’d hosed in the last three days. Yeah, FFX is a unique game to me in that I find its weaknesses and strengths equally interesting, and I wish there was more in-depth material on its development. I've read most of the English-language stuff out there, but I still wonder. Really would have liked to have been the metaphorical fly on the wall during their design meetings. Or the storyboard and editorial committees or equivalent.
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Apr 20, 2021 05:21
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I'll have words on the final boss once we get there.
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Apr 20, 2021 17:41
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Update 36: Home Near Here  Final Fantasy X HD Remaster OST 58. Scorching Desert Back to wandering.  For some reason, Rikku spends this part of the game wandering around the desert next to you. Maybe it’s because she has lines for when you run into interesting things, because there’s is a lot out here for her to talk about. Previous areas in the game have had plenty for us to explore, but until now they’ve always been linear paths with the occasional branch into linear dead ends. Bikanel is large and sprawling enough to have entire subsections with tons of hidden treasures and traps.  Appropriately enough for the Al Bhed homeland, the desert has a bunch of different signs in Al Bhed scattered around it; some of them have marginally useful information on them, especially now that we have about enough Primers to start piecing together sentences. Maybe half of the signs try to vaguely guide you towards Home; the other half mark dangerous areas and tell you to go somewhere else. I ignore both of them.  And I get this in return. Most of the monsters here are tolerable; the new area difficulty spike’s a lot less severe than it usually is, probably because there’s nowhere to buy items. The Sand Worm here, as intimidating as it looks, is really no exception. It’s a big bag of hit points, definitely, but it isn’t worth writing home about. Well, except for one attack.    Yes, it just ate Tidus. It removes any character it sucks up from the fight, preventing you from switching in anybody in their place. The first time this happens it will probably scare the poo poo out of you, because even overleveled characters can’t chew through its hit points fast enough to stop it from using Swallow at least once, and as far as you can tell it just instakilled one of your party members. Fortunately, that isn’t the case.    After a few turns it spits the character back out, none the worse for wear. They don’t even take damage while they’re inside it. It’s just a delaying tactic that makes fighting these helpless-but-durable bastards an even longer and more frustrating experience. An experience designed to teach you something.  Auron learns new Overdrives every time he picks up a Jecht Sphere. His second one only hits one target, and since the sequence after you get it is so boss-heavy, you can be forgiven for thinking it’s just another powerful single-target attack. But if you use it against somebody who isn’t a boss?   Play ball! It’s an instant kill that launches the target up over the horizon. What’s that? You want to see it in motion? /Update%2075/30-0zLC2oa.gif) This gif from TDI’s LP has you covered. Shooting Star is just the best  .  Sandragoras are Bikanel’s real regional miniboss. Instead of random encounters, you find them in various pits scattered around the desert; most have treasure chests next to them, but one blocks the way out of the area, forcing you to fight your way past it. And that sucks, because while Sandragoras have great Steal items (I farmed Remedies off the one in the screenshot), their basic attack Confuses a character. While Confused characters wake up the first time something attacks them, they always use melee attacks on a random target, including allies and themselves – and since Sandragoras move about as fast as any of your characters, that means you have to spend somebody’s turn lifting someone’s Confusion every turn or risk your entire party turning on itself. Normally, Yuna (or anybody you’ve sent down her path) can remove Confused with a simple spell. But Yuna isn’t here, and your only alternatives are rare and expensive curing items. I ate through way more Remedies than I’d like to admit on one loving Sandragora  .Just past it…   Guys! Guys! We’re… we’re…59-Crisis-FFX OST    Fiends soar and swarm around the edges of the structure, held off by increasingly sporadic gunfire. Screaming can be heard. Its source is unclear.  What? Yuna’s down there? Of all the places… Let’s go!  The remaining Al Bhed in the courtyard below put up a fight…  … But they’re outnumbered.   The last man standing catches something in the stomach and crumples.    He breathes his last and settles. Keyakku… A war? Between Yevon and the Al Bhed? Hu.      The party charges off after him. Rikku and Tidus stay behind.   …Update 3: Fa Gemm Ed? posted:
