Part 86: Episode LXXVII: Via My Corridors

New Music: Path of Repentance (Recommended Listening!)



So remember how two of this champions of year's world underwater sports tournament and the deep sea diver were tossed into the Bevelle water dungeon? Don't worry about them for now. Instead, we'll be shifting gears to a nondescript series of gray corridors for the party members they didn't program underwater animations for alternate path of the Via Purifico.



For the sole time in the entirety of Final Fantasy X, Tidus will be taking a break as the overworld player avatar. Instead Yuna will be taking over duties for this dungeon. You may notice a teleporter looking pressure plate gizmo in the center of this chamber. It's nothing really to worry about. There's no gimmick to this dungeon beyond having Yuna take the lead and having the party split up. There is a teleporter puzzle side diversion. But it is only for some extra loot.

Via Purifico is essentially laid out like a big oval with a line going through the center. There are open rooms connecting like this one in the center and all four cardinal directions. The exit is due north.





While the Via Purifico is an incredibly mundane dungeon, it is not entirely without hazards. Palette swaps of evil eyes called Bat Eyes are out in force. This one is weak to fire and has higher stats than the ones back at Macalania. That's it. They've pretty much given up on anything beyond the token color palette switch and across the board number boosting on enemies at this point.





Extended families of rock armadillo guy, status effect lizards, and sentient jello scoops (Water Element Edition!) are also available to strike down heathens who have never touched their Sphere Grids. But for an experienced summoner this not even remotely a threat.



Especially, given the newest member of Yuna's aeon collection:







TROOOOOOOOOOOOOGDOOOOOOOOOOR!!









Pay no attention to the fact they gave us an aeon with a summoning animation explicitly showing it fly in from the sky while stuck in a dungeon that's supposed to be deep underground. Bahamut Trogdor is here and he is ready to wreck any fiends or thatch roof houses in his way.



Yuna and Trogdor can easily just solo this entire dungeon as our newest in the long line of dragon buddies is extremely overpowered compared to anything the Via Purifico can throw at us. Which is a bit of an oversight on Yevon's part. But here we are.



Just a normal attack from Trogdor will result in a pimp slap so mighty it will overkill anyone foolish enough to step to him in a single blow.









But why bugger with anything that pedestrian, when Trogdor can unleash its unique attack, Impulse, to just one-shot an entire field of enemies all at once for non-elemental damage. Your damage resists can suck it losers. That includes you jello cup guy.



If that's not enough for you, Trogdor also comes equipped with every elemental black magic spell in the game, including the third tier stuff we've yet to even see prior to this point (and Lulu is still a good couple of hours of leveling before hitting.) Just in case you really want to ruin a Flan's day something fierce with Thundaga.



All in all, Trogdor is PRETTY good and will be our top aeon for quite some time. Poor Shiva Nora gets kind of shafted with having about a twenty minute stretch of game and two boss battles before Yuna gets sidelined for three hours and immediately gets dethroned the next chance Yuna becomes playable.



That all said, it's a very very good idea to do a small amount of grinding and get all of Yuna's aeons packing an Overdrive on the back burner. Just in case... Plus, Yuna has been sitting out for two major areas without leveling. It's a good time to show her a bit of love.





But enough about battling trash mobs and showing off our new toys. A gate in the central chamber is blocking the route directly north. So we'll have to make our way around the oval. It doesn't matter which direction. We'll head counter-clockwise to hit everything of mild interest in this dull dungeon as efficiently as possible. Reaching the eastern chamber we find Kimahri just kind of zoning out by himself. It was nice of Yevon not to toss him into the water dungeon. I cannot imagine that would go over well with a catman.



“No, it's okay.”





Well, that's Kimahri back in the party. I think that's even more of a hindrance than just having Yuna soloing the dungeon with her summons. We may as well get the rest of the gang while we're here.



Auron is the only mandatory party member we have to run into as he's hanging out in the northern chamber by the exit hallway. The first random battle we get into following his rejoining the party he will mutter “I hate this place...” I feel you, Auron. I feel you...



It's not required to track down Lulu or even Kimahri with we went around the corridors clockwise. Just heading out north from here will take us to the exit. No puzzles to solve or anything to escape. Like I said, that teleporter thing is just busy work to get an extra bit of loot. Lulu will stop being lazy and make her way out of the dungeon by herself if we just head on out without her. But eh... Let's not be rude.







After all, she's just hanging out around the corner to the westernmost chamber. I know everyone just got sentenced to death by Yevon but could the rest of you at perhaps try to take your jobs seriously? Auron at least made his way to the only exit to wait for Yuna to get tossed into the dungeon. Lulu, what's your excuse to be staring into space next to a treasure chest? What's even in there? A White Magic Sphere? Like I'm going to let you learn White Magic.



*shakes head* “It's okay. I know.”



And that's the whole party recovered. If you're curious about the bonus loot. There's a teleporter panel half buried in some rubble in an offshoot off the main oval-ish layout of Via Purifico we can have Yuna activate.







There's another panel to an offshoot just north of the central room of the dungeon. These two panels activate those teleporter pressure switches. They have the same rotating activation crap the Bevelle Cloister of Trials panel had where you have to time it in the right direction.







Long story short: You have to line up the teleporters to take you north and then the north one will shoot Yuna through a locked gate to the Northwest.





For taking the effort, Yuna picks up another Skill Sphere if you want more people to learn to Steal or Use Al Bhed Potions or something. And a Lucid Ring accessory for Yuna that locks out most common status effects. Meh.



