kenshin27's Full Review: Final Fantasy X for PlayStation 2
Let me start off by saying that my experience with console RPGs is most likely very minute compared to most of the video game reviewers here. Prior to FFX, the only other RPGs I've ever played were Final Fantasy VII (which I remember being relatively impressed with way back when), Xenogear (which was just massive in scope. I don't think I ever finished that game), and Legend of Dragoon (which wasn't half bad). So I really don't have much to compare FFX to. But I figure more than enough people here have already written up comparisons so I won't have to do the same. I'll just focus on FFX. So here goes...
I received FFX as a Christmas gift and didn't have time to finish it until this past Friday (2/22). Between this, Grand Theft Auto 3, and Mechwarrior 4 (on the PC), I had my hands full for quite awhile. I had already played the demo disc that I got a couple of months back and was pretty impressed back then. Now it was time to have at it!
To Save the World in a Nutshell
Final Fantasy X's main protaganist is a young man named Tidus. Son of the greatest Blitzball player that ever lived, he has a lot to live up to and is doing rather well when we first meet him. During a Blitzball game, his city Zanarkand is destroyed by the giant, nigh-invincible creature known as Sin. During the assault, Tidus crosses paths with Auron, his father's old companion and the duo gets warped into the future and seemingly, another world by Sin. Upon arrival in Spira, Tidus becomes acquainted with Wakka, the tropical island Blitzball player and through him, Yuna and the rest of her guardians. Together, they strive to save Spira from the destructive Sin and in the meantime, also try to find a way back to Zanarkand for Tidus. Of course, there's the requisite plot twists and turns along the way and a nice, gentle theme throughout.
Eye Candy
The first thing most people will notice of course is the game graphics. Square has once again outdone themselves in this aspect. For starters, the full motion videos are simply gorgeous and enchanting to behold. Which is to be expected really and isn't all that impressive since FMVs have been pretty awesome going way back to the original Playstation. Remember the opening for Soul Edge? But the FMVs for FFX were definitely clearer, sharper and more vibrant than what I remember from Legend of Dragoon (which was the most recent RPG that I played). Or it could've just been my tv. ;-)
Moving on to the game itself, Square also did a great job with the background imagery. Detailed, colorful and mood-enhancing. The island scenes are particularly pretty. Definitely gave you a good feel for the environment your characters were in at any time.
Then there are the real-time rendered scenes that is just way ahead of anything else that I've seen for the genre. For the most part the characters moved smoothly and realistically and the faces were evocative enough to exhibit a decent range of emotion. Of course things still aren't perfect yet with the jaggies and obviously you're not gonna see individual strands of hair (a la the Final Fantasy movie) but it's a great start.
The special effects just get better with ever subsequent console release. Not surprising I suppose with the beefier hardware and all. But FFX definitely doesn't disappoint in this area, ranging from explosive and sparkling effects to wispy, translucent, ghost-like plumes and trails. Plus of course the now obligatory lifelike water effects.
Audio satisfaction
Sound effects were very good throughout. Nothing noticeably missing but nothing to get particularly excited about either. The characters are bit more chatty than usual though and sometimes they'll spout out taunts or bravado when entering or fleeing from combat. But, most of the time was spent listening to Tidus' footfall sounds as you ran around and the background music for the particular area you were in. Which leads us to....
The background music was quite good. Each different melody seemed to fit the background very well. Although I wish for once they'd mix up the combat music a bit. I mean you spend a lot of time in combat so after awhile the theme that pops up everytime you enter combat gets rather grating. The main theme of the game though is nice and gentle with a tinge of melancholy. Rather fitting for the story unfortunately. ;-p
Voice dubbing for this game was actually quite impressive. Any longtime fan of anime will know what I'm talking about when I say I typically haven't been a big fan of English dub-overs of Japanese games and anime. So the job they did with FFX came as quite a pleasant surprise. Each voice gave you a great feel to the overall personality of each character and the dialogue generally flowed smoothly and never felt too awkward or suffered from bad translation. So they definitely did a great job with the voices even though Tidus' voice did get a little annoying at times.
Gameplay
Geez, where to begin with this. There's just so much to do in this game but one step at a time I guess...
_Gearing Up_
You can equip each character with one weapon and one shield. Each character can only use one weapon/shield type. For example, Tidus uses a bastard sword equivalent and shield while Auron's more of a two-handed type with bracer. Wakka chucks a blitzball around, Rikku uses a claw-like thing, etc. The basic weapon/shield I think doesn't actually affect how much damage you can do or take. It's the abilities that the weapons have that makes a difference. Each item has up to 4 ability slots, some which are pre-filled. You can "customize" your equipment by using items that you pick up throughout the game. There are a ton of abilities that you can give your items but only a bunch of which I think are actually useful.
