FFX Game Breaking Strategy
Why replay Final Fantasy X
I found myself watching a streamer who was playing the game for the first time. I figured I’m enjoying this and hey I own the game, so why not relive the nostalgia. I started playing along, initially intending to follow their progress. Thing is, I was fairly familiar with the game and combined with having a bit too much time on my hands from Covid; I’d easily end up playing through the entire game before their next weekly stream.
Why create a game breaking strategy
After about the third time through the game a lot of the nostalgia was waring off and I was looking for new strategies to try and pique my interest. I had found a variety of YouTube guides for getting overpowered. From that I got an Idea of what strategies were already well known and commonly used.
As with every Final Fantasy game if you want to get OP grinding excessive levels is always an option. A common early strategy for FFX was to grind a one-hit infinitely spawning enemy, using a turbo controller to mash x repeatedly as you leave the game on for hours. Since it was about my fourth play-through I had no patience for monotonous grinding.
I was replaying the game to enjoy it so I was looking for smart, fun and new ways of playing. While there were a lot of good strategies I’d end up using from the existing OP guides the one that really stuck out to me was How to make Kimahri a GOD!
Devising a unique strategy
This video stuck out to me in a few ways.
- As a kid I always thought the sphere grid (the new leveling system they used) seemed so massive there had to be some way you could just turn off at the right spot to get high level spheres early.
- How the developers modified-patched the sphere grid for the international version.
- How good the base stats are for Auron and Kimahri since they don’t have a lot of good spheres to level from early in their sphere grid.
This made the kid in me happy to see that there were strategies that took a big-brain path through the sphere grid to go right to the good parts. Seeing this gave me the motivation to pursue analysis on the sphere grid. I started looking into exactly how far I could exploit the sphere grid design in the interest of getting overpowered.
Know your game mechanics
In the game there are two main ways to improve your chances in combat that’s good strategy from mastering combat mechanics and upping player stats. Combat strategy was something that I honed quite well on my previous play-throughs and could be easily looked up on the Final Fantasy Fandom Wiki. The combat consisted of several simple mechanics like turn order, character swapping, elemental weaknesses, item stealing and status ailments. The depth and mastery come from understanding how they all interact with each other. If you have a strong grasp on these systems you can usually defeat any boss. People have even beaten the game without ever leveling up.
If you are leveling up character stats to get more powerful, then you should understand how the games level progression is designed. Early areas give a low amount of experience and early level-ups require a low amount of experience. Conversely in later areas Exp. (or Ap) reward will be high with level-ups requiring high amounts of experience. This means that the ideal area for grinding experience is always n+1 (the next area) so the final boss is normally the best spot to grind in the game. Understanding this I utilize good strategy first and prioritize using game mechanics to get past bosses instead of spending levels.
Exploiting the sphere grid
The sphere grid has two versions.
- Original Sphere Grid (appears to have been designed with some good exploits)
- Expert Sphere Grid (International Version: seems to have been redesigned to patch exploits)
From my previous research on strategies I had found there was at least one big-brain path through the original sphere grid. I found a detailed map of the sphere grid and went to start my analysis.
Each character had their own default path through the sphere grid and I could see how the designers had game progression in mind. Characters started close to nodes-spheres that were +1 stat boost while later nodes were better with +3-4 being common. The one thing good about the early nodes is it usually had good abilities. Each character had their own combat mechanic that was intended to be their gimmick.
The path to exploiting the sphere grid was the lvl. 2 lock spheres. I had noticed each character had those locks close to their start point to allow them into their neighbors sphere grid. The intent was likely to allow others to grab their combat abilities later in the game or for Kimahri to shortcut into the later regions of someone’s sphere grid. Kimahri is actually unlike all the others where he starts in the center and is meant to choose any other characters path to go down. I had the idea to invert the use of these locks and have each player hold off on moving through the sphere grid; until we can break the lvl. 2 locks and boost all their stats to late game levels.
There were 4 different areas that I found dense with stats and abilities that could be reached early. I called these areas the strength, buster, flare and dispel sphere grid. Now I had all the pieces I would need to tailor a smart big-brain strategy that excluded grinding, so I got to work.
Putting the pieces together
I started writing a script detailing all the steps needed and soon I had 10 pages going through all the items, choices, strategies, and the sphere grid paths to take. The gist of the strategy was delayed gratification, I’d have each character go just far enough on the sphere grid to be next to their lvl. 2 lock. I would take advantage of items weapons and overall use of good strategy to get past the early areas while staying at a low level. Eventually you’ll get to a boss that will drop keys for lvl. 2 locks and they become a relatively common find soon after. You would have been holding onto something like 30-40 unused levels that you can immediately use to grab all the high stat spheres. Stage one of OP is now complete.
The second stage is making use of another item that becomes a relatively common find-drop.
- Ability Spheres
- Special Spheres
- Black Magic Spheres
- White Magic Spheres
You can use these spheres to activate any ability node used by other players and if you combine that with a return sphere you have just teleported to a seperate region of the sphere grid. Now you have everyone teleporting to just the areas with dense stats and you get characters who can beat the end game at the half way point.
The black sheep Blitzball
The one thing I glossed over is that you will be getting return spheres after playing the Blitzball mini-game, you will need a lot of them. This is where a lot of people draw a line in the sand. Blitzball can be a grind if you play the league and even though the tournament is only three games most people just don’t like the game.
I don’t like it either, but end up playing a few tournaments just to get those sweet return spheres. If you grab the right team you can easily get 2-3 return spheres by tying multiple players as top scorers in one tournament. I later revised my strategy to tie five players in a tournament1 further reducing the number of tournaments necessary.
Helping out a streamer, hilarity ensues
All this time that I was creating my strategy the streamer continued playing the game. They missed a couple of weeks and got to a part of the game where the difficulty jumps up. I could tell they were having trouble playing so I figured hey I’ve got a save at right about there let me change the character names to match his and send it his way. Just tell everyone you were grinding after last stream was such a struggle and if they ask how the hell did you get that item just say lucky drop.
He thanked me for bringing him this comedic gold and a hilarious stream ensued. The rest of his game was a breeze after continuing with my save. I’d heard of many who stopped playing after they just couldn’t get past that part so I was happy my little joke-prank could help out.
Make video guide to share
After how successful sharing my save file had been I figured I’d double down and go make a video guide to share my strategy. I had partially used it as an excuse to have something to practice doing some video editing. I wanted to make some tutorial-guide videos for my What2Watchlist project2. Figured start by diving off the deep end and then I’d be experienced enough to make better tutorial videos for the other project.
I didn’t have any interest in being a YouTuber just found myself looking to rationalize all the time and effort I’d put into making this strategy. There’s definitely a lot more out there who find this old game nostalgic and would appreciate seeing a fresh take. So, I went and posted the guide to YouTube figuring if 10-20 viewers see it and appreciate it cool that’s fine. Months went by and I didn’t pay much attention until I realized there were no views because YouTube didn’t recommend it to anybody.
Notice me senpai (YouTube algorithm)
Well… that wasn’t gonna do, I wanted some actual viewers so I needed to get noticed by the YouTube algorithm. Tried sharing it a few places, but what really worked was debasing myself and making crappy shorts. I basically just lazily crated a highlights reel of best moments from my guide.
YouTube has no problem pushing out short crap to people because there is such a low risk of loosing user retention. Once it had actually gone and showed people something from my channel it slowly started learning that there was an audience for my guide. Eventually the channel crossed 100k views and that did a lot to make the struggle worth it.