Anyway, that is literally all Yuna's half of Via Purifico has to offer. A bunch of copy and pasted hallways and some middling treasure. If you really want you can bolt through the entire place in about five minutes. Of course, it's not quite going to be that easy. There's no Yevon guardian of the Via Purifico. That would make for to much sense for a dungeon meant to kill heathens to the weird Yevon death cult. No instead, they sent... this moron...

Music ends...



“Why are you here?”



"We rode the airship to the Calm Lands, then came to Bevelle. Maester Kinoc summoned us then. Ordered us to 'deal with the traitors.'"
*gasp*
"You will fight us?"
”I do not see that going well for you.”
"The temple's orders are law. Even if you are Lord Braska's flesh and blood... You're a traitor!”



“Maroda and Pacce are not here. I will do this unhappy deed myself.”




Music: Enemy Attack





So remember how I said Yuna's guardians were doing a piss poor job in this dungeon? Well here's Exhibit A on their poor quarterly performance review. Instead of just running over and kicking the shit out of this D-List summoner before he can do jack shit, like they ought to (and that frankly would have been kind of hilarious.) Auron, Lulu, and Kimahri instead opt for a smoke break while Yuna has a summon-off against Isaaru. What was even the point of gathering them in the dungeon!? Why was that a mechanic there?!







Isaaru chooses his Ifrit, Grothia (Greek for Fist. Apparently it's just called “Fist” in the HD Remaster and the original Japanese.) That's cute. I remember back when Yuna got her Ifrit-type way back like a day into her pilgrimage.







She's upgraded a little bit since Kilika...





We could blast this fool with Trogdor's Overdrive and one-shot the low end summon. But something tells me this may be a multi-stage affair. And why bother when we've got an aeon lacking elemental abilities and equipped with tier 3 blizzard spells against the fire-type Pokemon?







Isaaru's aeon will probably get uppity and pop off its Overdrive as soon as it gets a turn since around three turns worth of Blizzaga is enough to fill its overdrive meter and Trogdor is fast enough to get two turns right off the bat. But that's fine. It'll only take Trogdor to around 66% and...





...it's not going to endure a fourth round of ice chunks exploding up its ass. So much for your fist, Isaaru? What else have you got?







Aww it's good you made it to Besaid Temple and picked up your own bird with tits before getting punked by a bunch of no-name Al Bhed kidnappers. Did anyone ever tell you about the time Yuna and company blew up an Al Bhed tank? Or when she summoned a Valefor-type while freefalling and rode that sonuvabitch to safety?



We've upgraded our Flying Type since then.



Isaaru's Valefor Pterya is even less of an obstacle than his K-Mart brand Go-Bot of an Ifrit. But I think we ought to show him we mean business and we've yet to utilize our summon's stocked Overdrive. Let's remedy that...





It's hard to see past the wings and impatient posing, but Trogdor actually has a magical turbine on his back. One which can be revved up and used to power the dragon man's laser beam breath.







Yeah... That's pretty much it. Nothing too flashy. Just a beam cannon of death for hitting almost at the damage cap. So... Isaaru should be fucking dead, right? Like vaporized along with several blocks of Bevelle.





The adversary aeon actually does just no-sell that whole overdrive beam cannon. But when I said it wasn't remotely a threat, I wasn't kidding. It whiffed two attacks and did its Sonic Wings to delay Trogdor for all of one turn.





It did not survive the turn following that. Alright shithog. That's your Fist and Wing down? Going to pull out your... I was going to make a joke about naming your Ixion a penis joke but it struck me typing “Greek Penis” into Google is probably not a wise life decision so I refrained...



Whatever... Just bring out your electric dog and let's get this do—







Oh... Shit... So you speed-ran that Bevelle Temple too...? Haha... That place was a real shitshow of design, huh...

…

Crap...





Well fine. Be that way. What kind of a lousy name for a big badass Bahamut is “Spathi”!? It doesn't even have a sword, you Raiden voiced idiot.







Well whatever. We were storing up all the additional aeon overdrives for just such an occasion. Though of course, Isaaru's boss aeons have inflated HP for balancing issues. Bootleg Ifrit had 8,000. Dollar Store Valefor had 12,000 HP. And this Greek knock-off of Bahamut has 20,000.



But being a boss version of an aeon, it's also bound by silly nonsense like not attacking until it counts down to five and uses its Overdrive. Granted, the Overdrive will 1-shot any of our four remaining aeons (and yes we can use all four until we beat Isaaru.) But pfft... We already took out half its HP with that overdrive.





It only made it to the count of two before this aeon and Isaaru's summoning career were both on ice. Get dunked on by a real summoner!





You're over half way through your pilgrimage and you only have 6,000 gil to cough up from your war chest? What did you spend it all on Phoenix Downs for that seven year old guardian you had? Moron.



"Stay away!”
“Yuna, let's go.”
“...”
“There's a way to the surface up ahead.”
”Yes... I... Well, it's not very large back there. This is sort of the only way, so I figured as much. But thank you...”



Yuna bows and walks off with Kimahri and Lulu. Yep. That's it. They've escaped Via Purifico – the fearsome dungeon of Bevelle nobody has survived in Yevon's 1,000 years of existing...



And with that, Auron scoops up Isaaru and dumps him off the side of the Final Fantasy X plot train, never to be seen again...






Video: Episode 77 Highlight Reel





Bahamut Concept Art



Bahamut Final Fantasy Record Keeper Sprite