Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X was an emotional discovery, my first game in the saga and my first RPG. It was an immersive universe and engaging story that led me to replay it several times and become very familiar with it.

If nostalgia is a very important aspect in video games, I will still try to focus on the game itself. I like the fact that we begin the game alone, in traditional fashion, in a world grown hostile and cold, that will soon be contrasted by meeting the party: full-of-energy Rikku and the initial pilgrims. Spira is a surprisingly rich world, the game makes great efforts to introduce a multilayered society here. Thanks to this, the hunt after Sin is both a fight to relieve a world deprived of its peace and a personal quest to untangle the past and the truth. In this respect, I think the set-up ranks among the most elaborate in the FF series, and has great themes.

Because of this, the game is quite heavy in narration, but that drew me in. It's served by quality characterization, convincing scripts, and many cinematics some of which are brilliant and complex (not just action and explosions). The pace of the story is good overall. Fortunately, the game avoids overkill by subduing the initial density in the middle of the story, when everything is on its path, before increasing it again towards the end. I love the end by the way, it's tear-jerking.

I'll make no secret that the world and story drive most of my love for FFX. But I'll also make a note of the visuals: many blue and brownish landscapes, water, a rather warm, charming and realistic world. Some of the locations and towns sadly lack the possibility of exploration (Luca, Bevelle, Gagazet notably) and can admittedly be linear. The jumps in the story do make you change locations often, which is a welcome change from moving yourself from dungeon to dungeon on a world map.

Now, as for the gameplay, it's rather a conservative FF. The spheregrid is not a very inventive mechanism of leveling, but it does the job and it's nice that you have some choice. The weapons / shields and their bonuses are the main interest I would say, along maybe with the elements / alterations and managing the boost of the overdrives. I had to get the help of a method book for the legendary weapons and some of the additional aeons, but that part was nice and allowed a higher game duration. Lastly, I also enjoyed the challenge of beating the dark aeons and the challenge of a NSG game (playing without touching the grid at all).

Overall, a game that has stayed with me and made me passionate, also renewing my love of video games since I didn't know JRPGs before being 15 years old.

you know what... when i first started playing this game, i found it really dumb in a pleasantly goofy way, and i stuck at it because it was making me laugh.

i'm glad i stuck with it. these aren't the greatest characters of ALL TIME but i was surprised how much i started caring about them (bear in mind i had the sound off. which absolutely helped. yuna's voice acting issa not v good). i sincerely gave a shit about getting to zanarkand, i honestly felt sympathy after the failed attempt at killing sin

actually you know why i like this game? it's because it presents this straightforward serious drama but the presentation is sliiiiiightly skewed in a way that i want to define as "uncanny valley" but i cant quite. it's weird and hard to explain. basically this game takes these gorgeous beachy locations, puts a handful of unrealistic wish-fulfilment characters in them and lets them interact in their weird, stilted ways. and lets the drama play out accordingly. i dont know why but this adds up to a story i like more than i dont.

the battle system starts out like a cakewalk. but then near the end of the game you get shit like spectral keeper and yunalesca that actually made me die multiple times; yet i never actually got 100% stuck. it's probably the ideal curve for me.

i will also say that certain scenes/locations in this game are about as beautiful as the PS2 could get.

finally i wanna say that there is a certain location in this game, quite early on, that uses music that was sampled by a, uh, artist that i hold really close to my heart (if you know me you already know who that is) and the moment when i realized that THIS SAMPLE comes from HERE... that was a beautiful moment alright...

im glad this dumbass game got better. i was surprised how much this grew on me.

A new console generation brought about another hyper-ambitious project from Square with Final Fantasy X, a work swamped with all sorts of mechanics, minigames and details to offer. Upgraded, entrancing visuals and a long-winded grandiose story on fate are sure to leave an impression, but the minigame variety and unlockables steal the spotlight - running the gamut from sports to racing to monster capture and then some. Also of note is the Sphere Grid - their take on western RPG skill trees, which increments stats and abilities per node in a winding labyrinth of branches that only gets more complicated as it progresses. Besides that, the absence of the world map led to very fluid albeit very confined progression.

