Final Fantasy X-2, the game that some absolutely despise and some absolutely love. That’s about how my relationship with this trophy list is – it’s a love it and hate it relationship.
As part of my quest to obtain all of the Final Fantasy platinums, the day finally came when I went to earn this platinum. The journey towards the Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster platinum was a long one for me, but it all came down to a few key trophies that really held up the earning of it. Let us recount this journey that finally brought me to having the last platinum to claim the title of all Final Fantasy platinums (as-of March, 2016).
As expected, Final Fantasy X-2 has a handful of story related trophies. Essentially, there’s a trophy for clearing each chapter (except for Chapter 3, poor Chapter 3). You can defeat one of them before you’re supposed to, but that involves fighting within the Fiend Arena. Granted, that’s not something I’m entirely opposed to, but it does involve that. Of course, this gets a bit more complicated than “simply” completing each chapter and getting an Episode Complete in Chapter 5…
It gets a bit more complicated because you need to earn 100% Story Completion for one of the trophies. For the purposes of sanity, I highly, HIGHLY suggest doing this in two playthroughs. You will learn to hate yourself a lot if you try and do it in a single playthrough. Now, of course, you should try and get as much completion done as you can in a single playthrough, but doing two allows you to side with both groups in Chapter 2. I personally went for the route of doing it in two, and then I ended up missing seeing the trophy come up and thought I had to go watch the Perfect Ending for it…
FFX-2 has a lot of trophies for doing a bunch of miscellaneous things throughout the story. If you spend some time in the Fiend Arena, paying off O’aka’s debt is a piece of cake. Additionally, completing a single Fiend Tale is also extremely easy. For the sake of making this platinum easier, I highly suggest using fiends to some extent. Even if you don’t fully replace your party, I suggest having at least one or two in there. Having a girl in your party will make it easier to do things such as completing the abilities on a single dress and learning 5 Blue Bullets.
Probably one of the trickiest to do during the main story is to help Clasko with catching a Chocobo before the end of Chapter 3. Even after you complete the mission there, you might not think to go and actually catch a Chocobo for him until you need to do so in Chapter 5. Not a hard trophy per-se, but one that could easily be missed.
Speaking of Chapter 5, this is when things start to get real, at least in terms of getting trophies. You’ve got things to do such as catching the Amazing Chocobo and the Via Infinito. This is also around when you’ll likely start seriously thinking about trying to get the Oversouls, something that’s also needed for a trophy.
Catching the Amazing Chocobo is something that’s a huge test of patience. I highly suggest following a guide for this, as it is something that’s very easy to mess up. Once you get into the dungeon where it’s found, you’ll likely want to get a map as the area is a bit of a maze to get through.
The Via Infinito and getting all the Oversouls are two things that go fairly well together. Almost every enemy throughout the game is found within this dungeon, and at the end lies the original superboss of the game. Said superboss of the game also has a trophy attached to him, but you don’t actually have to climb all the way to floor 100 to get it! Trema can be found within the highest cup of the Fiend Arena – the Farplane Cup – along with his buddy, the NEW superboss of Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster. While you thankfully don’t need to defeat Major Numerus for a trophy, he can be a fun fight to do. I abused the fact Hero’s Drinks last forever in that fight and had a creature just beat him up for awhile until he died.
There are some enemies that you need to Oversoul that cannot be found within the Via Infinito. These particular ones can be found within Chapter 2, right near the end. The two bosses you can find from messing with the pillars are both Oversoulable, and thus you’ll need to fight them several times in order to do so. You also cannot find them in the Fiend Arena – another handy place for getting some Oversouls – so your only option is within Chapter 2.
Of all the battle related trophies, two in particular stand out – dealing 99,999 damage and getting a chain of 99. The 99,999 damage one is fairly easy to do with certain creatures, but obtaining a chain of 99 is a bit harder to setup. I’ve included my video below in which I got the chain. The best setup I can suggest is having all three girls set to Gunner with Trigger Happy Lv. 3. You could also just get lucky with creature chaining, but I never managed to quite make it to 99 with them (best I can recall was around 87). As long as you pick a target that won’t just die to this setup – I suggest Bahamut in the Fiend Arena – you should be able to get it.
To wrap up the part on the main game we have Gunner’s Gauntlet. Much like Lightning Dodging in FFX, I ended up having someone else do this for me. I’m just not very good at Gunner’s Gauntlet, however there are some tricks to getting to Max LV but I suggest just looking up a guide on how to do so.
In order to Platinum Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster, you also need to complete Iutycyr Tower – in other words, complete Last Mission. While a seemingly simple task at first, the act of actually completing it can come down to a lot of luck and knowing what to do. It took me four different saves to finally get a start I was happy with for completing this.
Last Mission is something that will absolutely test your patience. One of my runs I got 0 Restart Guides, an extremely handy item for getting yourself more powered up. My next (and final) run, I ended up with an overload of them. One of the big things to make sure of when you’re playing Last Mission is that you have Confusion and Doom protection. These two, simply put, are the worst status ailments in the game. Trap avoidance can also be handy, however on the run I completed I never actually used it and just dealt with traps accordingly (have an Alchemist).
Simply completing Last Mission isn’t quite enough to get all of the trophies from it however, as you also need to obtain the treasure within the Tonberry room. Just reading the description of this trophy can be extremely confusing. What Tonberry room? The Tonberry room is an area you can access with the item ‘Find Secret Area’ after a certain point within the tower. You’ll need at least three of these items, as in order to get into the Tonberry room, you need to get a specific order of rooms. More RNG, just want Last Mission needed! In order to obtain the “treasure” of the Tonberry room, you need to defeat every Mega Tonberry within the room that opens up after you solve the puzzle of the third “Secret Area”.
When all is said and done, Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster isn’t quite as tough as Final Fantasy X’s platinum was. What FFX-2 instead brings to the table is a lot of annoyances and, quite frankly, bullshit. I never want to see Last Mission again after all the pain it brought to me. Getting all of those Oversouls was just tedious in the end, especially since I had my Almighty Shinra just destroying everything in the Infinito. Trema can be tough, but when you also consider that Major Numerus exists, he’s nowhere near as hard anymore (that’s not to say he ISN’T hard, he’s just a lot easier than Numerus). The numerous random trophies related to the dresspheres aren’t that challenging, though you could potentially miss finding one of them along the way. Luckily, Mascot is nowhere near as missable now since it’s obtainable within the Fiend Arena, so if you miss (or mess up) all of the Episode Completes, you aren’t completely screwed out of it until a new playthrough.
Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster Platinum Difficulty
4/5
I am ready for Final Fantasy XV now that I have earned all of the current FF platinums.
My Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster trophy list.
