Best Buy has spoiled me. I now refuse to pay more than $0.01 for a stratecy guide.

Yeah, me too. I used this walkthrough http://www.bellaonline.com/gaming/st...b_ffxwalk.html

on the last, maybe, quater, of FFX & it is written & broken down perfectly. But I went to gamefaqs to look for a similar one on FF X-2, & they are just a mess. I can't even figure out how to read them & don't want to bother.

I didn't know strategy guides had EVERYTHING in them. I thought they were just that, strategy guides that just told you where to go to complete the game. Not all the extra stuff.

In my opinion this guide is worth getting. I think this is the biggest guide I've seen put out for an FF game, done by Brady Games. It's well over 300 pages and the walk-thru shows you how to finish the game with 100% and they do a good job of not spoiling the story for you. There's also item/accessory chart, maps, Bestiary, and they break down each job and their abilities, plus other stuff. I was a little hesistant to purchase it at first...$15 + tax...but when the guy at EB said you get 30% off the guide with the purchase of the game it made my decision easier . I'm just pissed cause I should have looked at it sooner.

Sounds good, looks like I will be picking this up shortly. Now I need to decide if I should dump the 10+ hours I already put into it.

I grabbed this piece of information from a faq..sounds like I wont be restarting afterall.

"Q. I couldn't get 100% the first time I finished the game, does it mean I
need to redo everything?
A. No, the game has a New Game+ option that lets you start all over again
retaining the percentage you got from before. All you need to do is
complete the actions that you did not do the game(s) before. Saying
that, you will need to play through the entire story again."

I got this game for Christmas and so far I'm enjoying it but there's a couple of things I don't like. They kept the part I didn't like about FFX and made it even worse. In FFX there's no world map or exploration, you just move from place to place. In FFX-2 they made it even more simplified and now you just choose where you want to go from a list. Its a minor peeve but still.

The battles are quicker but I think they are too fast to be turn based now and are too easy. Sometimes I'm inputting commands in so fast I don't even see what my characters are doing or how much damage they took. Once you get the white mage sphere all you have to do is just keep pressing X to win the battles. This might change later on but so far I haven't gotten to any enemies that had to make me change this method. If it was going to be this fast they should have made it real-time action like Star Ocean or Tales of Symphonia.

But overall I'm enjoying it. The whole new style change of the game doesn't bother me. I'm about 5 hours into it. It feels kinda weird to learn Curaga within the first few hours of the game .

You can still travel from place to place without even using the world map...every location is connected.

As far as the battles being quick, like others have already said, you can change the speed or turn off ATB in the options.

Oh, and White Mage is probably the easiest dress sphere to master, since every time you do a skill (or kill an enemy) you earn an AP point. So you can just do pray over and over since it costs nothing, and as long as someone is healed then you gain AP.

Oh, and I bought that FF X-2 strategy guide and I don't regret it one bit. It is a great guide and gives a ton of information and tells you everything you need to do to make sure you get 100%. I actually went and restarted the game when I got it, I am now about 46% done with about 25 hours in.

I also missed the moogle in the very beginning of the game. It's funny when you realize what it really is when you go back. It doesn't bother me too much since I'm planning on using the New Game+ option.

I got the FFX-2 Strategy Guide as well. I decided to get the Limited Edition one which includes an art book and a collectible cover.

Oh I see, I didn't know that, thats cool.

I refuse to buy a strategy guide, its a personal policy of mine, I won't even look at it until I at least finish the game once.

I have a dilemma, I didn't do any of the side quests in Chapter 1 and now I'm in chapter 2 (very beginning), should I start over? I didn't know that the side quests would change after the chapter (or rather I didn't expect to get to Chapter 2 so soon) and wanted to get into the main story a bit before I did the side quests and, well, I found out in this thread too late Should I start over? I'm more interested in seeing what there is to see in the game so I'm sorta leaning toward starting over since it probably won't take too long.

If you aren't really far in, you should start over and hit every spot on the map that is not a hot spot first, then do the hot spots as that advances the main story line. That's what I am doing for every chapter.

Ok I started over and I am glad I did, I missed a lot but i got back to where I was really quickly. I got the moogle at the beginning too, thanks for the heads up. If there's something else like that thats really easy to miss and hidden let us know .

edit: I made an exception for my FAQ rule on this game because its different than most games and here's a WORD OF CAUTION I found out.

Do NOT skip any scene or else it will not add to your completion percentage. It is ok to speed up the text by pushing X though.

Are you sure about that? I thought that was only for the

edit: I just checked my percent complete versus the episode complete guide and that looks to be true. What bullshit! I skipped the stupid cinematic's at the beginning of the game when I restarted due to me already seeing them.

I found even more information about skipping normal dialogue.

Secondly, you CAN skip dialogue (as in pressing "X" to speed it
along), except on one occasion. This occasion occurs in Chapter 1 at
Mushroom Rock Road/Youth League HQ in a conversation with Maechen. DO
NOT press ANYTHING during this conversation.

I had skipped some too when I started over. If they're gonna do that they shouldn't give you the option or at least warn you, that sucks. Anyway, anything I miss I'll be sure to get next time around, I don't want to start over again, thats what the new+ option is for. Thanks for the tip about Maechen. I actually waited that one out so alls well there, the guy talks for friggin forever but I guess he's been saving those stories for 2 years and needs to let them out somewhere .

I just beat the game last night. I had about 85% and did most of the side quests, but I'm pretty disappointed. I stuck with the game hoping it would get better than the beginning but it doesn't change that much. The actual main story of the game is really short compared to the side quests and the main story itself didn't feel that important. In FFX, it felt like you were going on a big epic journey, and the main characters were tightly involved in the main story, but the story never really felt that epic or important in this game especially since you just pick where you want to go to from a list. Another aspect that was disappointing was that about 90% of the game uses recycled areas and graphics from FFX. It's understandable why they would do this (its still the same Spira afterall, duh), but they could have at least made it so you explored new or different areas also, or at least different camera angles to make the game feel newer. Or maybe sail out by boat and explore new areas now that Sin wasn't a threat anymore. There was so much potential for a sequel.

The most suprising thing about about this game I wasn't expecting to not like was the music. With the exeception of the title theme music, most of it is just average, but the majority of the music is really really bad, especially when comparing it to previous FF's or even other RPGs.

The parts I did like though were the battle system and the voice acting. Yuna wasn't very good as expected, but Rikku and Paine were excellent. And I was surprised with Leblanc, her actor did a superb job on her character. It would have been great to get your in your party. The humor was also well done, especially some of the situations. But despite this, it doesn't really save the game. Anyway I missed the good ending because after checking the FAQ I found out that I apparently missed press X at some point in the game when I should have so I got the normal ending, which was rather underwhelming. I don't really feel like playing through again to get the good ending unless its especially different or better than the good ending. It hurts me to say this but if this is how direct sequels to FF games are I'm glad they haven't been doing them.

Dose anyone have a advise for the 100 floor dungon in belvel (damn spelling) every time i go at it i get beat down so horrably by that frist dragon thing hurts... damn game over sign :'(

I liked the game. I think it had a decent story but it was more about Yuna than about Spira, IMHO.

I thought the end was WAY easy.. especially after I got the (SPOILER: )