A much-needed return to standard turn-based battling was actually underwhelming for the most part. It piques some interest within its party-swapping mechanic and turn-order bar, but the combat system doesnt truly take off until lategame, when the Sphere Grid unlocks Haste/Slow turn manipulation skills that somewhat evokes the deep strategic gameplay of Grandia. Unfortunately - up until that point, FFX virtually borrows Pokemon's method of matching-game tedium (enemy weaknesses requiring specific party members to exploit). Design-wise, this is possibly the first example of Nomura's excess detracting from the show: These characters look super silly, which would work just fine if this was a super silly game. Overall a mixed bag whose strengths generally outweigh the faults.

A great game completely and utterly ruined by one word:

Tidus.

One of the worst protagonists in JRPG history, Tidus pisses on, shits on, and rips up one of the finest games Final Fantasy has to offer. Tidus offers nothing as a protagonist- hes not smart, hes not charming, hes not funny, in-universe he's not very skilled, he doesent work as a 'blank slate' due to his moronic nature, and is unrelatable due to being a superstar athlete. So he's not cool like Squall, Cloud, or even fucking Noctis, and isnt funny or charming like Zidane or even Yuna in X-2, and he's not relatable to the average person due to his rampant stupidity and (former) fame. So what im saying is, hes a complete failure of a protagonist that actively makes the video game worse every time he opens his mouth- which is frequent. You can't even escape his Chernobyl-esque verbal toxic sewage that is his personality when he shuts his mouth- his internal monologues are the intellectual version of sandpaper to the testicles, and incredibly common in the early stages of the game. And i'm a dumbass myself, unapologetically. Some of my favorite protags ever are stupid as shit. Shonen has made a killing with dumb teenage protags. But Tidus is dumb and obnoxious to the point of annoyance- unlike Spongebob, who annoys his friends but not the viewer, Tidus annoys the viewer and- some fucking how- not his friends. This isnt helped by the poor voice acting and uncanny valley faces of the 2000s ps2 era.

The rest of the main cast also isnt stellar, though not as bad. Yuna is a bland albeit charming and enjoyable whitebread waifu, Lulu is boring but laughing at her infamously stupid BeltDress is entertaining at the very least, Wakka is funny, charming and legitamately unirnoically racist, which is suprising for a final fantasy game. Calling ronso a 'character' is generous, Rikku is actually really cute and funny i thought, and Auron is very very cool. So its up and down, but the cast doesent coalesce like FF9's.

The world is where i have to just stop benig a cynical bastard and stare at awe. Final Fantasy game worlds are usually either random nonsense, or just backdrops that fit the need of whatever the main story wants to do, but FF10's goes beyond that and becomes a character itself. The world is living, breathing, jumping out the game into your heart and mind. It is by far the greatest setting in all of Final Fantasy and i would say one of the greatest in the history of video games. The setting itself is unironically a better character then 60% of the main cast. The seaside villages are gorgeous, bursting with stories. Everything seems important and more importantly everything COMES TOGETHER and doesent seem like the dev just smoked some Epic Weed and said 'wouldnt it be cool if there was....', like in the other Final Fantasies. this world was handbuilt from the ground up and it is utterly amazing, and beautiful.

I'll be honest about the story, i didn't get it. I understood the most of it but it gets very hazy at the end and, imo, overcomplicated and confusing. Im not going to spoil it but a lot of things happen that just made me eyes cross and made me feel like a dumb lil ape.

The gameplay is also the best Final Fantasy has to offer. Gone is the shitty time-based battle system of FF9 and before that just gave me anxiety, and in is a new gameplay that is snappy, yet gives you time to think and strategize. Its simple, sure, but it works so, so, well.

Overall, i thought it was a great game. The story lost me and Tidus pissed me off, but the gameplay is enjoyable and walking through the world of Spira is a great experience.

Final fantasy X is an absolutely awful game. And I can't believe this game has such high praise. Gameplay wise, this game is boring and inconsistent. I understand they wanted to evolve the combat, as the ATB system had been used for like a decade at this point, but jesus christ this was executed so POORLY. Firstly, every single random battle has the exact same enemies throughout the whole game. Only a small amount of enemies are used throughout the whole game and they kept getting re-used. So once you find out the weakness of each enemy in the first few hours of the game, all challenge in random battles go away. By the time you are half way through the game, random battles become a sluggish but also weirdly fast. They all playout the same because in seconds you know exactly how to beat it in under a minute, but they are so fast you can barely even remember what just happened.

Then there are the boss fights, some of which are arbitrarily placed throughout the game. They range from piss-easy to infuriating. Not only that, but they are sometimes gimmicky and not very fun (like the one on the airship).

