Final Fantasy X Part #121 - Episode CXI: Our Alphabet and Omega

Part 121: Episode CXI: Our Alphabet and Omega

Welp. It's been nearly a month and a half since I embarked on finishing most of Final Fantasy X's optional content. That was a dumb idea! But here we are! Finally there is light at the end of the tunnel and only one more bit remains.

There is only one NEW location left on the map that is not plot progress: The Omega Ruins. The obligatory optional end game dungeon of Final Fantasy X. We're in luck that this came before the Square-Enix merger and the company decided every other re-issued version of games in the back catalog needed the most tedious shit grindy bonus dungeon imaginable. Hey, thanks for finishing the Singing Mountain prototype area and adding it back into Chrono Trigger DS and all. But I really wish you hadn't! That joint blew chunks!

Omega Ruins is fairly benign. In fact, it's only about twenty minutes long if not for the ridiculously high random encounters rate against the fiercest standard enemies in the game.

A quick airship ride to a remote island with little fanfare later...

“Seven hundred years ago... a monk who defied the teachings was sentenced here.”

“Oh, the traitor Omega, ya?”

”Omega...? Really? His name was honestly Omega.”
“Was his brother named Alpha?”
“Hey! This is serious, ya?”
“We've already trampled on every part of Yevon, man. I'm not going to respect any dumb dude named frikkin' Omega.”

“They say he liked it underground, out of the light.”

“So, he's here?”

”Wait... you can just get pissed enough at something to turn into a fiend now? How does that even work?”
“Yeah, it definitely doesn't work like that.”
“Are you guys just making this up? Where'd you hear this crap from? Yevon?”
“Well... yeah.”
“And of all the Yevon things that turned out to be a load of crap, you're sticking to this one like it's gospel?”
“Look, there's a big nasty boss here. Just go with it, ya?”
“Yeah, yeah.”

“Not a chance!”

New Music: Beyond the Darkness (HD Remaster Version

So welcome to the Omega Ruins. It's a big brown cavern with some luminescent bits! Not entirely unlike a more spacious version of Cavern of the Stolen Fayth. At least, that's the first half of the dungeon.

This dungeon has a bit of a gimmick in the form of not providing a plotted out mini-map like literally every single other location in the game. Instead, we need to slowly plot it by traveling around like it's a Doom .wad or something. I am not entirely sure why they decided to do this. It's not like this is a remotely complex layout. Here's a map of the entire first half of the dungeon:

Other than the one dead end, it's all looping paths or dead ends with loot that you'd want to explore anyway. Not sure what they were going for here.

As you can see from the map above, there is quite a bit of loot to be obtained in the Omega Ruins. But, there's a catch! A big old stupid RNG catch. As you can see in the map, there are groups of chests. There is an entirely random chance as to whether any chest will contain treasure or whether it will be a Mimic and spawn a battle. Picking a Mimic chest will de-spawn all the surrounding chests and that treasure will be lost. The randomization is locked in the first time the party enters the Omega Ruins.

So the only method to possibly get the best treasure (99 Warp Spheres) is to make a save prior to entering the Omega Ruins, have a No Encounter piece of equipment set to preserve your sanity, and run to each treasure chest hoping for the best. Needless to say, I said fuck that noise! Most of the treasure is meh to completely outclassed by our Celestial Weapons and hoping the 1 in 240 odds fall in my favor is not something I'm wasting time on. But now you know another tidbit of bad FFX Endgame design trivia!

So beyond the treasure chests and interchangeable corridors, the main point of interest in the Omega Ruins is...

...random battles! This corner of Spira has the highest random battle rate of the entire game. Like get out of one battle, walk three steps, get in another battle potential of brawling with jerks. On top of that, it has the largest pool of baddies in the game as well.

Of course, 75% of them are just top tier palette swaps of old enemies. What? They're not going to suddenly tap into an untapped font of creativity for an optional dungeon, now are they?

