I seriously believe the developers must have been drunk or stoned while they were making this game. I mean, a sequel? We know how sequels in movies go – it’s either hit or miss, and I believe that Final Fantasy X-2 was the latter. This isn’t to say that the game wasn’t fun to play. I guess in all fairness it was...um...time consuming...in an interesting way, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was destined for the Final Fantasy hall of fame. If anything, it’ll probably be remembered as the lamest Final Fantasy game ever made.

This game doesn’t exactly qualify as a Final Fantasy game. It does in terms of the traditional ATB sequences and the traditional roles (warrior, black mage, white mage, etc.), but that’s it. Everything has been changed - and I think that in a way, this game was a little experiment, not to mention a little money-maker on the side, while a better Final Fantasy was being developed by Square-Enix. It’s almost as if the developers wanted to try out a new style before putting the real thing out on the market, and they definitely gave Final Fantasy a complete overhaul when they made XII.

Plot: We continue two years later, after the end of Final Fantasy X. The Eternal Calm’s peace is a bit unstable as the Ronso vie for war with the Guado, and the Youth League (formerly the Crusaders, who rejected Yevon’s teachings and turned away from the temples) constantly fights with New Yevon (the reformed religion that vows to bring truth to the people and right the wrongs they’ve committed in the past). Yuna, who has refused to join sides for the sake of avoiding conflict, joins up with Rikku and her Brother on a new airship to fly around Spira and embark on new, exciting missions. Rikku and Brother have formed the “Gullwings” – mimicking sky pirates, in a way – to hunt for treasures and recorded spheres lost in the 1000 years of Yevon’s oppressing rule.

A most disturbing sphere, however, catches their interest. It haunts Yuna of her past, and she constantly thinks of the dream she had to leave behind in order to defeat Sin two years ago. The spheres they collect seem to intertwine with her vivid memories, and Yuna knows that there is an important connection, somehow, between her, her love, and Zanarkand. Their journey leads them to a horrible discovery, however – a powerful force has been awakened and Yuna’s Eternal Calm hangs by a thread unless she steps up once again to defeat evil, unite the peoples of Spira, and finally put her memories to rest.

Gameplay: I definitely have to say interesting...and different. For one, the whole seven-party-members thing doesn’t exist in Final Fantasy X-2. You are stuck with three, and only three, characters for the entire length of the game. You are not allowed to switch members or fight with “guest” characters. The main characters are Yuna, of course, Rikku, and a new member, Paine. For two, Yuna has dropped the Summoner look and rebelled against all conservative views, I guess, because she’s introduced in some tight, butt-grabbing short shorts and a teeny little halter top (with Tidus’s and Jecht’s heirloom, scandalously woven across the boobies). Rikku is similarly scantily clad; with a mini-skirt hung low with thong strings sticking out on each side, not to mention just a bikini top and a scarf.

Ahem. Like I said before, I think the game developers were just all about having fun.

Why am I getting into the wardrobe???

Oh, yeah…I guess to kinda explain how wacky this game is compared to Final Fantasy X.

For three, traditional Final Fantasy tweaks are still embedded in the game - such as learning abilities, leveling up, and applying accessories - but they’re learned in a much different way than you would think. Also, because Yuna is now a member of the Gullwings, the characters operate under a number of missions and assignments instead of journeying across Spira like before. Therefore, the game’s plot development is based upon how many missions you complete and which road you ultimately decide to take – the ending may or may not be different either way.

Battles: Battles are fought in ATB mode, or Active Time Battle. There is no wait period as each character takes a turn to execute a specific command against the enemy. The ATB gauges are back – a bar that fills up during the battle sequence, and once the bar is full, the character may take action. A member cannot execute a command until the ATB bar has filled. This can get twice as annoying if you’re trying to execute a magic command – there is another ATB gauge that has to charge while the character is casting magic. In my personal opinion, you’re pretty much screwed if you want to be, for example, a black mage, because you have to wait twice as long to attack, and by the time you’ve gotten your piece of the enemy, the other members have attacked at least ten more times. Stupid.

I’m not a huge fan of ATB, obviously, because I find myself staring at my little list of commands to execute instead of watching battle. Delaying action means putting your characters in peril, so it’s best to act quickly and smoothly for a victory in battle. Unfortunately, the tougher the enemies get, the faster you have to be at executing commands, so you’re busy scrolling through your list during the entire fight, panicking about that stupid second ATB gauge for healing magic, and hopping up and down squealing, “Heal! Heal already!” Not fun.

As Final Fantasy X had Overdrives – special attacks that each character could execute – Final Fantasy X-2 has abolished anything similar to that concept. There are no summons, either (if you’ve beaten Final Fantasy X you’ll know why). Instead, battles rely solely on the dress sphere each character happens to be wearing. Each character’s strength and abilities depend on the dress sphere equipped.

