It's hilarious how hard this game tries to be "rad" - you don't merely find items in treasure chests, you "score" them. And the airship looks like something a huge Harley-Davidson fan would draw... Anyway, one thing that's nice as always is Yuna's voice. It's impressive what a good job her voice actress does.

I was at some ruins hosting a sphere first, and had to outrun that Leblanc chick and her goons to the top. The way I had to go initially was down rather than up, which caught me by surprise, so I failed, but, as I finally got up there, they scrammed. Apparently, some monster had appeared. I defeated it with ease, and got the sphere. Spheres actually contain some short video clips, and we watched this one... It was some fan exciting about getting to shake some girl's hand... Who knows what this was all about. The girls found no value in the sphere, but as a Dresssphere, it was great - got me the Black Mage job.

Next, I could choose between going to Besaid or Zanarkand, but I was warned that Zanarkand had tough beasts, so I headed to Besaid. Yuna met her old friends Wakka and Lulu - the latter apparently pregnant, and Wakka was psyched about becoming a dad soon. A seemingly casual conversation suddenly reminded him of a sphere of his parents. After talking to Lulu, Yuna got to sleep (you can see her wake up and get out of bed when sleeping in this game - clothed, of course). On the next morning, Wakka was gone, and I had to find him in some cave. First, we asked around the village, and people told us we needed to find some "ciphers" - apparently the numbers I saw a couple of before actually entering the village. I walked around the island and found another one, then found the combination lock-protected door to the cave... Since I already knew 3 of the figures, and the game was kind enough to also tell me their position, I just went through the remaining figures until I found the correct one. Wakka was just sitting inside, wondering whether to go on with the search... Yuna and the girls didn't hesitate a bit, and found it promptly. A flame dragon appeared and, after defeating him, the sphere was ours! White Mage job this time.

Sadly, it didn't turn out to really be Wakka's parents' sphere that his late bro Chappu had told him about. Then, Wakka decided it wasn't important, and what if his parents didn't turn out to be as badass as he'd remembered them? So he just gave up on the search (for now?). Yuna and the other two headed straight back to the airship.

Battling is still a little weird in this game - casting magic and abilities takes a while charging... Straight attacking seems to be the most effective, usually. But I haven't fought many strong enemies yet, I'll see later how things go. Learning abilities has been fun, already got a few useful ones, and learning some costly ones right now. After learning the most useful Thief abilities that were available, Rikku is now a Gunner... Yuna is a Black Mage, only Paine keeps her original Warror job at least until she learns Assault.

Another relaxing play session touring Spira. First, I went to the Youth League's headquarters. Had to go past a road full of "fiends," and I encountered Leblanc's goons on the way. Nothing interesting, we didn't even fight. Apparently, there's some cave I can open by collecting a bunch of key items in a sidequest or something. After going up a few levels and learning new useful abilities (Paine finally learned Assault, though I haven't needed to use it yet... What's with these easy enemies everywhere?), I reached the Youth League's HQ. They were planning some operation against New Yevon, though, and I couldn't speak to their leader, Noob... Nooj. Apparently an amazing warrior that was nowhere to be seen in FFX. OK then.

Then, I went to Djose temple, and you can earn money there by doing digging. I didn't sign up, sounds like a bore. I saw the "Machine faction"'s leader, apparently he's a rad Al Bhed dude. Then, I went to the Shoopuf location, and some fast-talking dwarf asked me to track down his assistant who was bringing goods for his show or something like that. He said I'd find him at Djose temple, so I went back there, but a hypello was nowhere in sight. Would I have to go in digging to find him? -_- Fortunately, as I left the temple screen and took the other fork tip of the road, there he was. I had to export him and his chocobo-pulled wagon full of goods to his master. Bandits attacked a few times, trying to steal his stuff, we slayed them with ease. The master gave us a sphere in return for our help. It's the Gun Mage sphere - apparently, the Blue mage flavour of this game.

I now have a bunch of sphere grids, but the later ones only have 3 sphere slots... Despite the nice effects given when switching spheres. Cura, Firaga and shit. I'll stick to my 5-slot one for now. Despite barely switching spheres in battle, it's nice to have options... The party of Black Mage (Yuna), White Mage (Rikku) and Warrior (Paine) is doing quite well for now.