Palette Swap Pals include:

Zaurus (Lizards clones that die in one hit to Wakka or Tidus)
Floating Death (Evil Eye clone that's larger than normal)
Master Coeurl (Tiger clones of little note)
Black Element (Element family of floating random geometry shapes. Does Berserk, Demi, and Flare)
Spirit (Skull clone that barfs poison and 2nd tier magic)
Halma (Armadillo clones. Can inflict Slow.)
Machea (Knife arms clone.)
Puroboros (Bomb clone. Most hardy of the lot.)
Wraith (Ghost clone. Has all the third tier spells along with Death and Doom.)
Defender Z (Yep. They're still making more of this mid-boss en masse.)
Master Tonberry (Tonberry with twice the HP and Karma does 10x as much damage. Gives tons of AP. Only found in Omega Ruins.)
Great Marlboro (Marlboro with higher stats and ALWAYS Ambushes with Bad Breath unless someone has First Strike. Auron's Masamune has that by default, so that's nice. Major fuckers.)

Quite the list, eh? There are a few new enemies. Or rather, enemies from the final dungeon that are making their debut early here in the Omega Ruins. Less for me to cover later!

First up we have a giant fuck-off turtle, like any good Japanese game should feature: Adamantoise. This one has been a reoccurring enemy in every Final Fantasy since II. The bruiser has continued to get steady work up to and including the upcoming, sometime before the heat death of the universe, Final Fantasy XV.

It is, of course, an armored enemy and has a quite respectable 54,400 HP. On the hand, felling one of these nets a sweet 12,500 AP (25,000 with Overkill.) Farming turtle soup supplies is a nice source of Sphere Levels, to say the least. Though, 95% of the Omega Ruins' existence is just to support massive leveling. Wakka gained over 100 levels by the end of this dungeon crawl. Tidus, Auron, and Yuna got around 50+ a piece. Lulu, Rikku, and Kimahri are in the gulag of the kind of useless, but still managed at least a dozen each.

Adamantoise has Earthquake, which cheats the four core elements scheme of the game. Earthquake hits the entire party for 1000-2000 HP and delays everyone's turns. I suppose that makes sense. Kind of...? In a weird video game sense.

It can also just breathe its bad breath on the entire party for around 1500 HP. Creatures with just poor hygiene and stink breath is a running theme in this dungeon given the Marlboros and the next fellows we'll face...

Meet the Demonolith. Hey! Do you have protection against Petrify for your party? No?

Run or you are gonna have a bad time! Demonolith's Breath will hit the entire party with Petrify. Nobody likes a stoner.

When attacked, the monster wall will automatically counter with Pharaoh's Curse. This will hit a party member with Darkness, Silence, Poison, and Curse. That, at least, can be prevented by silencing the enemy. The stone breath? Not so much. 45,000 HP to take each down. 11,000 AP (16,500 Overkill) for a victory. Not bad. But there are safer options that don't involve customizing Stoneproof armors.

Last up, we have Varuna here. I didn't know the Diablo from Final Fantasy VIII summon had a cousin.

Varuna starts any fight against him by casting Haste. Even with First-Strike equipped on one of our party members, this jerk cheats and gets first turn to haste himself regardless. Rude as shit. Varuna is quite obsessed with being Hasted at all times. So having Yuna roll in to Dispel his buff will make him just burn his next turn firing off another Haste.

Beyond that, Varuna likes casting Death spells and Tier 3 magic of all elements. Not much to him beyond that. 56,000 HP. 19,500 AP (29,250 Overkill) Good for you buddy. Never stop hasting!

Putting aside randomized chests and a clusterfuck of random battles, there is one other key item to be found in these ruins. One which finally closes out a game spanning side quest! That's right, you've probably forgotten all about it. But we were missing...

...one final Al Bhed Primer. The last missing piece of the Al Bhed alphabet is [W = Z!] I mean, Tidus you probably could have figured that out by order of elimination. But there you go.

Tidus is now a master of the Al Bhed language! There is a cap to this side quest. But it will have to wait until we return to the airship. Let's press onward and finish this dungeon first.

At the far northeastern part of the cavern, Tidus comes upon a platform tossing him and the party to the second level of the dungeon. Here we come upon the first major challenge of the Omega Ruins.

Music: Enemy Attack

Hey there, buddy. Didn't see you there. Kind of weird you grew 20 feet from cutscene to battle. But alright. Despite the fact this big boy looks like the Omega alluded to in the opening of this area, this is not, in fact, Omega. This lad is Ultima Weapon, the mid-boss of the Omega Ruins. Easy mistake to make at a glance.

Ultima Weapon (what his name doesn't get change to some goofy Irish localization?) has a hearty 70,000 HP we need to burn through to reach the second half of the Omega Ruins.

