Final Fantasy X, however, DEFIES opinion. My one word opinion of this game is "....uh....wa...be...gah". I CAN'T. It is my one true love and my worst enemy. I can't even say it's "okay" because it's worse than okay, in fact, it's so much BETTER than okay that GAHHHHHHHH.
But I am determined to finally put this piece of shit game behind me and cherish it for all time. I, for some reason, decided to torture myself by spending what was left on an Amazon gift card after buying a case of Surge, on the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster when I noticed it in the recommended items list at the bottom of the page. (Yes, I might be the only recorded case in history where the Amazon recommended items list actually resulted in a sale). And "why is this torture?" you might ask. Because...this is the 4th time I've played this game, yet I still cannot really tell you how much I liked this game.
So you know what? I'm going to give one word opinions on completely arbitrary aspects of the game and see if I can't find some sort of closure to my favorite game that I hate so much.
Even before the HD polish, the cutscenes and the music are pretty much a given on how great they
Ugh...and this is a "great" category. This is going to be hard.
Fantastic - The Combat System
This combat system is so good, I went on a mission to find a game that uses something similar. That is how I found my beloved Persona series. It's THAT good.
Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, FFX ditched the Active Time Battle thing for a traditional turn based system. (Yes, I'm saying this games combat system was better than my 3rd favorite game of all time's combat system). You can switch party members in and out of combat, something no other Final Fantasy at the time would allow you to do, so you can deal with various enemies strengths and weaknesses. Some enemies can only be defeated with speed. Some are armored and need a heavy hitting character. Some fly and can only be hit with ranged attacks and magic. Some...for lack of a better term, are blobs of goo that have a high defense to everything except a certain magic element.
While random battles do get repetitive after a while, the bosses really up the ante and can be quite difficult, especially after the difficulty spike that is Evrae, the guardian of Bevelle. Many of the later bosses demand an understanding of buffs and de-buffs as they can be exploited to take advantage of their weakness or to strip them of their strength. A late boss, Lunalesca, is tough as nails if you don't know what to expect. She basically forces you to fight her on her terms. Cure the status effects she inflicts, and she just kills you outright. It's a great part of this game, fighting a tough boss with very little health due to the Zombie effect, and overcoming it with cunning and adaptability.
I know that looks like a Gorgon head, but when you fight her, that's technically her butt.
I cannot express how good this combat system is. It's one of the most strategic I have EVER seen. It's remarkably fast for a turn based system. Obviously, you can slow things down when needed, but if you get angry and start mashing attack buttons, the characters will do it. You also have conversational options for some boss fights that act as buffs and de-buffs. You also have an Overdrive system, that acts like the Limit Break systems of previous Final Fantasy games, that can do massive damage but needs to be managed as some, NOT ALL, get stronger the more they are used.
It should be noted here that as long as a character made an action, you can level up all 7 of them easily. You can swap a character in on the fly (still can't express how cool this feature is) and you can do any action that doesn't end the battle, and they will get XP. Leveling up is so easy in this game, which is done in something called The Sphere Grid.
Pointless - The Sphere Grid
The Sphere Grid is a...thing? Place? Narratively speaking, I don't know what the Sphere Grid physically is, but it's where you spend XP to level up your characters. You can increase individual stats, learn new abilities, and so on. Basic RPG skill tree stuff. The only problem is that it's absolutely pointless busy work as all attributes are learned in almost a straight line. There is no choice. Sure, it LOOKS complex, but the path rarely branches off, and when it does, it does so only for about 3 or 4 attribute points.
It's a curvy straight line...if that makes sense.
With the HD Re-Master, I played with the Expert Grid (previously only available to the international version of FFX) which tries to alleviate this problem, but it still fails. The paths actually let you branch off onto different paths but they are so rare it would be detrimental to do so. Why would I have my white mage suddenly go down the black mage path halfway through the game? That would lead me to having some sort of half-assed white mage/black mage character that isn't great at being either.
The whole thing is pointless. If what I spend XP points on is decided for me, just fucking do it. Don't make me have to spend 10 minutes activating magic nodes in....space? My soul? What the fuck IS The Sphere Grid?
Before I move on to more meatier subjects, I absolutely need to cover a couple of optional side quests.
