{"id":34061,"date":"2016-09-29T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=34061"},"modified":"2021-02-19T02:26:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T07:26:25","slug":"final-fantasy-x-part-15-monster-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=34061","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy X Part 15: Monster Arena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our heroes escape the city through the power of cinematic editing, appearing in the forest outside the city.<\/p>\n

Well, That Was Easy<\/h3>\n

Boy, we sure did escape that heavily fortified, technologically advanced city where everyone knew where we were and had orders to kill us on sight. Let's make sure to never speak of this again.<\/div>
Boy, we sure did escape that heavily fortified, technologically advanced city where everyone knew where we were and had orders to kill us on sight. Let's make sure to never speak of this again.<\/div><\/p>\n

There’s another conversation like the one under the lake, where characters process what’s happened, clarify their motivations, reaffirm their goals, and otherwise make sure everyone’s dramatic arcs are nice and clear. <\/p>\n

For Yuna and Tidus, this takes place in a personal heart-to-heart. Yuna is tempted to give up the pilgrimage. She’s been branded a traitor. She’s alone with her crush. It would be easy to run off with her man and leave the whole “saving the world” thing to others, particularly since there are still other summoners on the path and the world is now against her. But instead she decides to set aside her love and march off to die for the people who have rejected her. It’s a hard road and she might not get any glory at the end, but she’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do. <\/p>\n

This is the moment that makes her the hero of the story, even if she’s not the “main” character. She sacrifices the most, and her decisions drive the plot more than anyone else’s. Tidus is a catalyst for change and his actions often drive the story, but his investment is so much smaller than hers.<\/p>\n

The next morning the party moves on to…<\/p>\n

The Calm Lands<\/h3>\n

This is probably the first spot in the game where you can be killed by a random encounter. The Malboro monsters can ambush you with an attack that confuses and poisons the whole party, and then defeats them without you ever getting to take a single turn. It kind of sucks.<\/div>
This is probably the first spot in the game where you can be killed by a random encounter. The Malboro monsters can ambush you with an attack that confuses and poisons the whole party, and then defeats them without you ever getting to take a single turn. It kind of sucks.<\/div><\/p>\n

The Calm LandsCalled such because this nice big empty wilderness is a good place to battle Sin. Hence, this is where the Calm begins.<\/span> is an unusual location in the game, inasmuch as it’s kind of a throwback to the days of FFVII where you could wander around in open areas. Your route through FFX has been very linear up until now. Not only must all areas be done in a particular order, but there’s usually just a narrow path for you to follow. Your only choice is to go forward, or… not go forward yet<\/em>. <\/p>\n

To put it another way, your only meaningful decision is to decide how long you want to grind in a particular spot before moving on. That’s still technically the case here, but now you’ve got a vast open expanse in front of you and multiple points of interest to discover. Far to the northwestThere’s no real compass when you’re on foot, so when I say “north” I just mean, “the way the camera tends to point”.<\/span> there are a few people to talk to and some goodies to get. To the east is the passage to the Monster Arena. Right in the middle is a little outpost. To the northeast is the passage to the next area. And there’s a hidden temple to the southeast, although you can’t reach it right away.<\/p>\n

It’s actually kind of daunting. The Calm Lands feel vast in a visual sense, and it can take a good long time to cross them if you’re fighting monstersIn the remastered version, there’s a hotkey to turn off random encounters, which makes crossing the Calm Lands take just a minute or so. In the original game this could only be accomplished by acquiring special items that only became available in the late game.<\/span>. <\/p>\n

This is where the story puts on the brakes. We’ve just gone through some pretty serious story beats, and now the storyteller is cutting the player loose. “Okay. That’s enough story for now. Go level up, or play some blitzball or something.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The big attraction here in the Calm Lands is…<\/p>\n

