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Final Fantasy X-2 (2003)

11 min read

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Log

2021-10-05 – 2021-11-26

Sheepb — 2021/10/16 6:52 PM
love 2 go around the world with my guns and my girlfriend and also my other girlfriend and collecting VHS tapes

at long last, i get the chance to play something that i’ve always been scared away from, whether it’s because of the girls-only premise or because of the allegedly-incoherent storyline or because it seemed like a needless addition to one of my favorite games. and honestly, it’s not like i have a very strong reason for wanting to play it now. really the logic behind this decision can be summed up with 1) i have a working ps2 emulator, 2) i want to play a jrpg, 3) as i decided whether or not to invite rikku to my mind lounge, it struck me that i don’t really know how her life progressed after the end of ffx, and maybe playing x-2 would give me some clues into how she developed as a person since then, and whether i would still love her.

i can’t decide how i feel about the music in this game.

  • that opening theme is gorgeous. straightforward in its composition, maybe, but the way it flows and doesn’t stop flowing makes me choke up. i don’t think it has the compositional clarity of to zanarkand, no, but i think they are two different types of songs.
    • after writing this, i listened to it again and then spent the rest of the night in tears: choking, heaving tears as the arpeggio looped inside me and my mind tried its best to absorb it. the experience made me wonder how abnormal – how broken – i really am.
  • some of the town themes are really nice, even if they’re not the ones i remember. in general, their use of piano as a constant background instrument appeals to me a lot.
  • but also they’re not the ones i remember! i feel like music is an important component to the memory of a person or place (see: the entire conceit behind motifs), and while i understand why they might have been barred by copyright from reusing (or remixing) the songs from ffx, the lack of any musical connection to the spira of old makes everything feel eerie.
    it’s also a bit bizarre given how centered the game is around memory, so it gives the impression that the people of spira managed to put their entire past way of life behind them in just a couple of years (though i think i can’t know if this reading is correct until i encounter new yevon).
  • that all said, not all of the new tracks are great, e.g. the besaid temple theme. sure, i can’t expect the hymn of the fayth to be there, but what even is this ambiance supposed to be?

(edit: after finishing the game, i must say that the music in this game is severely disappointing. it’s just flat, all the way through)

there is a very, very, very real chance that i will come away from this game with the desire to make something with this same premise but good. because oh my god i adore these themes! memory, and the preservation of memory, is important to me. losing yourself in the search for the one you lost is very on-brand. and i can even get behind the information-control elements of this plot as it presents itself so far.

sure, you can go anywhere, but it feels like everywhere you go ends in a blocked-off path – usually pretty on.

it’s especially weird since the game nudges you pretty early on toward a mission where the random encounters can easily oneshot party members, with the only hint that you probably shouldn’t do that one now coming from brother. so, ok, maybe that means it’s time to explore elsewhere. but where to now?

(note that i think i could actually really like this approach to game progression – at least, if it didn’t feel like every path ended in a quite literal “you can’t be here; come back later.” also notice the use of can’t there, since there are typically people standing around to block off progression.)

the combat might be fun; i haven’t decided. but the job system taps into an addictive side of me, resulting in me approaching random encounters with the intent to maximize ability gain. in practice, this means stalling battles for as long as i can get away with while having everyone else take either non-damaging actions or do whatever causes the least harm. this probably would make me obnoxious to watch.
this might be a bit unfortunate in comparison to ffx, where minmaxing battles involved making sure everyone takes a turn – which was a pointless hassle, but not one that could be dragged out for minutes.
yet all that said, working to learn new abilities is addicting in a way that the sphere grid wasn’t. the sphere grid’s pleasure was akin to the quiet joy of putting together a puzzle piece-by-piece, whereas the dressphere system is more about working toward tangible quick goals and then getting a new move.

chapter 2

aka the one where it took me way too long to figure out where to go next.
maybe that’s on me for not picking up the hints though.

chapter 3

when i first started this game i said “if it turns out that both sides are bad actually then i delete” but, you know, i think there’s a way to read both sides as different fascistic outcomes from the same general religious trauma. on one hand, you have the reactionaries: the ones who cling to the teachings because they’re all they know and have. on the other, you have the revolutionaries who want to see all traces of the old order expunged from society.
and as an exvangelical, i entirely get this impulse, and it feels analogous to how many like me jump ship completely to r/atheism after their prior worldview crumbles. they want something that gives them all the answers – like what they used to have.

