Here it is. This one was a lot of work. I lost some sleep over it. Now, I shall take it back.

Tomorrow, I shall crush Mike's puny defense of the worst sequel ever. Good evening.

If you think the dialogue is unusually bad, you are not alone. We sort of decided to harness the power of Karl's lack of sleep.

I think the dialogue is hysterically funny on this one. This is much more in the vein of how I would like the comic to be on a regular basis. Not in terms of labor intensity obviously, but in terms of content. Also, as an aside, my hair looks so strange because I tried out the most intense hair spray available and then had to beat it into submission with a shovel. This was the unfortunate result. (It looked a LITTLE better in real life.)

Here is a brief look at how part of the second panel looked during development of this comic. I think it represents an alternate yet fascinating interpretation of the scene.

There's so much to cover in just this one post. Let's start from the top of Mike's three most recent posts on the topic.

It is possible to get a decent number of jobs without too much effort, but that any of them require delving into the game's mostly awful minigames is problematic, since that is where the game ceases to be fun. And it isn't just about acquiring jobs. One might also want equipment and other things like garment grids (which let you use those jobs you might like to have) that might be useful to a band of scantily clad dress-up amazons. And, since you might not know what item a given side-quest has in store for you, you'll end up doing a lot of them that don't reward you in any meaningful way other than completely wasting your time.

Let me spend a moment on the minigame-based sidequests. They are, on the whole, terrible. Most of them are not so much games as lotteries. Guess what the right answer to this question or problem is. We won't give you any clues to help you along. You just have to know. OOPS! Guessed wrong? Well, reset the system or play through the game again (since it was soooooo enjoyable the first time, right?). But hey, who said games were supposed to be fun, anyway? Not the malevolent minds that produced FF X-2, that's for sure.

As for Brother, he was indeed not an important character in the first (tenth?) game, however, he did manage to come off as a badass that could play blitzball (A well-thought out minigame? Best keep that out of the sequel) better than anyone else in the world. In X-2, he's reduced to bumbling comic relief. It's analagous to what happens to poor Gimli in the second and third Lord of the Rings movies, or Jar Jar Binks, well, always.

Mike goes so far to admit that the first FF X's ending shows Yuna as a woman "coming to grips with the loss of someone important to her and moving on with her life," so why is another game needed? Furthermore, FF X-2 goes above and beyond this coping process, morphing a serious and respectable shrine maiden who bears the weight of the world on her shoulders to a greedy bimbo/ditz hybrid that runs around doing nothing in particular (until she's eventually forced into a doing something useful). I'll grant that the ending in which she comes to terms with the loss of Tidus is good and does advance the development of her character, however, it is not the true ending of the game! Ultimately, instead of getting over her loss, she just has her ex brought back to life in an amazing display of both a complete lack of backbone and a heaping pile of disrespect for the first game's plot (a young man nobly sacrifices himself to save the world and the woman he loves... PSYCHE!!!) on the part of X-2's writers.

In summary: garbage. It's worse than FF VIII, and that says something.

Speaking of things this week, Mike, I happen to think that some of the "They are dangerous!" style dialogue is a bit stilted and inane at best. It is perhaps silly, but I don't think it hits any particularly higher comic bars than that. Perhaps I have just become jaded in my old age; I don't really know.

This next one isn't so hard to make, but it isn't going to get done tonight all the same. Things would be so much easier if didn't have these jobs and other miscellaneous responsibilities.