Monster Arena<\/h3>\n

The crazy cliffs and ravines in the distance are supposed the be the scars left by previous summoners in their cataclysmic showdowns with Sin.<\/div>
The crazy cliffs and ravines in the distance are supposed the be the scars left by previous summoners in their cataclysmic showdowns with Sin.<\/div><\/p>\n

In the Calm Lands there’s a guy who runs some sort of crazy monster zoo. But all his monsters escaped. (Sad trombone.) If you catch them, he’ll open the zoo again. And then you can pay him money to fight various creatures. You can do this for XP, or for drops, or to work on different fighting strategies, or just for giggles. If you lose a fight here you don’t get a game over.<\/p>\n

The real goal here is to complete “sets” of monsters. If you capture one of every type of flan in the world, he’ll let you fight the super-flan. If you catch one of every monster in AREA, then he’ll unlock a super-monster representative of AREA. Most of these bosses are more dangerous than any of the bosses you face in the game, and it’s pretty clear this whole thing is for ultra-completionists who want to break the leveling mechanics.<\/p>\n

My problem is that there is a lot of fun to be had in the monster arena, but it’s all locked away behind hours and hours of tedious monster-collection.<\/p>\n

To catch a monster, end the fight by dealing the killing blow with a special weapon with the “capture” property. Which means you can’t use Aeons, magic, overdrives, or items. You’ve got to use these weapons that don’t have any useful properties. <\/p>\n

Fine, fine.<\/p>\n

But by this point in the game we’ve already passed through Besaid Island, Kilika Island, Mi’ihen Highroad, Mushroom Rock Road, Djose Road, Thunder Plains, Macalania, Bikanel Island, and half of the Calm Lands. <\/p>\n

Ahead we have the Fayth Cavern, Mt. Gagazet, Omega Dungeon, and Sin.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of monsters are behind us, and the plot has taken us through several one-way doors. We can’t go back to those previous areas just yet. What we need to do is finish the pilgrimage<\/em>. Once we’re ready for the final showdown with Sin we’ll regain access to the airship, and then instead of finishing the game we can fly around and work on completing the Monster Arena. This collection quest would be a fun project to work on while the game is progressing. But instead we have to get all the way to the end of the game, and then once we have the airship we visit each and every previous location and spend hours rounding up monsters that offer no challenge and are now worthless in terms of XP and loot. <\/p>\n

This magnifies all the worst parts of the Final Fantasy X combat. Every combat begins with a little animation. The music begins. The camera sweeps in on the battlefield. The monsters are revealed. Then you spend a minute or two defeating them. Then you get the victory fanfare and a couple of loot screens. <\/p>\n

This is tolerable when battles take a minute or two of interestingFor some. Tastes vary. It’s okay.<\/span> combat and you get a little reward at the end for your trouble, but it becomes torture when monsters die in a single hit, there are no decisions for you to make, and you get no reward at the end. You spend most of your time watching the pre-fight animation, and that’s just no fun.<\/p>\n

You can’t check your progress from out in the field, so if you’re wondering what your collection totals are and which monsters you need, then you’ll need to hike back to the save sphere, transport to the airship, take the airship to the Calm Lands, and then hike all the way across the calm lands to the Monster Arena. <\/p>\n

And the whole time the story is perched on the threshold of the climax and you’re thinking, “I could go beat Sin right now. Why am I doing all this?”<\/p>\n

In the middle of the Calm Lands is a rest area where you can catch up with Father Zuke, a summoner who quit the path a few years ago. Wakka was his guardian at the time.<\/div>
In the middle of the Calm Lands is a rest area where you can catch up with Father Zuke, a summoner who quit the path a few years ago. Wakka was his guardian at the time.<\/div><\/p>\n

This setup completely misses the point of a sidequest. Sidequest content is really good for when you start to get tired of the main story and are looking for a change of pace or something else to work on. It’s something you do in little one or two hour sessionsOr more. Let’s not talk about all the time you spent at the Golden Saucer. Yeah. I know about that.<\/span> throughout the game, and then return to the main quest. But here we just binge on the main game, and then pause the main game to binge on Monster Arena stuff for six hours. <\/p>\n

