NOTE: I'd just like to take a second here to make a comment. I was reading some reviews on FFXIII and a few things bothered me about it. For the most part, the game has gotten rave reviews, but when listing short-comings, the critics talk about a few things. Believable motives and acting, no sandbox (linear), and poor story. Now the poor story is worrisome because it's one of the things I like most about the games in the series. But the bad acting is almost a staple of the game, anyone who's taken the time to play through all 12 games in three months would know this well lol. It's just part of the franchise, Square does not do well in that department and it can be almost comical. As for linear, ummm, EVERY final fantasy has been linear. Yes you could always go out and run around in a forest but you had to cross that bridge to get to that castle and there was a mountain pass that you couldn't get into until you went to that castle, etc. It's always been a very linear series. And here in FFX is actually the first time we get even more linear than that. I'm eighteen hours into the game and haven't been on a 'world map' once. I just go from road screen to road screen to temple, etc. FFXII is the same way, so critics, go back and play some more FFs before you say that the series is drifting away from it's roots by being linear.
Anyway, continuing on my FFX LINEAR path of awesome game fun, we were almost across the wide river when we're attacked by an Al Bhed Machina trying to take Yuna again. Why do they keep trying to kidnap her? Wakka and Rhek dive into the river and have it out underwater with this machine. We kick the crap out of it and get Yuna back on the dino. After we finish our crossing, we take a breather and Rhek goes off down the next road a bit on his own. Here we find a washed up Rikku, who's a little frustrated at Rhek for just pummeling her in her machina. She takes off her full wet body suit in stripper fashion for a cut and then chats up Rhek for a bit.
I think that scene was single handedly responsible for all the FF nerds voting Rikku as the hottest FF chick of any game in the series.
Worth noting here that while Square is not as perverted in their games as some other Japanese game/anime houses, but they still like to toss in the sex innuendos everyone once in a while. The rest of the party comes down the road and meets us, then Rikku, Yuna and Lulu go have a girl chat for a bit. When they come back Yuna tells Auron she wants Rikku to be one of her guardians. Now I know Yuna is half Al Bhed, and I'm all for Rikku in the party. But how does she go from trying to kidnap her to being her protector in that conversation. What's going on there? On top of that Wakka (Al Bhed hater) seems oblivious to the fact that she's obviously Al Bhed and befriends her.
We continue down a very long road and enter into the Guado homeland, home of Maester Seymour, who insists we see him upon arrival. We get there and he shows us into this chamber. Here he uses some magic projection system where we travel across space and time and all the sudden we're IN Zanarkand over 1000yrs ago, walking among the people. He says it's created from the memories of all the dead.
He then takes us to a particular building and shows us the first summoner to ever beat Sin, Yunalesca, for whom Yuna is named. He explains to Yuna that it wasn't just by her own power but through the bond of her love with her companion/lover (some lord I can't remember the name of), that she was able to beat Sin and bring peace and joy to Spira. After the show and tell, he gets to the point. He wants Yuna to marry him, for the sake of the joy of the people of Spira. He leaves her to consider his proposal. Of course Rhek is against it, that guy is a douche bag, but for the first time since FFV, our hero doesn't have a love interest in the lead female character. He just wants to take her back to his place...
Quick interesting note. Before Seymour leaves, as our party is walking out of his room, he comments to Auron, "Why are you still here?" Auron doesn't reply, then Seymour says, "Sorry, we Guado have a keen sense of the Farplane." What the fuck does that mean, is Auron dead..?
After Seymour is gone, Yuna considers his proposal and decides against it, she must complete her pilgrimage and defeat Sin. But before we leave, we visit the local Farplane. So there's there's this uhh portal or something. And you step through it, and you can see and talk to the dead people of your memories. It's weird. Worth noting Auron won't go inside, neither will Rikku though.
Yuna talks to her parents, Wakka talks to his brother Chappu. Yuna tells Rhek to try to summon up Jecht. When no one comes she happily tells him it must mean that his father is still alive. No. He's Sin. But he does inadvertently summon up his mother for a moment. As we're leaving the Farplane place a spirit materializes before Yuna, outside the portal. It's Lord Jyscal, the late father of Maester Seymour. She performs a Sending to put him to rest, but before he disappears, his ghost drops something on the ground which Yuna picks up. We also see behind the party that the Sending causes Auron great pain and brings him to his knees... Uh huh... The party wonders why Lord Jyscal was wandering about, he should have had a Sending when he died. Auron comments that some spirits who've had a Sending still linger when they have unfinished business. It means he had an unclean death. Yeah, million bucks says Seymour killed him.
