Luca
-Wakka bidding his team goodbye. They’re all sad.
-The blitz season just started. Perhaps this tournament was like one of those season-opening invitationals.
-Yuna welcomes back her full-time guardian. I wonder if he’ll still use the blitzball as a weapon.
-Yuna comments that Seymour’s aeon was so powerful. I have a feeling we might have to fight it.
-Tidus confronting Auron. He’s… pissed. Blames Auron. Auron just kind of laughs.
-Wait. Auron helped defeat Sin ten years ago? And he went back thanks to Jecht to bring Tidus intentionally to Spira.
-Jecht is alive, but no longer human. Ah crap. He’s some corrupted fiend that Tidus will have to take out, right?
WAIT WHAT THE SWEET FUCK JECHT IS SIN HIMSELF???? JECHT IS THE GIANT SEA MONSTER THAT’S BEEN WREAKING HAVOC OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS?????
-So they killed Sin, but someone had to take on the mantle or something?
-Tidus is seriously freaking out about this. He knows he has to go with Auron, but hates being boxed into that choice.
-It’s up to Jecht whether Tidus ever returns to Zanarkand. This just got super fucked up.
“Hi, Tidus! Your buddy Auron here. I’ve been secretly conspiring with your abusive father to bring you into the post-apocalyptic world where – lol spoiler alert, you’ll probably have to commit patricide against your giant destructive sea monster dad. Check with him whether you can ever go home. His call. Hope you can get close enough to not become overwhelmed by your dad’s toxic aura.”
-Auron will offer to be a guardian for Yuna. Joining us full-time it seems.
-Music is pretty mournful right here.
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Around Luca
-Gonna take a last lap around the area before meeting up with the party.
-The Ronso master is Maester Kelk Ronso.
-Al Bhed dude here: “Dra Al Bhed rad hudrehk du du fedr drad fiend addacg. Drad ec dra dnidr!” (Putting this here in case I learn more Al Bhed and want to see what it said later.)
-Bought a few weapons. It’s hard to tell what to buy, since weapons in FFX seem like they’re just situational rather than strictly better most of the time.
-The goal of the Crusaders’ coming operation is to “smash the fiends.”
-The Aurochs are in the locker room. Feeling pretty upbeat, looking on the bright side.
-The mood around the city is like a rained-on parade. Happy that their Luca Goers won, but the fiend attack soured things. People are just thankful that Maester Seymour, their “savior,” was there to save the day. *side-eyes Maester Seymour’s “fortuitous timing” HARD*
-A citizen suggests Maester Seymour “isn’t a normal Guado.” Not normal how? Like, one non-Guado parent?
-A woman in the square says her brother is a devoted guardian of Maester Seymour. I’ll bet we’ll have to face that brother eventually in some kind of pre-Seymour fight. (I’m feeling really confident that Seymour will be the Big Bad, and will eat my words if I find out I’m wrong.)
-Ok, ready to move on.
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Leaving Luca
-Yuna, Wakka, and Lulu are in the part of the city where the Crusaders were waiting for couriers. Debating what will happen with Tidus when Tidus and Auron stroll up.
-The party is delighted to have Auron. If a bit confused. Auron said he promised Braska to watch out.
-lolol Tidus awkwardly joins too
-OH GOD THIS IS SOOOO UNCOMFORTABLE – Yuna wants to know if Jecht is alive, and Auron’s like “hmmm idk my bff jill, whatever, you’ll see him. Soon. ”
I’m just saying. If your job is to watch out for Yuna, and Yuna’s goal is to kill Sin, then not telling Yuna that Sin is Jecht seems like a huge betrayal of trust at the least. Will Tidus tell Yuna?
-Go Yuna! She can do the whistle now.
-Yuna sees her role as being someone to pick up those around her. Even feeling the need to smile when feeling sad in this role. She wants Tidus to simle even though he’s clearly feeling sad.
Hahahaha it’s so awkward. But she’s really cheering him up.
Now Tidus is laughing loudly and obnoxiously and everyone’ watching XD XD XD
YUNA: “You… probably shouldn’t laugh anymore.”
The fake laughter leads eventually to real laughter.
