WHAT VIDEOGAMES ARE YOU PLAYING RIGHT NOW?

I didn't find any purpose in its story, I found the concept weak and lacking motivation, all was just an excuse to get the party out in the world, not that it's much different from other RPGs in that regard, but other RPGs evolve their story, for me FFX-2 story only got worse with the introduction of new characters (like Leblanc) that never existed in the previous game and which also lacked believable motivations. For me at least.

Having a character that looks like Yuna and has a boyfriend that looks like Tidus is too ridiculous to take seriously.

If the story is only supposed to be light-hearted and not taken too seriously then it's still a stark contrast with FFX, which had a serious story with serious messages.

There was no need for an X sequel.

FFX story had a conclusion.
If they had made a new game in the same style as FFX-2 but not as a sequel to FFX I would have liked it much more. There was no need to do it as a sequel to FFX, they only did it because they had unused resources and some fans complaining they didn't like FFX turn combat and ending.
For me it ruins all that FFX stands for.

Too much change to Yuna in too little time for little reason other than fanservice.
Yuna didn't wear those clothes because that's not the person she is. She was changed for the sequel.

Majora's Mask recycles the graphics of Ocarina of Time and I still loved it, so recycling in itself is not an issue, however I felt the new areas were lacking, like they were rushed to meet the dealine. Not all of them, the basement of Yevon looked good, but other areas looked "unfinished", also the ammount of enemy recolours got tiresome after some time, how many summon recolours does one have to fight? Yeah, rub it in my face how I can no longer use summons *sob*

The game menus looked good though!

Those musics made nothing for me :/
I just don't feel anything when listening to them, and those aren't bad composers, they did some great work on other games, but I really dislike what they did in FFX-2, I only like a couple of tunes, like the title screen music.

I'm actually a huge fan of FFX, that's why I don't like FFX-2, since I feel it changed a lot of the original for worse by adding stuff that didn't happened or existed in the original.

So yeah, I'm a fan of Final Fantasy X.
As far as I'm concerned, FFX-2 did not exist.

Last time I was plinking through the Irithyl Dungeon which was basically awful including some 10m break plinking the six or nine or w/e jailers on the bottom floor to death twice. I take back what I said last time, I'd take 3-1 over that turd any day! I also cleaned out and killed Yhorne with Siggy's help (rip Siggy, I'll pour one out for ya!). The front half of Profaned Capital was easy with weaker jailers and simple gargoyles, the back half with toxic swamps and those hand beasts and some NPC jerk was hell. I ended up looking up how to continue Siggy's quest because otherwise I would've missed the broken window you can jump to.

From there I also crotchstabbed the shit out of the pope. Anor Londo was pretty boring which was unfortunate, it's like they took the two most memorable/infamous parts and cut the rest. Aldrich was crotchstabbing again with the obligatory death when the same tell produces a wildly different attack. Also a totally invisible bridge I was told about. I know the DS1 Darkmoon covenant was in the same relative location (bottom of the corkscrew staircase in the right position) but I wasn't going to walk on air to find it on my own.

Dancer of the Boreal Valley was an alright fight, ended up just using a pillar to cheese it near the end though so I could get some healing off and settled for lobbing fireballs. The Consumed King's Garden is one of the hardest places in the game for me, I never got good fighting the Cathedral Knights and Pus of Mans and the 2h Knights would just wreck my shit. I ended up just using my favorite "fuck y'all" Dark Souls technique of running past it all. The boss was a total cakewalk in comparison, Knight's Crossbow'd the first form and crotchstabbed the second.

The Untended Graves was neat. I've always been a sucker for familiar places but darker/vacant/more hostile. Champion Gundy wrecked my shit though, none of my old skillz worked on him and his mighty foot and shoulder tackle of justice. My ultimate gameplan was roll past him when he attacked, hoped he didn't use a certain follow up attack that would basically lead to a 2HKO, and stab him lots. He's by far the hardest boss in the game I've fought.

Lothric Castle hasn't been too bad. The knights and healers are the only real obstacles, the rest is mostly trash mobs that you handle like the rest in the game (carefully and solo if possible, thanks broken poise!). Dragonslayer Armor is an actually fun boss! He doesn't have the same asshole moves as Gundy but you still need to watch and learn his tells and moves but once you do you can go to town on him. The adds are assholes and I died more than once due to a deathball they fired off camera at me though. Dragonslayer and Vordt are the two best bosses of the game so far, and with the endgame approaching that isn't a good sign! I even spent some time sunbro'ing it up to help others with Dragonslayer because he's a fun boss.

By now I've done ~90% of the Grand Archives and some of Archdragon Peak. Only now with 35/20 str/dex is a Refined Corthian Scythe doing better than my raw ASS, and the straight sword's moveset is still better with anything that has quick attacks. I should probably farm for the Dark Blade at some point too. The balance for this game feels like shit, I'm tempted to start another run of DS1 to see if it had the same issues besides poise.