Been meaning to update.

I've reached Djose Temple and managed to get through the awful Mi'hen Highroad, the boring Mushroom Rock, cool Operation Mi'hen, and even a Blitzball Tournament. I decided to save Jassu this time because I always keep Gotta alive since it felt thematically more appropriate, and hey I managed to see this guy actually raise his voice for once. I also got a lot of levels, probably more than I should have... I also gave Oaka his 10,000 gil to get his discount, but we'll see if that's worth it. I didn't get the Moon Ring from the Crusaders, mainly because I didnt feel like grinding that kind of cash, and because I looked up what it did and that felt a bit like highway robbery, especially since I got the more useful Echo Ring by beating the undead summoner girl. We were also introduced to a lot of new characters in this segment.

Now that I've had some time with the Expert Grid, I would say it's more weird than anything. Like it is super easy to fall into someone else's "path" which is nice, but it still has an obvious path for each character, though it does sometimes feel like a randomizer. I think the issue I see here is that while the freedom to add a more personal customization touch is much appreciated, FFX is also a game designed around specific roles for the team, so it's hard to really take advantage of it because yeah, it sounds neat to teach Tidus some low level Black Magic spells early, but it also sucks when he gets one-shotted because he spent too much time down a squishy mage path and now you don't have your speedy Warrior anymore. The character who potentially can get a boon from this new system is like Kimarhi since he always wound up being just a second string version of another character, but now he has an easier time being the master of none Red Mage he was sort of envisioned as.

Pros:
  • Auron is a fun powerhouse and he adds some much needed intrigue, snark, and a voice of reason to the party that was really needed.
  • Oh hey, you can Scan party members and get fun info about them, just like In FFVIII.
  • As much as I complain about Yuna and Tidus, I will say their relationship is pretty solid. Game does a good job of giving them some nice small moments to help sell the fact they have feelings for each other. It will be interesting to compare this one to Squall and Rinoa later.
  • Oh hey, I unlocked the 9999hp attack trophy thanks to Valefor and the Blast Ray Overdrive.
  • While I don't care for Seymour as a character, I do always enjoy being able to use the villain as a party member for a bit. Though it was a bit of a slog to see his Overdrive.
  • I'm going to be honest. I am failry ambivalent with the characters of Shelinda and Clasko. As characters, I'm not exactly in love with them, but what saves them is the fact they are both voiced by Tenchi Muyo! alumni Sherry Lynn (Sasami Jurai) and Matt K Miller (Tenchi Masaki) and that adds just enough nostalgia to make them actually charming to me. Have I mentioned that I'm excited to watch Legend of the Crystals again because both of them as well as Washu's VA are in it?
  • I managed to beat the Chocobo Eater, though I didn't get the extra reward for knocking it off the cliff because it died too soon.
  • While the build up is excruciatingly annoying, the actual cutscene of Operation Mi'hen holds up pretty well.
  • I really missed having cool animations for different level spells. While FFX has never had the best ones, the fact it's more noticeable has me excited for the entries to come.


Cons:
  • The Mi'hen Highroad is generally the point where my opinion about FFX begins to change. While there are certainly some questionable issues with the plot, gameplay, and pacing from the beginning up to the end of Luca, it mostly feels nitpicky since we're still working on the setup. But once we finish the climax of the tournament, moving onto Operation Mi'hen is a bit of drag. The road is boring, mainly serves to dump seven new characters on your lap, who all quickly keep popping up throughout the road so we can have some minor character development to make you allegedly attached to them before the trout goes down, and said interactions are not always great. The road is visually dull and boring, the encounter rate finally gets normal making walking down this boring straight line more annoying, and the music theme for it is awful. It might be the worst track Uematsu composed for the game, and I daresay the arranged version might be more annoying. This section of the game is pace killer with the only highlights being the summoner duel and the random Chocobo Eater boss fight. Not helping is that Mushroom Rock is right after, and it is also bland and boring as well. It's times like this I miss having a world map, because the Mi'hen Highroad could have just been that, and maybe we could have put a bit more effort into Mushroom Rock or just have us skip to the Operation Base.
  • My other gripe with the combat system is that is has the same problem as a lot of 3D games with pre-rendered backgrounds, but oddly enough, I've been noticing that the controls for toggling between opponents/allies changes depending on where the camera is positioned. It's kind of annoying, and I don;t remember if this was an issue in the other PS1 entries but now that's I've noticed it, I'm going to have to pay attention more.
  • Kimarhi is the worst Blue Mage in the series. In fact, I'm going to be honest, he's the most superfluous element of the game so far. I feel like the team was trying to make him into another Red XIII character and he is so flat as both a character and party member. I would not bother using him if it wasn't for the fact he has a mandatory solo boss fight towards the end of the game and I will not experience that annoyance again. Great thinking Nojima and Kitase, you made this funky cool looking non-human character and made him the one who barely talks. That worked so well for Amarant. Also Blue Magic as a Limit Break is an awful idea. and diminishes the whole concept. You wouldn't tolerate your black mage or white mage having their spells locked behind a limit break.
  • I kind of forget how much of an ass Oaka is.
  • I think the thing that kind of bothers me about Operation Mi'hen is a lot of the hindsight issues of the game itself. Sin, is not a difficult boss mechanically. Now, that's true of a lot of FF story bosses, they are not terribly tough by design some of the time and this instance is no different. I think my issue is that narratively, Sin has a weaksause weakness, of which if the Crusaders and Al Bhed had simply known at the time, this operation may have partially succeeded. And that knowledge sort of diminishes the fact this whole sequence is designed around showing off how overwhelmingly powerful Sin is and driving home the false idea that the Final Summon is the only means of beating Sin to the player.
  • We've reached the point where combat is a bit of a chore now. Part of the reason I don't like the "Character A can fight Monster A" design is that it makes combat feel incredibly formulaic but in an annoying way where I still have to partially use some brain power to get through fights despite the fight being incredibly easy regardless. Like I can't wait until I get closer to the end of the game and can just steam roll everything with anyone, but even there, I'm still stuck with the annoying rule that only participating characters get XP, so combat is just artificially drawn out and boring to me.
  • Can we discuss the fact Valefor is just plain broken? Like it might be the most physically frail Aeon with the lowest physical abilities, but the fact it's a flying Aeon in a game where enemy monsters have no options for dealing with it besides magic (which Valfor is strong against) is just kind of messed up. I was trying to charge up it's Overdirve for future use, and kept running into issues where enemies just couldn't do anything against her, and so I could only get Overdive gauge by killing them because it kept skipping the monsters turns.
  • Blitzball is a chore. I get the feeling that a lot of the people who like it probably play actual sport games but this game is sssllllloooowwwwww. It's annoying I have to spend ten minutes every time I have to do a game of it. There should be a rule that makes it so the match ends automatically if a team reaches a certain score.
  • My other issue with Blitzball is how unbalanced it is. The Luca Goers are probably the only team that doesn't have some issue. The Kilika Beasts are purposely made weak so you can practice against them, the Ronso and Guado have opposing weakness that are easy to exploit, and the Al Bhed Psyches are just bulltrout with unnaturally high stats at ridiculously low levels. Like I curb stomped every team except for them because despite being similar levels, they have like five extra point in almost every stat. I only began to start winning against them, because they dropped a member and replaced them with a non-Al Bhed player who was low level and has bad stats early on. So I just kept exploiting this team member to get around the rest of the team's bulltrout but it's still annoying I can only score goals if Tidus or Wedge are literally on top of the goal and use a special move. Once their goalie get cut lose, I'm hiring him just so no other team can use him.