Final Fantasy X Part #52 - Episode XLIV: Electrify My Puzzles

Part 52: Episode XLIV: Electrify My Puzzles

Welp… No avoiding it. Did anyone actually like these parts of Final Fantasy X…? I have yet to meet someone who has enjoyed the Cloister of Trials crap. You jerks in the thread don’t count. People on the interwebs be crazy.

So you know how the first two times we hit the Cloister of Trials our plucky dolt hero bumbled his way into having to make his way through the puzzle dungeons all by himself? Now that he is finally a proper guardian going in with Yuna and the others as a group things should play out different… right?

Between Ordeals

You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But nope. Fuck you. The rest of the party vanishes into thin air and Tidus still needs to solve all these arbitrary puzzles by his lonesome. Could it have killed them to at least switch the party leader model to Yuna and just hand wave it as Yuna having to solve the trial by herself. Being that it is a summoner’s trial and all that to begin with… Yuna briefly DOES get to be the party leader for one segment so it’s not like they couldn’t be bothered to give her any new animations.

But meh… Let’s get this crap over with…

In this first chamber we find a pair of the house Djose Spheres located on each wall next to the first door.

And wouldn’t you know it… there’s a pair of sphere slots on said door! I think you know where this is heading…

That is the easy part down. Now for the main event. Up ahead we find a large chamber with a glowing Yevon sigil on the floor. Our new objective is to light up all five parts of said church icon.

The method of actually accomplishing this task will of course be as counter-intuitive as they could muster with the space allotted. This Cloister isn’t too hard. It is mostly a matter of observing and paying attention to the surroundings. So let’s take a moment to do a bit of inventory on the chamber’s points of note.

In the center of the room we have a pedestal with a Djose Sphere already slotted into it (granted this temple ONLY has Djose Spheres so I suppose we can stop directly referring to their type.) North of that is a sealed door with a pair of spheres slotted on either side of it. The left sphere seems to be powering the outer eye part of the Yevon symbol while the right one is connected to the door but clearly not the correct sphere to actually open said door.

To the left of the chamber is a panel on the floor that will reset the position of the pedestal should it be moved.

To the right alcove of the joint are two more sphere slots and some weird pedestal on the ceiling with another indentation on the floor right below it.

Our first order of business is to remove the two spheres alongside the northern door and…

…toss both of these into the slots in the eastern edge of the room.

This in turn activates that ceiling pedestal causing it to do… something…

Well there *is* a pedestal sized slot on the floor right below it so if we have Tidus give that a shove over we get…

A super charged Djose Sphere. Sure, why not? We can go ahead and remove the energized sphere from its pedestal and…

…slam it into the slot to the right of the door.

With that done the northern door opens up. At the far northern wall of the new corridor is another pedestal with a sphere slotted into it. Unfortunately, there is sort of an electrical current filled gap between Tidus and it. So we are going to need to find a way to remedy that situation. The solution is… not really that readily apparent.

What we have to do is take those two spheres we used to energize the earlier sphere and toss them both, one on each side, into the newly vacant pedestal. After that, we need to run to the opposite side of the area to reset the puzzle and move the pedestal back to the center of the room as doing it manually without getting caught on something is dicey at best.

From there we can shove the sphere augmented pedestal straight north and off the ledge into the electric boogaloo pit.

This in turn causes the pedestal to suck up the energy of the pit and begin floating in mid-air to form a platform across the gap. Sure, that’s how electricity works.

In any case, Tidus can get his Mario Brothers on and hop across the pit to the far end now.

All in the name of… just shoving another sliding block a single space. I wonder who the first video game developer was to put sliding block puzzles into their product. And what adverse effects it would have on history if I were to travel back in time and shove a piano off a roof onto his head as he were walking down the street.

Anyhow all that nonsense has resulted in the “iris” of the Yevon symbol to light up

Now with that taken care of we need to sort out the rest of these spheres to light up the rest of the symbol. Our first order of business in that regard is to reset the puzzle to retrieve the pedestal and two spheres attached to it.

Next we need to take the charge up sphere holding the door open and swap that to the opposite slot to reactivate the “eye” portion of the symbol.

The last part gave me trouble the first time I played since I wasn’t sure where the hell to slot those two. After a few minutes of running around confused and shoving the pedestal all over I remembered…

…the two initial spheres we took out to open the first door right at the beginning… Turns out that those…

…each activate one of the “wing’ parts of the Yevon symbol. :dooh:

With the light display fully lit the block puzzle component morphs into an elevator leading upward to the next level.

We are almost done with this Cloister of Trials. There actually aren’t any more puzzles left. Despite the slightly intimidating looking design of this room all there is to do is…

…push all five blocks lining the room. Yup. That’s it!

After the final sliding block busy work is complete another pedestal materializes in the area.

But more importantly, the door leading up to the Chamber of the Fayth is open and the segment is essentially completed. Heading up there now would end this crappy area. However, we are missing something. No Cloister of Trials is properly complete without finding the bonus treasure too.

Instead of heading up to the Chamber of the Fayth (which would lock us out of the treasure until the end of the game) we instead need to head back downstairs as something new has appeared. See the wall on the western part of the central room? There is a *very* faint glyph that flashes on said wall. It is slightly more noticeable in motion as it briefly flickers occasionally. But still easily missed.

We can have Tidus rub that glyph’s belly to open a hidden path leading to the Djose Temple’s Destruction Sphere.

With that in tow, it is just a matter of riding the elevator upstairs and tossing the sphere into the newly formed pedestal.

And now we are officially finished with Djose Temple’s bullshit.

Tidus and the rest of the party head to the top level…

New Music: Song of Prayer ~ Ixion

Yuna head straight into the Chamber of the Fayth to grab her shiny, shiny new summon while the rest of the party hangs out waiting. We can talk to a couple of our allies if we really want to hear everyone to tell Tidus to sit his spazoid ass down and be good. However if we venture too far into the area…

…Oh give me a goddamn break.

Hey you! Yeah you! The summoner high class whore! Get the hell outta here and go do that puzzle dungeon yourself! We just finished that 20 seconds ago. I know damn well you and Slab Squatthrust didn’t go through the whole thing legit in time for you to already up here being Bitchy McArrogantwat already. Go on and get lost!

Barthello walks over to Auron…

"You are...Auron, no?"

"What of it?"

“Auron--no, Sir Auron. You're the reason I became a guardian!"

*chuckles*

Auron shakes the big dopey guy’s hand without issue. Auron might never give a fuck. But at least he’s chill as hell while doing so.

"Calling the personal guardian of Lord Braska riffraff?"

"And you call yourself a summoner?"

“…”

"Hang in there, buddy, eh?"

<Yeesh. I hope the guardian benefits in that duo pay out well…>

Some time later…

Kimahri lays down the law after that little interlude. But actually we need to attempt to leave the room in order to progress.

Yuna does her usual stumbling out of the Chamber of the Fayth and nearly faceplanting from exhaustion routine with Kimahri once more helping her stand up. I am starting to get the feeling that Kimahri got hired solely to prevent Yuna from smashing face first into the floor after each of these temples’ proceedings.