On offense, Scan is a pretty good ability to have early on since it'll show you the elemental weaknesses of the monsters and how much life they have left. It'll also give you hints on how best to defeat a particular monster. Besides that, none of the offensive abilities are definite must-haves. Plus a lot of the abilities are duplicates from the abilities that the characters can have themselves.
Defensively, you should outfit your fighters with Darkproof, Zombieproof, and Stoneproof as soon as possible. Spell slingers will need Silenceproof and Berserkproof. Confuseproof will be mandatory for just about everyone while Deathproof and Curseproof can round out an item. All the elemental protection abilities aren't as effective the stronger your character gets. And I've never found a use for the SOS abilities.
_Becoming Superman (or woman)_
A new and interesting method of increasing your character's abilities is the Sphere Grid. The grid itself is a huge collection of interconnected nodes that allows your characters to raise their attributes (Strength, Evasion, etc.) and learn new skills (Steal, Pray, etc.), Special Abilities (Mug, Dark Touch, etc.) and Spells (Cura, Fira, Flare, Holy, etc.). Each character starts at different points of the grid, usually in the general area of the abilities that suit them. Rikku and Kimahri are exceptions as they start closer to the middle of the entire grid, giving you more leeway as to how you'd like to develop them. To traverse the grid you need to collect Movement Points (pretty much the same as leveling in other RPGs). Each MP moves you one node forward or 4 nodes back. While it's true that you should plan carefully in the beginning and try not to backtrack as much as possible, this becomes less of a concern the more powerful you become since you start gaining MPs pretty quickly then.
Each node can either be empty or will give your character a certain ability when you activate them with the appropriate ability sphere. These spheres can be picked up by defeating monsters. You can only activate nodes that you are either on or adjacent to. Certain sections of the grid will also be locked until you are able to unlock them with relatively rare Key Spheres. There are 4 levels of locks. There are also special spheres that can do things such as teleport your character to the node of another character or allowing your character to learn a spell or special ability on the other side of the grid that was previously activated by another character.
Overall, the Sphere Grid is an interesting way to depict character advancement. However, the circular structure of the paths can make navigation a pain sometimes.
_Being a Packrat_
Throughout the course of the game, your characters will either pick up or have the opportunity to buy tons of miscellaneous items like potions. Some of the items you pick up are one-time use things that give you an ability for the duration of a combat. I absolutely never used those. The only items I used on a regular basis were healing or resurrection potions. So what's the point of having all these items lying around? Well, that's what you use to customize your weapon/shield and give your Aeons more abilities. There are also some unique items that you'll find along the way that are essential to the story or for side quests. One of the most notable of these items are the Al-Bhed Primers. Each primer translates one letter of Al-Bhed to English. So obviously there are 26 of these primers located throughout the world that you should try to collect. Without these, your interactions with the Al-Bhed will be a tad more difficult since you'll have to guess what they're trying to say to you.
_Kickin' Some Bootaay_
The combat system is a very easy to learn, basic turn-based system but with a slight tweak. You initially have 3 characters in combat. Now however, you can swap in your other characters whenever you like, however many times you like, without penalty. This makes things a LOT easier at times as you can fight for much longer than you could have. Plus you can give experience points to all your characters in a fight as long as you swap them in at one point or another. The amount of points you get are _not_ diluted if you have more than 3 characters involved so it's a good way of making sure that no one gets too far behind ability-wise. Although it does get kinda tedious after awhile so some characters will be less powerful than others still. Also keep in mind that once your front 3 are dead, the combat's still over. You can't swap in live people for dead people.
Actions you can select during combat include attack, defend, special abilities, skills, spells, items, change weapons, change shield, run, and Overdrive. Pretty self-explanatory really. Every character has an overdrive meter that charges a certain way (default is when they take damage). Once the meter is full, the character can unleash their super-duper-all-monsters-go-bye-bye move. And to make things a little less redundant, each character has to do certain things within a time limit to make this move more powerful. For example, with Tidus you have a running bar that goes back and forth and you have to hit X when it gets to the exact center of the bar. For Auron, you have to complete a series of button and keypad presses. For Lulu, you have to rotate the left analog stick repeatedly as many times as you can. Once the move is completed, the overdrive meter goes back to zero and you have to wait for it to refill.