Played some more, did the Zanarkand mission... I like how I keep encountering these apparently minor characters from FFX, and I keep lying to them that I remember them, when I don't at all. But Yuna herself surely remembers them, so it's not really a lie when I choose those answers. Anyway... I almost got my first game over in a normal battle when I was attacked by these two huge beasts at once. I managed to escape with my last standing character. But it was all due to not taking normal battles seriously at all and selecting whatever comes to mind first. I met some kids after I entered the temple - apparently everyone's got Sphere Hunter teams now, and there are ALWAYS 3 people per team. Even kids and grannies do. "Kinderguardians"... Alright. They told me about a clue to finding the treasure - "key". Then, from another loser, I got "mon", and the clue was apparently "monkey"... There were lots of them in the temple, some even stole a few coins from me.

I proceeded deep into the temple, and another guy I "remembered" Isaaru or something was apparently working as a scary "boss" of the temple, guardian of the treasure or whatever. I told him the clue was "monkey" and then recognised him, so he showed up and gifted me another sphere grid. I also met Cid - there's one character I did recognise from the previous game. He's apparently running the place or something. He's the one responsible for Zanarkand becoming a tourist attraction, which upsets Yuna. Anyway, we proceeded deeper into the temple and did find a sphere. A huge boss attacked and we defeated him with a little bit of Protect-ion. Turned out the sphere was just half a sphere... Oh well.

On to the next mission, in Kilika Woods.

Only a few cutscenes today... I took a look at the sphere I got from those fools, and it had Tidus in it! It's probably from the distant past. He wanted to save "Lenne" - as Yuna interpreted it - by using some powerful machina. Then, Yuna danced for the Gullwings people to relieve some stress. I had to push some weird-looking musicians into the elevator before the show could start. WTF was up with that? This game likes being random.

Yuna got all angry remembering about this "Lenne" chick that Tidus wanted to save and went to bed angry, in her Dancer sphere clothes, too. Jealousy... "Len" might've also been short for "Lenny"? It doesn't necessarily have to be some other girl, but there Yuna goes, thinking Tidus is not only not really gone from "this world," but also cheating on her. Women. You need to trust him more, girl. Then, Yuna dreams of Tidus rescuing her from the wedding in FFX (? - I don't remember the scene well anymore), and they end up in front of this machina, but some riflemen catch up with them and shoot them dead.

Anyway, on the next day, I am forced to decide whether to give the sphere back to the Youth League or to New Yevon. We don't want to keep it because we feel kinda guilty for fucking them all up, and besides, it has no value as a dresssphere. Neither Rikku, nor Paine can advise me to give it to either faction, but I have to pick one. I myself don't like either of them, either, but I go with the Youth League - at least they wanted to make it public... They roll out the red carpet and stuff, and suspiciously all the major members get off the Celsius for the sphere delivery - the three chicks, Brother, Buddy and Shinra. We'll soon find out it's but a plot device.

Nooj tells me about the giant machina - apparently, New Yevon want to use it to control Spira, but it shouldn't be woken because it could bring great destruction to Spira! Youth League will do everything they can to stop them, he says. Okay. Yuna asks him about who the blondie on film was. Nooj can't say. But Yuna already knows it's Tidus. Anyway, Buddy appears and says there's a distress signal from the Celsius - we go back to the airship and we've had a sphere stolen. Leblanc left a message making fun of us. It's the half-sphere we found in Zanarkand. Time to get it back! First, we need to steal Leblanc Syndicate uniforms from around the world, and then sneak into Leblanc HQ. I wonder where I'll have to look for those, but there's a hotspot already marked on my map... K then.

I reset and tried giving the sphere to New Yevon... Roughly the same things happened, except they said they must prevent Youth League from getting their hands on that machina. Whatever. I am continuing on the file where I gave it to the Youth League, of course.

