Part 94: Episode LXXXV: My Monster of the Day

So much for the barren planes of the Calm Lands. It's just a short jog across a couple of bridges across this canyon and we're out of this lousy zone.





Oh, goddammit! The frikkin' tree elves are back again... Nobody in the history of fiction has ever been happy to see an elf. Even when they show up to save the day it's in a fashion that you could undoubtedly go, “Couldn't you pointy eared motherfuckers have gotten your asses here twenty minutes earlier? Bill got shot by an arrow and DIED!”

How did these guys already cut us off at the pass from Bevelle? That was ju—oh right. The night we wasted resting and/or boning... Probably ought to have gotten more than twenty feet from Bevelle's entrance before setting up camp, huh?



Whoops. I guess Seymour is still alive and we just haphazardly left that threat unresolved for absolutely no reason. I wouldn't have been that hard to have a load of deadly cutscene rifle armed Yevon warrior monks come storming in our direction from afar after the Seymour Natus battle. That would at least give a lame, but plausible reason as to why we didn't have Yuna send Seymour then and there. But that would take effort that Bevelle clearly wasn't afforded. So meh, our party are just a bunch of incompetent knuckleheads.



Well, Yuna to be fair... you are married to the guy. That did actually happen. You're technically Yuna Guado now. For all we know these guys are serving you your divorce papers.



Oh well, everyone strike your best angry and/or sassy pose and maybe they'll go away.



“I warn you, the maester doesn't need you alive."

I think they accidentally forgot to record a line here until later. The voice actor sounds like they're either a different person or on another mic. If you look closely you can see it's the same tall guy speaking all the lines, so it's not like his hunchback buddy spoke up.

IMDB actually lists the voice director for Final Fantasy X, Jack Fletcher.

He's actually done quite a bit over the years. Prior to this he was the voice director for the fairly bad (because the studio insisted on celebrity voices that suck as voice actors) Disney dubs of Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke. Also Aeon Flux as well as some other anime bullshit. Like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Bang up job there, Jack.

He later went on to voice direct game dubs such as Yakuza 1's English dub where Mark Hamill had no idea how to handle honorifics in the middle of doing his Joker voice and would kind of awkwardly pause a moment every time they came up. Or Final Fantasy XII and its fairly good dub recorded into a cup and string attached to a faded cassette tape in the next room. Though I'd just like to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and assume he kept getting stuck with studio jobs with idiotic constraints like Final Fantasy X's adhering to lip flaps business.



Anyway, enough about voice directors speculation. There's this dipshit looking rock golem idiot strolling up here now.



The two Guado fellows don't have anything further to say to Yuna and the crew. They're just out. Look, this is just a crappy paying 9-5 job for them. They waited here for hours. They requested Yuna speak with Seymour, she predictably rejected, and they unleashed the big rock dude like instructed. That's it. That's was the assignment. They don't care beyond that! It's just back to Guadosalam to clock out and grab a beer for these two.



In any case, this stupid ass filler of a boss is here now. Look at this moronic rock dude. This is the most half-assed looking excuse for a boss I've seen the entire game. It's like something you'd pick up at the some discount monster of the day market. The work ethic of these millennial Guado chucklefucks is appalling.




Music: Enemy Attack



Meet “Defender X”. Good grief, even the name is the most half-assed generic garbage. Defender X is a big lousy rock golem with 64,000 HP and resistance to physical attacks because he's made out of frikkin' stone!





Being a massive stone dude, he quite literally hits like a pile of bricks. What with the fists made out of a pile of bricks. Two attacks is enough to KO anyone in our party. One critical could do the job too.



If that's not enough, he also has a Haymaker attack – which isn't actually a haymaker. He's balling both his fists together and doing an overhead strike. But details. As it turns out, two brick shithouse fists crashing into a human body is quite a bit more damaging than just one, and the Haymaker is a near guaranteed one-hit dirtnap for our party seeing as it does 3500+ HP of damage on the light side of it hitting.





