I just finally put a wrap on my high school days. Confused? I know I know, I'm 22, I've graduated college, what the hell does that mean? I'll tell you: Once upon a time, I received a PS2 for Christmas ('02, I believe). I promptly purchased Final Fantasy X and played the LIVING HELL out of it. To this I even remember the evening I beat it: May 23rd, 2002 at 2:30-3:00 am-ish. The day of Graduation. However, I hadn't WANTED to beat it yet for a simple reason: I wanted to finish the sidequests. Frustration set in at not being able to finish a particular few, and I gave up... my interest in seeing the ending finally got the better of me. One particular sidequest sticks out in my mind more than the rest, due to the fact that I actually punched myself in the face because I couldn't complete it after approximately 200 tries: powering Tidus's Ultimate Weapon, the Caladbolg. Both the crest to give it a charge and the weapon itself are easy to find, but the sigil to bring it to fullpower is damn-near IMPOSSIBLE to obtain. Some of the GoW II guys may recall me complaining about this quest as an example of how tough Titan Mode is. For those who aren't in the know of the quest, I'll describe it: you train a chocobo. That's it. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. See, apparently in Spira, you train chocobos by running them around a bunch, collecting balloons and avoiding a bunch of killer swans trying to peck you to death. Anyway, you have to race another chocobo trainer, collecting balloons (which subtract 3 seconds from your race time) while avoiding swans (which add 3 seconds to your race time if they strike you... but what the trainer neglects to tell you is that they also cause you to stop in place stunned for almost two seconds, making it about 5 seconds). The race itself takes somewhere in the ballpark of 35 seconds to complete, which means you would have to collect at LEAST 12 balloons and not get struck to finish in the allotted time. Oh right, I forgot to mention that part: to get the sigil, you have to finish the race in under 0.0 seconds. Yea. Sounds fun right? Factor in the fact that you aren't actually controlling the damn chocobo so much as struggling to steer it and you can see trouble brewing. Yea. Think that sounds easy? YOU TRY IT. Gurantee you quickly deem it impossible. It's not, but it isn't fun. Like I said, 200 tries, easy. The closest I ever came was O.1 seconds. For four years, my save file sat, collecting metaphorical dust on my memory card, until the other day I came home from doing laundry and saw my brother playing the game in our living room... I sat down and started giving him some pointers to find stuff he hadn't yet, like the Shining Mirror, The Magus Sister's, etc. and before I knew it, I'd forgotten about Final Fantasy XII. After he left to go to band practice last night, I sat down and gave the game another go... I made a little sphere grid progress, but quickly grew bored and decided to go give some sidequests a shot. The Calm Lands were where I ended up, so I decided to give it a go, just for grins. 4 years without trying. It took me 4 tries yesterday. God I'm awesome. Now to do the "dodge 200 bolts of lightning" sidequest.