… He was one of your crew, wasn’t he? *Sniff* S-so who was that bald guy? Cid.  Then let’s go help him! Yeah. We have to save Yunie. Not just Yuna. Right? Right!    Every random encounter in here pits you against a Guado handler and 2 to 3 powerful fiends. Each fight is extremely dangerous and measures up to any previous area’s random encounter miniboss (and some of these fights reintroduce those minibosses); staying alive involves threading the needle between encounters, at least until you find a Save Sphere.  Why? Why would they do this? Causing suffering like this… How? Rikku! <We are the last! Get to the hangar! I will level Home!> Oh. Oh no. Translation? We have to get underground, now! Yunie’s there! C’mon! Even by Final Fantasy X standards, Home is lavishly realized; its environment is almost beautiful in its devastation between the broken machinery, bullet-riddled walls, and scattered bodies. The combat is challenging, the loot is rewarding, and the story is poignant. I utterly despise it. I’ll get more into why later, but for now let’s start with how the game encourages you to take your time and explore the area during one of the most emotionally tense sequences in the game.  There are few better places in FFX to powerlevel than Home. After you find the first Save Sphere in the area a couple encounters away from the entrance, you can take your time running in circles and farming random encounters before dashing back to heal – and every fight here dispenses AP in proportion to its difficulty. But what about Yuna, you ask? Won’t she be left in the dust if you spend time grinding here? The game replies with a hearty “yeah pretty much”.  Home has two hidden rooms, both of which hide some extremely rare goodies…  … After you defeat the triggered encounter, of course. The first one is pretty obvious; just go down a long hallway off to the side. The second, though? When the game boots you out of that last cutscene, you can see a door on the mini map right behind where it spawns you – and blocks access to it with an invisible wall. To go through it, you have to go far enough forward for the camera to flip to a new angle, then go back past where the invisible wall used to be.  The game won’t just let you open these chests, oh no. Each of them demands you solve some word puzzles written out in Al Bhed. Let’s go down the list:
 Rikku to Kenshiro conversion process, part one: completed. Eventually we pass through a door onto a catwalk.  … This place’s done for.He says it quietly, sadly. … The Al Bhed didn’t start out as one people, you know? All the machina cities had their own Al Bhed, and when Sin started destroying them, the families all slipped out. They formed clans. My family… We’re from the Besaid Clan, ‘cause we came from the city that used to be there. We’re the first! All the other cities based their templates on us. ‘Course, all the other clans say that too…… We used to fight each other all the time, even more than we fought the Yevonites. Sometimes, some Yevonites would get it into their heads that we needed punishment or something and hunt a clan down. They’d kill them. They’d kill all of them. Most Yevonites didn’t do that! But we just kept losing people. If we put our minds to it and worked together, then we could make a new home. We were safe! Everyone worked hard, we had our Home, and… But now… Why did things have to turn out this way? Rikku… I’m so, so sorry.
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Apr 21, 2021 03:43
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Hey, that hurts!
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My only issue with Home is the fact that there's any side stuff here at all. If it was just a gauntlet interspersed with these small, intense scenes, it'd work so much better. And it'd add to the intensity if you never had control on the map because it'd be the first time there's not a readily available Save Sphere.
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Apr 21, 2021 04:56
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I'M ANNOYING, HUH?
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Apr 21, 2021 07:35
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So, uh. Three days in and I’m barely 500 words into the next update. I’m burning out. Hardcore. Right before an update that has to have at least some narrative heft, too. So, I’m probably going to have to put this on hiatus until I can come back and actually do it justice. I know we’re on a cliffhanger right now, but it would just get worse the longer I wait. The LP is hardly abandoned, but it’s probably gonna be at least a few weeks before I can start it up again. Probably more Instead of just not writing, I’ll do another LP and come back when it's done. I'm thinking... 
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Apr 23, 2021 |
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Apr 23, 2021 15:00
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No worries, you gotta take care of yourself first.
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Apr 23, 2021 15:39
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You do you, dude(tte). We'll be here when you feel better. Creativity can be draining sometimes and you need to take a step back.
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Apr 23, 2021 17:16
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Take care of yourself.
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Apr 23, 2021 17:42
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Do what's good for you.
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Apr 24, 2021 01:15
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This is a very different game from Final Fantasy X.
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Apr 24, 2021 05:02
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