Part 72: Episode LXIII: Make My Order to Wendigo

New Music: Those Who Come Closer



Now, where were we? Ah yes. The bunch of nasty fellows that look like the resulting spawn of Groot boning a tree elf want to lynch the party for pulling a hit on their leader. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Good luck sprinting to safety in that dress, Lulu.





O'aka has set up a save point and is offering some ware outside the temple if we want to get a few essentials from a scumbag. Thanks for the offer, but pass you weird cockney groupie.





The Guado are not just going to let Tidus and the gang escape in piece. A constant stream of Guado pursuers start sprinting out of the temple after the party. Despite the dopey Donkey Kong-esque limb proportions, the Guado have been putting in some cardio time and will fairly easily catch up with Tidus.





Of course, the solution to this dilemma will be to further dig ourselves in a criminal hole by murdering even more Guado on the way out the door. We already killed their race's leader. May as well have a full blown massacre grace the headlines of tomorrow's newspapers.



So did you know that the Guado can summon forth fiends to aide them in battle? It's true. That is... apparently a thing they can do. This is the only time in the game it ever comes up and their stock of monsters is the exact same things we'd have encountered in random battles in the region (ice palette swaps of dogs, shell guys, evil eyes, and the jello cup enemies.)



All of which can easily be one-shot by the appropriate party members. It's like they're not even trying.



If left to their own devices for too long, the Guado guardsmen will start casting Berserk on its ally monsters. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen Berserk before in this game. It is an enemy-only spell in Final Fantasy X that will cause the afflicted to attack every turn with a heightened attack power. Not much of a buff here. But it will get nasty soon enough.





Beyond casting Berserk, the Guado Guardians themselves are fairly similar to the ones that defended Seymour earlier. Their ability to cast Protect on themselves has been replaced by the aforementioned Berserk spell. But the auto-potion nonsense is still in play (and still disabled with Rikku.) It's still just a matter of burning through 2,000 HP and they can join their leader in the Farplane.



If Tidus keeps moving, we should only have to face 2-3 Guado Pokemon Trainers on the way out of Macalania Temple. We've still got the matter of running back to urmm... Well, I'm not sure where we are running to if I'm being perfectly honest here. Just away from from the tree folk lynch mob.







The Guado give up the chase for a bit while we retrace our steps across the snowmobile cutscene cavern. If not for the random battles, I swear it's quicker just to walk this path than it was to cut through on vehicles. Maybe it's just the fact that probably none of these clowns, besides maybe Rikku, have ever actually driven a machine before.





Once we're out of the designated snowmobile exposition zone, the Guado pursuers catch up for a final thro—hey... Hey you, back there! I see you hiding.



What you doing there, little buddy? You wanna watch these dopey mutant elves get ruined too? Don't be shy. C'mon out and watch. It's gonna be a real proper asski—



OH CHRIST! Note to self: Do not provoke the locals while traveling in the future. It has gone real bad for us thus far...



So this is happening now. Meet the “Wendigo” according to Final Fantasy. Actual mythological wendigo are from Algonquian Native American folklore and are evil cannibal spirits of the winter that possess humans and force them to devour flesh. Sometimes the stipulation was a human got its Hannibal Lecter on first and the wendigo possession was just the spirit going “fuck YEAH I'm all about that, let's do this thing!”

They also occasionally like to murder TV actors and actresses in their late 20s to early 30s trying to pass as uncanny valley looking teenagers.



Final Fantasy X's version of the wendigo looks like a Ronso boned an ogre. Apparently it's on the side of the Guado for not entirely apparent reasons. Regardless, we now need to take the Wendigo and its two Guado Guardian friends out, if we are to continue our flight from the greater Macalania region.



Guado lackeys are still pulling the same tricks from earlier with casting Berserk on their chosen Pokemon. Only here it is an actual major issue because the Wendigo already hits like a cannon. Buffed with berserk?





