as i mentioned in my first blog post i'm trying to play a video game every month and write about it here, i've got quite a vast backlog (who doesn't) and this is a way of getting through some of the stuff i've really been meaning to look into, rather than just playing the same games over and over.
that said, this post is about a game i have played over and over, though never exactly in this way. back before i got long covid i used to be a speedrunner on twitch. i was never very good but i learnt this game and another by the same director (motomu toriyama) - final fantasy xiii. ffxiii was a brutal speedrun because you are able to skip every single cutscene along the way, which for a speedrunner means the game has no breaks, even stopping to drink a glass of water is tricky, you're inputting something or other for at least 4 hours and 24 minutes at the time of writing. i was a very poor speedrunner so ffxiii took me over 6 hours to complete, and it was a guarenteed migraine every time (maybe i was already disabled before i caught covid lmao).
well final fantasy x-2 is not like that, it has lengthy cutscenes with boppy little tunes and everything, plenty of time to roll a smoke or stretch your legs or unclench your jaw, or whatever you need to be doing. one of the things i love about my favourite final fantasy games is canon gay shit. final fantasy v has faris, the transmasc he/they pirate with long pink hair from 1992. 2009's ffxiii has the (admittedly subtle) lesbian romance between fang and vanille, plus lightning's gay pink mullet and the fact she has a deadname! ffxvi from 2023 gave us the gay dragoon dion lestrade, and even let him kiss his boyfie! it might sound like i'm begging for crumbs here, and in some ways i am, but when it comes to final fantasy x-2 we are eating well. motomu "ladies' night" toriyama delivers with this lesbian roadtrip rpg which beat christine love to the punch by 18 years.
a lot of people hate this game, and they hate ffxiii also, and the reason for that is sexism. they can't handle a strong female protag. people whinge and whine about there being "no good final fantasies since x" and point to the lack of a traditional turn based system, but i think these games are the absolute peak of atb-driven combat in the series, and build the basis for the beloved combat systems we see in final fantasy vii remake and rebirth, and also to a large extent the combat in ffxvi (though we mustn't ignore the contributions of ryota suzuki to that game, who also worked on devil may cry 5).
the big combat innovation this game makes is related to it being 3d, in previous ff's the party stands in a line, each member takes a step forward on their action, before returning to the same position. in ffx-2 the party are spread out, often encircling enemies, and their position changes across the course of the fight depending on what enemy they're attacking and what action you're taking. it takes longer to attack an enemy on the other side of the screen because your character will have to run over there. and they won't just run back to where they started, they'll stay in position until the next move. the other big factor is stun animations, you can interrupt many bosses in the game with just basic attacks and if you time it right you can keep a boss stunlocked for a whole fight. this is an intended mechanic and you build up combos which add a damage multiplier if you can keep the rhythm up. this mechanic is still in final fantasy, just play the ffvii:r games, it's all about trying to keep your enemy stunned, keep that momentum up untill you finally stagger them. this game doesn't have a stagger mechanic but you can see how it would emerge later in ffxiii.
combat is one of ffx's weak points i would argue, they fully dropped the pseudo-action of the active time battle system for something more like what we'd see in octopath traveller and i think it's the weakest combat in the entire series as a result. final fantasy's initial metaphor was gridiron, american rugby, and then later it became f1 racing. in ffx the metaphor is just "a movie" and the battle is disconnected from that metaphor, it just exists. ffx-2 however, actually iterates on the formula that had served so well from 1987 to 2000.
i'm being a bit facetious about the sexism thing, because the first thing you'll notice about ffx-2 if you ever played final fantasy x proper is that the tone is wildly different. this game is the campest thing in the world! the opening scene is yuna, no longer in her demure summoner's garb, decked out as a pop-idol singing the spiran smash-sensation "real emotion". we're introduced to "the gullwings", or as i like to call them, "the girlthings", our all female party of yuna, rikku and paine, with the line "Y. R. P. In position. It's showtime girls." this game is so fucking gay. an early-game antagonist leblanc is the highlight of this, with her extremely revealing outfit and her handfan attacks. later we even have a minigame where we have to massage her, and my friends the voice acting is not subtle. this lady is straight-up cumming into the mic.
