And so, we return to my adventures in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia, in which things open up and I start getting really into the game.

I did not properly finish Chapter 1 last time I posted, so I got right to doing that. The last boss of the chapter was a Behemoth, which was actually kinda easy with the weapons I unlocked for Cloud. Well, but instead of dying, the monster kept going.

As it turned out, it was a scripted moment and I wasn’t supposed to win yet. This is the jarring introduction of summons, which Mog so helpfully gives you despite the fact that you may have already beaten this thing to death a few turns ago.

Summons are actually helpful in Opera Omnia, even if it could have been introduced better. Aside from offering a passive group bonus and doing a big group attack when summoned, your party goes into a stopped time where only they can do attacks with a boosted bravery limit until the summon duration is over. Aside from bringing you closer to victory, I can see practical use in delaying enemy turns to get some breathing room or to heal up.

After the Behemoth was slain, the party found an airship for Sazh to pilot. And so, I took off to the rest of the game.

So much hit me at once. You unlock the World of Illusions, where you can grind to improve summons. You finally unlock Events to get some limited time goodies or to grind for different daily crystal types in Cycle Quests to improve character stats. There is also Lost Chapters, where events that had characters locked behind them become permanently available, which I think is pretty rad as somebody coming into this game now.

Looking at these new modes opening up, I realized something. So ordinarily, playing these gacha games requires spending stamina or energy or whatever for every level. Usually when I try going into a game fresh, I get showered with so many level ups that I can play for a while before running out, and I thought the case was the same for Opera Omnia. It turns out, you don’t have to spend any stamina to play through the main game, which is honestly kinda neat.

Other quests are more typical of the formula. Doing the World of Illusions spends stamina and co-op event quests spends bells. Cycle Quests are more merciful in that while you’re only allowed to play ten a day, it only counts victories, so you can try throwing yourself into higher level quests until you succeed. Theoretically, I can actually power through the main story so far if I wanted to, and I’ll probably do that eventually.

Speaking of that, I hopped into chapter 2. The intro showed Seven from FF-0 wandering a strange dimensional void until she met Caius from the FF XIII games, who points her toward looking for Lightning. We then cut back to out intrepid heroes who –

Wait what the fuck. Ashe, Garnet, Cecil, where the hell did you guys come from.

So, you know how games like Fate Grand Order only acknowledges the characters in the main story within main story cutscenes? Opera Omnia seems to be the inverse of that, acknowledging characters that you could conceivably have at that point – regardless of whether or not you actually have them. Like, I’m guessing that there were a bunch of events in-between the releases of the first two chapters.

Anyway, the airship the gang found started crashing, so Mog teleported everybody to the ground and gets knocked the fuck out on impact. I didn’t really care because I was more mystified by the appearance of these strangers.

I tried to get to the bottom of this and hopped into the Lost Chapters and went for Setzer’s story, since he was one of the strangers present in the cutscene. This ended up raising more questions because Terra and Shadow were suddenly in my party and I’m pretty sure neither of them were available in the Lost Chapters? Where did these nerds come from? What is chronological timeline of this game??

So, Setzer. The guy was initially just wandering around and doesn’t really give a shit about the greater good. Like I don’t know what he planned to do besides roaming around these hills with nobody in them, but the latter part led to him bringing up a valid point: what is everyone fighting for if there’s nobody in this world to fight for?

Everybody argues that they’re fighting for their own ideals and Setzer’s like, “oh worm? I’ll join, I guess.” And so, this anomaly in my personal timeline has joined in, with the interesting ability to temporarily prevent enemies from building up BRV.

I decided to celebrate his arrival by taken a ten-pull on the banner he was on, which was headlined by Kuja. I got Setzer’s advertised Darts item, which boosts his Red Card skill and delays a target’s turn, which seems neat.

I was wondering, jeez, how long will it take to get Kuja in the game? He is very hot and I need him in my party. I then looked at the event missions I had and found out, oh actually, I can get him right now.

The game only now decided to warn me that I can run into events featuring characters that I’ve never met in the story, and it’s the proceeding cutscene that introduced some intrigue in the story. Kuja and Golbez have teamed up to do some villainous stuff that I’m sure would get elaborated on in the actual main story. However, their focus isn’t on some villainous plot. Instead, they’re suspicious of Mog, believing that he isn’t some mere guiding spirit. They decided that the best way to investigate Mog is to get close.

Kuja then appears through a Torison in front of a party being led by Zidane and challenges them to a fight. He’s blatantly holding back, because almost immediately after being beaten he’s like, “ooooh no I’m owned, I might as well work with you guys now.”

Also, everyone besides Mog and Zidane switched out during the battle, so there’s suddenly a different set of NPCs after battle talking as if they were always there. It’s at this point that I must accept that characters will drop in and out throughout the game like a fever dream. Vivi is now in the place of Steiner and he’s expressing justifiable concern about having to work with Kuja while Balthier responds to his theater metaphors, which I thought was pretty good.

It’s at this point that I decided to take a break and make another 10-pull, because dang, do I have a bunch of gems.

This time, I really lucked into getting stuff for Kuja, who I guess uses orbs as a weapon. I got the Brilliant Cores that boosts his Ring Holy skill and Scintillant Cores, which boosts his Ultima skill. The other 5-star item is for Yuna, who I’m sure will join in eventually.

And that’s when I decided to stop, for now. Aside from these missions, I did a bunch of Cycle Quest grinding. Gotta say, the auto-battle feature is pretty helpful for these, even if characters only do the default brave and HP attacks. Next time, I’ll try to finish Kuja’s event before going back to the main story, where I’m sure more strangers will keep dropping into my party.