A few days ago, Penny decided that she wanted to pick up FFX-2 again. We’ve had it since its release, but, as with most RPG’s, we got distracted partway through and never actually finished it.
I found a save, at the beginning of chapter 5 (out of 5), and we played. Well, Penny played. I sat in the room and watched most of the time. And tonight, we finally beat it.
I’m not entirely sure why the game wasn’t better received. It’s got a good story, some interesting and unique gameplay mechanics, great hooks for the pokemonstering numberchasers out there, and a ton of mini-games. Granted, the whole ‘girl power’ theme comes off a bit strong early on, but it becomes increasingly unimportant as the game progresses. Shrug.
We had 74% completion (Penny had skipped over most of the optional content in chapters 2 and 3). Yuna had mastered black mage. Paine had mastered warrior, dark knight, and white mage. Riku would have mastered the singer class, had we been able to acquire its hidden abilities. All three girls were one sphere away from being able to complete their special classes as well. The party was lvl 57-59 by the time the finall boss went down.
I liked the ending – it was just as serious and emotional as the ending to FFX, but much happier. And, yes, we saw the good ending. Not sure whether we’ll ever try for the “perfect” ending, but I think Penny’s planning on doing a New Game Plus replay with a walkthrough checklist now.
I have two comments about the end-game experience.
- The final boss is wimpy compared to some of the stuff you fight shortly before him.
- Mana becomes obsolete.
One of the hotspot missions in chapter 5 has you hunting little cactuars from all over the planet. Once you’ve gathered them together, there’s a wimpy boss fight followed by a big monster attack on the nearby Al Bhed camp. The boss is sufficiently tough that they actually warn you – and ask if you want to evac to your airship and leave the poor desert mechanic guys to their doom (and maybe come back later).
We were about lvl 36 at the time. We left. We did other things. We finished every other sidequest in chapter 5, except one. One that requires access to the little desert camp that was being occupied by big evil nastiness incarnate. I ground some levels and skills and walked into the boss fight at lvl 50.
TWO AND A HALF hours later… the boss finally died – giving us another 1% toward our completion counter, a ribbon, some other equipment we never wound up using, and 5000 xp. Yup. 5000 xp. At lvl 50 you can one-shot mobs worth 1000 xp. Turns out, that boss had over 330k hp. We hit him for 750-2500 hp a swing, depending on how badly debuffed the attacker was at the time. Most attacks were for 1000 damage a pop.
Our reward from the Al Bhed for saving them from the ancient sand demon of ultimate destruction? They made us dinner. Specifically, they acknowledged that the fight took a while and the food was prepared while we were getting slaughtered out there 
Cross reference this to the final boss. It is a sequence of five fights, each against mobs that are similar in damage output to the desert monster but don’t do aoe status effect attacks. These final boss fights also only have around 30k hp each, and you can save after the first two. There are some optional mobs during one of the boss fights, but since you can’t take the XP with you this late in the game… why bother?
After watching the ending and making a backup of our saves, it was time for Alanna to take a bath. Penny and I had some confusion about what exactly had happened during the ending, so I beat the final round of 3 bosses again in time for her to watch the last few rounds of the final boss with me after bathing the baby.
So… where’s the balance? I understand that it is traditional for Final Fantasy to have optional bosses of immeasurable power… but they usually at least give a reward commensurate with their degree of difficulty. Ultimate sword of doom, biggest summon spell in the game, materia containing every spell in the game, that sort of thing. For this ultimate boss of doom, you get a ribbon. Now, granted, the ribbon is a nice enough item… it still gives immunity to all negative status effects in the game, just like it has since FF1, but there are much easier ways to get status effect resistances, and those much earlier on in the game too.
And I don’t remember any of those fights being 150 minute long marathons – some are even timed to guarantee you finish them in under half an hour, etc… 2.5 hours in a game that took us less than 40 to complete? I spent over 6% of our entire playtime in that one fight.
Meh.
The other thing I noticed was a result of my gearing up to fight the desert monster. Mana is pointless in the endgame. Alchemists are where it’s at. There’s no way that we could have survived anywhere near long enough to beat this boss if it weren’t for my party’s ability to regen 2000 damage in waves that occur every few seconds… forever.
When an alchemist is combined with a pair of dark knights using their darkness attack (fairly quick to perform, aoe non-elemental hit for good damage, costs hp in stead of mana)… you can just hold the kill button down and watch things die. Yojimbo? Anima? Last five bosses of the game? No problem. Ok, actually, not Anima. I sped things up just a touch by swapping one of the dark knights out for a warrior using excalibur since she was weak to holy damage, but it was the same procedure.
And even if you do use abilities that cost mana when traveling with your alchemist, they can get free ethers. Yup, infinite supply of mana heals during combat. It’s neato.
The only thing that prevents the alchemist from being a complete and total game breaker is their lack of natural status effect resistances and their lowish hp. But that’s easily remedied, and they do have an infinite supply of remedies – so they really only have to worry about equipping resistance to the debilitating status effects 
It also helps that they can’t use their abilities to heal the party outside of combat, otherwise mana really would be pointless.
So yeah. Fun game, should have done better commercially. People who liked FFX and dismissed FFX2 for the initial girliness are missing out on the rest of the story.