I’ve been pretty down on the whole of the FFX/X-2 HD Remaster, and for good reason:
It doesn’t fix nearly as much as it could, the load times are massive, and it introduces
a slew of audio issues.
But there’s one thing I wasn’t quite expecting: Final Fantasy X-2 Last Mission.
It’s supposed to be the final word on the world of Spira, the capstone to the whole
project.
The denouement to two games’ worth of sphere-centric RPGing.
Last Mission isn’t FFX as you know it, hell, it’s not even FFX-2 as you know it.
It’s…
YRP no Fushigina Dungeon.
That’s right, FFX-2 the Roguelike.
And it’s the last best hope for salvaging what is otherwise a pretty rough patch on
this PS3 disc.
So after being reunited by a mysterious letter - and a deep, DEEP callback that I actually
had to appreciate - YRP are back again, now climbing up a giant 80-floor tower of ever-shifting
maps.
A giant 80-floor tower that no one over the course of the last two games ever noticed.
Of course.
Anyway, all the old rules are out the window.
Now, we’re playing a hardcore roguelike, where dresspheres are applied in layers.
That’s right, just like Pittsburgh in winter you’re going to need underclothes on top
of underclothes, but at least these ones give you superpowers.
Mine just keep me warm.
You can stack five jobs on top of each other, which seems like much, except your Gullwing
of choice plays the entire thing alone.
Completely alone.
No friendly Pokémon or nothing....
unless you’re using the Trainer sphere, of course….
y’know, let’s just get back to the game.
It’s a radical interpretation on Final Fantasy, sure, but not entirely unprecedented.
Long ago there was a romhacked version of FFV designed to play much the same way.
But if you’re looking for the quality of your average Chunsoft maze-crawler, you might
be a little disappointed: The mechanics aren’t very well documented, the whole thing lags
like a mother, and - this being a roguelike - you’re probably going to die painfully
the first three or eight or twelve or six thousand times.
You’ve got a limited inventory of 20 items; everything else you come upon you have to
either skip or use as an improvised thrown weapon.
The mechanics are themselves shrouded in mystery: each sphere has its own stat progression,
and heck if they show you what that entails; your YRP also develops levels and HP and stats,
which can be influenced by means they’re not quite clear about; and you can gain new
passive abilities and bonuses by combining spheres, but your two options for finding
these combos are trial and error and the internets.
I have to mention the problems that plagued the other games on this disk, specifically
a multitude of audio failings and lengthy load times.
The music’s not that bad by comparison, though it’ll get tiresome really fast as
a stage that’d take another roguelike a minute to a minute and a half to complete
takes Last Mission seven or eight, simply because every animation takes five-fucking-ever.
If you don’t mind waiting, or you have some other means of dilating time, there’s a
lot to like in Last Mission’s sheer audacity.
It rocks a space, along with Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings and Crystal Chronicles:
The Crystal Bearers as the boundary-seekers, the games that stretch what a “Final Fantasy”
game can be, while still being recognizable.
Samey?
Yeah, maybe Nomura’s designs are falling in upon themselves and we need some new blood,
but mechanically speaking this whole thing’s been put in a blender and reconstituted into
a thick, roguelike smoothie.
Which probably still tastes like math.
And math is delicious.