Got over 2 and a half hours in today... As I loaded my save... What the hell is Rikku wearing?! Oh, it's the Leblanc Syndicate uniform... Making sure I don't forget how many more I need to get. Neat. First, we overheard that Leblanc's goons were doing some mountain climbing, and headed to Mt. Gagazet. We got to speak to the Ronsos, including Kimahri, again, choosing one among 3 options... It seemed as fruitless as last time. We went to Fayth Scar and started chasing a female goon. Eventually, we caught her and a friend taking a dip in an onsen... Nice! Just as we were about to steal their clothes, Ormi showed up, and we had to defeat him. Easy-peasy. Then the two goons also attacked, beat them, too. And because we had to go to 3 different places to get these uniforms, not just two, got just one uniform out of the two girls. What, we let them split the other one so they wouldn't be completely naked? -_-

Then, I tried to get Yuna and her friends in the onsen themselves... Only to see that it wasn't possible anymore. Apparently, after looking it up, I had to take a different route before (not after the goon), and it'd treat me with an onsen scene. Now, it's locked. Well... I looked at it on Youtube, and it was pretty odd - WTF is up with those hypello dudes in the onsen with Yuna, Rikku and Paine? And they were wearing beachwear, too. What kind of onsen is that?! I thought it's probably American censorship at work, and looked up the Japanese version (thought they just wouldn't be shown nude...). Unfortunately, they had their swimming suits on even in the Japanese version. What an insult to onsens that was.

I also tried Yuna's special sphere or whatever... Rikku and Paine scrammed, and she turned into some weird boss thing. Main body and two arms, each getting turns and having various special abilities. It was overpowered as fuck, the main Yuna had like 1500 HP, while normally she has like 500.

Then, I had to go to the desert, as I'd already heard that clue last time, but first, I had to register as a digger. I went to see Gippal, the Machine faction leader, in Djose temple. He got all horny from being able to talk to Yuna personally... But showed enough restraint so things didn't have to escalate. He interviewed me with one question - whether I wanted to dig. Well, why did I come here?! And that was it. I then went to the desert, talked to the chick in charge there, and she asked me to go to the Oasis, where I had to check on some suspicious people. They were, of course, from the Leblanc Syndicate. I went there and quickly battled Ormi and Logos (or was it just Logos? Hmm), defeating them. Got the final uniform. I got Rikku's special sphere, too. Will try it next time.

Time to storm Chateau Leblanc... We dressed up as goons and entered with ease. There, we saw Leblanc go all lovey-dovey with Nooj, the Youth League leader... Apparently, she'd found the location of that huge machina, Vegnagun, and now he knew it. He was like "Spira is going to be in some trouble" or something like that, and left. Hm, if he's with Leblanc, he can't be a good guy! Anyway, everything was going swimmingly, we were chatting with Logos and Ormi as if nothing was going on, and we even got to massage Leblanc. That was hilarious. Apparently, Yuna is really great at massages, making Leblanc fall asleep (after one redo, of course). Then, we opened some secret door, and Paine came up with the "brilliant" idea to take off the uniforms, which of course the other two went along with. Well, fuck you! I could have never guessed we'd get found out and attacked this way. -_- In the next moment, that happened. Supposedly, it was Brother's fault because he called on the radio, but come on.

We ran around, grabbing another sphere with another vague video on it, and then we had to open some door. We had to disarm 3 security locks scattered around the place. Two of them were visible, the other one wasn't. I escaped a huge wall with spikes moving towards me on the way... And apparently, to find the third lock, one had to shove oneself into that wall. -_- Very intuitive, Square Enix. But yeah, eventually, I found it, and entered the secret room. Found the two halves of the sphere I had had stolen (you know, Leblanc had already found the other half). Of course, Leblanc and the other two then showed, and Leblanc even used Mighty Guard, that well-known enemy skill from Final Fantasy VII, but we beat them with relative ease, although they used a cool combo move that got one of my girls down. Then, we watched the sphere, learning the location of Vegnagun (Bevelle, of course), and agreed with Leblanc that we had common goals (dismantle it and "save" Spira again. Although I'm not so sure about this...). Leblanc then invited herself on our airship, and off to Bevelle we went...

Had less than half an hour for this today, but managed to clear a mission. It was in Besaid. Shinra and Buddy came down with the girls, and Shinra tested some device that transmits image to the airship... That'll probably have significance later. Brother got hard upon seeing Yuna, as usual. Wakka had gone to fight the fiends in the temple, and some Youth League dude wanted to just burn it down and deal with the fiends immediately. We of course went in to defeat them before it came to that.

We found Wakka lying injured, and asked him to take it easy while we defeated the fiends' boss... It turned out to be Valefor, Yuna's first aeon. The fight was easy, I won without using special dresspheres. Temple saved... For now. Youth league guy also told Wakka not to risk his life, especially since he'd be a father soon. He had a point.

