Final Fantasy X-2 is the first true sequel of the Final Fantasy Series. For those of you that got just as wrapped up in Final Fantasy X as I did, you're going to have to play Final Fantasy X-2, not only out of curiosity, but in hopes of finding answers to questions left unanswered in Final Fantasy X.

Final Fantasy X-2 is a RPG (Role Playing Game) put out by Square Enix, which I believe was formally known as Squaresoft. It is rated T for Teen, due to suggestive themes and violence. It offers a mission-based story with non-linear gameplay, while also being able to change jobs in the heat of battle. It is an ATB (Active Time Battle) game rather than a CTB (Conditional Time Battle) game. It also is a game where the ending you get to see is determined by the completion percentage you receive from completing missions properly, or not completing them at all.

The Story & Background:

I find the story in X-2 to have less depth than X. Even so, it's still a great game with an interesting story. X was the best and nothing will really ever hold a candle to it, but X-2 was a worthy attempt and shouldn't go unnoticed.

FFX took place in Spira, same as FFX-2. In FFX Spira is a place where the people are tormented by a beast called Sin. You are along for the ride as summoner Yuna embarks on a pilgrimage with her guardians Wakka, Lulu, and Kimarhi. She travels all around Spira preparing to defeat Sin, physically and mentally. She is willing to lay her life down (which is traditionally what happens to a summoner who goes up against Sin), perform the final summoning, and save all of Spira and bring about the Calm. All this is done in hopes that the Calm will last. Although the Calm has never lasted for any of the summoners before her, that already paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Along the way she meets many people and gains three more guardians, Tidus, Auron and Rikku. Rikku you later find out is her cousin. Tidus is nothing short of a dream, and well, Auron is unsent. Together the six of them, along with Aeons, uncover many of Yevon's dirty little secrets and fallacies. They decide to go against tradition, the teachings of Yevon, and do things differently in search of a way to vanquish Sin forever.

It goes much deeper than this, but to cut to the chase Yuna succeeds in bringing about the Eternal Calm and the people of Spira rejoice. She's praised and famous. Tidus disappears. Auron gets sent. Rikku, Lulu, Wakka and Kimarhi stick around.

Now for the game at hand. The graphics are great and were impressive in the beginning and throughout the game. The beginning of the story wasn't exactly what I had in mind though, and after seeing it, all my hopes of what the game could be had dropped to the floor like yesterday's socks.

It opens with an event in Luca. You see the stadium in detail, the top of it almost looks like rolling water. It appears as though Yuna is giving a concert in Luca. She's up there singing and dancing, lips moving along to the song, legs and arms moving in step with the beat. Rikku (a familiar face from FFX) is in the crowd, along with this mysterious black clad girl, kicking butt. These vehicle type things are flying around the concert. You don't completely understand what it's all about and if you're anything like me you'll be disgusted with the Britney Spears type singing and atmosphere.

The good news is as you progress through the game with the corny sometimes excessively juvenile dialogue, you'll find you really like the game. The game will in fact start to grow on you, and you inevitably become addicted.

The beat goes on. You discover that high summoner Yuna has joined a group called the Gullwings in search of spheres. They're sphere hunters and what do you know, they hunt spheres. This was inspired by this one sphere that was discovered showing him. It looks like Tidus, sounds like Tidus, but as Lulu said, something seems off.

The game revolves around discovering the truth about what happened to Tidus and is he still alive. If so, can Yuna find him? Will he be able to stay? What about the Fayth?

While in pursuit for spheres Yuna finds Spira falling apart again. She saved the world once, now she finds herself faced with it again. That and she's getting really good at reuniting the people of Spira. Being busy with sphere hunting and saving the world, there's still a lot of other things that happen, including side quests/mini-games.

Final Fantasy X-2 My Likes:

There were many things I liked about playing this game. It was great going back to Spira, revisiting and catching up with my favorite old characters. The story that sucked me in the first time continues. I was so excited about news of the sequel and couldn't wait for its release.

The graphics are awesome, the story is interesting, Dresspheres and Garment Grids are great. The graphics are great because lips move when the characters talk, although sometimes it seems a little out of sync. The characters move their bodies. Ever notice how Rikku has bad posture? They're clothing moves as they walk. Yuna's dream was a perfect example of great graphics because you see her running with Tidus, stumbling to try to keep up as he's pulling her along, stopping to catch her breath, their hair bouncing up and down as they run. When the lighting hits their hair a certain way you can see highlights and shine, like a real person. Not like some character in a game, but more actual people. All of this makes it very realistic. In her dream she gets shot down along side Tidus and you see both their bodies shimmy from the bullets impact. They then fall to the ground, you hear the thump from the bodies hitting the floor. Yuna lays there, life fading from her eyes as a tear rolls down the side of her face.