We head back downstairs and Yuna goes to rest. Rhek is roaming about and hears talking in her room. He tries to eavesdrop and stumbles inside to see a holographic image of Lord Jyscal talking. Yuna closes the hologram and tells Rhek it's nothing. She later comes out and tells the party that she's decided to marry Seymour after all. Booooo!
We go to find Seymour and find out he's already left for Macalania Temple. We follow. Along the way Auron makes a short side trip to some weird clearing in a crystal forest. There we find a fight with a elemental shifting Sin spawn who drops a sphere when he dies. On the sphere is video footage of Jecht and his trip to defeat Sin with Auron and Braska. Also on the tape, Jecht speaks to Rhek a little, apologizes, acts... fatherly. Auron comments that during his time in Spira, that the asshole Jecht changed. He accepted his fate, he grew as a person, and he decided he would help defeat Sin for the people of Spira and his son. He actually became a decent guy I guess because all of Rhek's flashbacks of him portray him as the biggest dick ever.
Before we get to the temple, we have a little run in with some other Al Bhed trying to kidnap Yuna once more. We stop them and they have a shouting match from afar with Rikku then leave. Wakka finds out Rikku is Al Bhed and is all pissed but whatever, that guy is a blind fool. Man I hate religion, even in video games...
We finally get to the temple and Yuna has already gone ahead to enter the cloister. While we're waiting around, we find that thing that Jyscal dropped/gave to Yuna. The party watches the hologram as it tells us that Seymour is dark and corrupt and killed him. He must be stopped for the sake of all of Spira. We go running to find Yuna. Seymour is waiting for her outside the cloister.
As we confront him, Yuna comes out and joins us. She always planned on stopping Seymour but she didn't want to get the others involved. She was going to do it on her own. Normally I'd say, oh man, that crazy girl trying to do that shit on her own. Doesn't she know he's the super bad villain, she's just gonna get killed alone. But...
After some back and forth argument and an upset Wakka who can't understand how a Maester of Yevon could be evil, Seymour tries to kill us all. So I enter into an interesting battle. Seymour casts shell on himself and has two guardians who cast protect on themselves. So, if I try to cast magic on Seymour it's met by Shell, and if I try to hit Seymour it's intercepted by his minions who have Protect and auto-potion for 1000 health. Ooookay. After trying to throw my hardest at the minions to get them out of the way, I realized I needed another solution. I needed something that could hit everyone at once for more than the minions 2k health.
I called up Yuna. You know. The crazy girl who I thought would be stupid to try to take on Seymour alone? Yeah, her. I hit the summon list and I see ???? at the bottom. Ohhh, she DID just come out of a cloister of trials. I hit the command to summon and out comes one of my favorites, Shiva. The minions start going to town and Seymour starts casting random magic. Her overdrive bar fills as I just keep casting Blizzara on myself to heal for 1500hp. Awesome. I pop her overdrive ability, Diamond Dust, and watch the board get slapped for 9,999. Dead, dead, dead. Seymour didn't like that though so he summons Anima. That big ass Aeon that killed everything in the Luca stadium in one hit. Uh oh. Shiva might be going down. Nope. I proceed to Airblast the Aeon with 18,000hp for 2k a pop while healing myself with Blizzara and watching the overdrive climb once more. Then I popped that bitch for another 9,999 damage. Dead. Finally, Seymour seemed to have gotten another 8,000 health from somewhere, so I had to fight him again. Diamond Dust, 9,999 damage, dead. Ice Queen for the win. Man I love summons in this game. Starting to remember why FFX got me on the summoner kick.
We watch as Seymour appears to die and his entourage comes in, shocked to find their Maester dead in front of my party. We try to explain things but they won't hear of it. We're traitors. Auron tells Yuna to send his soul but the Guado won't let us touch him. They take his body away. Now, at a guess I'm gonna say that since we didn't Send him, we're going to have to face some fiend version of Seymour that's way more powerful. Just a guess.
The sequence final over, I collected the Shiva summon officially along with a crap ton of AP and save my game for the night. Goooooood times.
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