Broken - Blitzball
Blitzball is a fake sport that seems like a soccer/volleyball/rugby hybrid only under water. Yep, I know, that already sounds dumb as hell. The opening cutscenes however makes it look cool as shit, so I was surprised and excited that this was part of the game. It's mostly just a side quest, but the first game is mandatory so you need to play at least a little of it.
Too bad it sucks. The cutscene shows
a third dimension to soccer and the gameplay strips that from you and forces you onto a 2-D plane. All player interactions are done stat based, and turn based, because when I like turn based games I was OBVIOUSLY talking about sports games.
Works for RPG's, not sports.
Of course I played the hell out of it during my 1st playthough to get, what turned out to be mediocre items and gear, because the game is very easy to exploit. The team you are given, The Besaid Aurochs, suck ass mainly because they can't play defense and the goalie has a goddamn 3 catch rating. 3?!?! Even opposing teams worst shooters have a shot rating of 5!!! So what you have to do, is sucker the other team toward a defenseman, make a long pass to Tidus (protagonist and only good Blitzball player), rush the other teams net and hope to get a one on one with the goalie. Take the shot, score, then....do nothing. If you have the lead, just hang back near your own goal and the opposing teams AI just gives up and spins in circles. Don't swim anywhere. Just hang tight and run the clock out.
I can't think of any sports game where the opposing teams AI doesn't even attempt to pursue the ball carrier if they do nothing. I know this isn't a sports game but this mini game was so bad it really hurt the mystique of the overall game.
Also, why the hell can Blitzball players hold their breath for absurd amounts of time? This is never explained. I'd accept magic, I would, if somebody just said it's cause magic. Instead, Blitzball players just...do. It's weird.
Uuuuuuuugh - The Monster Arena
In the last third of the game, in an area called the Calm Lands, you can unlock the Monster Arena side quest in which you buy special weapons to capture monsters in the game and supply the Monster Arena with monsters and WHY YES, this is stupid too. Unfortunately, it is mandatory to complete if you want to fight the two hardest bosses in the game and boss battles are one of the best parts of this game.
In order to unlock Nemesis, you need to collect 10 of EVERY MONSTER IN THE GAME, defeat every normal monster in the arena, and defeat every created monster in the arena, all of which takes about 26,798 hours (approx). Nevermind Penance, who is the hardest boss in the game and requires also defeating every dark Aeon, each of which is incredibly tedious to even unlock.
What is it with Final Fantasy games making you do repetitive bullshit in order to take on it's biggest challenges? I could study to become an actual rocket scientist in the time it takes to do these. Even my favorite, Final Fantasy 9, made you do this stupid Chocobo Hot and Cold mini game that seems to go nowhere for an absurd amount of time. STAHP.
Good - The Plot
This entire game revolves around a flying Godzilla named Sin. It looks sorta like a demonic whale and destroys civilization with god like powers. Starting the game, you know Sin can be defeated, and HAS been defeated many times in the past, but it always mysteriously comes back. The world known as Spira, has adopted the religion of Yevon to combat Sin. Yevon gives Summoners the power to defeat Sin with Aeons, this Final Fantasy's version of summoning, and with the Final Aeon, a summoner can kill Sin, albeit, temporarily. A summoner is protected by guardians whose sole purpose is to get the summoner to the Final Aeon. The summoner, and the guardians, make up the "party" of this Final Fantasy.
As the plot progresses, you learn more and more about what a summoner must do to defeat Sin, as you play as the "every man" who knows nothing about this world.
Interesting - The Setting
The world of Spira is pretty facinating for a fantasy setting. It's not a medieval fantasy as various forms of technology obviously exist even if they are hard to define. There are guns, various machines, and even a salvaged airship. Ruins are all over the place from previous civilizations that have now died out due to Sin. Just by looking at the design, plus the lore, shows previous civilizations being more advanced in technology. The Church of Yevon restricts much technological advancement though, for reasons I'll get too.
Terrible - Tidus, The Protagonist
Tidus might be my least favorite character in any Final Fantasy game and that is saying something since Final Fantasy 8 had a womanizing cowboy who withholds crucial information through 2/3rds of the game for absolutely no fucking reason. Tidus acts as the main character, narrator, and every man of the game. The narration is fine, and oddly the characters best voice acting, and the every man status was necessary to have other characters explain things to him so the player can understand the world, its customs, lore, etc.