...Yeah. That's not going to be too hard. I actually had to reload a save-state and change up my party because Ultima Weapon tried smacking Wakka then Tidus and they broke a chair over his head and shived him in the jugular while he was laid out on the floor. So I'll slow down so we can see what he's capable of...

Most of Ultima Weapon's tricks is casting status effects. Confuse, Break, and Silence lead the crowd. He's also got a nasty Holy spell to add to the mix.

We can just trot Yuna out casting Reflect on everyone to nip that nonsense in the bud. Ultima Weapon is highly resistant to Silence but it can afflict him. He will happily cast Holy on himself like a dumbass. And that's fun.

As far as unique attacks go, Ultima Weapon has Core Energy which err... well, it releases energy from its weird sphere core like a weird overloading robot. It hits from anywhere between 2,500 to 3,500 on a single party member.

As a partner to Core Energy, Shimmering Rain is essentially the same sort of non-elemental attack but it hits the entire party for a bit less than the solitary Core Energy.

That's about it. It's a mid-boss. A low HP Auron with his Celestial Weapon can solo the thing without a problem at this point. Despite the name Ultima Weapon, it doesn't actually have Ultima as an attack. Misleading disappointment all around with this guy.

As much of a pushover as Ultima Weapon was, I made sure everyone got on the AP train for that jobber. That's a nice payday on levels right there.

“Just a shadow, born from Omega's wrath.”

“What, so the main man's still around?”

“Come on out, Omega!”

“When we meet, I will send it.”

Okay. Wait. Hold up a minute here. Fiends can asexually reproduce now? Is that what I'm hearing here? We killed Omega's son, Ultima just now? Just how angry was this Omega guy that he can just shit out an angry demon son during an intense session of brooding? Omega Ruins fiends are weird!

Now that Ultima Weapon has been slain, it's time to take down his dad further in the Omega Ruins. Ultima leaves behind a teleportation pad to the second half of this lackluster dungeon.

Music: Darkness

Welcome to Omega Ruins: Part 2. It's a series of flat arenas circling... some sort of huge volcano like cavern pathway? I'm not even sure where we are supposed to be. How did we even get into this ruin from the airship in the first place? Did we just teleport in? I have many questions about aspects of this dungeon I feel like everyone is just glossing over.

There are no random battles in Omega Ruins 2. Just set encounters on each of the arena platforms as Tidus approaches. There is an additional enemy found here that wasn't present in Omega Ruins: The First.

The Gemini Twins. One has a sword. One a club! They're both just higher stats Iron Giants with 36,000 HP with a team-up attack. Yeah, 36,000 HP? That's cute. Auron does that damage passing wind in his sleep at this point. Said team-up attack, Double Reaper, is prevented by downing one of the Gemini before it can be performed.

The unfilled map thing is still in effect. But there's only one entirely linear path this time. Heading left leads to battles against Geminis and an Adamantoise which dead ends at a Friend Sphere. Neat...?

Heading right leads further into the ruins and will lead Tidus against a Master Tonberry, another Master Tonberry, Geminis, yet another Master Tonberry, an Adamantoise, a Great Marlboro, and a Varuna along the way. They're all static fights in this mid-boss rush.

It is worth noting there is no save point other than the entrance to the Omega Ruins and leaving the area will reset all the fights in this area. So, I hope you can defeat the dungeon master in a single go. Or else have fun with the run back for a second challenge. Spoiler: If you've made it this far intact, it's a good chance you can take out Omega. At least... in the original version of the game.

Auron used his solitary fuck back at Yunalesca. A 700 year old cave dweller whose only claim to fame is being exceedingly pouty about Yevon and developing hermaphrodite qualities? Pfft. Whatever. This barely qualifies as a random battle to Auron nowadays.

Music: Challenge

Meet Omega Weapon! Yep. It is literally just Ultima Weapon with a palette swap and boosted stats. That's like some next level laziness here, Final Fantasy X. Why would you do that? Why have a mid-boss that is straight up the end boss but weaker? What purpose did that serve? That is a baffling design decision to me.

And the thing is, he's not even much stronger than Ultima Weapon. At least not in the original Japanese and North American versions of the game. Ultima Weapon had 60,000 HP. Omega Weapon has a whopping... 99,999 HP... Yes, a critical hit with the damage cap broken could one-shot Omega Weapon. In later revisions of the game, Omega Weapon's HP is boosted with an extra 9, giving it just shy of a million HP. Making it a wee bit more of a threat.

