Just did the operation Mi'ihen thing. I don't know why, but this part always felt super boring. Partly because Mushroom Rock Road is just so incredibly bland in terms of presentation, and partly because I can't be made to care about the Crusaders storyline no matter how much the game tries to make me.

Something I don't get - they said on more than one occasion that the Crusaders have been rejected by Yevon (Seymour himself confirms it, saying that though their and the Al Bhed's mission is against the teachings of Yevon but they long for the same peace as Yevonites so it's okay), but the game also says the Crusaders have been called that since they've been taken under Yevon's wing, and Kinoc is explicitly stated to be one of the four Maesters who is in charge of the Crusaders.

This is a huge discrepancy. Of course, you could explain it away that this operation is only conducted by a specific group of Crusaders that have decided to use Machina to defeat Sin, but not authorized by the church of Yevon. But Kinoc is there and it looks like it's pretty much an operation that has been prepared by the higher-ups - so Maester Kinoc. Also, Wakka hates the Crusaders because apparently they've rejected Yevon's teachings (and then there's the fact that his brother was one and died), but this doesn't make sense since the Crusaders are a part of the Yevon church and are run by Kinoc!

Who in the hell wrote this trout!

At this point, it seems like the most logical thing would be to just create a subsidiary of the church that can go against the teachings should the Maester in charge deem it a necessity to make things better (which is still a farce since Kinoc has pretty explicitly stated he's doing it to give people a false sense of hope). So if this has been verified by the church - to the point that, again, they have a Maester run a whole thing - HOW IN THE HELL HAVE THE CRUSADERS BEEN REJECTED BY YEVON?!


That's why this whole subplot was pointless. Sure, we needed to see how undefeatable Sin is, how much destruction it causes and that Tidus can feel Jecht, as well as hinting at the corruption of the Yevon clergy, but there's plenty of scenes later on and earlier that drive that point home anyway. This, coupled with the fact that the bland environment here is so padded out, makes it easily the least interesting part of the game for me so far. The death of the Crusaders ultimately rings hollow to me because it seems like the writers had no idea what to do with them in the first place and failed to make me interested in any one of the characters from this faction - even though this had huge potential, considering Chappu and stuff.