Yuna also has a summon command that lets her call her Aeon's into play. When the Aeon's come in, everyone else gets out of the way so you fight with the Aeon only until it either dies, is unsummoned, or manhandles the opponent. Of course the summoning of the Aeon has to be a grandiose affair with a long lag time. Following the "kinda cool the first few times but really darn annoying after that" theme that console RPGs seem to make mandatory these days.
So what do you get for being victorious? Weapons, shields, miscellaneous items, and spheres. There is a limit to how many weapons/shields the entire party can carry but I didn't bother trying to figure out what that number was when I hit it.
_Other Things to Do If You're Really Bored_
As I mentioned earlier, the way your character charges up their Overdrive meter can be changed the further along you get into the game. Some options include charging when you heal someone (useful for Yuna only most of the time), charging when you do a successful attack, charging when you supply the killing blow, charging when it's your combat turn, etc. For the most part, I found that the most useful option was to charge when you dealt damage to an enemy. When combined with weapons that have the Double or Triple Overdrive abilities, you can really start pulling off your Overdrives like crazy. Although usually at that point the monsters don't live long enough for you to have to use multiple Overdrives. =p
The other customizable aspect to this game is with the Aeons. You can pretty much treat them like characters and use items to raise their attributes or give them skills and spells and the like. Waste of time in my opinion since the Aeons are usually powerful enough as they are but I guess if you really like to tinker with things, at least the option is there.
_Walking the Unbeaten Path_
As most other people have pointed out, FFX is more or less a strictly linear game when it comes to the story flow. You can't just take your guys and wander off somewhere. You basically go where the game wants you to. The only time when this isn't true is when you have the use of the Al-Bhed Airship. At that time, you can basically chill out from the main storyline, roam around the areas where you've already been through, and maybe do a miniquest here and there. And believe me, there's enough of these sidequests to keep you occupied for quite awhile.
There's also the game within a game concept that is Blitzball. There's only one part of the main story where you're introduced to Blitzball and _have_ to play it. After that section, you can choose to play more Blitzball at most of the save points. Blitzball is basically soccer played in a water sphere. And throughout the game you can even try to recruit players to join your team. It's an interesting diversion I suppose if you really like soccer but I wasn't too interested in it so I mostly ignored it. You do get to try to win tournaments in Blitzball and gain some items by doing so.
Some of the more interesting side quests include trying to find the legendary weapon for each character, attempting to capture all the species of monsters, finding 3 hidden Aeons, Chocobo training and racing, and hunting down Cactuars. The legendary weapons can be tough to get because you first have to find the deactivated weapon and then find the appropriate Crest and Sigil to activate it. Getting the Sigils however can be a royal pain in the rear since some of the things you have to do is _very_ repetitive and tedious and sometimes you just have to rely on alot of luck. Like dodging 200 lightning bolts in a row. Trust me, it's easier said than done. Or getting a 0 min. 0 sec. time in the Chocobo race. But when you _do_ manage to complete the weapon, they are pretty darn impressive. I finished the game with 5 out of the 7 legendary weapons and gave up on the last 2 because one required you to play Blitzball and I got tired of chasing butterflies around in the other one.
Bang For Your Buck
With so much to do, FFX really gives you your money's worth. Most people seem to be able to tear through it at around 40-50 hours. I got sucked up into doing almost all of the sidequests and beefing up my characters by doing Omega Ruin runs and managed to lose ~130 hours to this game before tiring of it and finishing it off. At that point getting through the final bosses was rather anticlimactic since Tidus, Lulu, and Yuna were so powerful that the bosses were dead before they could even attempt an attack. When Tidus can do 99,999 points of damage with one hit to the final Aeon, you know you've played waaaay too much. Anyway, I might return to it eventually to finish up the Monster Arena side quest and take a closer look at Blitzball. But for now, I'm all FFX'ed out.
FFX definitely lived up to my expectations with its stunning graphics, improved combat system, interesting characters, and involving story. Leave it to the Japanese to come up with a less than upbeat ending of course. =p Although I guess they did leave a little bit of vagueness after the credits for people to make of as they wish. Overall it's a superb game fit for just about anyone except for, as my friend pointed out, people with no patience. As most RPGs are wont to do, it does tend to meander around a bit with the special effects and repetitive "random" encounters. They should have included an option that would allow you turn off all those excessive Aeon animations. But besides that, a recommended game all the way!
The people that we have lost, and the dreams that may have faded.... never forget them.
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