Sweet Perfection achievement in Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster

I kept these two guides up for my playthrough:

The first one gives detailed step-by-step instructions, the second one is more of a checklist to make sure you don't miss anything important. The HD remake drops the decimals from the completion percentage (

), so you'll have to make sure you're on par at the whole percentage milestones throughout the second guide.

To that end, the percentages for Chapter 5 are all wrong, and you'll likely do various parts out of order (eg: getting to level 20 in Via Infinito to get the last of the Crimson Spheres to unlock the Den of Woes, completing that and most everything else first, and then coming back to finish VI). There's also 1% missing from the weird math right at the beginning of Chapter 5 (77.6 + 0.8 = 78.4, not 79.4). However, if you treat it as a checklist and make absolutely sure you do everything on that page, you'll get to 97% before the point of no return.

During the Chapter 4 CommSphere sequence, I used the following guides to make sure I didn't miss any scenes and thus got all of the little 0.2% completion steps:

(Chapter 4 pre-show)

(Chapter 4 second post-show)

I strongly recommend making a new save every single time you go to a new location. This will save you lots of unnecessary replayed hours (or a whole second playthrough) and heartache if you realize you missed something late in the game. I had 56 save slots when I finished everything. I also had to replay 8~10 hours because I missed several things several times and didn't have a spare save in the right spot. On that note, PLEASE make sure you use the second option when speaking to Kimahri in Chapters 1 and 2. Neither guide specifies this until it's too late.

FWIW, I missed talking to Buddy in the engine room at the start of Chapter 5 (after Brother's weirdness about backs). When I checked the engine room the first time, he wasn't there, so I just left. However, you have to walk to the back and mess around with the engine, and then start walking back out. After some trial and error with earlier saves, I was able to load up my last save and trigger the scene with ~96% completion (you need more than 75% to get his full story). I had my 97% after watching it, and then went back and defeated Vegnagun again. No need for a second playthrough, thankfully, but God I was sweating there for a minute (well... more like an hour)!

Finally, the achievement pops during the short sequence with Shuyin and Lenne right after beating Vegnagun. But you'll want to stick around...

You should reward yourself and watch the full credits and see the scene that makes this all worth it. Just press while YRP are walking back through the flowers in the Farplane, then answer the Fayth's question with "Yes!" The sit back and watch the entire credits to get to the final scene.