YUNA: “Thank you. I want my journey to be full of laughter… if we should get separated, just whistle. I’ll come running. I promise.” She reverses what he told her. Tidus rolls with this.
-Next stop is the Temple at Djose. (JOH-zay)
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Highroad – South End
-The music here is jaunty, and a bit mischievous. The kind of music that might play as a kid was sneaking into the kitchen at night to steal a cookie.
-!!Whoa!! The road here is ACTIVE!! There are other people walking up and down it, even though this is outside a major city.
-The save sphere in front of me is a bit unique. “Traveler’s Save Sphere Level 2.” It can now teleport me to the blitzball stadium.
-I can actually recruit blitzers from around Spira for the Aurochs. This mini-game gets bigger and bigger.
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Blitzball Tutorial Revisited
-Ok. Let’s go through this tutorial again. Only going to note stuff that is new to me on re-read, or that is worth remembering and tough to remember.
-I open the Action Command menu to pass/shoot/dribble with x. See, I really thought I was pressing x before during the championship game against the Goers and that it wasn’t doing anything. Maybe I wasn’t pressing it at the right time.
-The PA stat on a player represents passing accuracy. I had thought that the receiver had a role in whether the pass is completed or not, but it seems like it’s just the thrower’s PA.
-SH is shooting accuracy, and CA is the keeper’s catching ability. If CA > SH by the time the shot reaches the keeper, it’s a save.
…OH! I see. Not quite. So the applied CA is randomized, in a range from 50%-150% of the current CA. That means that I can be surprised – a shot may sneak in despite a higher current CA than SH, or a keeper can make a great save even if the CA seems like it’ll be lower than SH.
-Wait. I don’t quite get something. Watching the shooting tutorial again.
-If the SH is at least 1, it’ll score. If it’s 0, it’ll fail.
In this sample, Tidus’ SH starts out at 10, and the keeper’s CA is 8. Tidus shoots. It travels to the goal, and is reduced to 7 by the time it arrives, less than the keeper’s CA.
Now we “subtract the goalkeeper’s CA.” 7-8 = -1.
AHA. Ok. I think I get it. So if this were a game, I wouldn’t know the exact calculation because of the randomized element. If could be 7 (SH) – 4 (CA) = 3 (GOAL!), or 7 (SH) – 12 (CA) = -5 (VERY NOT GOAL!) Chances are slightly better than the shot will be saved. If the SH were 8 and the CA were 8, then there would be a coin flip whether I’d score.
-Pretty comfortable with the whole “using HP,” so let’s move onto encounters.
-If I try to pass past a defender, my PA will go up against the defender’s BL. The BL is subtracted from PA. If the remaining PA > 0, the pass goes through. If it falls to 0 or below, it’s intercepted.
-And much like shooting and catching, the actual numbers will be a bit randomized. A pass I think based on the actual shown numbers will get blocked might actually make it through, and vice versa. This seems to be why it’s possible for a defender with a BL > 0 to still not even get a hand on the ball as it’s passed or shot: the random number generator for that encounter happened to roll particularly low for them, and their actual BL became 0.
[Non-rhetorical question: am I understanding the randomness in this correctly? Like, that if a player’s shown BL is 8, it might end up calculating at 7 or 9 or something instead? Or is the number I get shown already randomized and I can always know for sure whether my pass will be blocked or go through?]
-The last thing I’m going to review for now is breakthroughs.
-The key stats here are EN on offense and AT on defense. Subtract AT from EN to determine the outcome of a tackle.
-Hm! It also seems that the ORDER of the defenders matters. If I try to break through the top defender, I just have to deal with their AT. If I try to break through the second defender on the list, I have to deal with their AT plus the first defender’s AT.
GOT IT. This feels much clearer to me now that I have the context of a played game behind me.
-Going to stop the session here. That’s a lot to process.
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Next time: Going to start the next session with an exhibition game to put what I learned here into context and practice it. Then I’ll review the rest of the tutorial about marking and techcopy and stuff and maybe try it out.
I apologize to those of you hoping I’d just kind of move on with the main story. I’m a big sports fan irl – baseball, basketball, American football, and hockey (Mets, Knicks, Giants, and Wild, not to mention all University of Minnesota sports) – and this game is really exciting to me. I want to explore it and try it out a bit, and try to understand it.
