What's funny is they probably just leave the voice-acting the same and put in Japanese subtitles. I wish this is what Squarenix would do or at least provide an option for but they refuse to do so despite it 1. being cheaper and 2. probably being better quality. Although FFXII had pretty nice voice acting all told.

Pause, unpause, wait for flash, X. Rinse and repeat X200. :)

Makes it a helluva lot faster and there's one particular spot where the lightning can actually come down faster if you decide NOT to use the pause button. I believe it was around a pole or pond?

I just have to say this about Kimahri: if you're expecting him to be awesome at any one thing, you're using him wrong. Kimahri has the benefit of a buttload of strength to start with, so his beginning primary role should be as an attacker. Use him anytime you'd use Auron, because both generally have Piercing weaponry. Once you get Auron, pull them both out at the same time and you'll make quick work of foes. Also, Kimahri can easily get into Lulu's area, so have him dive into her first-level spells as a backup caster. You can then work him through Wakka for some accuracy and additional strength, plus status stuff, and have him dip directly into her third-level spells.

Kimahri is a generalist character. He's like the party bard, if you will. He's able to support your every effort and can help you do it better depending on where you build him.

Frankly, I use him all the time. He's still a pretty heavy hitter physically, and his Ronso Rages are pretty useful and actually not at all a pain in the ass to get like Blue Magic usually is.

The thing with Khimari though is that his Overdrive designate him as a Blue Mage who has only access to his attacks when in overdrive and that is crazy stupid. He has no other good ability other then Lancet. Quistis was in the same boat, but thanks to the way Limit's worked in FF8, you could exploit that easily so she could use her Blue Magic whenever.

It can be argued that Rikku is the same with her mix, but I always pegged her as a thief first and chemist second and she could use steal whenever.

Rikku would be like that with her Mix, but Mix is so useful that's totally offset. She's also got Use, which lets her use Grenades and Al Bhed Potions and some other neat items. Plus, Steal is good, and she also gets Bribe and Copycat, both of which are also really good. Kimahri, well, Scan is kinda useful, I guess. If you don't want to waste a slot on a weapon for sensor. Other than that, he sucks. Really, you've already got 6 characters, all of whom are good for something. And you can switch them out in battle easily; it doesn't even waste a turn. So you really don't need a Jack of All Trades when you already have a bunch of Masters.

The "repeat times two hundred" is the part I take issue with.

People who have done it say its really not all that bad.

One of my friends did it and says this to me whenever I bring it up and complain.

Your friend is a masochist.
Regardless of the annoyance of 200 times dodging lightning bolts, it starts being frustrating when you're at 199 and THEN you get hit.

I just said "Fuck this, I'll create a similar weapon from scratch eventually."

It's only an hour of redundancy. Nothing too hardcore.

*has collected ALL of the ultimate weapons*

Biggest promotion of false advertisement ever.

Actually I think it's only about 40 minutes, assuming you're not pausing all the time. Least that's what I remember. And it's not hard, just long and tedious and annoying IF you fuck up a good ways into it. Personally I did it on my first attempt without any problems. Kimahris fucking butterfly catching bit was the REAL pain in the arse moment of the Celestials. I had all the others collected without issue, Tidus' first, then Rikkus (should have really gotten a No Encounters weapon first though), then Auron, Wakka, Yuna (that took a while), Lulu, but when it came to Kims it was near impossible for the longest time.

Got there in the end, but it wasn't really worth it. The others were pretty awesome though.

Don't wanna waste too much time.
 

Starts as soon as you get that "Hey look you can dodge lightning" tutorial thing, but you have to talk to this guy after you get 200 dodges to get the weapon.

Yeah it's just whenever your first dodge happens to be. So long as you get 200 consecutive at any point you'll be able to unlock everything. Once you have, head to the travel agency half way through the area and speak to the guy behind the counter, though you'll still need the celestial mirror to get the final prize.

Yeah, you won't get Lulu's weapon if you don't have the mirror, but you can come back and get it after you get the mirror. If you're just getting to the Thunder Plains for the first time, you won't be getting the mirror for a while yet, so don't worry about the dodging until later.

I dunno about that. I found those few extra health spheres and all the other stuff you get was quite nice for the first 100 bolts you dodge when you first arrive there, and if you've done 100 you might as well do all 200 while you're at it.

He got worse near the end.

