Part 89: Episode LXXX: Meet My Mortibuddy

Music: Hurry!!



Well, that whole escape only to immediately decide we ought to run back and engage in that boss battle after all was kind of awkwardly written. But fear not, the ramshackle Bevelle portion of the game will soon be at its end.



“Anything you want, I've got! Traitor or no, Lady Yuna's always been a friend to O'aka.”



O'aka has set up shop. Heretics? Whatever. It's not like this scumbag has any morals. An axe murderer could be stumbling out of an orphanage, still wet with the blood and viscera of slain innocent children and O'aka would cheerily stand there referring to himself in the third person and selling the guy a change of clothes to skip town.

At least this reoccurring jackass is a bit more plausible an excuse for an item shop in a pinch rather than a submerged treasure chest portal to the mercantile dimension.



The party made it a fairly decent jog before Yuna had a change of heart in abandoning Kimahri. The awkward stop-gap between Via Purifico and the ultimate boss battle of Bevelle is, of course...







...just an excuse to give the party a chance to do some grinding if necessary. The Bevelle Highroad is stocked with the same crew of enemies defending Yuna's wedding and they all give out some quite nice experience if one is feeling the need to buff the party a bit. Well other than Kimahri. Sheesh, when was the last time the entire party was together and could freely do some decent grinding? Macalania Woods?



In any case, trotting back to the far end of the Bevelle runway will take us to pretty much the final battle of the second act of Final Fantasy X.



In the time since we bailed, Kimahri has managed to err... circle around to the other side of Seymour and continue to engage in an intense staring contest.





Seymour was JUST about to falter but then everyone stormed in and broke Kimahri's concentration. Nice going guys. You know how hard it was for Kimahri to retain his composure and not glance at Seymour's flashing armor nipple highlights?


Music: Enemy Attack





Oh well. I suppose we're just going to have to throw down the old fashioned way. Seymour has evolved into Seymour Natus. Also between scenes, Seymour has made friends with a demonic pair of scissors named Mortibody. Sure, why not? First things first, much like the original battle with Seymour, we once more have Trigger Commands to talk/yell at the Guado creep for some stat boosts. This time Tidus, Yuna, and Auron all get anime passionate speeches to power-up.



“You talk too much, Seymour!”



It's worth noting that Seymour's voice has gotten an echoed distortion filter over it. If he starts giggling and muttering something about a Flower, we might need to worry...



“I'll only be pleased when you're gone to the Farplane!”



I'm curious what would happened if Seymour won here and killed the party. Would he remain a flying purple monstrosity with wings coming out of his ass and a stone archway for hair. I'm just picturing him crashing through a wall and floating to his position at the Maester assembly room like it's no big deal while Kelk Ronso looks mortified.



“Kinoc was still my friend, Seymour! You will pay for his death!"



I'd be pissed too if someone dissolved my former friend's soul to craft a make-over that looks like the monster of the week from an off-brand sentai series.



Trigger Command buffs out of the way, let's get down to business. Seymour Natus comes packing a respectable 36,000 HP. The Mortibody... (the fuck even IS a “mortibody?”) on the other hand, only has a trifling 4,000 HP to its name. But there's a reason for that. Mortibody is a strange bugger and kind of runs the show for this entire battle.



Pretty much any handful of halfway decent attacks will kill Mortibody. Tidus alone does around 2,000 HP with his physical attacks. But draining all the HP of the weird pincer parasite hanging out with Seymour Natty-lite won't kill it. Instead, it will use “Mortibsorption” to replenish its HP straight from Seymour's stock. So depleting Mortibody's HP is a free 4,000 damage against Seymour. Which is a strange but semi-effective means to damage Seymour without triggering some of his retaliations.

However there are diminishing returns to this. Mortibody will initially restore for 4,000 but each additional Mortibsorption will reduce its maximum HP by a thousand. The bare minimum it will go is 1,000 HP. It's impossible to fully kill Mortibody without slaying Seymour. So we'll just have to live with the bizarre thing.