It can pretty much one-shot half the party members with its attacks. Any attempt to dispel Berserk (such as Yuna casting Esuna on it) will result in the Guado immediately recasting the buff their next turn. So we should probably take care of those Guado folk straight away and focus on the Wendigo. However, these Guado are particular dicks in their deaths.





Namely, the one on the left will cast Shell on the Wendigo boss upon its death. The jerkface on the right will cast Protect. Way to just make the fight a longer slog, ya jerks. Elves in all incarnations are just utter pieces of shit. Four in Drakengard 3 might have had the right idea.



Get the hell out of here, Guado! No one likes your creepy asses. Go on! Get!





With the Wendigo's handlers out of the way, we need to get to work peeling off all those buffs it got handed out. A berserk heavy with both magic and physical protection sounds like that bullshit endgame enemy type they love sticking in modern shooters. You know the type. Nobody likes fighting those fuckers, but they just keep sticking them into games nonetheless! Probably the same jackasses like those as the ones into sliding block puzzles. Highly damaged, ill individuals.

Yuna can use her Esuna magic to knock out Berserk, bringing the creature's attack power down to normal levels. I mean a single punch is still enough to give someone like Rikku or Lulu severe brain damage. But their heads won't outright explode when it. Small improvement to our situation.



Since Wendigo is all physical attacks all the time. So Auron's Power Break is choice in at least neutering the beast's offensive capabilities. Now we're just down to severe concussion status from Wendigo fisticuffs. But we could do better.







Our new burly friend is also weak to Darkness status, so we'll just go ahead and have Wakka help completely shut down its ability to do much of anything but whiff attacks for days. But that still leaves the Protect and Shell up. At this point, the boss effectively cannot do anything unless it gets real lucky with RNG in the blinded attacks.



We could just put up with the protected status and beat on it for about ten minutes with our strongest physical and magic attacks at reduced effect. But we've got places to be and a pilgrimage to continue. So let's get this show over with ASAP. As soon as Wakka beans a Dark Attack on the Wendigo, let's have Yuna tag in summon an aeon.





Shiva Nora may be our newest model of aeon, but it's not the choice for this battle. And we may be in an frozen tundra biome fighting a big blue yeti dude, but McGruff's fire isn't the ticket either. Thorse is what we want as it has a choice ability to deal with the whole magic buff situation going on with Wendigo.





Thorse's unique ability, Aerospark, doesn't do a whole lot of damage. But it does possess the innate ability to negate all status effects/buffs on strike. So there goes the Guado goons' final parting gift out the window. Now we can just go ahead and wrap this up in short order.



Mostly by just having Thorse finish the job. Wakka's Dark Attack should still be active for a couple more turns, leaving it free to whiff a few attacks to build up Thorse's Overdrive gauge for us.



Meanwhile we can play thunderbolt dodge with the roided out yeti for a time while it builds. Spoilers: It's not very good at it.



When getting low on HP, Wendigo will put up its dukes and begin countering all physical attacks dealt against it with some heavy hitting 1000 HP+ attacks.







Silly abominable snowman. You can't counter punch lighting! What are you even playing at?





We get a moderate payday off the corpse of the final two Guado warriors in pursuit. I believe our grand Guado massacre number was eight in total. These two Wendigo handlers, Seymour and his two bodyguards, and three on the way out the temple. Not bad for an on the spot international incident.





Following the battle, Wendigo hops back onto its feet and either is really pissed at the party's antics. Or else it is about to take a sofa sized shit all over Lake Macalania. Either way, it sounds like a bad scene.



So a ten ton tank rolling out onto the ice firing gatling guns and laser cannons didn't so much as put a dent onto the frozen ice. But an angry, mostly dead yeti doing a downward heavy punch before keeling over dead shatters the lake's surface immediately? I probably should have stopped thinking about Spira physics back when blitzball was introduced, huh...?







Final Fantasy Record Keeper Sprite Wendigo