Not like chaos from X1 bad, but near the end, I wanted to strangle him about his Damn story.

Fucking anti-mash bitch hell shit
 

You should go pick up the consolation prizes from that guy at the Travel Agency, and then, yeah, fuck that shit. You can't even get the weapon for a long time anyway.

I need more shit.
 

Is it the one you go when Riku's scared, because I didn't see anyone who gave me shit.

I'm pretty sure that there's a dude in there somewhere who'll give you something. Just talk to everyone. It might be that it didn't register before because you didn't have enough dodges for a prize.

I think the first time you go there it doesn't register, you need to leave the area with the entrance to the agency then return, go inside, and speak to the guy behind the counter. Then a chest will appear outside. Least I think that's how it works, if not then there's a book inside the agency on a table somewhere which keeps track of your dodges.

I don't think it's going very well.

It's a good game, but regressing to it was the wrong decision for FFXIII.
 

The only regular story fights I had real trouble with were Evrae, Seymour No. 3 and 4, Yunalesca and the second last boss.

We were searching for some hot babeliens when our tour bus crashed!
 

Yeah, this one took me two tries in total to beat, though I mostly blame this on not having Yuna in my party.

Also, Tidus sounds like he's doing a spot on Limozeen impression when he yells. "AAAAaaaaaAAAAAaaaaaAAA!"

I got slaughtered my first time against Braska's Final Aeon because he's fast and would get like 4 charges in the time it would take me to get one turn. So I had to go though the whole sphere-collecting bullshit all over again (seriously, what was with that?), but then I beat him with help from the Magus Sisters and all was good.

(Also, saying goodbye to all your summons was neat and all, but I kind of wish the game ended when it ended. Not as pointless as the sphere thing, but it could have stood to be a lot shorter.)

Maybe it's just me who wants this though.
 

On my first playthrough I was stuck on Evrae for the better part of a month. But my first playthrough was a fucking disaster, so that's really not surprising. I've only lost to him a couple of times since then.

Pretty much this.

Very Zhuangzhi.
 

Did you get your PM btw?
 

What is worse, that or the Orphanage scene from FFVIII?

Nonc: It makes the end about a majillion times better.

Until FFX-2 fucks it up by bringing Tidus back.

Cue Persona PSP music.
 

Better, since I can kinda get behind it on this whole "Is the me in this world just a dream a butterfly is having?" level, and there is the tiniest, vaguest fraction of foreshadowing.

Wait, which are you saying is better? Because X had quite a bit of foreshadowing that something was up about Tidus' version of Zanarkand, whereas the Orphanage scene was basically "Oh hey look all these guys were at the same orphanage but they totally forgot."

I really don't remember anything else.
 

I'm saying X is better. That said, other than Mr. Fayth showing up for no apparent reason early on, what foreshadows the twist?

Well, it's not really foreshadowed that he is specifically not real, but there are things that point to his Zanarkand not being the real Zanarkand. For one, Tidus has never heard of Summoners when he ends up in Spira, but later it gets mentioned that Zanarkand had summoners. He's also never heard of Bevelle, which was the city that Zanarkand was in a big war with when it was destroyed by Sin. It's been a while since I played last, so that's all I can think of right now, but I'm pretty sure there were other things.

Someone didn't stay after the credits in X.

I might just be being nitpicky.
 

That's not the only reason I didn't like the twist, but you make good points. I do wish that more had been done to foreshadow it, and should have, but whatever.

Just beat the battle with Sin while on the airship, aka possibly the worst boss fight in the game. "What? You thought that fighting Sin's arm was kinda boring and took too long? How about you do it ONE MORE TIME!"

AND THEN HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN BECAUSE SIN CHARGED HIS OVERDRIVE ALL THE WAY AND NUKED YOU. Yeah, that was pretty dumb.

Square may have made this with intentions of a sequel but I'll be damned if X-2 didn't happen.

They could have left it with the "is he alive or dead" ending and called it a day. Spend some time on FFXI, and keep motoring on. But then FFX-2 came out and, though it's chippy, Kinda took a lot away from what FFX had going for it.

I didn't think it was bad at all, but I'm a dorky romantic about the relationships between fictional characters.

Different strokes, I guess?

Also, dude, spoilers.

What is this spoiler you speak of? >_>

You do know I'm joking right?

Joking how? Maybe I'm just WOOSHING over the whole thing, or something?

