So the prize is actually the Lady Luck dressphere, and I definitely have some stuff to say about that one. It transforms the girls into casino waitresses in long, skintight dresses with strategic cutouts so that technically no naughty bits are showing. Each of the girls has a different playing card symbol on her chest, and they also wield actual playing cards and giant dice. There are lots of butt gyrations involved as well. This is not a family friendly dressphere. I know this is somewhat unexpected, and I’m not super proud of this, but it’s one of my favorite dresspheres because it’s fun and random, and I like the design. And Paine’s outfit is the most flattering — her camel toe is kind of shielded by her skirt. A skirt instead of ugly pants! I know, this is some crazy, crazy shit.
I also want to point out that if Shinra wins the tournament, he refuses to hand over the dressphere to YRP. Going back to how silly it is to even have a prize that presumably only these three girls can use, it is even sillier that the kid who designed the Garment Grids for them in the first place won’t even let them use it. What the fuck is Shinra going to do with it? I don’t know if that is a question I really want answered, but now that it’s in my brain, we are going to follow this thought to the bitter end. If a young boy equips this dressphere, does his magical outfit also resemble a prostitute clown? Or, like Yuna, Rikku, and Paine, would Shinra’s costume be based off his own clothing preferences, so it would be a flashy snowmobile suit with a feathered gas mask? Maybe Shinra is going rogue and he has plans to sell the sphere. Can he sell it to Baralai or Gippal? I’m asking for a friend.
Anyway, I really want to be done with this now. But first, Yuna takes this opportunity to pimp Argent and the Fanboy Bachelor, as if she hasn’t already done enough to the people of Luca for the day. Seriously, leave these poor citizens alone. This continues to be terrible, all these years later. Looking back, though, at least Squeenix didn’t take this awful idea and put it in every subsequent game, like they do with the Tightass character design. The girls head up the steps near the Laughing Spot to reach the next stop in the third round of the Reminiscence Tour — Mi’ihen Highroad. Here, a random NPC runs up to them while Yuna provides a Wankese voiceover of their conversation. “It probably doesn’t have anything to do with the temples or the fiends, but there have been problems here, too,” she wanks. “Seems some machina are on the rampage.” Wait, so we’re back to machina instead of machines? I am so out of touch with the younger generation. I also love how the intro to this section, which is presumably more urgent than the stupid Sphere Break tournament, gets a fraction of the time spent on it.
Rikku is super excited, as she is about everything, to take down these rogue machina, but Paine remembers that they have to let Yuna make all the decisions around here. We can’t allow anyone else think they might be the least bit important. It’s actually up to me whether to take on this mission, and the option to turn it down is “We don’t have the time.” That’s a good one, like Yuna does anything but waste time. Since it wouldn’t be in character for Yuna (or me) to turn this down, of course she accepts. In the background, Shinra and Buddy run up the path, possibly getting themselves killed by the malfunctioning machina as Yuna giggles that “it’s Mission Time!”
The Mission Screen for Machina Mayhem (sigh) comes up, informing all of us that this is a life or death situation — the machina are attacking “innocent” travelers. As opposed to the travelers who totally deserve it. The goal is to “Incapacitate 13 tandems of machina” which is a weird way of putting it, so now I’m picturing hipster machina riding around on double bicycles. The next screen contains more information on this mission, as if there’s any complexity to it beyond “kill as many machina as you can.” To add some, I guess, difficulty to this assignment, while Yuna and her two hangers-on are taking down machina, there is an offscreen, unnamed group of Al Bhed also working toward the same objective. “This isn’t a race, but you should do your best to strike down the majority of the machina yourself,” the mission screen finishes. That would make it absolutely a race. And why wouldn’t everyone try to finish this as quickly as possible, anyway? Lives are at stake!
Along the Highroad, I expect to see dismembered body parts strewn about, thongs still attached, with shambling robots shooting sparks from frayed wires and dripping blood from their various appendages. If this scene were attempting any sort of realism or urgency, that is. I should have known from the jaunty music that this is the least dangerous machine revolt ever imagined.
That isn’t to say this is without its issues. Remember, Mi’ihen Highroad is where Sam had to jump through hoops — and sometimes miss those hoops entirely — to complete the mission in the exact right way. This pattern of caressing the moogle ever-so-gently continues in Chapter 3. I’ll get to that in a bit. Plus, the enemy difficulty increased at the beginning of the chapter, so battles take longer to complete and there’s a greater risk of losing one of the girls to an inconvenient temporary death. I’m not going to act like this is anywhere near as difficult as adding single-digit numbers together in 45 seconds, though, so let’s get cracking.
