jeremy1456's Full Review: Final Fantasy X for PlayStation 2
I've always been one of the biggest Final Fantasy fanatics around, and so its only natural that upon seeing the first screenshots of Squaresoft's first PlayStation 2 entry into the series I became very excited about it. The game came out but I didn’t have a PS2, and so I could only imagine what it was like to actually play it, and this led to me uncontrollably hyping the game up, at one point I was actually expecting something that even surpasses the legendary Final Fantasy VII, even though I kinda knew inside that this was impossible. Hyping myself up for Final Fantasy X became even easier after reading the reviews on this site, all (but one) are filled with high praise for this game. So it's been about half a year since I first received my Playstation 2 and Final Fantasy X for Christmas, and I can honestly say that Final Fantasy X is easily the worst Final Fantasy game ever created, and yes, I have played all of them (even the game boy titles).
Is it just me, or has pretty much every RPG this generation led to massive disappointment? Seriously, this generation of games seems to be the worst for RPGs thus far (for me anyways) as lately I'm having a real tough time finding one that I can enjoy. I know I'm probably in the minority because I believe that, but I'm having troubles getting into any of them despite the fact that I have been a hardcore RPG fan since I was 6 or 7 years old.
Final Fantasy X fits nicely under the turn based RPG genre, as you wander the world engaging in battles with monsters. Turn based refers to the way in which battles are fought, after engaging with the enemy, you select commands for your characters and they carry these commands out, each taking a turn to do so. I was somewhat expecting Final Fantasy X to go the less stressful route of giving players the ability to see the monsters before they are thrown into battle, but then again what can ya expect?
Storyline
Tidus is the star blitzball player of the Zanarkand Abes. Despite the fact that Tidus hates his father, it is apparent that he is following in his footsteps, Tidus' hate for his father is very strong even though his father disappeared about ten years ago. Everything starts going wrong with Tidus when (at the beginning of the game) his hometown of Zanarkand is attacked by the evil being known as Sin during one a blitzball game, and the entire city is thrown into a state of chaos. Tidus is met by his father's old friend Auron who mysteriously guides Tidus to Sin. After approaching Sin Tidus just disappears and wakes up in a mysterious cave, he is soon met by the enemy forces of Al Bhed but ends up escaping due to another attack from Sin, the only problem though is that this doesn't appear to be the same world in which Tidus lives in, he keeps telling people that he lives in Zanarkand, but nobody believes him, this is due to the fact that Zanarkand was destroyed 1,000 years ago according to everyone he speaks to.
Personally I don't dig the main storyline too much, this is probably because after playing so much Final Fantasy in my lifetime I was able to predict several plot twists way before they happened, and the game tries too hard to be mysterious right from the get go which really makes things confusing from the start.
A lot of people really don't like Tidus' character, but I actually thought that he was a good change from the typical Final Fantasy main character. Most people say he is too whiny, but that may be due to the fact that he is actually the first main character who is "down to earth", and most of the story is told in narrative style from Tidus' point of view, and it really makes the story telling aspect stand out from past Final Fantasy games. With that said, the only other character in the whole game that I liked besides Tidus was Wakka, I guess I like him because Squaresoft really just molded him into a nice guy.
Usually a Final Fantasy game will feature one character that is quiet and fairly mysterious, but for some odd reason Squaresoft decided to make Auron, Kimahri, and Lulu all like that, well in the beginning anyways. These three characters, while being rude to Tidus in the beginning, just come off as being snobs through most of the game, and most of the time they are fairly unlikeable.
Gameplay
As you can probably guess, Final Fantasy X has you travelling across the world battling monsters only to view cinema after cinema after cinema. If you thought the past Final Fantasy games were bad about having too many cinemas then you'll probably get bored with this title quickly. The extra cut scenes don't really bug me much at all, as I wasn't expecting anything less from this game. I would personally like to thank Squaresoft for giving players the ability to pause the game during these long cut scenes.
Final Fantasy X would be a much better game if Squaresoft had just changed the gameplay, as I really couldn't stand playing the game, and the only reason I played it at all was just to see what happens next, but then again the story is disappointing too, at least for me.