I'd pay assloads of money for a NES FFX.

That's a real NES ROM Hack. It works, has the whole game, and a full Sphere Grid.

It's only available in Japanese though.

Really redeemed a lot of poorly delivered scenes earlier on.
 

Call up Anima, nuke the fucker. You DID get Anima, right?? Or at least the Magus Sisters??

Quadruplet of 9?? Celestials??? Attack reels?? If not any of these, then yeah, it may be a bit tricky.

I've been kinda rushing so I could focus on other games.
 

Best way to get Ultima is to have Kimahri get it and then use a Black Magic Sphere to give to Lulu and Yuna. Also helpful: Wings to Discovery. If you absolutely cannot beat Jecht, go back to the Calm Lands, find that Chocobo race, run it, get three chests, and win. Then use Rikku to mix two of them together in the battle with Jecht, then have Tidus use Slice and Dice and Lulu use one of her furies. Boom, you win.

Just wait till you can combine 1 MP weapons with a double cast Ultima and then have the rest of your front line mimic that double cast and blow your opposition into oblivion. Though the animation does get boring after awhile. Luckily not much can withstand to many rounds like that.

This is something I've been finding as I do weekly reviews, as well.

Someone needs to translate that shit.

If I didn't say I was kidding about spoilers someone would have said something on how to use spoilers. :)

Why?

It'd be the same game but with shittier graphics, and the writing would seem even worse 'cause they were using facial expressions and body language to say a lot that earlier (NES/SNES era) games found ways to work into dialogue.

I mean, some of the VA was pretty aggravating, but was it really THAT bad?

Novelty. I have FF1 on the PSX, but I prefer it on the NES because of the novelty factor. And I didn't even grow up with an NES.

I think that the outdated graphics and sounds have a certain charm to them. Just because they're not high-res sprites doesn't mean they aren't good in their own way. People put work into making things look good in a tiny space. I, myself, have experimented making FF7 NES sprites. It's pretty neat, all told.

Okay, deja vu.

I didn't have any of the optional summons when I first fought Jecht either, it makes it a LOT harder. Hope you like that cutscene beforehand and are ready for a long, tough battle.

Protip: Unless I've gone crazy, the spell Zombie works on pretty much all of the final bosses. It's one of the only times I've found that spell useful. Jecht cures himself eventually but it can be useful for when he wants to heal himself.

Also, I think Tidus and Auron and such can use a special "talk" command for him like in the Seymour fights that I believe will weaken Jecht or strengthen them or something. (I dunno, it's been a long time since I've beat FFX.)

I think it keeps him from using his "Fuck you I win" Overdrive.

This. I don't want it because I don't like the voice acting(to be honest, I don't), I want it because it's cool.

It causes him to hesitate, making him lose a turn.

Tidus actually makes him lose some of his Overdrive as well, IIRC.

It upgrades Wakka's Defense and Tidus' attack, I thought.

That's in the fight with Seymour, I think.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense for Wakka to talk to Jecht since Tidus is the only one related to the Final Aeon. Main thing is getting the "F___ you I win" overdrive from being activated. But I still can't remember if the talk function stops after a certain time...

Just promise me, NonCon:

Whatever you do, do not play Final Fantasy X-2.

Do you hear me? Whenever anyone mentions the theoretical existence of a "sequel to Final Fantasy X," you roll your eyes disdainfully and remind them that Squaresoft never makes sequels to Final Fantasy games. You hold your damn ground when they hold up images of Yuna and Rikku and an effeminate looking man in negligible amounts of clothing to convince you otherwise. Those are doctored photos! They aren't real!

You must persist in this illusory state of serenity. Against all odds, this conviction must hold true in your heart. When Final Fantasy X ends, it's over. Anyone who dares mutter thoughts to the contrary is an enemy of the state.

I liked FFX-2.

Shitty story, music was a step down, but the combat system was fun. It wasn't soul-destroying or anything, just a very different game set 2 years later.

WHAT

You lie.
No seriously there is quite possibly no game I hate as much as FFX-2. It's not that FFX-2 is actually a terrible game -- on its own merits, and if it were released as a title with no correlation whatsoever to FFX and a completely different cast of characters, it'd be merely a generic below-average JRPG. But what makes the game despicable is the moment Square tries to assert that this piece of junk is tangibly related to Final Fantasy X. It's like if an artist paints a masterpiece and then some stranger walked over and just started throwing random splotches of paint on there. (And to clarify, FFX wasn't even my favorite Final Fantasy. It was just pretty good. But the ending of FFX was masterful, and then Square utterly demolished its bittersweet resonance for no justifiable reason.)