The girls encounter a guy on the ground, cringing backwards as a creepy machina bounces in place with its crotch at eye level. It doesn’t look as if it’s actually in the process of attacking the guy, but I’m sure we’re supposed to imagine that the Gullwings interrupted just in the nick of time. I’m using Gun Mage Yuna, Black Mage Rikku, and Alchemist Paine in battle at the moment, so the fashion situation isn’t all that bad. At least I can’t really see Paine’s horrid orange underwear on the small screen. As soon as they defeat the two machina — the second one must have been hiding in the weeds prior to the battle — the guy they just saved runs off ahead of them, instead of back to the safe, non-machina zone. Dumbass. And he completely ignores Yuna, too, which might be a first for this game.
The Gullwings continue along the Highroad, fighting pretty much the same two battles over and over. At least the area’s regular fiend population is polite enough to stay out of the way, instead of using the confusion to attack all the defenseless people with no survival instincts (this includes me). Eventually I switch to Warrior Rikku, which is a thousand times better than Warrior Tightass Yuna, except that I forgot about the whale tail poking out the top of her low cut shorts. It’s impossible for a woman to use a sword without something wedged up her buttcrack, apparently.
By the fifth battle, the NPC in “danger” doesn’t even seem concerned. Going by this pattern, the next “victim” is going to be filing his or her nails, and the final one will probably be napping on a picnic blanket. As Yuna runs past the inn where Tightass first interrupted her recording of her suicide sphere, Shinra runs toward the overlook carrying a sphere of his own. Maybe he’s going to kill himself over losing the Sphere Break tournament and needs to record a final bitter goodbye video.
Skipping ahead to the bridge above the old road, the Gullwings have defeated six raging machina and the mysterious invisible Al Bhed have dismantled three. Since these Al Bhed always seem to be just ahead of Yuna and company — we’ve seen several of their destroyed machina along the path — that means they had to pass by those six other people at some point. I know these battles are pretty repetitive, but that’s still a dick move.
Yuna finds the next traveler stranded on a stone column separated from the main road, so we’ve found the person with the shittiest self-preservation skills in this whole clusterfuck. Right after this fight is where the moogle foreplay begins. There’s a hidden ledge just below the edge of the canyon that Rikku can jump onto if I run around pressing the circle button. This ledge is key, along with the amateur chocobo capturing in Chapter 2 and whatever the fuck happened in Chapter 1, to setting up the Almighty One Hundred Percent. Yuna follows Rikku down (phrasing) where they and Paine battle the final machina to bring the total to 13 defeated. Of all the random and downright silly things required to reach full completion in this game, I guess this one isn’t really that big a deal. Especially since the ledge is technically visible on the game map and thus, there’s a decent possibility that some gamer somewhere — that gamer is not me — would discover this on their own. That is probably the nicest thing I have ever said about this game.
With 13 total machina “tandems” left smoking in the middle of the Highroad for other people to clean up, the Gullwings receive their reward (10000 gil and the fifty thousandth Garment Grid) from a lady I don’t remember seeing before. Is this the Prophet’s assistant? She has a silly pink hat that would not look out of place on an Anal Attorney character. Rikku wonders what happened to fuck up all the machina’s shit. “None of us can figure it out. Pretty creepy, huh?” Pink Hat Lady non-explains. “We found agency property smashed up. Then the hover crashed.” The camera pans to the wreckage under the bridge. “Just when we were about to look into that, the machina went out of control,” she finishes. There’s probably a conspiracy theory Sphereddit that is going balls-to-the-wall crazy over all this. It’s a New Yevonite plot! Hover fuel can’t melt steel machina!
Seriously, why does anyone care about this?
Rikku complains about the lack of resolution to this particular mission. Oh my god, Rikku, shut up. It took less than 20 minutes and one try to complete — that is the most amazing thing that has happened in this game. Do not offend the gaming gods and force them to punish us with more chocobo racing. “People who want happy endings have to write their own,” Paine winks. Holy shit, that escalated quickly. Rikku whines that she wants a happy ending, presumably with little to no effort on her part. I’m guessing that certain activities are not as reciprocal in this relationship as Paine would like. This exchange triggers the guitar riff as a bunch of smiling assholes wave from the bridge in full support of the girls giving each other a happy ending massage. Mission Complete!
Of course I forgot something while I was being positive and defending this game like a chump. With the machina threat over, the usual layabout NPCs have returned to their regular positions along the road, so I have to go back and convince a bunch of them to act against their best romantic and monetary interests for the sake of the Almighty One Hundred Percent. And when I say go back, I mean I have to walk the entire fucking area, just so I can make sure not to miss the two dillholes hanging out at the very tip of the Oldroad. What took me twenty minutes to complete when I only had to fight nine battles takes me an hour now that the regular fiends are back from their temporary vacation.