It would partly fix the problem if we could at least buy capture weapons early in the game. That would save us from needing to grind captures in the boring starting zones. Even better would be to make the monster arena something you could jump to at any save sphere, the way Blitzball is currently handled. <\/p>\n

The power delta between a normal end-game party and a maxed-out party is at least an order of magnitude in terms of damage output and defense. The special bosses are fun and challenging puzzles that can engage the hardcore, without dropping a soul-crushingly difficult boss into the main quest to frustrate the people that aren’t trying to break the game. <\/p>\n

The Monster Arena is fun and interesting… once you put in the time. But you can’t really enjoy that fun until you do a bunch of grinding, and you can’t begin that grind until the game is nearly over. <\/p>\n

Mt. Gagazet<\/h3>\n

Am I the only one who got a huge Hanz and Franz vibe from these two? The stilted dialog, the stuff about strength, the way the little one acts as hype man for the bigger one, the stupid insults. Hang on, does anyone actually REMEMBER Hans and Franz? I am so old.<\/div>
Am I the only one who got a huge Hanz and Franz vibe from these two? The stilted dialog, the stuff about strength, the way the little one acts as hype man for the bigger one, the stupid insults. Hang on, does anyone actually REMEMBER Hans and Franz? I am so old.<\/div><\/p>\n

The party ascends Mt. Gagazet, which is the home of Kimahri’s people, the Ronso. His individual character arc has involved a longstanding feud with a couple of his brothers, and that arc is resolved here. His brothers always make fun of him for being a puny six and a half feet tall, which makes him about a head shorter than the average Ronso. They don’t want a weakling like him to cross the “sacred mountain” where they live. <\/p>\n

I think there’s also some bad blood on account of Kimahri leaving to care for Yuna. The brothers talk about how he “forgot” his people and his mountain. Maybe there are some conversations with him to clear this up, but I never encountered them.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, the brothers are level-scaled so that if (like me) you left Kimahri on the bench for most of the game, his brothers won’t be massively overpowered for him and you won’t have to grind levels for Kimahri for hours just to get through it. <\/p>\n

Although, you get a Game Over screen if Kimahri loses. I think it would be an interesting design decision to let the game continue on without him. Either he dies, or maybe he just gets stomped by his brothers and has to yield, and the party has to continue on without him. The player would have to decide for themselves if they want to accept this outcome, or if they want to reset the game and try the fight again. <\/p>\n

This would probably feel like a win for most players. If you really don’t care about him, you’re free to ditch him. If you do care about him, you get the satisfaction that you earned<\/em> his victory. Since Kimahri is the redundant wildcard character, his absence wouldn’t really be much of a handicap to the player. <\/p>\n

Those losers.<\/div>
Those losers.<\/div><\/p>\n

Stylistically, I think making Mt. Gagazet a snowy region is a surprising choice. The game has been running through the standard videogame biomes: Water level, crumbling ruins, jungle area, city area, rocky area, ice level, desert level, grassy region, and whatever the hell we want to say Macalania forest was made out of. And now we’re going for “snow”? I realize the white snow of Gagazet is distinct from the blue ice of Lake Macalania, but it still seems like a repeat. Both “cloud level” and “lava level” are still available, and both of those would work for a mountain top.<\/p>\n

Sure, snow makes sense for the top of a mountain. If it were up to me I would have kept the snow here on Mt. Gagazet and changed Lake Macalania to some other motif. But whatever. It’s not bad or wrong. It’s just unexpected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our heroes escape the city through the power of cinematic editing, appearing in the forest outside the city. Well, That Was Easy There’s another conversation like the one under the lake, where characters process what’s happened, clarify their motivations, reaffirm their goals, and otherwise make sure everyone’s dramatic arcs are nice and clear. For Yuna […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51859,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34061\/revisions\/51859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}