Mortibody also has a very annoying attack called Desperado which hits the entire party for middling damage. But more pressingly, it dispels any magic buffs (read: Nul<magic>, Protect, Haste, Etc.) So the usual tactic of getting the A-Team hyped up on the Tidus Haste train is a bit neutered.





Beyond that, Mortibody isn't too much of a threat. Early on it will just cast weak first tier magic spells on the entire party.





However, this seems to give Seynat some nasty ideas, as he will in turn cast the Tier 2 version of the same spell twice. If he's feeling like a real asshole, he'll do it on the same party member and probably kill them in the process. The first half of the battle is mostly just dealing with Seymour's magic bullshit.







As far as going on the offensive goes, stocking up a bunch of Overdrives is always a safe bet. I mean other than Kimahri obviously. But even then, Kimahri's Overdrives are mostly terrible.









Aeons can be useful in this battle. But ONLY if Yuna has a Grand Summon Overdrive available or the aeon in question came packing an Overdrive in the chamber. This is because Yuna's summons have exactly one turn to pour on some damage. If Seymour gets to go ahead...?







He is not having ANY of that shit and will immediately cast Banish which works like Eject but for aeons. Still, having Bahamut or Shiva pop in to do 9,000+ damage is nothing to sneeze at.



At around 50% health Seymour Rebirth starts switching things up. First of all he'll cast Protect on himself, which is always annoying for a boss to pull. It's of note that Mortibsorption ignores Seymour's shield. So if beating the shit out of the weird Seymour pet is avoided up until now, it's a good time to start wrecking the thing to indirectly hurt Seymour.





Neo Seymour also begins casting Break on characters which causes Stone status. This needs to be sorted out immediately because the very next turn Mortibody gets, it will using “Shattering Claw”. Which is normally just a weak physical attack. Unless it is against a Stoned character in which case the attack lives up to is name and the party is down one active member for the rest of the battle. It's a bad scene.



At this point Mortibody seems to be feeling a bit of remorse for leeching so much health off Seymour, so it'll occasionally chime in with a Cura for a good 1,000+ heal on its host. Obnoxious.



This can be avoided if Yuna has grinded down her Sphere Grid enough to unlock Reflect. Indeed, this battle can be made fairly easy using Reflect seeing as almost all of Seymour Natus' attacks are magic based. Tossing a Reflect on Seymour himself will cause all of Mortibody's Cura's to bounce back toward our party. Yuna needs to re-up the Reflects if Mortibody uses Desperado to dispel them. But it is a very effective tactic. Except for one last attack Seymour Natus has up its sleeve soul armor gauntlets.





Flare! A non-elemental magic spell that cannot be reflected and hurts like a bitch. The damage Lulu is getting blasted with is on the light side of things. Flare can easily hit a critical and do 2,500 to 3,000 HP of damage. Bad news at this point in the game. In the second half of the battle Seymour alternates between Break and Flare, with the occasional multi-cast for spice.



That's about all there is to the Seymour Natus boss battle. Though there is kind of an amusing glitch to the Bevelle Highroad battlefield.







Aeons' Overdrives will occasionally fuck-up and play their animation facing the wrong direction. It's not an emulator glitch. I definitely had this happen on the original PS2 game as well.





In this case, Seymour Natus met an inglorious end thanks to Thorse's butt gyrating as it put on a sick electric light show over the skies of Bevelle.







And with that, Seymour Natus and Mortibody are no more. So I guess we double-killed Seymour...? Is Yuna going to go ahead and Send him now? Are we done with the fruitloop?





Hell if I know! The battle ends and we'll immediately be jettisoned from Bevelle into a completely different location with no mention of the battle's aftermath or Seymour's fate whatsoever!

Bevelle! Not Final Fantasy X's strongest point!






Episode 80 Highlight Reel





Seymour Natus Concept Art



Mortibody Concept Art