Happy new year! What, you didn’t think I was going to build up the pre-Final Fantasy X Playstation 2 without getting to the main event itself did you? You may have guessed, but I’m not exactly a final fanboy. I like some games in the series, and like other less. Where does X rank in? Well, I’m not going to tell you. Yet. That’ll be another article. For now, let’s just look at the iconic series’ first entry onto the PS2.
Final Fantasy X starts out with a flashback, where the main character asks you to listen to his story, while the camera pans across the party camping out in the ruins of a city. Then you cut to the main character, default name Tidus, playing the silliest sport since Quidditch. This turns out to be a flashback in your flashback so you can flashback while you flashback. Confused? So is Tidus, when he comes to in some ruins and gets rescued by scuba divers. Eventually, he ends up washed ashore on the island of Besaid, where he meets most of the party, including his love interest, and sets out on a quest to save the world from the terrible monster that destroyed his home hundreds of years ago. For all that it’s a cookie-cutter plot, there is some decent political intrigue going through this game, and mildly interesting twists which, of course, I’m not going to get into.
The characters are mostly meh, with Tidus being pretty annoying and bratty for a main character. Wakka’s got his Hawaiian accent, Kimahri’s all stoic, and Rikku’s almost painfully chipper. The real up note is Auron. Everyone says it, but I’ll repeat; Auron is a badass. He always wears those shades, carries that booze for all he’s worth, and is the only one who consistently calls all the other characters on their idiocy. There’s a lot of that going around in this game. The villains are pretty bland. Really, they just want to destroy/rule the world. Nothing much to see here, move along.
The gameplay is pretty solid. Battles are turn-based for the first time in a while for the Final Fantasy series, but the pace doesn’t slow down much because of the way all the enemies and characters are animated. They never stop moving, and do a lot more than just bob up and down. Anyhow, characters’ abilities are an interesting mix of class and customizable. When a character gains a sphere level, they can move one space on the sphere grid, a massive board-game-like map of abilities and attribute bonuses. They all share the same map, but locks at various points make it so characters are stuck in a particular role until the locks can be removed. So at the beginning of the game, there are distinct character roles, while by the end of the game you can mould your characters however you wish. It satisfies both types of players, and that’s a pretty hard thing to do.
The replay value of this game is pretty limited. Sure, you can understand what the Al-Bhed are saying if you collect the primers on your first playthrough, but that’s not much. The character customization system means that you’re going to be stuck with characters who look pretty much the same at the beginning of the game, so there’s not much you can do to change things up until late in the game. I’d say this game is a “once through, twice only for the most devoted of completion whores.” It’s a fun game and all, but let’s not kid ourselves, there’s no particular reason to play the game again except for nostalgia, which you either have or you don’t.
Final rating? Well, I’ll try to be fair. I don’t want to get hate mail over this, because I know some people really like this game, but I also don’t want to underrate this game. It’s well-made, represents the first RPG on the system that made extensive use of voice actors (Shadow Hearts had some, but only occasionally), and set the standard for the system in terms of RPGs. Well, enough talk, this game gets a 8.2 out of 10. It’s better than your average game, and certainly better than most if not all of the other RPGs that preceded it on the system, but in the grand scheme of things, unremarkable. Unremarkably good, but unremarkable nonetheless.
Quick Tip: You might be tempted go straight through someone’s sphere grid. You might want to wait around at some lock spheres until you get key spheres to open them, since you can get to some potent abilities or combinations of abilities by doing this.
Fun Fact: Wakka and Kimahri have the same voice actor; John DiMaggio. He also voices Bender from Futurama.
If you liked this game, you should take a look at one or more of these games. Final Fantasy XII has good visuals and voice acting, a system of leveling up that is somewhat similar, and a plot chock full of excellent politics. The whole Xenosaga series (Episode I Der Wille zur Macht, Episode II Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Episode III Also Sprach Zarathustra) gets you into the story really well with gratuitous cutscenes, and there is some degree of customization of characters in it as well. Tales of Symphonia has a similar initial premise for the story, and has a similarly staggering array of sidequests.
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