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Final Fantasy X - Sphere Factor

Hello and we-

Oh my god what the fuck is this, what the fuck are you doing?
Okay I can explain.

Final Fantasy X is part of the long-running JRPG series, and was released for the PS2 in 2001 by Square-Eni-I mean, Squaresoft. It was the first Final Fantasy game to feature full voice acting and was a big leap in the series from a technical standpoint. Some people like it. Some people hate it. Some people think it's the worst Final Fantasy. Some people might also think it's the best Final Fantasy and if you're one of those people I'm more than a little concerned but I'll let it slide. _{(Unless you're only counting gameplay in which case I could buy that)} As for me, I think it's okay overall but I really enjoy the gameplay of this one.

This Let's Play is not going to be a normal Final Fantasy X LP because there is an excellent LP of it by The Dark Id that you can read on the archive. This LP will be a little light on the story, in that I'll mainly be breezing past it and linking cutscene videos in case you need to follow along. The focus is not on the story this time, it's the gameplay. This will be a hybrid LP; mainly screenshots but with videos of most bosses and other notable encounters, and also linked videos of the cutscenes.

By this point you're probably wondering what makes this LP special, then. Throughout the series, numerous challenge runs have been devised for many of the FF games, and FFX is no exception. In fact, it probably has the most challenges, or at least the most challenges that have guides written for them. Just go to the GameFAQs page and scroll down. Yowza. Anyway this LP is going to be a challenge run of Final Fantasy X.

So what challenge are you doing, you poor fool?
Of all the Final Fantasy X challenges, none of them are as challenging or as daunting as the NSGNSNCNONENNENBB Challenge. That stands for No Sphere Grid, No Summon, No Customize, No Overdrives, No Escapes, No "No Encounters", and (*gasp*) No Blitzball. That means doing none of the above except where required to by the game. It basically amounts to using Rikku to steal and use a ton of shit, grinding for rare drops, and buying as much shit as you can.

I will not be doing the NSGNSNCNONENNENBB Challenge.

I know, I know! I got your hopes up and everything. Unfortunately for you and fortunately for me, I am not nearly masochistic enough to do that challenge. A lot of the really absurd challenges, as far as I know, aren't actually capable of winning the game without some serious luck bullshit, getting stonewalled by the final boss (Braska's Final Aeon). (apparently for the N-whatever challenge above BFA has been beaten) Some of them are more than possible, however. In fact, for just a regular No Sphere Grid challenge, only one boss (according to the FF Wikia) hasn't been defeated yet without resorting to Yojimo/Zanmato bullshit: Penance, the most powerful superboss.

Okay cut to the fucking chase, what challenge are you doing then?
I will be doing the NSGNSNCNONENNENBB Challenge with one big modification: I will be using the (International Standard) sphere grid, which will allow me to level up my party and give them stats and abilities.

But! The Sphere Grid I will be using has been completely shuffled around.

See, it turns out, since the Sphere Grid ends up being very flexible, that pretty much the entirety of the sphere grid is baked into the save file. Using a save editor like FFXED, you can change pretty much anything about the layout of the Sphere Grid except the actual physical path layout. In fact, FFXED has the ability to shuffle around the stat and ability nodes (empty nodes and lock nodes are left alone). As in, all the abilities swap places with other abilities, and stat increasers swap places with other stat increases. So that's what I did.

Originally, I was just going to do a Random Sphere Grid run for this LP but I decided that even with potentially lopsided and non-optimal characters it wouldn't be that much of a challenge. So I decided to take the other restrictions of the NSGNSNCNONENNENBB challenge to hopefully make it at least a LITTLE more difficult. Think of it as the RSGNSNCNONENNENBB Challenge.

Anything else?
- I am playing the Remastered PC version with the extra content added in the International PS2 version.
- I did not pick the Expert grid because it's too open.
- I know nothing about the generated Sphere Grid. I will not purposefully look more than a few spaces ahead at any given point.
- I will be doing as much of the optional content as I can, which is where the difficulty will definitely kick in. I will probably not be able to do very many of the superbossses...if any. (I may cheat when it comes to stuff like capturing monsters for the Arena because otherwise I will never finish this LP)
- I will probably cheat for some of the Celestial Weapon stuff (you can upgrade them in the challenge) because if you think I'm dodging 200 lightning bolts you can kiss my ass!
- Since some of the optional stuff obviously involves Aeons I will be forced to bend that rule a bit.
- I will try my damnedest not to break the rules of the challenge but if I feel like I absolutely have to I will.
- Spoiler Policy: Tag it if it's major plot if you want, leave it outside of tags if it's not story related. If it's for any of the other FF games, put it behind a tag if it's super-spoilery. That includes FF15!

Got everything? Good. Listen to my story.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 - Heavily Enforced Tutorials