(i interpret the youth league’s motives as rooted in their belief that religion is fundamentally about power, and so they frame their battle as one of liberating spira from this power)

but also why does the giant mech need to be involved?

chapter 4

also why are we healing the country through the power of song and dance?

i feel like there’s a certain liberal sentiment which assumes that… i feel like this is the same sentiment that gave us Band Aid.

(i really wonder what the material consequences of band aid were, all in all) (did it effect any positive change? or did it make a lot of people feel good out of some misplaced self-important notions that their consideration was a high act of charity?)

chapter 5

shiva refight: oops i got wiped pretty early on because i didn’t remember to put iceblocking on someone.
but i guess you live and learn, and i assume playing classic rpgs would require a lot more living and learning.

and now i’m at the part where we go through a music dungeon because the current leaders of the world’s factions got lost in it and we need to get them out i guess.
are you a bad enough dude to rescue the presidents?

and maybe this is my fault for only completing just under 60% of the game. maybe had i done all the sidequests then i’d be able to feel more concern for these characters but…

on tidus

@GrindaViking

Tidus is basically a public use tulpa

one interesting thing about ffx is that we never get a clear answer to who tidus is. we know that he is a dream of the fayth, but the nature of dream zanarkand itself is left unspecified. since it mentions that their dream involved gathering up everyone’s memories of those who lived there, does that mean that there used to be an original tidus?
though that idea doesn’t quite track since a) time within the dream world passes enough for events to happen (such as jecht disappearing) and b) auron spends time within dream zanarkand and watches tidus grow up. so i’m inclined to believe that the fayth are involved in collaboratively writing the story of dream zanarkand from the point of its original collapse: who ended up marrying whom, which kids were born, who rose to prominence and who faded away – all under the condition that nothing would happen to topple the city which they had created. so, under this theory, it’s possible that there was no original tidus, and rather he’s the imagined great50-grandchild of someone who did live in that zanarkand.
but that can’t quite be right since tidus’ mom shows up in the farplane, which implies that she was a real person.
(that is, unless we buy into the theory proposed by rikku that the farplane simply projects the memories of others out in front of them. but rikku is a reddit atheist and that doesn’t explain why jecht wouldn’t have shown up)

all of this is to say that the questions here are more interesting than whatever the hell this game was going for, at least to me.
the furthest this game goes is to say that tidus “might be out there,” but no, it was a video of someone else.
it’s like if there was a story about searching for obama but all they have to go off of is his alleged appearance within the whoomp there it is music video.

the final bosses

also yuna’s tantrum upon reaching vegnagun made me laugh because it goes against the entire point of ffx!
like, that was the central plot line! that they all decided to turn away from the way that things had been done and forged their own path! and they killed the aeons because the fayth was tired of being alive too!
and “the friends she lost” is just tidus. you’re horny for that zanarkand dick and refuse to move on. you learned nothing from the events of this game, but there weren’t really any events for you to learn anything from anyway so i guess it gets a pass.
does this game even have anything resembling character arcs? rikku is rikku is rikku. payne is payne but every so often you learn a little about why she’s payne. yuna jumps into action with a gun but it’s not really addressed past that point.

lol i got the bad ending because i decided to unequip status effect protection since i thought other things would be more useful, and this game doesn’t let you change your equipment mid-battle like ffx does.
this fucking game i swear…

decided to make savestates for each form because a five form boss battle where each form requires accounting for a different approach is just unreasonable.
because now i got to shuyin and got killed because that motherfucker is way too fast and has an attack that can wipe two of my party members if they get targeted.
maybe i just need to bumrush him and revive party members instead of trying to heal them then.

yeah chocobo wing + bumrushing worked.
which means i finally completed final fantasy x-2!

and the normal ending gets a tepid speech about the importance of unity, where the ideological differences between factions are paved over as if there was nothing underlying them.

final thoughts

i really wanted to like this game. i tried to like this game!
and maybe it’s my fault for skimming through it (final clear percentage 58%), but if just the base story doesn’t do a compelling job of engaging me then i think that’s still an issue.
it let me play as much of it as i wanted to, and it gave me reason after reason to not want to play that much.

so now i’m brought back to the questions which sparked this playthrough: how did rikku change since the events of ffx? and would i still love her knowing this?

and, you know, i either don’t have a clear answer to that first question, or i received the best answer i could possibly get. perhaps the truth was staring me in the face this whole time: that rikku is rikku is rikku. she’s an excitable puppy of a girl who would brighten your days for as long as you can stand it, and then her immaturity would start to wear on you.

thankfully, i have a thing for annoying girls.