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.
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.