Final Fantasy X (The Longest Journey)

[Krylo]

Tips:

That thing everyone else is saying about switching characters?

Fuck that.

No really.

There's a few more worthwhile characters--like Lulu, Yuna, Rikku, and Auron--than what you can keep in the party at any given time. HOWEVER--unless you plan on playing blitzball forevers to get his ultimate weapon and ultimate limit breaks, Wakka is only good for killing fliers, and anyone with black magic can do the same. He has some neat status fucking abilities, but they're of pretty limited use, honestly, due to higher end enemies having pretty good resistance to them, and he has low enough mp that ehhhh.

And Kimahri?

Kimahri is the most useless piece of shit to ever be put in a game.

Now, as has been said, everyone pretty much melds together if you grind/at end game due to skipping and hopping to other people's section of the board. Unfortunately for Kimahri, this means that the only true defining feature is their limit breaks.

When you get Kimahri use jump on someone. Then attack that same person with any other member of your party.

Then sigh loudly because none of his limits other than, like, Mighty Guard and White Wind are any better than that. And those two can be replicated/done far better with Rikku's mix. He also starts the game with pretty shitty stats, and his natural sphere grid progression is shitty.


NOW, all of that alone would NOT be reason to say fuck them when it comes to leveling everyone together.

No no, the thing that makes all that translate into picking a few characters (make sure yuna is one) and leveling them is this--SPHERE STARVATION.

If you try to level everyone you'll notice it first just before macalania woods with ability spheres. You will have everyone sitting there on the board with something like 18 sphere levels just staring at the grid longingly as you can't level them any further without skipping over abilities. You should never skip over abilities (or anything else).

Now, you could, conceivably, farm spheres like a mother fucker against the fish in the very beginning or spend three hours on the miihen highroad because there is an enemy there that drops them, but he's pretty rare to run into.

OR you could just not level every single member of your party and it should be fine.

THAT SAID, if you are going to level every single member and farm ability spheres, move Kimahri into Rikku's path ASAP. Don't even learn anything on his past what it takes to get him to the entrance to Rikku's.

The reason being that there is exactly one use for Kimahri, and that is learning steal early on so that you can steal items from enemies before you get Rikku. This only works if you don't run out of ability spheres, though.

And DO make sure you level Yuna. Her summons are the most powerful abilities you have, and summon stats are based on Yuna's stats. This also makes Yuna the best choice for empty spot filling spheres most of the time.


ALSO: Unless you really love ridiculous grinding and power gaming I wouldn't bother teaching everyone steal/use. It's far far far from necessary and I don't know about you but using steal with every single character in every single fight is just kind of aggravating to me. Same goes for leveling every character, too, but there are more prescient reasons to not do that, at least at first.

Basically, though, I would honestly just play it casually. IT IS NOT A HARD GAME. All the power gaming advice above, from both me and others, is entirely unnecessary so don't even bother unless you really want to.

As for blitzball, it's not bad if you learn how to play. Tips: DO LEARN JECHT SHOT. Even if you never ever plan on playing. Not because of Wakka (because fuck wakka, the only point to keeping him is if you feel like power gaming and breaking the game with his ultimate weapon/limit), but because there is one game the computer MAKES you play. You will NEED Jecht shot to have a chance in hell at it, and you will feel really bad if you lose.

Also: The aurochs are basically the best blitzball players. They seem to suck because they all start at level one and you're up against level 5 etc. teams straight off, but they have very well rounded stats and some of the absolute best level progression. Other players have much more specialized stats that can be obnoxious, like guados and their super passes that are more or less impossible to stop, or the untackleability of the ronso, but the original team is more or less your best bet for a well balanced team once you get them some levels.

I've won a few leagues on my most recent play through and have, literally, not lost a single game using only the original Auroch team. Just make sure you have money to rehire them, because their contracts do eventually expire.


OHhh, and on combat. Turn order--pay attention to this when you're choosing skills/spells/abilities. The turn order will readjust itself to predict what will happen if you use that ability. So you can see if using haste on your character now will let you go once more before the opponent, or how useful a delay attack/buster would be at this point.

Which is great if say... you have Yuna out and someone as low hp. You can check to see if it's possible to get Yuna to go before the enemy before committing to trying it, and therefore know if you're better off dealing damage with your other characters and having Yuna cure the hurt person, or if you're better off using items to keep them alive until Yuna can drop the real heals.

It's incredibly useful if you bother learning how to use it.