Listen to my story - Let's play Final Fantasy X International!

Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VII Supplemental
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Part XI
Part XII
Part XIII
Part XIV
Part XV
Part XVI
Part XVII
Part XVIII
Part XIX
Part XX
Part XXI
Part XXII
Part XXIII
Bonus
Bonus II Step 1
Bonus II Step 2
Bonus II Step 3
Bonus II Step 4
Bonus II Step 5
Bonus II Step 6

LP Complete!

Highlighted map of the International Sphere Grid

Current Stats
No longer relevant, oddly enough!

Long long ago in the distant year of 2001, there was a new RPG in town. And its name was...



And it was only playable on that new-fangled PlayStation 2 what cost so damn much. $300 for a new console!? Nobody's gonna pay that much for a video game system amirite!? But we did, and so many of us got one just to play this one game. Why would you plop down that kind of money for just one game, you ask?

Because it was a new Final Fantasy, that's why. If I need to say more than that... then I guess I will. Final Fantasy started out as a bit of an underground hit when it first hit the NES in America back in the earliest of the early 90s, and remained a cult favorite with two more releases on the SNES over the next few years (re-numbered, of course, because we missed half the series along the way). It seemed like it would remain a cult favorite sub-million-seller series here in the States for a long time until that fateful year 1996 rolled around. That was when we learned that Final Fantasy VII was coming, and it was coming on the PlayStation. With its proper number, to boot! (Man did that cause some confusion back in the day... but that is a story for another LP.)



FF7 was destined to be a huge hit, because Sony was backing it with a marketing budget that rivaled that of some movies! Oh yeah, and it was a pretty fun game, but who cares about that, look at those graphics! And sure enough, FF7 was indeed a huge success, eclipsing the comparatively minor triumph of its predecessors by leaps and bounds. It became the first and currently only Final Fantasy to sell close to 10 million copies in a single release, about a third of them in the States (the next-best-selling Final Fantasy, incidentally, is FFX). And from then on, the name "Final Fantasy" came to be associated with mainstream RPGs. Even if opinions were rather mixed on the next two (FF8 especially), the Final Fantasy hype was still running strong when the series made the leap to the PS2.

Now I was one of those clever lot who waited for the inevitable first price drop on the PS2, so I got my copy a good year or so after all those early adopters first experienced the game. Perhaps I felt a bit left out as a result, because since then I've replayed this title no less than 10 times. I kid you not, start to finish for each one. For the longest time, it was my definitive PS2 RPG, the game I would play when nothing else sounded appealing. And now, I get to share that love with you, my faithful readers.



♪♪ Summoned ♪♪

But in a new form (for me, at least)! That's right, we're going to tackle FFX International. The only problem is... I don't have a modded PS2. But fear not, the wonders of emulation are here to save the day!







Of course we'll be playing on the International (aka. Expert) grid (why bother with International otherwise?), and in English. Granted, we COULD play in Japanese, but then most of you wouldn't be able to follow along.

(Note that the intro sequence was actually screencapped off of my PS2, with the original version. There's no differences in this sequence anyway, so it's not like it's going to matter. I have to re-watch it anyway once you pick a name for the hero.)

♪♪ To Zanarkand ♪♪

The game opens with a nifty shot of a water sword, a staff, and someone's beach ball. One might take these to be the iconic weapons of the main characters if not for the beach ball throwing that impression off.

(Mini-Spoiler: They're the iconic weapons, all right. All three of 'em.)



Some slightly bored-looking people sit around a campfire during this sunset. One of them in rather a silly-looking yellow-and-black get-up... er, gets up.



He pats his complete-heterochromatic companion on the arm as he walks past her, in response to which she looks down sadly. SYMBOLISM!



Up the nearby hill he goes!



We're then treated to a slow pan-around where this oddly-clad fellow gapes like a fish out of water for a bit. I think he might have asthma.



If you could hear the voice acting here, you'd be thankful pretty quickly that you can't hear it during this LP. James Arnold Taylor can't be completely blamed for the poor delivery of this character's lines, but he's an easy target nonetheless. That said, the International release uses Japanese voices for everything, so I don't even have to suffer him. Hooray!



And we have our title. Again.

♪♪ Prelude ♪♪

As the title fades, we open up on... a futuristic city with people cheering? Okay, that's a pretty big shift from a ruined city at sunset, but let's roll with it anyway.



Someone runs up and gestures, and everyone follows shouting mirthfully! Something must be up!



Then a ghost-boy walks through the scene. SYMBOLISM! (Of what? Um... I have no idea, actually. Make up your own reasons.)



The scene shifts to some sort of house-boat, and we get some awkward camera angles of the strangely-dressed fellow from before. At least I think it's a "he". It's honestly hard to tell the gender of any Final Fantasy lead from 8 onwards...



He/she seems to have a crowd of adoring fans, at least.



Of course!

Ah, he/she's a sports star. Since there was no name shown there, that must mean...



Yep, now we get to name our protagonist! Here we see the default Vanilla Option.



Here is the zany Video Game Recaps Option.



Of course we have our Classic Talking Time LP Option.



And the Obvious Joke/Spoony Experiment Option. These are just suggestions; feel free to suggest your own instead. The winning name will be selected in one week's time, and then the fun begins! You should also suggest a Sphere Grid path for our intrepid hero to take. Here are the starting options:

Time Warrior - A combination of a melee fighter and Time Mage.
Knight - A powerful-yet-inaccurate warrior class that focuses on breaking enemy attack and defense.
Inflictor - A highly accurate and strong melee fighter focused on status attacks.
White Mage - Your classic healer class, with a few buff spells thrown in.
Black Mage - The traditional attack mage class, pretty much no surprises here.