Even certain fiends that you defeat in the game are impressive. The Amorphous Gel when defeated, seemed to turn into this liquid lava that flattened out to the ground and almost kind of smoked and then vaporized. The Ultima Weapon is a little similar to this. The Paragon kind of explodes in a Die Hard kind of way. This is if you kill it at cloister 100, after battling Trema. If you bribed the Paragon like I did before battling Trema, you witness little old man Trema kick the stuffing out of the big beast, as if it were a little helpless creature. Trema looks like someone's grandpa and he beat the heck out of this ferocious weapon. He just flew up in the air and did some swift martial art type moves or something and totally laid the smack down.

As for those Dresspheres, its pretty interesting to watch a Spherechange occur. You see feathers floating, smoke drifting, brilliant light, an outfit disappear and a new one take its place with barely a transition. You might see a bit of a sandy, glittery effect travel up their body and all of a sudden they are switched into their new Dressphere. Dresspheres include Gunner, Thief, Gun Mage, Warrior, Alchemist, Samurai, Dark Knight, Berserker, Songstress, Black Mage, White Mage, Lady Luck, Trainer, and Mascot. Special Dresspheres include Yuna's Floral Fallal, Paine's Full Throttle, and Rikku's Machina Maw.

You can change jobs in the middle of a battle. Such as, if you are using the Thief Dressphere and steal what you want from a boss you can then Spherechange into the Lady Luck Dressphere and get double gil and experience with the auto abilities from the Dressphere.

The battles were fun and some of them required quite a bit of strategy. Fun, but challenging. Vegnagun was a decent boss, along with all the Aeons. Even though you can't use the Aeons any more for fighting, it was nice being able to fight them. Angru Mainyu, Trema, and the Paragon were the most challenging in the game.

Paine is a new character in the game and an interesting one at that. Paine is mysterious like Auron and kind of fights a little like him, but resembles Lulu a bit (kid sister perhaps?). Paine doesn't talk too much in the beginning, but really opens up as you progress in the game. Paine is also good for great one-liners. Like when you're in battle sometimes Yuna and Rikku will say "Give me a Y, Give me a R", and Paine replies with "Give me a break". Paine's story ties into events that would have occurred during FFX and that's kind of nice too.

I also enjoyed the additions of Nooj (Meyvan of the Youth League), Baralai (Praetor of New Yevon), and Gippal (Head of the Machine Faction). Nooj comes off as the smart heroic type. He's known as Nooj the undying, and as a fearless death seeker. Baralai is calm, cool and collected. He comes off as being the polite, well spoken, conservative type. Gippal is the humorous flirt. He's the laid-back, crack a joke and still gets the job done type.

Shinra, Buddy, and Brother are also part of the Gullwings. Brother and his obsession with Yuna was sometimes funny, but also sometimes annoying. Buddy had some strange comments. Shinra's the wiz-kid. He's very informative and he adds to the mix as well. Barkeep is funny with his speak impediment, can I say "Mish Yoona what can I do for you?"

It was cool how you have the option to direct how your game is going to go. If you want you can team up with the Youth League, or you can chose New Yevon. With each path comes different events, scenes and conversations. The only problem is, if you chose the New Yevon path you can't obtain 100% completion. Without 100% completion you can't see the "perfect ending" as they call it. Basically an extra scene after the "good ending" scene is what it is. If you go with the Youth League there are certain items that you miss out on.

Some of the mini-games were nice as well. I was glad to see that you didn't have to dodge lighting like 200 times to power anyone's weapon so they could break their hit point or damage limit. That was a relief.

I didn't like Sphere Break at first, but warmed up to it later on. Once I stopped getting so nervous and counting on my fingers that is. I also liked the Chocobo Ranch mini-game. It was fun catching them, leveling them up and sending them out to find items. The Let's Go Digging mini-game was also nice. You go to the desert, stand where the x marks the spot and dig for treasure.

One option about this game that X didn't have is the New Game Plus. I really like this option. This is available at the end after the credits and ending scenes. You get to save your game, and start from the beginning. Only this time you have an edge. You start at level one as you normally would, except you have all the Dresspheres, Garment Grids, accessories, items, Al Bhed Primers, Special Dressphere upgrades, Book Of Magical Dances (both volumes), and the abilities gained in your previous game. One thing that I noticed though is that you don't get to keep all the coins you won from playing Sphere Break and from digging in the desert. It gets reset and you have only the coins that you get after going through the tutorial. That kind of stinks.

