Summary: The memory-haunted ruins of Zanarkand. Trials in the Dome. Approaching the Final Aeon. Maybe.
Zanarkand Ruins
-It’s so weird to have the main music in game now. Even during combat.
-They weren’t kidding about this place being in ruins. Just a rocky hub of buildings sticking out of the water.
-Heh. It occurs to me that this is actually Tidus’s first visit to this city.
-Behemoths wreck my shit hard, but at least they just do it in a single-target way so I can use life/phoenix down after most heaves.
-Wakka comments that the ruins up ahead look like the Farplane. Full of pyreflies and this swirling misty thing.
-I’ve started to get neglectful of my sphere grid with some characters. I have no L.3 Key Spheres and only three L.4 Key Spheres. Auron has 10 S.Lv, Rikku has 13, Yuna has 3, Tidus has 11. All have reached the end of their main tree already. Time for me to look elsewhere. But where?
-Part of my concern is that L.4 key spheres seem pretty important. I want to use them to get at Full Break and Doublecast and Ultima specifically, but I think for now I’ll just push past them and hope that the huge stat boosts from using them elsewhere is worthwhile. I don’t want to just save and save and never use them.
-OH RIGHT!!! I have 7x Return Spheres. Let’s see if I can use those to help solve my problem.
-Jackpot. I found a connecting point between Auron’s path and Tidus’s. Going to head there. It’s the circle with Provoke and Cheer, the place Tidus started. Doing the same thing with Tidus. I’ll have him travel Auron’s path.
-Quick note: I’m certain that those who are much more comfortable with navigating the sphere grid are probably tearing their hair out, going “AUGHHH THAT’S SO BAD! YOU’LL GET DOUBLE STAT POINTS IF YOU DO X AND Y, AND SAVE UP FOR A, B, AND C!!” You’re probably right! But I’m just so happy right now that I’ve stopped stalling out on these upgrades that I’m okay with it, and will learn more after this playthrough about how others handle this situation.
-Rikku was the last one I had to sort out. I found a connector between her area and Kimahri’s area, connected by something called “Pilfer Gil” that has her (or perhaps Yuffie) written all over it. I use the return sphere to head there.
-Yuna is the last one with this problem right now. I’m out of level 2 spheres. Not sure where she can go. I’d love for her to head to Lulu-land, but Lulu’s region is on the opposite side of the grid.
-Argh! I wish I hadn’t blown Lv. 2 Key Spheres on aeon boosts. I didn’t think that decision through. Oh well. I really do not want to use a Teleport Sphere here, so I’ll just wait until I find a Lv. 2 or Lv. 3 key sphere.
-Inventory full?? I didn’t know that was a thing that could happen. Hope I find a vendor soon.
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Dome
-Dome. The music stopped. Is this the old blitzball stadium? I’ll bet it is. Perhaps Lady Yunalesca waits inside.
-Also, I wonder where Sin is right now. He’s gotta know that this is where we’d come, and it’s not like the Zanarkand Ruins are landlocked.
-Gah, and Seymour too! And Mika! There are so many dang variables up in the air at this point.
-An old dude waits inside. Someone to greet us. He seems to be some sort of gatekeeper for Lady Yunalesca.
-CREEPY!!! As we walk past him, he walks towards the camera and fades out of existence.
Note to self: assume pretty much EVERYONE I meet from here on out is dead until I learn otherwise.
-We start to see the ghosts of past guardians and summoners, all who came here and sacrificed themselves to stop Sin.
-I have so many fucking chills right now. We’re surrounded by the dead. This place is swarming with unsent ghosts.
-The first enemy I meet here is a brutal one, “Defender Z.”
-Wait, strike that – I decided to change courses with Yuna’s sphere grid and work down Rikku’s path. Less purely-physical and it links up eventually with Lulu.
-I hate these flamethrowing zombie ghost monks. Though Scan tells me they’re vulnerable to healing, so yay!
-Just remembered Ifrit. Yeah, the monks aren’t so bad anymore.
-wait
-wait wait wait
KID WHO LOOKS DISTRESSINGLY LIKE SEYMOUR: “No, mother, I don’t want you to become a fayth!”
-Look. Seymour is an awful, horrific person, and if he’s to be trusted it sounds like he may have nearly wiped out the Ronso. But I hadn’t even remotely thought about what this experience must’ve been like for him.
-Found something new called a Friend Sphere. The description is exactly the same as a Teleport Sphere, but I’m guessing it’s more limited, that it teleports me only to another party member’s current location on the sphere grid.
