Final Fantasy X Part #49 - Episode XLI: A Guest in My Party

Part 49: Episode XLI: A Guest in My Party

Welp… That could have definitely gone better. If anyone was on the waiting list to become a Crusader, I definitely believe a few positions have opened up.

Yuna has at least managed to survive the blast from Sin’s vaporization ray with only a few cuts and bruises. Auron, Tidus, Lulu, Wakka, and Kimahri are all AWOL but eh… They are all named characters. That’s like having a character portrait in dialogue. It grants a certain amount of plot death immunity.

New Music: Challenge

But enough about possibly dead party members. Sinspawn Gui is decidedly not dead and is currently attempting to give a less than friendly hug to Seymour Guado. Aww… Leave it alone, Seymour. It is just scared by his dad taking off its belt. That death ray vaporized sinspawn and humans alike, you know.

Yuna gets up on her feet and runs over to assist Seymour. Auron also shows up out of nowhere looking no worse for the wear and not remotely impressed with any of the proceedings.

Yuna and Auron run into battle alongside Seymour as he shoves the sinspawn away…

Yuna stutters out a “yes” but doesn’t actually comply with Seymour’s request. Seymour isn’t just being chivalrous or anything. He actually does totally have this handled.

In any case, time for the long standing Final Fantasy tradition of a guest party member. Seymour Guado will be joining us for this, and only this, rematch against Sinspawn Gui. And he could pretty much handle the whole battle by himself easily.

Seymour comes pre-equipped with the entire tier one and two stable of Black Magic along with every tier one White Magic spell with Cura for good measure. Sadly, we cannot have him summon Anima for some shit wrecking. I think there have been enough heat rays on Mushroom Rock for one day.

That all said, his stats are WAY the fuck higher than any of our party members with the Fira spell Lulu was dishing out doing twice as much damage in Seymour’s hands. He also has 999 MP so he can fling magic around all day.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much at all to talk about with this second round against Sinspawn Gui. It is literally the same exact boss but with half the initial HP for the main body section. Seymour can easily one-shot the head and both claws with his magic and then take out the main body in five or so turns. Having Auron along for the ride is just well…

…you get the idea. It is VERY easy to Overkill this boss, especially if Auron or Yuna have the sensor ability to monitor its HP (if not Seymour has Scan so that works too.) It only has an 800 HP Overkill threshold. So as long as the final shot is Seymour casting magic, it is almost a guaranteed Overkill victory.

It is worth mentioning that Seymour actually does have his own Overdrive – Requiem. This is the only time in the game we can see it though the animation is in-fact recycled for another special ability. However it does take for fucking EVER to get Seymour’s meter charged up enough to use it. In round 2, Gui only attacks using its claws (so one character that may not be Seymour) and casting Demi and it alternates each turn. I think it took a good ten minutes of dicking around not finishing the boss off in order to capture the Overdrive.

There’s a video at the end of the update if you’re into that kind of thing…

This time around Sinspawn Gui dies in a proper explosion of sparkly soul fireworks and dust. Looks to be an only a best out of three bout tonight.

Much like the fight with the Sin Fin, this boss battle is an easy source of easily grinded AP. The two regenerating arms are considered separate enemies and worth 55 AP each time if overkilled (and it is harder to not Overkill them than to do so) coupled with 600 AP for the Overkill of the boss proper. With Seymour’s bucket loads of MP and Yuna on healing duty, it is pretty simple to play Wizard Field Medic lopping off Gui’s arms for some easy AP.

Killing Sinspawn Gui also gets us a boat load of cash along with 3 (6 if Overkilled) Level 1 Keyspheres. This boss pretty much is a big red flag saying “You should be reaching points on the Sphere Grid where you can use these like NOW”.

Now that the intermission bout against the sinspawn has concluded, we can return to the regularly scheduled Sin offensive… already in progress.

There actually was a Part 3 to this Crusader-Al Bhed operation against Sin. The Crusader’s beach defensive may be a bust, but the Al Bhed has yet to play their hand with the giant machina do-hickey they have built on the side of the cliff.

Utilizing the latest and greatest in awkwardly designed fantasy war machine design, the Al Bhed charge up and fire their…

…crazy ass Tesla Cannon. Hmm… There is kind of a disparity in technological steps between 17th Century artillery cannons to five story tall Arc Lightning Towers. What type of energy source to Spira machina even run on? No, it is not pyreflies nobody even considers using those as a poor-man’s Mako energy until X-2.

Quite a bit of surviving Crusaders, not content with dying on the beaches of Mushroom Rock, gather beneath the second most likely location in the region to result in a violent death. How this organization has lasted for 800 years is a mystery to me.