Tidus the protagonist is a ridiculously designed Blitzball player. Actually, he's the star player of the Zanarkand Abes!!!!....a fact he will make sure YOU FUCKING KNOW after repeating it 17 times in the first half of the game. Zanarkand is a city destroyed a 1,000 years ago by Sin, so naturally, every other character in the game rightfully thinks Tidus is a goddamn lunatic every time he brings it up considering that would make him 1,000+ years old. It's also funny because another character in the game, Rikku, tells Tidus NOT to tell people he's from Zanarkand, yet he just keeps fucking doing it! Wait, did I say "funny"? I meant "ludicrously stupid". And in case you're wondering, no, I don't know what a Zanarkand "Abe" is and I'm pretty sure the developers don't either.
DORK
Also, I don't understand WHY he is the main character. Sure, his dad is now Sin (I'll get to that later), but other than that, he has no reason to be here. In fact, his existence makes the story MORE confusing as revealed near the end of the game. He's actually a dream made manifest from the souls of the dead or whatever, it's fucking stupid. The game could have easily made him a side character whose arc could still include his dad becoming Sin, add some scenes about how his romance with Yuna is troubled due to her basically needing to kill her boyfriends dad, and give him a benign origin instead of the sorta real but not really dream person metaphysical crap.
Or better yet, cut him from the game entirely. This is the first Final Fantasy game to have voice-over dialogue and MAN, does it show. I'm not sure if it was the voice actor or the writing, probably BOTH, but Tidus is extremely annoying. Even people who have never played this game probably know of the
infamous laughing scene. Like...did nobody at Square Enix raise their concern that not only was this scene stupid and unnecessary, it's actively annoying? Tidus spends a lot of the end game whining about how this is "my story" as if the writers are desperately trying to tell us the protagonist isn't....
Okay - Yuna, The Summoner
Except for a prologue, the entire story is about Yuna and her guardians journey to obtain the Final Aeon in order to defeat Sin. And while a lot of other stuff happens in the middle, which I'll get too, she is a de-facto main character. She is a kind, demure, healer who is confident in her goals but conflicted about her abilities to be the hero Spira needs. As a character, she has a decent amount of depth, but her character arc is shaky with some shoddy writing.
She's kind of an idiot because one part of her story has her faking marriage to the main villain without letting any one else know her stupid, stupid plan. She only really agrees to do so after he's found out to BE a bad guy so she can send him to the Farplane (this games analog to an afterlife kind of). But yeah, her guardians are not told so they, you, have no idea why the hell she is doing this and has no back up when shit inevitably hits the fan.
There is also a shoehorned in romance between her and Tidus that was never very convincing. Yuna gets sad and starts crying under some emotional weight of what her fate is, Tidus decides this is the best time for a first kiss, then...love? Uh, yeah. Not to mention, after this underwater make out session, possible sex metaphor scene, her guardians are either totally indifferent or oblivious to the relationship until the very end.
Mixed - The Guardians, or, The Rest of The Main Party
I know a lot of people hated Wakka but I thought he was needed. Yeah, his hair is stupid, but I thought the game needed a best friend to Tidus who also seemed to be the last person to accept the token Final Fantasy mid game plot twist...wait. What the hell kind of archetype is that?
Derp
Meanwhile, Lulu is fine despite wearing a heavy winter coat while living on a tropical island and really loves showing off her cleavage. Also, her skirt/dress is made up of belts, which is awesome and very impractical. She is a typical JRPG character who is always serious about everything although most of her dialog is explaining things to Tidus.
Kimarhi is a man-sized, bipedal blue lion who doesn't talk much but has one of the better individual character arcs. He is also the only character who doesn't have a designated Sphere Grid path, letting the player decided what kind of specialty to assign him. Of course, I send him down Aurons path.
Auron is by far the best character in this game. He's older, has obviously seen SOME SHIT but you never really learn about any of it until late in the game, seems to be the only one who knows what's really going on, and he hits the hardest and has the highest health. It's hard to explain, but the dude is pure badass and is a huge juxtaposition to just how shitty Tidus is.
Finally, there is Rikku, who is okay as a character but her inclusion is....ewww. She is here for nothing but underage fan service. She is supposed to be 15 years old yet she is sexualized all the time in this game. It's even worse in Final Fantasy X-2 (WAY worse). However, she is Yuna's cousin and provides conflict to the entire summoning traditions, as well as a lead-in character about the shittiness of the church of Yevon because she is part of an excommunicated minority.
Laughable - Seymour, The Main Villain
I mean come on. Look at the guy.