Sadly we cannot start our protagonist as a Thief right off the bat thanks to a pesky L1 Sphere Lock in the way, but we CAN send him that way if you really want by sending him down the Time Warrior path first. That'll come in later updates once we've made some Sphere Grid progress, though, so for now just pick a path from the above.

Note: I should have mentioned this before, but the International version doesn't let you use anything but the basic alphabet, numbers, and typographical characters (such as + - ! ? and so forth). So suggestions of names requiring any of the accented characters will sadly have to be ignored or modified to not use said characters.

inb4

AH. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA!

(Seriously though, this should be interesting. I've never looked into exactly how the International Version changed up the Sphere Grid, only that it did and it was an improvement.)

Teedus.

(although I may change my vote when something invariably better comes along)

Alright, Final Fantasy X! With International extras! And 100% less flappy low-poly robo-jaws! (Unless you post some videos.)

It doesn't really matter what we call Tidus since all the spoken dialogue finds ways to awkwardly avoid referencing him by name ever, so my vote goes to...a write-in for Johnny. Tidus reminds me of that annoying twat Johnny Test from his groan-worthy self-titled extreme Flash cartoon, particularly because they're both blonde, into extreme kinds of shit (Blitzball for Tidus, generic stuff like skateboarding for Johnny), annoy me enough that I wanna punch them in the face (Johnny moreso), and have the same voice actor to boot.

Blitz. I don't know if the sport was named after him or he was named after the sport, but he's the star right? Either that or plain ol' Tidus.

As for class, Time Warrior into Thief is my pick. An always-available thief is so damn useful.

Time Warrior is Tidus' default grid path, incidentally. I think mixing it up and going the Black Mage route will be more entertaining. The whole point should be to steer away from the intended routes by using the Expert Grid.

As for a name, Sudit. Goes with the backwards intention I have :-)

Obviously we'll call him Madden.

Inflictor path please. Status effects are always the best option in RPGs, especially Square ones, right?

Also you should call him Madden. I like this terrible idea.

We must support our time-honored traditions!

Would you believe the answer to this question is "yes"? The oft-neglected status effects of the series can in fact be huge tide-turners, their occasionally dodgy accuracy aside. It's just a lot easier to mash the action button until everything dies in most random battles, thus people often ignore them. And of course bosses tend to be assumed to be immune to everything, which they rarely are...

Inflictor, just to see if having more status effect attacks changes up the early game.

In that case, I'm all for an Inflictor named "Raiden," because that was a big year for blonde pretty-boy game heroes, as I recall.

Mostly I want thieves. Though as long as Kimahri gets steal I'll be satisfied.

Just please PLEASE don't put Lulu or Yuna on physical attack routes. Their weapons just don't let this work.

That's not entirely true. Actually, Lulu is the only character who's painful to make a physical attacker, and that's only because her physical attack animation is so bloody long. Yuna's, by contrast, is very short and to the point. I've had many a game where I sent Yuna down the Knight path as soon as possible (which isn't very soon on the original, sadly), and reap the benefits swiftly. The various Str/Mag+x% abilities weapons generally sport are so small until the endgame that they're basically meaningless, and by the endgame you have access to customization anyway and can make whatever weapons you want for your characters.

The short of it is, whatever paths you want to send people on, fair game. Although I will not be a happy camper if you turn Lulu into a physical attacker. Seriously, longest physical attack animation ever.

I was able to make Lulu into a physical attacker in the original version... somewhat late in the game... by customizing a doll to have Deathstrike. That was fun.

Wait... There's only one thing we can call him, because he is a WANKER!

Also, yeah, Inflictor so we can see the new stuff in the early game.

Inflictor named "Lederhos"

Meg Ryan the Black Mage.

Also, Oh shit. I think this means I'm going to need to get ready for my FFX-2 LP.

I always send Lulu down her path, then break off to Yuna's path for the wealth of MAG bonuses on her early-mid grid. You come back almost exactly where you left, with spells that are powerful enough to offset the slight disadvantage that the (rather long) detour gives you - that is, delaying the acquisition of -ga spells.

As for Tidus; Start him off on his path until he learns Haste, then switch him over to one of two paths:
-Rikku's gives a more thief-centric gameplay, which I rather like but isn't for everyone;
-Wakka's makes Tidus an essential de/buffer on the team.
In both options, you jump back to the end of Tidus' path for Hastega and Slowga later on.
That's if you want to stray off his default path, of course; Tidus' default setup is a great buffer/fighter, and he does his job just fine.

No vote for the name, but make him a white mage. I definitely want to mess with "classes" from the normal grid.

Aside from the new sphere grid are you going to do any kind of challenge here? The Dark Aeons and Penance, at the least. The battle system in x is actually pretty well designed, but if play normally you don't use much of it.

You have to admire the guile of the director who puts a long, drawn-out scene where nothing happens right up front, just so the player who goes through the game a second time will see it and go, "Oh! Now this scene is really boring." Wait, did I say admire? I meant the opposite of that.

Ps. Inflictor.

This.

I am going to try to defeat every boss in as creative a fashion as possible. At the very least, resorting to the series standard "attack-attack-heal" routine will be turned to only in cases where the fight is simply too limited for anything else. And I don't foresee that as a problem.

Come on, guys. Don't use the name Meg Ryan. That's not a very good joke, and it's been done so many times before.

A better joke would be to name him Shuyin.

Since I've got my LP, I think I'm gonna hafta exercise my veto power on Bongo's name.

Pants. Not because it's a tradition, but because look at that guy's stupid, stupid pants.

Ugh... I wouldn't touch the International sphere grid with a ten-foot pole, simply because it has less spaces overall.

Default name and path, please.

Agreed.