Yuna and Seymour’s weird ass chest intently watch the pyrotechnics. What is even going on with that guy’s body? He looks like a stretched out Yazuka Ken doll. What is that sun looking faded tattoo thing above his sprayed on abs? Did he get drunk one weekend and get a tramp stamp on the wrong side?

Anyway, back to the Tesla Cannon vs. Doom Whale battle…

Spoiler Alert: The unstoppable abomination that utterly destroyed civilization at the height of its technological advancements manages to defeat salvaged and jury-rigged technology likely dug up from the same period. I know. Who’ve thunk it?

Meanwhile, down on the beach below Tidus has survived yet another huge fall that really ought to have broken his neck. He didn’t even have his mane of freshly feathered hair to cushion the blow this time. But details…

Welcome to scenic Mushroom Rock Beach. Sorry, this is the regional off-season. As such, the beaches are…

Hymn of the Fayth

…Well. It is a bit corpsey is all.

Tidus is free to briefly explore the beach. Though there is nothing of interest beyond poking some of the cooling bodies that weren’t instantly atomized in that first blast.

If we explore the northeastern part of the beach we do come across one survivor of the disastrous operation. And it just so happens to be a familiar face!

“Why? What? WHAT’S GOING ON!?"

So thanks to our advice earlier, Gatta has managed to survive Operation Mi’ihen. Sure he’s probably got severe PTSD and will likely be haunted by what he witnessed for the rest of his life. But I suppose it is better than being vaporized. I wonder where Luzzu is hiding…

Oh well. I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. In the meantime, it seems Sin has lost interest with this hoedown and has decided to split for the evening.

Someday This Dream Will End

Meanwhile…

"You won't hurt it!”

“Your powers are still...too weak."

”But I filled up my Overdrive meter!”
“That won’t be enough! What aeons do you even possess? Ifrit? Ixion? That… one from Besaid. I cannot recall. I think it was some manner of bird…?”
“I named it ‘Kazooie.’”
“…Do you honestly expect something named *Kazooie* to be effective against what you just saw…?”

"But I must do something!”

Yuna ignores Seymour and attempts to call forth her flying or fire elemental summons against the water submerged Sin.

Seymour continues to be the voice of reason here. He should really just go get Auron and drag him over to tell Yuna to calm down and knock off the dumb shit. That is kind of his thing and it has a 100% critical success chance against Yuna.

Elsewhere…

“But before I knew what I was doing, there I was chasing him down like a thief at market.”

”You know, if the market was flooded. And the thief was my dad. And my dad was a sea monster on a bender. …Look, I am not good with analogies.”

“Maybe I was angry. Maybe I wanted to go home. I kept thinking of Zanarkand, and my old man.”

New Music: Twilight

We abruptly fade to a surreal landscape with a spinning light show for a sky and the spectral forms of every generic Crusader NPC model under the sun.

…Although they are not *all* generic nameless, faceless ghosts. I do recognize one of them.

The crowd of spirits disperses and in their place appears Ghost Kid who walks up to the camera and shakes his head. Hiyah, Ghost Kid. Ain’t seen you in ages. What’s the word?

…Oh. The word is apparently “blitzball”. Yeah. Sure. This is definitely the most appropriate point ever for a fantasy sports game transition!

The random blitzball flies at the screen…

"What?"

"Let them talk. I'm still the best."

"They say you're no good 'cause you drink all the time."

"I can quit drinkin' whenever I want!"

"Then do it now!"

"What did you say?!"

"You just said you can!"

"Heh. Tomorrow, maybe."

”Depends on how big my hangover is in the morning. I’m workin’ on my second bottle of whiskey so all signs point to early visit to a titty bar.”

"Why *not* today?"

"Why do today what you can leave for tomorrow?”

”And if tomorrow isn’t looking good, try the day after. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always next week.”

Young Tidus vanishes…

“There he goes again... crying!"

”Hey crybaby, if you can see the fridge through all those wussy tears be a pal and hook your old man with a beer, eh?”

”At least my ability to milk that Sin toxin excuse with other people had gotten reset. So that was something.”

Tidus sits up and gives his best 1000 meter stare…

Hymn of the Fayth

“When will she stop dancing? When will it stop?”

”It is like she was dancing mad.”

“Yuna won't stop dancing -- not until Sin is gone.”

”Of course now thinking about it, that whole Sending thing isn’t really connected to Sin beyond being a big source of bodies and you’re probably going to still need to do the dance thing all the time even when we do beat Sin. Unless the future after Sin holds peppy adventures that go out of their way to ever kill off anyone. And what are the odds of that…?”