RPG Rabbit Explains How to Win that First Asshole Blitzball Game Against Those Asshat Luca Goers

I believe I have said this before, but it bears repeating: fuck blitzball.

Seriously, I know so many people who love Final Fantasy X. It’s such a great game! The story is great, the characters are great, the battle system is great, it has probably the best summons system in any Final Fantasy ever, it’s got a ton of strong, smart female characters who wear a decent amount of clothing, the music is gorgeous…I could go on for HOURS about how amazing of a game Final Fantasy X is.

Except for blitzball. Everyone hates fucking blitzball.

Seriously, the number one search term that people use in Google that finds this blog are the words “fuck blitzball,” followed closely by “i hate blitzball.” WordPress tracks these things. I’m not making it up.

What gamers find when they use those search terms is this guide I wrote a few months ago detailing a fairly foolproof way to beat blitzball almost every time. I even claimed it could work in that first game against the Luca Goers.

(Also, side note: what the hell kind of a name for your team is the “Goers?” Seriously, what the fuck is a “goer”? Every other team on Spira has a totally badass name, like the Aurochs or the Psyches, but the reigning champions are named a nonsense word that maybe means they’re good at…going, I guess? They go really fast? Or something? I don’t know, it’s a stupid name. And it makes me hate them even more. Asshats.)

Anyway, I was wrong about my strategy working for the game against the Luca Goers Asshats, because I just replayed that first game against them a few days ago on Final Fantasy X-HD, and my strategy just did NOT work. SIGH. So here is a NEW, REVISED strategy that will win you that shiny tournament trophy. I will reference the original strategy, though, so read this first.

A tournament trophy that basically looks like a blue dick.

Okay, so you still want to get the Jecht Shot, because it will make winning all future games an absolute breeze, but you won’t use it in this game against the Asshats, because Tidus’ blitzball level is so low that it will take almost all of his hit points to use it and unless you manage to use the ability in the first twenty seconds of the second half of the game, you will never get the option. It is POSSIBLE to score with the Jecht Shot, but you can only do it once, and if the Asshats get the ball and score themselves, you’re probably screwed.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that for any of these strategies to work, you need to switch your movement to “Manual.” The default sets it to “Auto,” which means you have no direct control over where your blitzball players swim. So as soon as your team has control of the ball, hit the triangle button and set your movement to “Manual.” There’s an A and a B option; I prefer A, but try them both to see which you prefer.

Once you can move your dude yourself, immediately press the square button to bring up the Pass/Dribble menu. Pass the ball to Tidus. Then swim Tidus behind your own goalie and just chill there until halftime. The opposing team’s AI won’t be able to spot you there. If they follow you over to your goal, they may try to tackle you and steal the ball, but Tidus has a high enough endurance that the attempt will most likely fail. After they try (and fail) to steal the ball, they will leave you alone until halftime.

At halftime, you can probably equip the Jecht shot, but again, you probably won’t have the chance to use it. Once Blitzoff happens, get the ball to Tidus, and swim him back behind your own goalie. Hide there. Seriously, just hide there until Tidus leaves and Wakka returns to the field around the 3 minute mark. Once you get the ball back, guess what you do? Yep, hide behind your goal again.

If you did this correctly, the game will end at a 0-0 tie. Good. You want that. Now you will go into Overtime, and in Overtime, the first team to score just flat out wins the game. As it turns out, Wakka’s pre-equipped ability, Venom Shot, is a pretty good ability. So get the ball to Wakka, get him as close to the goal as possible, and shoot! Depending on who is blocking, you have a pretty good chance at making the goal. And then you WIN THE TOURNAMENT. WHEE!

Now, I have got to say, despite how difficult this is to do, there are very few in-game benefits for winning this tournament. The prize is a Strength Sphere, which will generate a +4 Strength Node on the Sphere Grid. Certainly, this early in the game, a +4 Strength is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you activate it for Tidus, but it’s not a game breaker. You don’t even get a PSN Trophy! Seriously, they should have given you a trophy for this. It will LOOK like you get a trophy called Teamwork, but you get that trophy just for winning your first Blitzball game, not for winning this specific tournament. So it’s just a bronze trophy. I was totally disappointed.

