Part 34: Episode XXVIII: Crank My Crane
Music: Inflexible Determination
<Oh for f-- I leave Yuna with nancy boy for one minute and--!>
Kimahri gets the taste punched out of his mouth yet again thanks to Tidus’ distraction. But Kimahri decides to continue the brawl another day since we have slightly more pressing matters at hand...
Tidus and Kimahri rush out of the bar...
This is roughly the point in the game where we begin to realize that Yuna’s guardian entourage kind of... what’s the phrase I am looking for...? Ah yes: SUCK ASS at their jobs.
Lulu enters the square and shuffles over toward the duo. How she does not trip wearing that outfit and moving at a pace any more strenuous than a speedy walk is beyond me...
”Kimahri got in a bar fight with some other Ronso guys. It was pretty sweet. You can really take a punch, man.” *glares*
"Yuna's been kidnapped by the Al Bhed Psyches. In exchange for her safe return, they want the Aurochs to lose." ”Oh? I was wondering where she had gott—” "What!?" *sigh* <Kimahri never will hear the end of this one...> "If they're only blitzball players, I doubt they'd do anything drastic. But we shouldn't take chances. ” ”There aren’t fanfic writers in Spira, are there...?” “...What are you even talking about?!” “That a ‘no‘...? Good!” “Let's go get her." *points toward the docks* “I'm going too! This will be no problem. They're telling the Aurochs to throw the game, as if they needed to! I mean, how good a team can they be?" ”Do they like just not translate win records into Al Bhed? The Aurochs are the last team they ought to be blackmailing...” *grunts* “Well, okay. Other than that Ronso team since I think that would just be a great big invitation for them to get their arms torn off.” "Wakka said the same thing. He'll take care of the game. We should go get Yuna. The Al Bhed boat is in dock 4. Let's go."
Good thing we looted those docks earlier. It would be pretty inappropriate to do so while Yuna has been abducted.
The trio enter the dock area...
Music: Normal Battle
"Ancient machina, salvaged by the Al Bhed. They are most vulnerable to lightning."
So this is a new enemy type: machines. Machines are probably one of the most pathetic trash mob types in the entire game as they are extremely vulnerable to lightning elemental black magic.
Vulnerable as in “Lulu can one-shot all of them” for a pretty decent stretch of the game. The Worker machina here included. Indeed, Lulu could pretty much solo this entire sequence with no problem. This raises the question...
...
Actually, you know what...? There is a LOT of things wrong with this little stupid filler mission, if you think about it. Tidus and the gang have to fight like five waves of these lousy robotic workers. So let's take a moment to analyze all the lapses in sense and logistics behind this Yuna kidnapping subplot. Tell me if I missed anything.
- The Al Bhed Psyches managed to kidnap Yuna, a major celebrity known on sight by pretty much everyone in Spira, in broad daylight in perhaps the most populated area on the entire planet at the moment. They then dragged her across the entire city (that cafe is just below the gate out of town) back to the blitzball stadium's dock. Nobody noticed this.
- On top of being an extremely well known person, Yuna can summon a ten foot tall fire werewolf at will, yet was abducted by a bunch of lanky blond guys in rubber jumpsuits.
- The Al Bhed Psyches decided to blackmail the worst team in the entire league for an easy win. Yes, I know there's a reason for this. Alter this question to "why even make ransom demands in the first place".
- Yuna's abductors managed to kidnap her, take her across town, send ransom demands to the Aurochs, and Lulu had time to huff it across town all before Tidus and Kimahri noticed she was even gone. Apparently, Tidus was indeed just standing around watching television for twenty minutes going "oh no the game" without moving alongside Kimahri and Biran having a staring contest.
- Nobody bothers to notify the authorities or at bare minimum tell the blitzball officials that the Al Bhed are up to some slightly unsportsmanlike conduct before the match. I cannot see any way that would be less hazardous to the hostage than bum rushing the docks shooting bolts of lightning and stabbing everything in sight.
- Wakka and Lulu came to a consensus that yes... Wakka playing a game with his trainwreck loser fuck-up team is more important than rescuing the person they are sworn to protect in accords with their religion.
- Lulu knows the Al Bhed kidnappers are held up in a dock just on the other side of the stadium. Instead of rushing off to rescue Yuna herself (which she is clearly capable of doing since Tidus and Kimahri are useless for this segment) she instead takes a jog across the entire city to go yell at them for losing Yuna and then jogs all the way back.
- On that note, the fact Lulu jogged ANYWHERE in that outfit.
- Nobody is noticing the Al Bhed, a race already said to be on Yevon's shitlist, has unleashed a small swarm of forbidden robots in the building. A building currently holding the religious leader of Spira. Did the Yevon rent-a-cops all get to go on break to watch the game they're supposed to be guarding?
Music: Inflexible Determination
I think that's just about everything idiotic about this subplot. Perhaps the characters have realized the farce at hand as well, since the whole urgent rescue of Yuna is interrupted by...
...taking a breather to watch a bit of the game we've been ditching.
The whole tutorial didn't mention it, but blitzball games are divided into two five minute halves. The timer pretty much never stops for anything as far as cutscene blitzball would be concerned (in-game it is only for stopping to pass/shoot or when encountering defenders.) There is two minutes left in the game (the timer counts up to 5:00), so keep that in mind for the next time we see Wakka's match...
The Psyches proceed to gang up and kick the shit out of Wakka as soon as he gets passed the ball.
"That's probably because there are no referees or fouls in blitzball, Jimma."