Played more last night and just now. First, I headed to the Youth League HQ, but apparently the Machine faction had appeared and handled the fiend problem. No need for Yuna and co. to interfere. However, they were worried about Nooj missing. So I headed to Djose temple and saw the Machine faction worried about Gippal missing... Apparently, all three faction leaders had gone missing. I stormed the temple and fought the aeon Ixion who showered the girls with lightning attacks. Yuna responded with some Waterga and he was promptly defeated. Another huge hole had opened up...

Yuna looked at the hole and thought she shouldn't go in, as there were secrets that were not for her to know... Then, suddenly, Ixion attacked again, and Rikku and Paine managed to fall on the sides, but Yuna was blasted into the hole. She fell and fell... Then she heard Tidus' voice calling her. As she landed in a garden down below, a beautiful cutscene ensued where Yuna was beautiful in her Songstress dress. Tidus appeared and called her Lenne, she was confused. He embraced her and expressed his disappointment with Spira and everyone still fighting, even 1000 years later. He said he'd take measures to repair that. Then Yuna "woke up," or rather, was woken by Baralai. Nooj and Gippal were also there. The latter two dropped off a couple of spheres Yuna was to deliver to Paine... Apparently, Paine and these three had been a team or something in the past. Then, some portal opened and off the three went, leaving Yuna alone. She got angry because everything was so confusing, she had no idea where she was or what was happening... She collapsed and then she woke up in the Bevelle undercity, where the Gullwings recovered her. That marked the end of Chapter 3...

Almost. Since I was told I was supposed to do something in this chapter to unlock a different ending, I decided to look it up and it turned out they were extra scenes on top of the normal ending, so I thought why not. I reloaded my save before Djose temple and headed to Guadosalam, checking on Leblanc and her friends. She was being super depressed because Nooj was missing, but then I talked to Ormi and Logos and they invited me to watch some spheres they had. We went and watched them. Tidus was there again talking about Zanarkand being invaded with one of the invaders... All of a sudden as we were done watching, old man Maechen appeared and started chatting with Yuna. He gave her hope that Tidus might not be gone forever... That's almost certainly the extra scene I'll be unlocking.

Then, I redid everything stated above, and I mashed X at the end of the Yuna being angry and confused scene, so she heard whistles and saw the shadow of Tidus running around. After the last one, a stairway of light, leading to the sky appeared, so she ran on it and after Tidus... But that's when she woke up in the Bevelle undercity.

Gah... It seems the game is forcing me to grind. I went to the Thunder Plains and apparently some big fiend wanted to eat the spectators, so I had to defeat it before starting the concert. I went to fight it and... It's really powerful. I couldn't even manage to change to the special spheres. It kills people in one hit. This is awful. I hate grinding, such a waste of time... At least I'll build some other dresspheres up.

Quite a bit later, we're back in business! I got the girls up to level 28 and then decided to tackle that boss with 2 Warriors and White Mage Rikku. BTW, Yuna is a sexy Warrior! Sure am glad this boss forced me to put her in a role I wouldn't have attempted normally. I lost the first 3-4 tries, but it became clear that if the boss didn't target Rikku too much, I could take him. And eventually, I did. Simply attacks from Yuna and Paine, while Rikku was healing (after casting Protect in the very beginning, of course). That was it. On the first chance after the fight, I saved, and will continue soon.

Did the Besaid episode today. Will try to get a little playtime at a time, but playing more often. Wakka's son is cute, as expected. Wakka was having a hard time coming up with a name, though... Beclem (the New Yevon guy overseeing the temple) was leaving and I went to see him off, he gave a sphere "from a war buddy" asking me to pass it to Wakka... Of course, it was his brother Chappu. He revealed that there was no sphere of their parents as he had previously claimed... And it was a conversation with Wakka so Wakka had already known this. WTF. Why was I made to believe there was one and I was to find it? Whatever...

Anyway, thanks to the sphere, Wakka got some self-confidence and named the kid Vidina. Not before gathering everyone from Besaid around a huge campfire. Finally, we saw Lulu expressing her love for Wakka near the campfire... It was cute, and Rikku was unsurprisingly "aww"-ing. Oh yeah, before that, I got to play some silly Gunner mini-game where Yuna runs around and shoots some beasts, getting treasure chests with ammo upon killing them. It's not that bad, but I won't be wasting time with it.