But in-game, the Aurochs get a trophy. A really big trophy. So there’s that.

BUT IT TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE A DICK, SERIOUSLY GUYS.

RPG Rabbit Tempts the Trolls by Mentioning #GamerGate

I usually stay out of Internet scandals for a reason. I don’t bring it up much, because my vagina doesn’t actually have much to do with the way I game, but I am a woman, and sometimes being a woman gamer is weird. This is one of those times. I actually debated for awhile with myself whether I even wanted to MENTION this on my blog AT ALL, because I’d really prefer to not get rape and death threats, you know? But then I thought, “Hey, it’s pretty fucked up that you’re actually considering not mentioning something that upsets you on your OWN BLOG for fear that someone might post some shitty comments.” And then I thought, “Man, you only get 25 hits a day on your blog anyway, so who gives a shit?”

Perhaps you have heard of #GamerGate? It’s gotten pretty complicated in the past few days, so forgive me if any of this information is inaccurate.

Last week, Anita Sarkeesian posted a new video in her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games YouTube series. I haven’t had a chance to watch the new video yet, because I just started a new job and I am super busy, but I’ve watched the other videos in the series, and I’ve quite enjoyed it. I don’t agree with everything she has to say, but I like hearing her perspective, and I’ve certainly had uncomfortable moments with the depiction of women in games, so I think the ideas she puts forth are important to consider. Unfortunately, there’s a highly vocal chunk of the Internet who disagrees and apparently wishes that she and her videos were bombarded with nukes or something, because the harassment she seems to endure whenever she releases a new video is staggering to behold. BoingBoing linked a great essay from the New Statesman that chronicles the issues that Sarkeesian is dealing with in great detail (like death threats so serious that she had to flee her house) and explains why her work  is so valuable. It’s worth a read if you’d like more details about the situation.

However, this simply served as an inciting incident for an unexpected maelstrom of Twitter updates and games journalists weighing in on the issue of sexism and discrimination in the gaming community and industry. One piece from The Guardian (written by a woman) attracted so much hateful Internet attention that the author has decided to back off from games journalism for awhile. Even Al Jazeera wrote a piece on the situation, so it’s clear this is getting a lot of mainstream attention.

It’s just baffling to me. If Sarkeesian had decided to create a webseries called Tropes vs. Women in Movies, I don’t think anyone would have had a problem with it. No one would have accused her of being a “fake movie watcher” or a “social justice warrior movie watcher.” Why is it that having the gall to both have a vagina and criticize the depiction of women in games paints a giant target on your head?

I’m a gamer. I’m a woman. Also, I am not a minority. I love JRPGs, and I still play them despite the fact that I am occasionally dismayed by how skimpy the female costumes are and how sexist some of the attitudes towards women are. I don’t play a lot of the games that Sarkeesian cites as examples in her webseries, but that’s more because I don’t like playing shooters than because I don’t think those games should exist. I think there should be games for everyone, from those who love playing GTA5 to those who want to play more games like Gone Home. And why shouldn’t there be different games for different people? Not everyone likes watching moody indie films, but I don’t see a lot of people arguing that there isn’t a place for moody indie films and blockbuster Michael Bay films in today’s world. Why should video games be any different?

There is a problem with diversity and representation in the gaming industry. Anyone who says otherwise need look no further than the droves of stories about women getting harassed in the gaming industry. Anyone who says otherwise need look no further than the top of this blog post where I mentioned that I was trepidatious about posting a piece about this on my own personal blog for fear of getting rape and death threats. It’s sad to me that my favorite hobby sometimes feels like a scary and alienating place, and it’s sad that the industry itself is clearly such a scary and alienating place to the women with the skills to make more games that I might like to play. Every creative industry is made stronger by the different kinds of voices contributing to the creation of more awesome things, and I want more awesome games to play! Isn’t that what every gamer wants?

There’s plenty of room in this world for both Duke Nukem Forever and Depression Quest. Let’s keep it that way.