The "Gullwings" safely recovered Yuna's sphere from the imposter, Leblanc. The sphere seemed to contain the memories of a singer and dancer, who could be tapped in to in order for the Gulls to use her skills in battle. Back aboard their airship, the Celsius, they searched for signs of spheres to hunt.
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| The new, New Game Plus option! |
If there was going to be a game that I was going to beat before I even typed a word about it, I could have done worse than FFX-2. This game has that feature called "New Game +", which my understanding is, takes it's name from another Square offering, Chrono Trigger. As I started thinking about it, this game actually has a fair amount in common with Chrono, such as non-linear play and multiple endings. Primarily, the New Game + allows you to start a new game with all of the items, abilities, dresspheres (jobs/classes), garment grids (umm... hard to explain quickly), and Gil (money) that you ended the game with. This doesn't completely mitigate the challenge, as you start back at the bottom in experience levels.
FFX-2 Also tracks your "story completion" as a percentage. I'm guessing this just means what percentage of the story moments in the game you've experienced. I'm not 100% sure actually, haha, no joke intended. I finished the game at 68% completion, and the New Game + retains that. This means, hopefully, I won't need to worry about repeating everything I did the first time around.
Yuna was making an audio journal, that she addressed to an unknown figure. I think you can guess who it was, someone who she was missing a lot no doubt. She took a few moments to traverse the Celsius and introduce it, and the crew, to her journal.
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| The Celsius has a pretty ballin' bar. |
Just as Yuna was heading back to the bridge from the cabin, an alert rang out! The co-pilot, Buddy, had located sphere waves, indicating there was a sphere located in recently uncovered ruins on Mt. Gagazet. The Gullwings scrambled to the floating ruins, but were non-plussed to find that Leblanc's crew, the Leblanc Syndicate, had followed them. Leblanc was a tall, shapely blonde, who's loud voice and obnoxiousness left much to be desired. Her side-kicks were lanky, gun-wielding Logos, and massive Ormi. The threesome were determined to stop the Gullwings from making it to the top of the ruins, throwing hordes of goons and machines at them to delay their travel.
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| Yuna climbs the floating ruins on Gagazet. |
This as good a time as any to mention a couple things, first, the "goons" are actually named "goons" in the game. There's Mr. Goon, Ms. Goon, and... wait for it... Dr. Goon. Goofy yes, but it fits well enough with the tone of the game. The second is that this game adds the ability to both jump and climb by holding the O button while walking. It seems like mainly a gimmick, but it does expand the three dimensional feel of the map a little bit. There are treasure chests and secrets that can only be found with proper use of the O button.
The Syndicate tried, but not hard enough, as the Gullwings came out on top with the sphere!
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| The Leblanc Syndicate seems to have fallen for this treasure chest.... haha... hahaha. |
X-2 is organized into 5 chapters, and during my first time (for the blog, second time total) through, I hit every location in chapter 1 to see what was out there. While some of the locations don't have "missions", there are plenty of story elements to be uncovered, and some areas have missions that you don't discover until you visit. One of which is protecting the shipment of a fellow named Tobli's supplies from bandits.
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| As you can see here, Tobli is fast. His assistant, who I must help, however, is not. |
I rather enjoyed chasing the bandits as they attacked the assistant's wagon. X-2 is loaded to the brim with mini-games, and they are hit and miss for sure. This one I enjoyed though. Thankfully, for the most part, they are optional. I'm sure as far as an RPG is concerned, FFX-2 has the most mini-games out there. I just can't see anything else competing. However, depending on your tastes, some of them are lame, some are great fun, and some are completely out of the genre, so mileage will vary. I personally enjoyed the mini-games the most that still employed bread-and-butter combat as part of their gameplay. That includes this bandit catching mission, and the digging in the desert, which I'll describe later.
Before traversing off looking for more spheres, the Gullwings, at Yuna's behest, decided to tour Spira a bit, and gauge the welfare of the people. Their first stop was the moonflow, followed by a trip to the Mushroom Rock Road, which was known to house the headquarters of the recently formed "Youth League." The Youth League was mainly made up of former Crusaders, and exists to counter the other major faction "New Yevon." The Gullwings thought to make a quick stop at the Youth League headquarters when they spotted none other than... Logos and Ormi! The dorkish duo took off into the thick fog, with Yuna, Rikku, and Paine close behind.
Following Logos and Ormi led to a mysterious door, and an equally mysterious sphere. I know a little bit about this place from my previous playthrough, but I didn't get all of the spheres necessary to open it. I plan to this time, however. After Logos and Ormi vacated, Maroda shows up out of nowhere and names the place as the "Den of Woe." He doesn't offer up any other information though, just saying the place is off limits.
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| The reasonably spooky Den of Woe. |
May you never fall victim to the Den of Woe, my friends... so that you may come back next time, for This Bard's Tales!
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