The grid level thing is awful. Because you can only upgrade one stat at a time, you barely feel like you've actually improved. and it can sometimes get super complicated and it's not very fun "making your own choices" because all the stat boosts are so similar.

Than there is blitz-ball, which is a forced minigame that is so confusing with WAY too many rules. It's boring and should not be forced.

The game's linearity is also a problem. I have no problem with linearity in games, as long as there is a purpose. But Final fantasy X is just hallways and each hallway feels pointless. in other linear games, they pack each area with interesting things and focus on keeping the gameplay fresh and exciting. But final fantasy X feels like each hallway is a weird excuse for random battles which ALREADY are boring and tedious.

The characters are boring, tidus in unlikable in every way. I get that he's meant to be an outsider, and his views on tradition cause the rest of the characters to question the morality of their traditions. But nothing he does every leads to anything useful and his character just wasn't executed well. Lulu has basically no personality, waka has no growth, yuna is just quite dumb, predictable, and shallow, the one girl who i forgot the name of has one personality trait: being a different race, and auron is so cryptic and gets annoying. It also doesn't help that he says random shit that means nothing, tells tidus things so that he doesn't "get emotional at a critical moment" and then doesn't tell tidus yuna IS GONNA FUCKING DIE until a critical moment!

and the trials, not only are they boring and tidus, and lack any creativity, but also don't make any fucking sense in the story line. Like how are they completely reset even though yuna and friends went through it before tidus????

bad game.

Final Fantasy X sort of gets a mixed reception from the community, while it is commonly on top 10 PS2 games of all time lists and many praise the game and even consider it the best FF game, there is also a pretty decent sized part of the community who consider this to be a step in the wrong direction and find the story and characters to be among the worst in the series. My exposure to this came after I finished my Final Fantasy marthon over Winter break of my Senior year in college, my friend had this on PS3 and really enjoyed it so we played a little of it, but we only got a few hours in, there was no way we'd be able to beat this anytime soon if we only played it once a week for a few hours, so eventually I just said I'd play the game on my own in the future. Well about a year later it was the week of Christmas the year after and I was done with college, so I rented the Final Fantasy X HD collection from my library.

Like the other FF games, I actually got into this game pretty fast. It had similar combat and style, and I enjoyed the big open World. FFX is a lot more streamlined than the previous game, and I think for a lot of people it seemed dumb down. The game is a lot more linear, you have no overworld map that you travel between towns, instead its just one World, and the game's upgrade system is a lot different than previous games, you get a grid and you use spheres to go down a path to upgrade each character and let them learn new abilities. On top of that, you have voice acting now which is probably the best and worst thing about this game.

Now for me FFX is mostly good, but it also is a bit of mixed bag. I liked the different locations and open World. The combat system in this was pretty decent and not too different than the previous FF games. I enjoyed the different characters and their abilities plus Yuna's summoning did add a new element to the combat. The music in this game is just fantastic and among some of my favorite in the series and the characters for the most part were likable and memorable enough, even if they did occasionally get on my nerves.

But there are a good amount of things I didn't enjoy. The game's story is a mixed bag. It started off good but then went downhill about halfway through for me, especially after the stupid twist with Tidus. Plus Seymour, while I thought he was a decent villain, just seemed confusing how he kept coming back and the game tries to set him up as the main villain only he's more of a side villain. The story at times just feels like it tries to focus on too much and it gets a tad convoluted at times. The characters also get annoying due to voice acting, Rikku and Tidus just manage to cross that line on many occasions. And the upgrade system in this game also could have been handled a little better, I just didn't really like the grid system and it felt a bit too simplified. And the side content in this game is pretty average, its just silly stuff like Chocobo racing and finding hidden cactus enemies. Sure you have the buffed up optional boss fights, but they are more about having an optimized party and having good luck on your side. And there are a few mild annoyances as well, the biggest one being the inability to skip cutscenes, which makes dying to a boss incredibly annoying, considering some of them have 5+ minute long cutscenes preceding them.

Either way, I really enjoyed FFX and while there were a good amount of annoyances, they never really took me out of the World, and my playthrough of this game 3 years ago brings back good memories and was one of my favorite playthroughs in recent years. This is really the last of the classic FF games and even with its flaws, awkward moments, and annoyances, it manages to be a much better game than most other RPGs of the PS2 era.