What is with the ridiculous hair in this game?\
You see Japan? This is what happens when you let anime design go too far. This is, with out a doubt, the worst character design I have ever seen. How am I supposed to take that seriously? Dude looks like the owner of a bathhouse for clowns. In reality, he's a high ranking member of the Church of Yevon, which must not have a dress code.
It doesn't help that the guy talks like a bond villain. Also, villain motive is illogical and eerily similar to another video game villain (see Mass Effect). He thinks that Spira is full of pain and sorrow due to Sin, so his plan is to BECOME Sin so he can end pain and sorrow by...killing everybody. Ummm, no. Just, just stop.
Hate - The Cloister of Trials
Most of the traveling done in this game leads to one of several Temples of Yevon where you collect Aeons. In order to do so you must enter the Cloister of Trials to prove your worth to the Fayth to collect said Aeon. These trails are absolute garbage. They involve doing some easily solved but tedious puzzles. The puzzles are about putting glowing balls into certain slots to let you progress further into the temple and eventually reach the Fayth that give Yuna the Aeon. (More on the Fayth later).
If that sounds like not much of an explanation it's because it's totally true. These puzzles are completely trial and error. Try this ball with this slot = nothing happens. Try this ball with another slot = something glows. Try a different ball with the first slot = a wall opens. WHY AM I DOING THIS? It is extremely not fun and even if you know exactly what to do, I shit you not, some trials still take 15 minutes or more.
The last one forgoes balls for Tetris blocks.
More than just the gameplay of it, how does "putting balls in holes" prove your worth to the Fayth anyway? That's like giving the world's best golfer god like powers.
Again, they are not hard, but with literally nothing to go on, it's a giant pain in the ass. There are no hints or clues. You just try stuff with stuff and often when stuff works with stuff it makes no goddamn sense anyway and you just want to destroy the game disk and set fire to it's remains. Fuck these trials. By far, worst part of the gameplay.
Things - The Story
This part is tough and a reason why I've spent a week writing this thing. The story, on its surface, is decent. Pretty good even. The problem though is once you start asking questions, you can REALLY get sucked down a nitpicking waterfall that makes this look like the worst story ever told.
For example, there is one part in the middle where the party gets teleported to the other side of the world because they got to close to Sin's toxin (it can do that I guess). Once on this desert island, the native inhabitants known as the Al Bhed, the excommunicated people Rikku belong too, somehow learn Yuna is there and kidnap her. The rest of the party makes it's way to the city only to find Seymour's people have somehow
learned of Yuna's location, in a totally unexpected place, and mobilized an army to kidnap her from her kidnappers. Then, the party boards an airship to crash a wedding in the city of Bevelle, back on the other side of the world, that must have been thrown together in record time considering the party is on the only known airship in existence. All this takes place, depending on how long you wandered the desert, in about 2 hours of real time. What is the in world time-frame of these events? It seems like only a couple of days at most.
Possibly 40 years though. RELIGION JOKE
See what I mean? It's not something that major, but there is a ton of these little intricacies that make no sense. And even with the part in the previous paragraph, I can't complain too much because the wedding crashing scene is one of the coolest scenes in the game. In fact,
Awesome - The Wedding Crashing Scene. Watch the
start of this video, it's fucking rad.
Meanwhile, the Church of Yevon stuff is actually really good. It turns out, not surprisingly because Final Fantasy games do this all the time, that the Church of Yevon is corrupt. You learn the church took up worshipping a false god, took control over the only known means to defeat Sin, and covered up the truth so they could maintain power. The truth being that the false god, Yevon, and Sin is the same thing.
Still though, the Church of Yevon has a really dumb way of executing people. After Seymour fails to marry Yuna, a stupid plan to begin with, the church puts the group on trial for heresy. The church then sentences the group to death by...throwing them into a monster filled dungeon with all their equipment and weapons which you can just walk out of. Why? Why have an exit or at least one that can be opened from the inside? Or, why even have the dungeon? Just hang them or something........
.....sorry. Sorry. I'm nitpicking.
Still though, the story isn't all that bad. Somehow, all these individual crappy parts make up a solid main story despite all reason and logic. It's an anomaly to every piece of fiction I've ever liked, I swear. And the funny part is, it gets worse near the end.