As it it stands, Omega Weapon is kind of a joke.

Indeed, I had to shuffle my party again because Omega Weapon attacked Auron, who went down to only 100 HP. Auron proceeded to tear off his shirt, declare “the fuck you playing at” and break Omega Weapon's neck with his bare hands in a single blow.

That said... there isn't much of note unique to Omega Weapon. It has all the same skills as Ultima Weapon's attacks like Core Energy and Shimmering Rain. They are significantly powered up, doing around 3500 range damage in both cases. Omega can also cast Ultima, unlike Ultima Weapon. Cuz that's not just flagrantly stupid right there.

Omega Weapon does possess one unique attack that will almost certainly wipe the party doing 9,999 damage. However, it takes the better part of a year for it to pull it off and Kimahri actually has a use here.

Omega Weapon's ultimate attack is also Kimahri's strongest Ronso Rage: Nova.

Nova, not to be confused with Super Nova, else we'd be here all day, is a non-elemental attack that will damage an entire party using... well... a nova explosion. Unfortunately, given Kimahri's lackluster abilities and the fact that I've more or less abandoned leveling him beyond bosses, the end results of all the bombastic explosions are rather disappointing.

Nice try, Kimahri. Return to the bench.

So that's Omega Weapon. The ultimate challenge of the Monster Arena is named Nemesis and it is, get this, a palette swap of Ultima/Omega Weapon! I won't be fighting that, since I do really want to finish this game and just unlocking the ability to battle Nemesis requires capturing 10 of every single enemy in the game. Not 10 types or the lot. I mean ten copies of every enemy palette swap cousin in the game. Ten Tonberries. Ten Master Tonberries. Ten Marlboros. Ten Grand Marlboros. And so on and so forth...

If you're invested enough in grinding Final Fantasy X to tackle that task, I'm afraid there is no hope for your encroaching dementia.

Following the battle, Auron gets a bit hypocritical as Omega Weapon evaporates into dust. Meanwhile, Yuna completely flakes out on Sending Omega like she intended. Nice work all around, team. You did it. You finished the bonus dungeon.

Good grief. It barely even gave much more AP than Ultima Weapon. Heck, Wakka didn't even get his Double AP out of the whole ordeal. I'd say he had gotten ripped off, but he gained about 20 levels just making it through Omega Ruins Part 2. Well... maybe we get a decent item or armor out of the deal?

...The Rod of Roses. It does Triple Overdrive. That... That's it? Really? That's the treasure for finishing the optional endgame dungeon? One of the less useful Overdrives in the game can charge up faster. Final Fantasy X, I've used Yuna's Overdrive so little she's still got Healer mode as her best option for filling her gauge. Goddammit, game!

Welp! That is it for the gigantic wet fart that is the Omega Ruins. We are unceremoniously warped back to the dungeon entrance. If we return to Omega's chamber (fighting new enemies in Omega Ruins Crater) there's one last prize waiting for us at Omega's grave. A... Magic Sphere that the party failed to collect during the cutscene. A Magic Sphere. Plop it down anywhere and get 4 whole extra points to Magic Damage!

I'm going to file that under “Who Cares? This Place Sucks! Let's Bounce!”

New Music: Attack

Before we close out our adventures in Final Fantasy X's optional Endgame antics, we have one final bit to sort out back on the Fahrenheit.

Remember how we got the last of the Al Bhed Primers? If we return to Rin, who initially suggested we take up learning the language, we now get a new conversation after neglecting to shop at his overpriced shop.

[Very good! You have well learned our tongue.]

[Easy, once you know the trick!]

[It's just English with a letter cipher to make it sound like another language.]
[You must take this secret to your grave. All the Al Bhed know the common tongue. We just like shit talking Yevon followers behind their back.]
*nods*

[To think the day would come, that we could talk so, it is joyous indeed!]

[I am happy too!]

[Here, a present to congratulate your success!]

And here is our prize for having mastered the Al Bhed language. This allows us to Customize up to three weapons with Double Overdrive. So it's completely useless, thanks to our Celestial Weapons all innately coming with that function.

Dryhgc y pihlr, Vehym Vyhdyco Q. E's kmyt E fahd du ymm dra vilgehk dnuipma.! Ikr... Mad'c vehecr drec tisp kysa, oy?