Final Fantasy X tries too hard to implement a sense of strategy into it's battle system. The fact that you can (and sometimes have to) switch party members in the middle of battle angers me to no end. Now why exactly does this get me mad? The answer is simple, you can switch party members without sacrificing anything, and this makes some aspects of the game easy, and some other even more repetitive than your standard RPG. Some characters do very well against specific types, and so it's not entirely uncommon to have switch back and forth in a battle against standard enemies. While I often welcome strategic aspects into this type of game, I can't help but be disappointed because the strategy is too easy, you just have to know which character's weapons will do damage to which enemies, but this does get slightly more complex later in the game.
The worst aspect of gameplay in Final Fantasy X is the system used for leveling up; the sphere grid. The sphere grid is extremely confusing near the start of the game, but doesn't take long to master. Basically, after defeating all the monsters in a battle you will be rewarded with AP points (instead of the conventional experience points), as you attain more of these AP points your S.lvl rises, and with different spheres you can enhance your characters statistics, you can move one space on the grid for each S.lvl that you gain, each sphere that you use enhances a different stat, and through moving the spheres along the grid in a specific direction you can customize your characters. There is a problem with this though, as at the end of the game the characters start losing their individuality through their statistics and special moves.
If you have a good thing why not try and make it better? This is what Squaresoft was probably thinking when they thought up the idea for overdrives. Overdrives are pretty much the same as limit breaks (from Final Fantasy VII) and trances (from Final Fantasy IX), only overdrive doesn't seem nearly as cool as those two. The overdrive meter is located below the character's HP, and it fills when damage is taken and received, only some characters have different ways of filling up their overdrive.
The strangest thing about Final Fantasy X though is definitely the mini-game blitzball. It's basically a combination of soccer and football, only it's played in turn based style. This definitely isn't one of Squaresoft's better ideas for mini games (snowboarding in FFVII was probably the best), but I guess it could be a good time waster.
One thing that I did like about this game though is it's system for summoning. Aeons (monsters that can be summoned) can only be used by Yuna. After summoning an Aeon the characters disappear off the screen and you take control of the summoned monster, and you control it until you either call it back or it runs out of HP. Aeons are the best part of combat in Final Fantasy X.
Graphics, Sound, and Control
Even though Final Fantasy X is an older PS2 game it is still one of the best looking games around. Seriously, I was blown away by just about everything this game had to offer graphically. Squaresoft finally decided to do away with pre-rendered backgrounds for the most part, and the result is fantastic. Besides Resident Evil 0 and Halo, Final Fantasy X is currently my favorite game to look at this generation.
Like all the other Final Fantasy games before it, Final Fantasy X features a very compelling soundtrack. The music has a lot of depth, and it fits the fantasy world very well. I personally liked the remix of the song that plays whenever you are selecting a file to load from the past Final Fantasy games. There is one fairly major problem with Final Fantasy X in this department; the voice overs are often atrocious. The worst voice actor is the girl who takes the part of Yuna, the awkward pauses in the middle of speech are just plain awful, and most of the other voice actors did pretty bad jobs themselves.
Moving about in the world of Final Fantasy has never been more simple, but sometimes it seems like Tidus moves too slowly. Controls are very simplistic, which is nothing uncommon for this type of game, and the menus are fairly easy to navigate through. The most difficult part of the whole game is learning exactly how to use the sphere grid, but once you learn it, it is very easy to use.
Final Recommendation
For me, Final Fantasy X was one of the biggest upsets in my gaming career. I really wanted to like it, and believe me I tried, but I really couldn't get past all of the bad points, namely the game play. This game is just plain dull, and it seems as if Squaresoft cares more about the casual gamer nowadays than they care about their long time fans. What's worse is that Final Fantasy X-2 sounds to be even worse than X, why ruin a game even more than it is already ruined?
Overall Rating: 4.6
This is an entry into a write-off hosted by fellow game reviewer Awoolcott. This write-off was called the I Can't Believe What People Think About This. I'm two days late here, sorry!
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