-IT’S YOUNG BRASKA JECHT AND AURON WTFFFFFF
-Jecht says one line asking Braska to not do this. Braska says no, and Jecht accepts this. Surprisingly to me, it’s AURON who’s much more upset. He was about to forego his duty as a guardian to keep Lord Braska alive.
-Braska walked on, but young!Auron was not at all happy.
-Shooting Star is probably my favorite Bushido.
-We head inside the stadium, following the ghostly trio of Braska, Jecht, and Auron.
-lolol Jecht is annoyed that there are probably more trials here. He didn’t like the ones on the pilgrimage either.
-Save sphere. I’m nervous as fuck right now.
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Dome Trials
-Tetris?
-So do I have to find the blocks on the screen in a particular order? Or just the right amount of each block?
-Just the right amount of each. Got it.
-A much larger Tetris game awaits in the next room. [Later edit: more of a pure memory game than Tetris, but come on. Look at those pieces. No way I’m not thinking of this as Spiran Tetris.
-This one I’m having a much harder time understanding. Like, I don’t get what it wants me to do at all.
-GOT IT!! Now I understand. I had to click the right amount of tiles around the room that were in the right positions, like on the screen. Neat.
-Gotcha. Gotcha gotcha. I have to reset and do that a few times for different alignments. Ok. I can do this.
-Two down.
-Woohoo, I got the next one on the first attempt!
-Whew. Only gotta do this four times, not six. A pleasant surprise.
-The elevator chimes. Save point.
-I head to the next room. Shit gets trippy, and a boss comes up from below.
Spectral Keeper.
-Best I can see, I think I have to position myself behind the boss to shoot the light thing on its back.
-Kimahri getting “Scan” is one of my favorite things ever. Helps so much!
-Seems that this monster attacks all frontal targets when hit, and puts explosives on some of these floating platforms.
-Ruh oh. It uses Berserk.
-Died, but I learned a lot that attempt. The movement is mostly to stay out of its cleave, not to hit it for some insta-kill from behind. Also, anti-berserk = yay. Much better sense of how to hop between platforms, when do to do so, and how to set my party up.
-Preparing for the next attempt. Wakka, Auron, Kimahri, and Lulu all have protection against Berserk. Yuna can pop out an aeon for similar protection. Rikku might have it if Auto-Med has her pop a Remedy when hit with berserk, but I’m not counting on it.
-YES! Armor Break didn’t work, but Mental Break landed.
-Lulu is an absolute all-star this fight. She tanks most of the damage, and with Yuna’s Protect on her it doesn’t hurt too bad. Then Bahamut comes in to finish up the much-softened up boss.
-That was easily my favorite boss fight in the game, and (mechanically at least) one of my favorites in the series.
-Here we go. Hall of the Final Summoning. Yuna takes the elevator down. Alone.
Determined and resigned to her fate.
-We hear another flashbacks from the old trio:
JECHT: “Huh? What do you mean no Final Aeon?”
-uhhhhhh what? Is this a trick of some sort? It can’t be. Plenty of summoners have come here and gotten the final aeon and beaten Sin.
-Yuna comes back up on the elevator, calls out to us in a panic to join her. We do so and take the elevator down.
-Save point.
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Quick and Almost Certainly Wrong Thoughts on Where We Are, Where We're Going
-I know guessing is a fool’s errand at this point, but I’m a fool and it’s the perfect errand for me.
-It seems like there’s no fayth down there. That’s the only thing I can think that would provoke such a reaction from Yuna. First thought was that someone kidnapped or moved it the way someone did to Yojimbo, but no. Jecht had the same reaction back in the past.
There’s some (likely horrifying) quirk of “summoning the final aeon” to be learned. I don’t think it’s just going to be a matter of finding some ultimate Omega aeon and sending it after Sin. Best guess: it’ll involve Yuna transforming into the final aeon, either becoming the next fayth or joining some ultimate Voltron of past summoners to take down Sin.
-In terms of time, I think we’re getting close to the end of the game, but that there’ll be a final period of exploration before whatever the final fight is. (Which I’m currently guessing is some Seymour/Sin combo platter.) Something will go horrifically wrong down here, Cid will save our asses, and we’ll be able to hop across the world to wrap things up before heading to the final dungeon/boss.
-One last thing that I’ve been thinking about and don’t have an answer to: if Tidus was a dream, and his Zanarkand was a dream, why wasn’t it just preserved as such? How did Sin bust through to the dream state – or if it wasn’t really Sin, what went wrong that caused the dream to collapse?
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Next time: Zanarkand’s chamber of the fayth.
