Final Fantasy X Part #124 - Episode CXIV: Our Unlikely Success

Part 124: Episode CXIV: Our Unlikely Success

Despite everyone clearly being engulfed in an inferno of hellfire visible from outer space in that previous scene, all it managed to do was knock everyone down. Forget Yu Yevon's Sin Armor. The party's intense Plot Armor is unshakable.

Oh... Uhh... Hi... You sure moved fast between scenes. Indeed, prepare for Sin to teleport wildly between cutscenes and even cuts in the same scene. Sin cannot actually teleport. The storyboarding for this sequence is just godawful. Also there's the fact the CGI sequences were clearly made long before they locked down any of the gameplay elements revolving it.

"Hey, I saw somethin' shine on the base of Shin's arm! I reckon its a weak spot!"

”Yep. Big old glowin' purple weak spot. Huh. Weird nobody's ever noticed that til now, eh?”

Music: Attack

[What, what?]

[We are pulled by Sin!]

[I just said that, Rikku!]
[Nobody but me can understand you out here!]
“I can.”
“...”
“...Since when?”
“Yeah, I just finished learning Al Bhed back in that Omega Ruins dump.”
“...”
“...What?! How?”
“I picked up the last of these Al Bhed Primer thingies. Taught me your alphabet. Z is W? Wild.”
[Totally fluent in Al Bhed now.]
[...You are just messing with me now.]
“I'm not messing with you.”
“The fu—“

[Too late! It comes!]

Welp. I guess we're just fighting Sin now like it was any other throwaway boss. This all feels... really unearned, if we're being honest. Forget the LP's schedule, in which the party took a month off for an intense training montage, each collecting legendary weapons and powering them up while getting beefy stat upgrades in the processes.

As far as the plot of Final Fantasy X's is concerned, this whole sequence is taking place almost immediately after the events in Zanarkand. The biggest threat the party faced was Yunalesca, a rather powerful undead sorceress lady that still required a seven-on-one beat down to defeat. And now we've just immediately jumped from that to going “Fuck it, we can just go fight Sin, right?” There's no escalation leading up to this. Or even a reason as to why we're rushing half-cocked into this situation. Sin hasn't gotten to be any more of a direct threat that must be stopped this instant. Nor has the party gained any key advantage they can use to challenge the doom whale.

It's not as though it would be that hard to write in a lame justification as to why we're now jumping to the final battle. Here: Killing Yunalesca and screwing up the whole Pilgrimage cycle had disrupted Sin's programming and now it's on a rampage heading for Bevelle. A decent chunk of Spira's population will be incredibly dead unless we go sort out the mess we made. There! Lame justification. It even gives more of a reason for Yo Mika to been “fuck this noise” immediately. Instead, this whole thing feels like a TV series that found out it wasn't being renewed mid-shoot of the season and had to scramble to wrap everything up. Or more like they had the ending bits in place, but had to half-ass the connecting threads getting there.

But whatever. We're now facing Sin and its newly discovered glowing weak points. Thank heavens Sin decided today was a good day to take a leisurely afternoon flight and leave its structural weak points conveniently exposed like this. It's also fortunate that Sin has neglected to employ that massive energy shield it could conjure up earlier in the game. You know, the one that could tank concentrated cannon fire from an entire army and send out pulses that disintegrated anything within a couple mile radius?

Hey, remember how just being in Sin's vicinity caused localized hurricane force winds capable of razing entire villages? Or the endless barrages of Sin Spawn it could shoot out with pinpoint accuracy? Oh yeah, don't forget the poison Sin Toxin it farted all over when even just a little cranky. It's all fine. None of that will come up ever again.

This battle has the same airship mechanics as the fight against Evrae way back during the initial visit to Bevelle. Well, minus the missile salvos, as they're depleted regardless of whether or not they were used against Bevelle's guardian dragon. Rikku or Tidus can command Cid to move the airship closer to the target, so the entire party can attack.

At range, only Wakka can physically attack and magic will be the only way to begin running down the Left Fin's 65,000 HP. Which at this point, isn't much of a problem considering I've got Wakka hitting for five digit damage and Yuna 2/3rds of the way down Lulu's Sphere Grid helping on the magic front. But, we'll give Sin a sporting chance by flying in to see what a Sin Zit can accomplish.

The Sin Fin is fairly passive as far as attacking goes. At range, it just hangs out until the party has attacked 7+ times.

After that, it will get fed-up with people poking its acne and will ram the Fahrenheit doing... surprisingly little damage considering it's about 50 stories tall.

After either being attacked a handful of times or falling below 66% health, the Left Fin's boil will begin charging up energy for a turn. Next round...

Next round, it will release Gravija, the second tier Gravity attack which reduces the entire party's HP to 25%. It's real nice we don't have to worry about maintaining the Fahrenheit's structural integrity during these battles. Getting shoulder checked by a doom whale? It's fine. Localized black hole opened up on stern of the ship? Little bit of turbulence. It already tanked a nuclear explosion without as much as spoiling the paint job. They knew how to build 'em back in the day.

In any case, bringing Auron's HP down to critical with his Masamune is a bad overall strategy on Sin's part. So concludes the battle against the Left Fin.

“Here we go!”

So who's ready for a big ol' ass pull?

Remember during Operation Mi'ihen where the Al Bhed had that massive Tesla Cannon type set-up to combat Sin? Didn't go so hot then.