Final Fantasy X-2 My Dislikes:

There were quite a few things that kind of irritated me about the game. I wasn't too thrilled about the fact that it was an ATB game. I like to ponder my moves and not feel rushed to hurry up and command the character to do something before I get pounded by the enemy. With the way FFX was you hit the fiend if your turn came up first, then after you hit, home dude takes a turn and hits you. You have to be quick with ATBs. If you sit there too long trying to figure out what you're going to do, you could end up dead. I couldn't help but sometimes find myself hitting the x button in a panic to hurry up and kill, kill, kill.

I was a little disappointed in the story. I was addicted yes, staying up around the clock advancing, but it wasn't quite like the way I was with X. Part of this was probably because most of the old characters were sidelined.

Kimarhi was off being the new Elder to the Ronso on Mt Gagazet. Lulu is pregnant and having a baby with Wakka in Besaid. Auron was the unsent that was eventually sent, therefore you don't see him. I think his voice was one of the voices that you hear while you're kicking Vegnagun's butt. Tidus is the guy that was a dream of the Fayth and then poof, disappeared. You looking for clues as to what happened to him. Therefore, he's not in the story directly either.

This brings me to my next dislike. The fact that there were only three characters that you use to fight. I miss having six characters to chose from. I also totally miss having the Aeons. They were so much fun and boy did I miss them. Dresspheres were a nice substitute considering, but still not enough to fill the void left by the Aeons.

I really miss some of the magic of FFX. What I mean by that is that I miss being able to cast Ultima, Flare, Holy, and Auto-Life. You can't do that with this game. You need to equip a Garment Grid that enables you to do so. Then usually you have to Spherechange several times to perform that magic ability. There is also no Garment Grid and accessories combined that allows you to cast all those magics, break your HP limit and break your damage limit. What use is it to be able to cast powerful magic when you can't exceed 9999 in damage to an enemy with about a million HP (Hit Points)?

In some way having a completion percent was nice and made it challenging, but in other ways it was just a pain in the butt and a reason to have to go back and do things over. Doing things I already did isn't exactly my idea of a good time. That and having to go back because you forgot one little detail. Such as me forgetting to rest in the cabin either during chapter 2 or 3 and then going back to chapter 2 and working my way all the way back to chapter 5.

Some of the characters were really annoying. The mission to catch the Chocobo for Calli was annoying, but mostly because Calli herself is annoying. Rikku is a little on the annoying side as well. Leblanc and her Noojie Woojie stuff was nauseating. Brother was sometimes funny, but other times ridiculous and annoying. Can I say, "Who's the leader, I'm the leader!". That and sometimes his constant flirting with Yuna was annoying. Hello, she's your cousin sicko! Talk about promoting love within the family. Unless him and Rikku were half brother and sister, but I don't remember that ever coming up.

The Y.R.P. in position stuff really had to go. Pretty ridiculous. So Britney Spears. Some of the singing and dancing was like that too. The song about 1000 years wasn't too bad. Some of the dialogue was along the same lines, juvenile. The girl talk between them was especially well ummm...girly. It was like a couple of 13 year olds talking amongst themselves, getting excited about the new N' Sync album or something.

Speaking of songs, how I ever do miss the Hymn! I wish they could have squeezed that in some where or came up with something comparable. I remember when I first heard the Hymn from FFX. I would find myself humming it all the time. I would be cooking and humming it, washing the dishes, taking a shower, whatever. I would be humming it.

The mini-games I could have done without would be the ones you can play in the Calm Lands (Gull Force, Feed The Monkey, Lupine Dash, Reptile Run, etc), the Gunner's Gauntlet, the Lightning Rod Towers, Cactuar Hunting, and Blitzball. All of those weren't my cup of tea.

I liked FFX's Blitzball, but they decided to change Blitzball on you. They made it so you couldn't learn abilities from players and everything was on auto-pilot. So, when you are playing you really don't have much control over what your team does. Basically all you can do is raise and max out their stats, and remove injured players during a match.

The Great Mi'ihen Mystery mini-game wasn't bad, but I'd really like to know how you nail Rin's butt to the wall. Not literally to the wall, but what clues must you call him over for to get the ball rolling and have him be the number one suspect?

Conclusion:

Overall it's a really great game with great graphics and an interesting story. It's not Final Fantasy X though. Not as good in my opinion. Final Fantasy X-2 is a fitting name, not only because it's the sequel, but also because it's only second best. I would definitely recommend it though. It kept me busy for quite a while. I got the game on December 27th or so and if you look at my profile page you see that I didn't write from then until March first. This game is the reason why. Certainly got my money's worth! Buying the Final Fantasy X-2 Official Strategy Guide helps out a lot too. I would recommend that as well.

Thanks For Reading!


PS: If you want to check out Square Enix go to www.square-enix-usa.com or check out www.playonline.com regarding the game. If you want to check out Bradygames (makers of the Official Strategy Guide) go to www.bradygames.com.

Recommended:
Yes