Dafuq? - The Climax
Over the course of the game, you learn more and more about Jecht, Tidus's dad. You learn that he, and Auron, were guardians to Yuna's summoner father, Braska. He successfully killed Sin 10 years prior to the events of the game. Jecht proceeds to go missing, while Auron heads to "Zanarkand" to look over Tidus. You also eventually learn that a summoner must sacrifice him/herself to defeat Sin as simply summoning the Final Aeon will kill the summoner.
Tidus eventually learns that the Zanarkand he is from isn't real, and therefore, he isn't real. He comes from Dream Zanarkand, a place constructed by the dreams of the Fayth. The Fayth are the former inhabitants of the real Zanarkand who sacrificed themselves in a massive summoning to create Dream Zanarkand and give the power of Aeons to summoners. One master summoner, Yu Yevon, draws from their power to create Sin.
The Fayth. Yeah, yeah I don't know either.
Once you reach Yunalesca in the Zanarkand Ruins, she tells you that she will turn one of the
guardians into the Final Aeon and that the final Aeon will become the next Sin. She tells Yuna, that it must be someone with whom the summoner has a bond with, explaining why Seymour wanted to marry her in the first place (so he could become the next Sin). This also explains how Jecht becomes Sin. Yuna, of course, rejects all of this, Yunalesca flips her shit, and you kill her.
Finally, you go back to Bevelle to confront the last remaining church leader to spill the beans on how to end the cycle of Sin's rebirth. While he doesn't really have an answer, the Fayth in the Bevelle temple beckons you and he explains what Sin actually is. Yu Yevon inhabits Sin, and when Sin is destroyed, he simply inhabits the body of the Final Aeon that killed it, which he can do cause he's a magic tick now. Therefore, the only way to truly kill Sin is to kill Yu Yevon, because this wouldn't be a Final Fantasy game if you didn't pick a fist fight with God.
God is more....bug like than expected.
Are you confused? Me too and I've played this game 4 times.
All of this end game stuff is needlessly metaphysical. I'm okay with a lot of this being explained away by magic or whatever, but this went wayyyyy overboard. There are so many holes, SO MANY HOLES!
Jecht disappeared from Dream Zanarkand went he went out to sea for training and ran into Sin, but what the hell was Sin doing there? Just hanging out in Dream Zanarkand? When Jecht becomes Sin, it makes sense to go to Dream Zanarkand so he can get Tidus, so that Tidus would kill him and "set him free" and whatnot. There was no reason for Sin to be there when Jecht got teleported to Spira.
Why are some of the Fayth on top of a mountain summoning Dream Zanarkand and giving Yu Yevon the power to create Sin, while some Fayth are scattered around the globe in temples?
What about the war between Bevelle and Zanarkand that started this mess to begin with? Was Zanarkand really in that much of a danger of being wiped off the map? Bevelle was going to kill everyone and the last resort of Yu Yevon was really just summoning Godzilla and destroying everything in return? That's insane. WHY DID HE DESTROY HIS OWN CITY and not, say, Bevelle? I guess you could say "so that Bevelle would start a church to worship him, otherwise end up like Zanarkand", but HOW DID HE KNOW THEY WOULD DO THAT?
And this is jumping ahead, but history gets even more funky when Final Fantasy X-2 is entered into the equation. We learn that Bevelle had a doomsday weapon called Vegnagun that could easily have won the war outright but they refused to use it do to the whole killing everybody thing. Bevelle was never going to outright destroy Zanarkand. Also, why didn't Bevelle at least ATTEMPT to use Vegnagun on Sin instead of starting a damn church?
I don't hate the climax of this game. The ending is okay (you defeat Yu Yevon, Dream Zanarkand disappears as well as Tidus, and Yuna gives a speech that tried to be poetic about all we lost but the future is bright blah blah blah) and features some good drama. It is entertaining despite all it's "what the fuckness". I just think the game would have been better served with a cleaner script and a simpler payoff. Less magic, more logic.
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Well.....this got me nowhere. I guess after writing this super long thing nobody will read, is that my one word review of Final Fantasy X is ".....uh......". I got nothing. Lemme think, uh....
Uh.
Hey, that isn't so bad. FFX is "uh". Yeah. YEAH! This game is complete "uh". As in, don't ask me about this game because I'll just say, "Uh..." then go on a 10,000 word magnum opus.
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Follow me on Twitter where I spent a lot less time talking about Final Fantasy.
I have a much shorter review of my 3rd favorite video game of all time,
Final Fantasy 9, here.
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