Well, turns out the Fahrenheit had one of those strapped on this entire time. Or maybe Cid had one installed while we were off gallivanting about capturing monsters or visiting Seymour's mom. Doesn't matter! Don't worry about it.

The point is, the Fahrenheit now has a giant fuck-off laser cannon powerful enough to blow Sin's fin clean off in a single shot _{_{after we significantly weaken it with blades and magic.}} You know, you could have just added a short sequence about gathering resources used in restoring this cannon on the airship as a justification for stepping up to rumble with Sin. Hell, just say there's some nifty weapons cache in the Omega Ruins or something. It's not that hard! Just going “oh by the way, I've got this thing that ACTUALLY will do all the work wrecking Sin while you idiots poke its zits” seems... poorly written.

It's worth noting that this is, in fact, a boss rush and each battle is counted as a separate encounter if everyone wants to get on the AP train.

"Couldn't have done it without you! All right! Everyone look sharp! Time to hit the other side!"

"Easy for you to say!"

Time for Round 2 against the Right Fin. This is... the same exact boss battle. They fiddled with a few settings like it attacking a bit earlier and the like. But stats wise and moveset... yeah they just copy and pasted this one.

So we'll just skip ahead to the chase and pop this zit straight away.

Sin is not having a great day. Huh. Who knew the key to ending this past millennium of suffering was just to put a bunch of research points into aviation and beam weaponry? And hoping Sin gets drunk and forgets half its abilities, while simultaneously deciding to become an aerial threat rather than an aquatic one.

I really hope we're still flying over the ocean. It's not going to be great PR for the party if one of Sin's fins lands on a fishing village or crushes a family having a picnic.

[It is over.]

[What? We have only begun!]

[But the main gun, it is broken!]

[Th-That cannot be!]

[I said we should wait and finish repairing gun. But no! Everyone all eager to fight Sin like lunatics!]
[Well... It was workin'... mostly.]
“...”

The thought of Sin's fin raining 10,000 gil across the sky like a big pinata when broken makes me smile.

"Dang it! All right, back inside! Time for another plan!"

"No! We're going in!”

Tidus shut the FUCK UP about blitzball! I swear to God, I will digitize my arm and slap you so hard it will knock the bleach out of your hair! When you've got the ball, you either score the one time. Or you take the ball and sit in your goal for three minutes so the garbage game ends quicker. Your motivational statement is stupid and so are you.

Hey, remember that whole half-baked affection stat? The one that determined who Tidus had a romantic snowmobile ride with back at Macalania? Here's the only other scene where that stat dictates what happens in a cutscene. Which, in my case, has apparently shifted from Rikku to Lulu in the time since then. That makes sense, since I barely ever use Rikku more than a couple turns in a fight. Also Lulu's slow ass was quite prone to getting wrecked and needing healing back when black magic was the crux of our fights.

Whoever takes the lead leaps off the edge of the Fahrenheit onto... hey, wasn't Sin just several miles away just a few seconds ago...? Also, behold the only time we see the void below Lulu's dress in-game.

In case you're curious, the alternate bits of dialog before the suicide leap are:

"Let's go!"

"Foolhardy... But a fun plan."

"See you there!"

"Go, go, go!"

"On my honor as Ronso!"

Yep. Sure. Everyone just leap off the edge of the airship and skydive on the back of the flying doom whale. A good a plan as any.

This game got incredibly dumb in a remarkably quick span of time.

Sin responds to the invasion of its personal space by breaking out in a nervous fit of back acne. I mean technically this Sin is ten years old. It's just hitting puberty real early.

Erupting from the popped zit we are confronted by Sinspawn Genasis. Eww. That's dangerously close to “Genesis” and I don't want that name invoked in any Final Fantasy title again. But wait... Heeeeey... wait a minute!

We've already done this one! This is just a palette swap of Sinspawn Geneaux from back on Kilika Island... minus a couple of helper tentacles.

Technically, we are fighting both Sinspawn Copypastux and the Sin Core behind it. The Sin Core is quite similar to the two Sin Fin cores. Only it has just 36,000 HP this time along with Sinspawn Genasis' meager 20,000. It will burn a turn to charge up before unleashing Gravija the following turn. Meanwhile, Zitspawn will attack with poison afflicting attacks and the occasional Waterga.

At least it would if the party didn't obliterate it immediately before it got a chance to attack. My party is overpowered as hell at this point. But I'm willing to give new encounters a chance to show off their stuff before being torn asunder by overwhelming offensive capabilities. I will not, however, give any quarter to more goddamn palette swap encounters.

And the same goes for the Sin Core. Beyond charging up and farting out Gravija, all the Sin Core does is occasionally throw in the rogue second tier magic spell. This series of battles is piss easy whether you've grinding through all the Endgame content or are fresh off the airship from Zanarkand.

Why did Sin have a cache of mascot dolls attached to its back...?

Music ends...

So... we took down Sin. That was... shockingly simple considering the last time anyone challenged Sin it resulted in the death of several hundred soldiers.

Oh nice, we got an audience for our triumphant victory over Sin. You thought Yuna was a big celebrity before...? Sheesh. They'll never leave her alone now.

Wait a sec... Shit... Where did we end up shooting down Sin?

”Welp...”
“Aww geez...”
“Was there... a lot of people... living there...?”
“Hmph. Nobody we knew.”

Whoops. We accidentally crashed Sin into the biggest population center on the planet and the only place it rarely attacked. Nice going, team! Good hustle!