See, I've conditioned myself to keep them as two separate entities in my mind. They're parallel universes; FFX happened in one, and in the other (FFX Spoilers!) the fayth never stopped dreaming. FFX-2 is what they dreamt up because the party failed. Instead of Dream Zanarkand, we now have Dream Spira. Makes everything palatable.

FFX-2 is by no means a bad game. It's got a great battle system and the ability to change classes is a welcome replacement for the multiple party members of FFX. Also, the music is good, the story is good on several merits (for one, you get to see Yuna get all territorial about Tidus and you also learn about Paine and her connections), and Spira is as pretty as ever, only blown wide open for you to explore.


The only real complaints people have about it are a couple of scenes worth of cheesecake and the ending, but the ending is really the only appropriate reward given Yuna's quest and it does tie things up well.

FFX left it open for a sequel(Spoilerific).Considering that the video after the credits in FFX set up the secret end in FFX-2 means it didn't destroy it, as it was always going to be a happy ending. That shit was planned.

Proof of such
The true ending to X-2

If you didn't expect a sequal and a happy end after the after credit vid on X, you are crazy.

(Mild Shadow of the Colossus spoilers are also included in the spoiler-tags. You are forewarned.)

Nah man, I totally interpreted Final Fantasy X's post-Credits ending as metaphorical or something and did not make any connection whatsoever to the possibility that Tidus was going to show up alive in Spira and immediately be reunited with Yuna upon his reawakening in perhaps the most terrible happy ending in the history of all pathetic, melodramatic happy endings.

When the entire emotional impetus of the game revolves around a tragic ending, retconning it into "happily ever after" frankly sucks. Like, take Shadow of the Colossus. If a post-credits scene in that game established that Wander actually somehow survived and the horse fully healed and Wander runs up and embraces the woman he rescued that shit is lame. The entire plotline revolves around the tragic consequences of Wander's morally ambiguous actions in slaying the colossi. Similarly, Tidus being merely a dream conjured by Sin or whatever the hell he was -- it's been a while -- is the entire point of Final Fantasy X. Tidus' sacrifice is poignant in part because it's completely out of left field -- you spend the whole game assuming Yuna's life will be sacrificed, when in reality Tidus is the one who bites it.

And Tidus' ending is beautifully scripted -- he has a reunion of sorts with his estranged father, Jecht, and there's the awesome sequence of Tidus slappin' five with Jecht and Auron after Tidus fades into obscurity. The whole message is about Tidus' maturation as a character. He starts the game off a spoiled brat, and finishes the experience as a noble hero, who Yuna is left to fondly remember. Then Tidus is back in the water in the end but given the allegorical meanings of water itself there's no real way to tell exactly what that means.

Instead Square-Enix shuts down that beautiful bittersweet ending for some happily-ever-after bullshit and you call that good storytelling? No, that's shit storytelling. It's the kind of storytelling written in bad fanfiction that eradicates all semblance of theme and character progression and emotional investment by having Deus Ex Machinas up the ass rescuing all the main characters at just the right moment to ensure that the main characters can spend the rest of their precious lives in fairytale land. That's the comparison I was looking for! It just occurred to me -- Final Fantasy X-2 takes an approach similar to Dominic Deegan. Your investment in the characters and their well-beings are thoroughly destroyed as there are effectively no stakes because you know the storyline will end with every important character surviving and every such character having their cake and eating it, too.

Of course there's ALSO the problem of how Yuna's characterization actually regresses in two years from a mature woman willing to sacrifice herself to stop Sin and understanding the tragic consequences of truly loving someone, into a goddamn cheesecake Diva who explicitly refuses to sacrifice anyone's lives in the game's ending in order to stop a Doomsday Machine. Allow me to repeat this as it's critical as to why I hate FFX-2: Yuna refuses to sacrifice the lives of any friends in order to stop a Doomsday Machine, effectively meaning that if the Doomsday Machine is subsequently successful, Yuna's own stinginess in sacrificing the lives of a few friends would condemn all of Spira. Nice job with that character progression, Yunie!

