@sweetz: I haven't done the lightning bolts yet, but I did manage to beat Dark Valefor last night thanks to Hastega and Quick Hit and some aeons taking big hits. Which in turn let me unlock Yuna's celestial weapon, so she, Rikku, and Tidus are probably going to be my main party for a while. I'll probably get the lightning bolts done eventually - at least I'm on a Vita without any display lag. That seems like it'd be a tough one to do on an HDTV.

It was a task like this in FFXII that finally broke me on JRPGs, and I've never looked back. (That was actually my first blog on the site, I think.)

I actually managed to get him down legitimately last night! Hastega'd everyone, used Tidus and Rikku for Quick Hits, flipped between Auron and Yuna for extra damage or to summon Aeons to take whatever Dark Valefor attacks were coming along. Think I only had one Aeon left to go when I managed to kill him. Feels good!

This reminds me I need to play FF5 for real, as well as play the Project Rainfall games, I only got into Xenoblade. JRPGs are really rad games once you start to get in the thick of it and the story is interesting. The last one I played was probably Xenoblade, and before that Tales of Vesperia and maybe Lost Odyssey? Those were both pretty swell too. I hope someone can pull off a good-ass JRPG on the PS4 generation and modernize it in all the right ways, heck even if it ends up being 2D (hopefully at least better than SNES level stuff) I would be pretty excited.

@xyzygy: Yeah, this is a game that makes it pretty fun to get past the damage limits. It's almost odd how much work went into the dark aeons and the monster arena and the like; most games just make you repeat the same bosses with amped-up health pools (e.g. Diablo III) rather than give you a bunch of new content after the ending, so it's nice to see a bunch of new stuff to tackle here.

Despite Tidus being insufferable, the ending is indeed really effective and emotional. I blame the music, which gets to me every time, but then I wonder, if I didn't have the context for it, would it still do that to me?

Just makes it an even bigger bummer that the writers couldn't make their leads more likeable.

Good stuff, @rorie. Have you ever thought about posting your occasional blog posts as full articles on the site? It seems like a shame to bury this kind of stuff when it's easily good enough to be on the homepage.

If you've no hangups with using slightly nefarious means to get the lightning challenge done, there's a particular spot in the Thunder Plains that can be used to force a bolt to appear whenever you walk over it, making it much more easier.

Oh, that Rorie sure can write! Enjoyed that, though I have little interest in playing the game. Oh, hey, and puppies.

@conmulligan: Well, I'm technically not an editor, so I usually refrain from publishing stuff on the homepage. Plus if I throw this on the forums and tweet about it, hopefully that will lead some people who aren't on the site as forum posters to maybe sign up and comment? Plus I think it's good to show that the staff is active on the forums when I can; not many of the editors have time to come around and interact as much as we'd all like.

Oh wow, you did all of that without Anima?

I guess it does save up on time now having to summon it every time...

Me liking Final Fantasy games usually has a lot to do with the characters, Final Fantasy X did not really make a good impression on me in that regard but I still played the entire thing. The turn based combat system was just so damn good and the overall story has some surprisingly mature twists to it.

You misspelled the name of the Leading Man

How has FFX HD done? Is FFXII HD likely?

@flstyle: I'm actually curious about this, too. Haven't seen any sales numbers on it.

I thought Final Fantasy held up particularly well, but some of the mini-games still piss me off to this day. I don't think I'm likely to return to it again anytime soon. As for the HD update, it was neat to see the graphics get a little bump and I didn't mind the new music, but I'd much rather have seen some effort go into fixing some of the gameplay problems (maybe some "skip ahead" cheats for the aforementioned minigames that shut off achievos, a way to skip cutscenes, etc.). I'm not sure it was worth the $40 I paid for it, but it was pleasant enough to revisit one of my favorite RPGs.

What do we have to do to get more Matt Rorie articles on giantbomb.com?

I'd give it a go if it had dual-audio.

Revisiting old favorites or memorable games from the past and writing something that's not exactly a review but more of a reflection and opportunity for discussion is a great idea. Maybe that's what Encyclopaedia Bombastica basically is but small written segments like this work really well and can open up a back and forth between the writer and other fans of the game.

I would buy this in a heartbeat. I don't know why they don't get on this RIGHT NOW. A quick look at VGChartz (I know) has the retail copies as of May 10th at around 1.5 million. Keep in mind they don't count digital sales, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhere closer to 2 million or above.

So I'd say it's doing pretty good.

I Suggest playing FFX-2 with the battle speed turned way up. By the time I got Payne's super metal suit thing (I think that's pretty early) I had maxed the speed and cut te animations. It was a lot of fun, and it was pleasantly surprised when they embrace a similar system in FFXIII.

Nice write up Rorie, sums up my experiences as well tbh.

The interesting thing for me is playing through this originally at launch I really identified with Tidus, probably because I myself was an annoying 12 year old. It's been interesting this time to see how frustrating he can be at times.

I am kind of on the fence when it comes to these HD Remastered games on the Vita, I haven't tried any of them yet, but I heard God of War Collection was a pretty bad port, so I have tried to stay away.

Big fan of FFX though, so might pick this one up.

I picked it up on Vita during the recent sale.

It looks real nice and still plays like a damn fine RPG made in Japan. I've always had a thing for super massive big RPGs on portable systems ever since I got FF7 working on my PSP in about 2006.

Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster sales reach 260K in the U.S.

Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster has done quite well for itself since going on sale this past March. According to the NPD Group – the company that tracks game sales data on a monthly basis – the combined sales on both PlayStation 3 and PS Vita hit over 260K units in two weeks.

While slightly under the game’s Japanese debut, FFX|X-2 HD did manage to top the debut sales of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX – which ended up selling 132K at launch. Despite its age and stiff competition last month. Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster is also the best selling Final Fantasy title of the year so far.

Source: http://www.novacrystallis.com/2014/04/final-fantasy-xx-2-hd-remaster-sales-reach-260k-in-the-u-s/