On top of all that, Longshoreman Defender X can launch his fists like a projectile, halving the target's total HP. Not sure how a boulder in the shape of a fist being launched like a rocket does exactly 50% damage. But I'm not asking too many questions with this dirtbag. Defender X will counter attack with Blast Punch against physical attacks. So that's fun.





Once Defender X drops down to 10,000 HP it begins casting Mighty Guard (Protect, Shell, NulAll) every turn it gets. And that's just rude and annoying. Like most of this fight, since you can easily get into a loop of having to revive folks just to have this filler boss knock them out again. So, let's just do a big ol' AI weakness right off the bat.







We haven't ever messed with it, but Tidus has the Provoke ability which will make him strike a sassy pose. This arrogant slight will utterly piss off this pile of rocks causing it to do nothing but attack Tidus.



But in Defender X's case, it will just start using Blast Punch and halving Tidus' HP every turn. Provoke will make it stop counter-attacking, not bother with Mighty Guard at low HP, and turn the fight into a joke. The rest of the battle just consists of a rock rocket-punching Tidus in the face.



After it's provoked, Tidus is free to get everyone on the Haste train while tanking rocket punches. Auron in particular can use the boost...







Auron can go ahead and use Mental and Armor Break to make its physical attack resistance more reasonable for our heavy hitters and Lulu's black magic even more potent.





Which is nice, because I just reached Lulu's third tier magic spell Waterga with the rest coming shortly on her Sphere Grid. That's a good 3500ish damage a round for Lulu.





And of course there is always the nuclear option of having Trogdor roll out with Megaflare for an easy 11,000+ HP to move this waste of time boss along even quicker.







In any case, that's a wrap for good ol' Defender X. You can go ahead and purge any memory of this boss even existing from your collective memories now.

Music ends...





Welp, that was quite the annoying toll just to cross a bridge. Give me a good old fashioned troll toll any day of the week. Past the first bridge is another one that spells the end of the Calm Lands and the beginning of Mount Gagazet. However... there is another path to the right of the secondary bridge...





"Wow, you know your way around, ya?"
“...” *walks off*
*looks confused and rubs neck*





Well, my video game explore senses tell me we ought to go check out that valley. If there are lightning breathing drakes down there though, we're turning right the hell back.



Welcome to the bottom of the gorge. Over to the left is where we want to go. But first, there is one area of interest over to the right.



A couple Crusaders are hanging out down here training. They're a bit bummed out their ranks have dwindled ever since the whole Sin disintegrating 95% of unnamed red shirts in their army. Good luck rebuilding guys. Don't expect to ever have any further relevance in this game, though.



Discarded between a pair of boulders in the back of this area is a Rusty Sword! This item is actually the first step in obtaining Auron's Ultimate Weapon. It's useless as it stands. So we'll just remember we obtained it and toss it into the End Game chapter's ever expanding pile of woe.



Doubling back to the gorge bottom's opening, we find the final optional area of the Calm Lands. Don't expect the rest of the journey to be riddled with side areas like this region. It's back to walking down a scenic corridor from here to Zanarkand.

...This game really is proto-Final Fantasy XIII level design wise. Right down to the one big open field segment with a bunch of optional shit 3/4ths of the way.





"The fayth is inside. As are the fiends."
"Hey. This where...?"



"The summoner I guarded on my first pilgrimage... died here.”



_{”Ah... geez.”
“...Oh boy.”
“Had to poke around down here...”
“Sorry. Not my fault everyone in Spira waits until we're all a foot into the middle of something to mention anything heavy.”
“...That's fair”}





Tune in next time for the Pilgrimage Pals and the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth!



I can tell Lulu is really looking forward to it.






Video: Episode 85 Highlight Reel





Early Calm Lands Concept Art



Cavern of the Stolen Fayth Entrance Concept Art