that does depend a little on which version of the game you're playing, and in this instance it was my first playthrough of the original japanese version. my japanese is not great, i can't read many kanji and know next to nothing about grammar, but i know enough to follow along if there's voice acting, which final fantasy x-2 excels at, particularly in english. that's a wild thing to say if you know me, because i generally can't stand dubs, i'm a subs girl all the way, but the english voice cast actually elevate this game for me in a way that they never could in the original final fantasy x. in fact, final fantasy x is one of my least favourite ff's, and a huge reason for that is the extremely poor casting and performances of both tidus and wakka in that game. i really didn't like tidus from the get go, "this is my story", motherfucker no it is not, it is yuna's story and all of your bits could have been given to auron and the plot wouldn't need to change that much. fuck off and let yuna have her moment!
i've recently replayed ffx on pc with the jp voice mod and i can confirm that most of what i just wrote is because i don't like the american voice acting in the game, particularly when it comes to tidus. tidus is much more relateable in japanese, and that's because he's not some sonic-the-hedgehog fuckboi in japanese, he sounds basically normal. and when he sounds normal i can actually accept that his outsider's perspective is great as a player-surrogate kind of framing, and that his worldview actually changes the people around him, even the theocratic fascist wakka, into doing the most blasphemous things possible. but we're not here to talk about ffx.
i played the japanese version of ffx-2, for playstation 2, and along with less outrageous voice acting during the massage minigame it also has a completely broken accessory, which i have to assume was intended as a debug tool but got left in the game as an easter egg. there's a part of the game where you have to push a band of musicians into an elevator, but if you manage to push their band leader in (a ridiculously difficult feat that tobli fuck can move at the speed of light it seems) you'll be rewarded with the cat's bell, an accessory which makes all attacks hit for 9999 damage if the wearer is in critical health. that's enough to one-shot the majority of bosses in the game, but if you need more than one hit then just give yunie the gunner dresssphere and she can rapid fire any boss in no time.
did i mention they gave yuna a gun? that's so fucking funny, this was before sega gave shadow a gun, and the first fight where you control yuna she has a literal handgun. she's not a good yevonite girl anymore! also what the hell is a dresssphere? why it's one of motomu toriyama's great innovations, where girls dressing up in cute clothes is the way you change your job class, he also does this in lightning returns (2013). and every sphere change is accompanied by a full magical-girl transformation sequence where your girlthing transforms from a black mage into a samurai or whatever.
we need to talk about paine, and her relationship to lightning, because a lot of people say that lightning from ffxiii is just girl cloud strife. which is true but it's not enough. she's also paine-2. paine wields an enormous greatsword just like cloud or squall or guts, but she has a deep voice and is ready to kick your ass. i don't know how motomu toriyama makes such incredible lesbian fiction but he does, i hope he starts hrt soon because men should not understand how this works this well. anyway, lightning is built upon the building blocks that paine provides and her butch presence is exactly what the girlthings need. it's also what i need. it's also what i need to become. please give me money so i can wield an enormous greatsword and protect my girlfriends.
with the cat's bell equipped the game took me 10 hours to beat, which is about how long one of the og famicom ff's would take me to beat. which is to say, the cat's bell lets you skip anything approaching a challenge. nice for me because trying to read menus in japanese and follow along with the japanese dialogue was the real challenge i sought out. i can highly recommend this version of the game if you're a little familiar with the language. i can also recommend any version of this game if you, like me, resent tidus' whole, "this is my story" schtick. ffx-2 is yuna's story, and it's a story about young people trying to find a way forward, including a hot disabled guy in a lycra suit and that leblanc lady i told you about who has her tits out 24/7. 10/10 no notes thankyou motomu toriyama.