"Right you are, Bobba." "Oh! Here comes Judda lunging with a poison-tipped dagger toward Wakka's scrotum! Unbelievable!"
"He won't last. Wakka's always like that." "Ouch." <Is Kimahri the ONLY one taking job seriously...? Besides, everyone knows of Ronso Fangs supremacy.> "Let's go."
In other news, the Al Bhed have decided to take up anchor and flee the docks with the window of opportunity allotted by our heroes stopping to gawk at a sports game.
Alright! Just enough space for everyone's favorite...
Action Leap! HOOOOOO! Except for Lulu who vanished. Screw animating that dress performing an Action Leap!
But just because the party has made it onto the Al Bhed's ship doesn't mean the day is saved quite yet. A crappy sub-plot would never be complete without a crappy filler boss battle.
Music: Enemy Attack
And the Oblitzerator here is just the filler boss with a terrible pun name for the job. This is a gimmick boss battle. A very easy one at that.
The Oblitzerator's primary attack is to shoot a barrage of blitzballs at the party for ~50 HP of damage multiple times against random members of the party. It will use this on its own during its turns alongside a 1/3 chance of using it as a counter-attack if anyone damages it.
In addition, the glorified pitching machine also has a pair of counter attacks. Against physical attacks, it has a chance of countering with a ball pelted straight in someone's eyes for a decent chunk of damage as well as blinding them. Likewise, if Lulu decides to get uppity with magic, it can bust her in the jaw with a high powered blitzball pitch to silence the magic user. But we aren't really going to be attacking this thing directly much. Observe...
At the start of the battle, Tidus notices a crane and decides he ought to fiddle with heavy machinery during the battle against heavy machinery. Sure, why not? A Trigger Command to "Use Crane" is issued to Tidus for this battle. I guess Lulu is just following her Yevon teachings of machina being the devil and everyone knows cats cannot operate cranes.
Unfortunately, if Tidus attempts to use the crane it appears to have no power. I'm not sure why a huge crane and the ship it is attached to are operating on separate power sources. But there you go.
In order to juice up the crane's power supply, we'll need to have Lulu cast Thunder on it three times in a row. Since everyone knows that mechanical equipment struck by lightning just gain more power.
Tidus' role for this battle is more-or-less just morally supporting Lulu's Thunder volley with a bit of Haste and a side of Cheer for everyone else for shits and giggles. The Oblitzerator has very high resistance to physical attacks. Plus that whole counter thing. Keeping that in mind, Kimahri is utterly useless here. When I fought the battle, he immediately got blinded by the boss and spent the rest of the fight just flailing hopelessly at air.
In any case, after three lightning bolts the crane will spring back to life and Tidus can properly use the Trigger Command on the crane.
Using the crane will cause it to grab a hold of the Oblitzerator and tear off its ball pitcher apparatus, both neutering its counter-attacks and ball volley business as well as reducing its HP to 1/16th of the total remaining.
Needless to say, the machine doesn't last much longer after that...
Music:Victory Fanfare
The Oblitzerator apparently doubles as an instant hostage situation diffusion as the moment it explodes, all the Al Bhed aboard the ship immediately fall unconscious and the cabin imprisoning Yuna instantly springs open to release her.
So concludes Luca's obligatory boss battle.
"A little." *sniff* "What's that smell?" "Umm... nobody go below deck. It is... Well, I summoned my newest Aeon and... Umm... Things got a bit out of hand..."
Tidus looks around the ship, taking particular note of the Al Bhed attempting depraved sexual acts best left undiscussed.
"There were these Al Bhed that saved my life when I first came to Spira. They took me on their ship, even gave me food." "And then some water when I almost choked on the food. They were pretty cool. Other than kidnapping me and forcing me into labor..."
"I wonder if they're all gone." "What happened?" "Sin came up near us. I made it out okay, but I don't know what happened to their ship." "If Sin is involved, I wouldn't bank on that ship having made it to any port..." "Tch. Are you trying to always the biggest downer in a room, or does it just come out that way naturally?"
*sits on a railing* "I don't know. They were all speaking that Al Bhed language." "Well, one spoke Engl--err... OUR language. But I didn't really get to ask anyone's name before Sin came rolling in." "I see..." "So who's Cid?" "He's my uncle, but I've never actually met him." "Wait. That means you're Al Bhed, too, Yuna?" "On my mother's side, yes. Cid is my mother's brother. He became distant after my mother married. But she told me to seek him out if I ever needed help." "You're worried he was...?" "Does Spira have a term for getting gibbed by Sin...?" "..." "I'll take that as another 'no'..."
"The thing about Wakka -- he never had much love for the Al Bhed." "How little love are we talking here? 'Them damn Al Bhed are takin' all our jerbs!' kinda bad blood or 'We ought to string all Al Bhed up from a tree'?" "...Wakka is leaning a bit more toward the latter." "And Yuna being half-Al Bhed has never come up in a decade of you all knowing one another...?" "It is Wakka. He is... simple. To put it lightly."Tidus gets startled and jumps from the railing...
"I thought I told you not to tell Wakka!" "Do you truly have the memory span of a goldfish?!" "The game!" "Oh!"
And thus with the wily Al Bhed defeated and Yuna rescued from their vile clutches, Lulu utilizes her Signal Flare spell to declare the end of this dopey ass subplot. What...? You didn't know Lulu had a Signal Flare spell? Well she does. She just used it. And will never use it again! Such are the mysterious ways of the dark cutscene magicks.
Video: Episode 28 Highlight Reel
Oblitzerator Concept Art