Also there's the whole concept of Spira itself advancing into a fun-filled reality-TV nonsensical adventure park in a mere two years' span after Sin is destroyed. Hey, this once religiously devout society dominated by a spiral of death and fear of destruction is liberated from Sin and...in TWO YEARS... society completely and utterly transforms? The entire psychological welfare of the people of Spira goes topsy-turvy? Everyone's obsessed with MTV-style presentations of pathetic pop songs? WHAT?!??

I'm sorry but I could seriously keep going FFX-2 is seriously an affront upon all reason and copies of it should be burned and Square-Enix should be forced to apologize for ever making this game.

I don't necessarily see that as a regression. You've gotta throw in all the other factors in to her want to sacrifice herself in X. It wasn't because she was mature, it was because her father did it and everyone expected her to do it. It was so ingrained in her as it was the whole religion that she didn't really have a choice in the matter.

To her not wanting to sacrifice anyone, she wasn't told Tidus would stop existing without the Fayth and in the end lost him. If you have a big loss like that, I'm sure you'd exhaust all other options before losing another person. It's understandable why she's stingy. Add to it that summoners sacrificing themselves to sin in the past did not solve the problem, it goes along with the same theme.

I agree X-2 has a lot of problems, I cant stand watching most of the cutscenes as it's just to heavy with the girl power stuff, but I wouldnt say she's regressed. She's came out of her shell for certain and as a character she grew from being that reverent girl being bred to kill herself for everyone, finally she's living partly for herself.

Also, on Culture.

Their entire religion was proven to be not just false, but actively lying to them and murdering the fuck out of them by way of giant doom whale, not to mention ruled by the undead. Further, the people had been shown to drown their sorrows in ridiculous and silly pass times while Sin was around. It is anything but a large leap to assume that their society would cope with finding out that they'd all been basically living lies for generations by trying as hard as they can to ignore it and drown their sorrows in false happiness ala MTV Diva shit.

Though I totally agree with what you've said about the ending scene, Snake. I never assumed that meant he was alive. I thought it was metaphorical or something, because him being alive at that point made less than 0 sense.

Any character who suddenly decides that the life of a single individual, any individual, supersedes the continued existence of the world, including that aforementioned individual, has clearly regressed.

Whether Yuna's initial justifications for being willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of Spira were justified by personal maturity or simply following her father's example or whatever, doesn't change the fact that philosophically it's the right decision to make 100% of the time. For Yuna to choose any alternative would be selfish. She'd have to value her own self-preservation over the lives of thousands of others.

Of course what's really strange is that the situation with the ancient Doomsday device -- whatever the hell it was -- in FFX-2 is arguably far worse than Sin. Sin was a continued nuisance that wrecked lives every decade or so, but it never came close to destroying the entire planet or wiping out all of humanity. In fact, Spira's residents largely accepted Sin as a continued destructive force. Yuna's sacrifice in FFX would have only bought Spira another decade or so of peace before Sin presumably resurfaced. By contrast, in FFX-2, ancient Zanarkand Doomsday Machine or whatever is going to fuck all of Spira up. Sin's effects are predictable; Doomsday Machine was an unknown monstrosity buried under the Calm Lands or something, if I remember correctly.

The bottom line is this: In such a situation, it's a simple sign of fucking caring about the continued existence of the human race to allow individuals to sacrifice themselves to stop the threat. If you don't, you risk everybody dying -- including the people you're so worried about in the first place! Yuna's decision was thus arbitrary and her speech about refusing to sacrifice anyone made no sense. She was willing to sacrifice everyone in order to, uhh, preserve the mere insubstantial chance of sacrificing no one? Yeah, that's not character maturation or progression, that's sheer character stupidity.

EDIT: Regarding culture: I just don't think that progression happens in two years. I don't care if all the evidence in the world is immediately released that exposes Yevon for a pile of shit. In a mere two year span, there will still be plenty of Yevon defenders, out of sheer stubbornness or petty denial. In two years, the kinds of infrastructure upgrades wouldn't be possible to support a Diva-MTV resurgence. The entertainment industry, virtually defunct besides Blitzball during the FFX era, isn't suddenly going to develop like that.