Dress Spheres: As stated before, Yuna completely drops the Summoner role and has gone for a bolder look, including weapons and magic. She trades the staff for some semi-automatic guns, switching from white mage in Final Fantasy X to gunner in Final Fantasy X-2. Rikku keeps the thief image and employs two daggers as her weapons, and Paine is the traditional warrior armed with a sword. Because there are only three main characters in battle, combat diversity would seem a little slim – but not with dress spheres.

Dress spheres collected throughout Spira enable the character to change their role in battle at will, so anytime someone needs to be healed, a warrior can physically transform into a white mage. When black magic needs to be used, a thief can change into a black mage, and so on and so forth. Any three characters can change into a sphere of choice, so the player is free to assign different roles at any time. Once a dress sphere is used to change form, the battle sequence pauses as the character gracefully floats into the air, undergoes a sparkly, magical transformation, and reappears with new garb, new armor, and a new weapon.

At which point I curled my lip, raised an eyebrow, and said out loud, “Are you serious?”

Dress spheres vary from warrior to white mage, thief to gunner, and interesting new roles can be applied as well. For instance, you can also obtain the Berserker dress sphere, Alchemist dress sphere, Dark Knight dress sphere, or Songstress dress sphere, to name a few. Yes, I said Songstress. You can dance your enemies to death. (Not exactly, but that would be funny.) Just wait...it gets worse.

Gaining Experience: Unlike Final Fantasy X, there is no sphere grid. Gaining abilities in Final Fantasy X-2 is similar to Final Fantasy IX, where the character equips an item and the ability is eventually learned. In the case of Final Fantasy X-2, equipping a dress sphere allows that character to use abilities specific to only that role (i.e. a White Mage can only use white magics). Equipping a dress sphere and keeping it on during numerous amounts of battles, however, eventually enables that character to slowly learn each ability. Information on a dress sphere shows you abilities contained within, which ones you can learn, how much longer it’ll take to learn one, and which ones the character is currently learning. There are prerequisites, so to speak, in terms of learning abilities. Stronger abilities cannot be learned until the weaker ones are learned first. It is much like leveling up as a white mage, for example – you obviously can’t use Curaga until you’ve learned how to use Cure and Cura first.

Experience points are gained after every battle and the character simply levels up. After each level-up, the character’s stats slowly increase (strength, magic, speed, etc.), but the character’s status also relies heavily on the equipped dress sphere, which is modified every time there is a dress sphere switch. The character can also equip accessories to boost certain stats.

Don’t tell me there’s singing? Haven’t you heard? Welcome to Final Fantasy X-2, the Musical! Yes, Yuna sings. Yes, how embarrassing that Final Fantasy has stooped this low. I think I cringed when I first watched the introduction. I mean, she even has backup dancers. Make me vomit. This is all in good fun, I suppose, if you’re really into this stuff – but don’t give the game a Final Fantasy title! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not quite sure I’ve encountered a positive reaction to this game so far, and I think it’s predominately because of the teeny-bopping, not to mention completely lame, aura this game is practically bleeding out. The seriousness in this game is lost in the constant bickering between Gullwing members, overkill on comic relief, clumsy, dense enemies, and 70’s disco music playing in the background (seriously...complete with bow-chicka-wow-wow beats).

And as I also said before, the game’s plot only takes certain directions if you’ve completed a certain percentage of it. To be blunt, you have to play the game twice to achieve 100% completion, because there’s two ways you could take during the game. Unless you want to spend tons and tons of time with this game, achieving 100% is almost impossible; it takes a lot more than simply investigating Spira’s secrets and completing missions. The entire game is almost like completing a bunch of tiny sidequests, and sometimes even overlooking the slightest detail could change the outcome of the final ending. Needless to say, I don’t think I could have ever finished the entire game without looking at cheats on the internet. I mean, c’mon – we all do it, especially to find out which secrets are where – but constantly looking up ways to finish the entire game is a little too much. The excitement I originally had for the game, therefore, quickly fizzled out as I realized that there was no real way to play the game. Instead, it was just running around the world, fighting bad things, and completing missions. Whoopee. I’m the type of person that expects a huge plot that unravels as you play a Final Fantasy game, so I ended up being very disappointed.

Overall: If your curiosity overwhelms your pocketbook, I say that you should give this game a try, if you dare. However, please take into account that this is NOT a very Final Fantasy-ish game, and it’s only a sequel, so set your expectations low. Very low. And expect singing. I do not recommend this game simply because of the ridiculous amount of time it takes to get to the point of the whole story, not to mention the awful music, and the lameness factor (on a scale of 1-10) reaches up to 11. If you can stomach all of this, then the real ending is worth seeing.


Recommended: No