The real problem with FFX-2 though isn't that all these changes have necessarily happened in such a short span of time, but rather, that the game merrily assumes you're going to go along with all the bullshit and never really seems to provide any semblance of justification for anything. Even if Yuna had a few serious scenes where the shifting beliefs and demographics in Spira were fully explored -- in a way that didn't seem ludicrous or played for laughs -- that could have worked. Final Fantasy X-2 does not attempt to provide justification because the game doesn't take itself seriously, which works fine if the game had no correlation to FFX. But as a sequel to FFX, FFX-2 had an obligation of sorts to actually explain its correlation to FFX. The complete shift in tone is jarring -- and it should've taken at least a decade for the political, theological, and bureaucratic underpinnings of society to erode in such a fashion.

Snake: Sacrificing people in the past never worked. Upon learning this it would be completely ridiculous for her to assume that it's going to start working now. If anything that was a pretty large sub-point of FFX. That merely choosing to allow someone to sacrifice themselves so that everyone else can keep on doing what they're doing isn't morally/ethically right, and that it doesn't actually fix the problems.

You can disagree with it, but it's there.

This is also why Tidus's sacrifice was potent. He didn't sacrifice himself BY himself. He was merely a casualty of a war that the entirety of Spira was involved in as opposed to a sacrificial offering. Yes, he knew he would probably cease to exist upon their victory, but fighting your hardest knowing there is a damn good, or even 100% chance of dying, is not at all the same as being a sacrificial offering.

The route he took was, indeed, all about denying that anyone would need to be a sacrificial offering ever again.

For Yuna to choose to sacrifice her friends would have gone against the morals of FFX.

It's hard to say either way, since there are two ways of thinking. Most of the Japanese media I see value the life of the individual over more(though they still make those who sacrifice themselves into heroes...so I guess it's somewhat of a weird concept). Heck, it shows up in Western stuff a lot too. Maybe Im too used to it being a Japanese thing that what I do doesn't enter my mind when playing the game>.<

Probably the whole provability of undead Maesters. Also lots of people still followed Yevon, but now it was New Yevon, and ruled by a new guard that outright admitted what had been going down before and apparently let Yuna off the hook.

Not only that, but no one on spira actually gave to shit fucks about HOW Sin went down, just so long as they got themselves a Calm. See: Large scale support of Operation Mi'ihen. The ONLY character we saw whom out right opposed it was Wakka, and he only opposed it 'cause of misplaced anger over his dead brother.

It wouldn't matter at all if Sin came back in ten years. What would matter was that they now know they can kill Sin without sacrificing a summoner. It's possible. They can fight him.

X had Yevon guards with guns. Proof is the fight before the wedding.

Yeah, there is that. But I think someone would've started asking questions about how Yuna went in with 6 guardians and came out with 4.

Yes, but those were secret Yevon guards that nobody really knew about. Wakka nearly shat himself when he saw them. New Yevon is completely upfront about having guns and nobody cares.

If your point is "the morals of FFX and FFX-2 were equally screwed up," yeah, I could actually buy that. The difference is that FFX's story was actually told well enough that I forgave my philosophical disagreements with the characters. Whereas FFX-2 doesn't even really give a damn about explaining the philosophical positions of the characters because everyone's too busy yukking it up in a series of comedic cheesepuff scenes that border on the incredulous. FFX-2's poor storytelling everywhere else undermine it when it actually attempts to become serious at the end because I'm still having nightmares about Yuna giving JPop performances and comparing breast sizes and giving a female rival a backrub.

It's like if I'm having a political debate against Barack Obama and Michael Moore. Obama and Moore may take the same exact position on an issue -- for the sake of hypothetical argument, let's go with Affirmative Action, because I probably would disagree with them both on that issue.

I may vehemently disagree with their positions on that issue. But I bet you Obama is going to present a case methodically in such a way that I find credible. I may disagree with his position, and I may find his arguments unpersuasive, but because he backs it up with evidence and generally treats his arguments seriously and with a proper amount of research and respect I can't dislike him for making his case. In fact, I may ultimately emphasize enough to understand why he believes Affirmative Action is necessary and vital. I could understand his perspective and how his life experiences and his interpretation of facts leads him to a particular set of beliefs, while simultaneously disagreeing.

And then there's Michael Moore, who'd just spew out random bullcrap in the least effective, least credible way imaginable. (This may be an exaggeration against Moore, who probably isn't always as bombastic as his critics paint him, but I'm relying on the stereotype for the sake of the point.)

Okay that's a bad analogy but it's 1:30 in the morning. My point is, FFX is sort of like Obama in that hypothetical and FFX-2 is sort of like Michael Moore.