Final fantasy games were very solid to begin with. They were stern JRPG’s with interesting stories, odd creatures and riveting sound tracks to mix it all into an amazing experience of gaming that other companies can’t possible over throw what Square Enix produced. Some day they even owned the 90’s. So with the Final Fantasy franchise entering it’s big mile stone, the hitting of double digits, the next single letter title we would see for a long time, the solid tenth game of the series, will it hold up? Final Fantasy X has been regarded as a work of beauty, and when you’ve been reviewing games for a long time, you start to take a hint that what is said about a game is normally true. I expect great things from this game.

So the game starts off with a rather peaceful yet solemn scene of our heroes and heroines in a ruined town with what seems like fire flies buzzing around. This is rather an interesting opening, as normally this section shows off the game play and cut scenes to make it look really impressive. I wouldn’t mind, but the opening sequence to this game when you start up a load is exactly the same. So I have to sit through the same cut scene twice. I could skip the intro scene, but then I didn’t know what the opening was going to be, and I normally love to see all that a game has to offer, including the opening scenes. So thanks game for making this already seem uncreative. The only real difference is that Tidus, the protagonist says a few lines before the game begins.

Well, another scene shifts first to a light filled city, where I thought it was another cut scene and was waiting for what seemed like years before I figured I might be able to move. It turns out Tidus, the only character you can name in the game, is a Star player of the Zanarkand Abes, in the fictitious game of Blitzball, which I guess is like underwater basketball-football mix. Tonight is the night of the championships, and as you are about to move to the stadium, you are greeted with some over voice.

Now this is where the game really started to annoy me. I thought this was a monologue of an NPC that knew Tidus’s farther, Jecht, that was speaking directly to Tidus some time ago, but apparently the entire thing was in fact a sports opening to the finals. What’s more, you had to wait around to listen to the entire thing. It wasn’t spaced out or timed so that you could walk the entire way and hear the whole thing. I got to the next area in mid sentence and wanted to hear more, but I couldn’t turn back and the next section was starting. This infuriated me so much, and I had to restart my entire save just to listen to it, which turned out to be pretty much irrelevant. These are little things, but it really felt like they just didn’t care when making this game.

Then as the blitzball game starts, there is a scene change to water moving on its own, and a guy in a red cape watching over it. The way he moved made me think we was the bad guy! He’s actually one of the characters you play as, called Auron. Then you fight some enemies; get used to the combat, and then get sent of to an entirely new world called Spira, with pretty much no explanation on what is going on. I will be honest, this entrance to a final fantasy game isn’t as riveting as FF VII, in that game there was music, tension, heck, even some explanation to why they were blowing up Midgar sections, all while keeping it gripping. This….just feels weak, period.
Now, it is justified, just bare with me. Throughout the first 4-7 hours of the game I was cringing; rolling eyes; slapping foreheads; and pointing out so many flaws about why this could possibly be the worst final fantasy game of all time it would take forever to list them all here. My biggest one is that before you get to play a Blitzball match, you are given a detailed tutorial on how to play. When you’ve sucked in all the detail, it turns out Yuna is kidnapped, and you don’t actually play the game at all. Why do that? Why give me so much information to take in then tell me that I can’t play Blitzball? That’s exactly like saying I show you a board game, I teach you how to play and I set out the game for you to join me. And then, I tell you to move to Mars or something. It’s just plain rude.

And when you do get to play, the game is out right cheating you rotten with the hardest (and meanest) team with no play experience. What’s more, the one move you need to make this all so much easier can only be obtained like twice in the game, once in Luca before the game, and then again once you get the airship hours later after the tournament, and even then getting the move is vague, you only have one shot before the story continues, and even if you do get it, the game still cheats you stupidly for something so early on in the game. It’s such a kick in the teeth.

But it is justified! It is blatantly obvious I am bashing this game (and I am, to an extent) but really, everything is justified later on. I gave up on this game for like 3 weeks because I had lost all faith in it. My OCD then compelled me to complete it, just the story and that’s it. At that point, I hated, absolutely hated this game. The fact you can’t level up and need to move things around a grid to get stronger, the fact that the game doesn’t let you explore properly until like 3 hours into it, the fact that no-body bothered to ask your name, not even Yuna, and just call you by the alias “Hey” and “You”. I know it’s all voice acting and it’s all very well done, but could they have AT LEAST ONCE, just had a texted with “players choosen name” and then the voice acting, to show that they in fact know his name? Then it could be justified. But no, not even Yuna, whom had the hots for Tidus, didn’t even ask his name. Great bond of love there (sarcasm alert overloading!).
Now now now….I hate to admit this, but the story does get better. Not just a little better, not just a dramatic change of better, but a whole new spectrum of better. Somewhere in the game, the story turned from terrible to actually decent. I am not sure how this happened, but at some point I had to put aside my rage for this game and finally conclude that the story telling actually is really, 100% legit ingenious. Yes there are flaws, I have stated that, but at the same time, I realised that this story is being told to a different way that other Final Fantasy games have been told.

The main character is as clueless as you are, clueless as you with sin, with Spira, with Summoners, with how things work. You are ignorant, but so is Tidus. He doesn’t know things like the other protagonists of final fantasy games did. For once, you can be in his shoes and grow stronger with him, with everyone. It really is a fantastic character simulator procedure. All that anger I felt for FF X? Probably that I didn’t like how it was different, but it can also tie into the fact that I was angry at no-one telling me what was going on or getting straight answers. I was feeling probably what Tidus was feeling; being trapped in a new world where everything is different, being looked at for not knowing what a High Summoner was, or what a Guardian was.

It is actually really clever and it took me a while before I could actually recognise this. After that, the game started to become emotional, the scenes became more beautiful and the story was all that much richer. I may not have liked it, but I guess it was effective for getting me involved with the story. I must say that some of these scenes were so touching they nearly made me cry, which is amazing considering when before they would have nearly made me cry for it being so terrible (Laughing scene anyone?).
That’s the story, magnificent if you give it a go to the very end. The combat is like many other final fantasy games. It is turn based, although I’m not sure why the back of the box (PAL) states “New conditional turn-based battle system”. Didn’t the original Final Fantasy games have that? Like, turn based? I can understand it’s different since some of the games before that were active battle systems. It was time based instead of turn based. But here, it’s nothing new. Breath of Fire beat you to that.

That being said, there is a chart that says when which character can attack and when which enemy will attack, and the alterations when you perform a move (such as hastega on the party). That’s pretty handy. Also in combat, every character has a certain aspect they are used for. Wakka is the one to attack flying enemies. He deals more damage to them and if anyone else tries, then they will almost always miss. Tidus is for agile enemies, Auron is for taking down tough enemies, Lulu is used for magic and so on, you will be reminded of this countless times in the beginning of the game.

A different thing to this final fantasy game is that the bosses are really really challenging. The further along the game, the more challenging the boss fight, where it comes up to hard as nails hard when reaching the conclusion of the game. These bosses can include different aspects that keeps the fight fresh and vastly different to other, normal fights, such as switching where the players are physically on the battlefield, fighting against a time, unable to use mana or summons, the list goes on and on. The bosses can also get really annoying as well as their difficulty spikes, but it actually feels like fighting a boss in this game, instead of just it taking longer than a normal battle. These boss fights are really interesting and since they come at times you wouldn't expect, then it also keeps the flow of the game active like the final fantasy of a realm would.

Despite me preferring the time based system of FF VII, FF X has quite the counter measure in this argument. You can easily switch team members over without missing a turn. I cannot tell you how much I love this feature. Constantly I would see an enemy that I think “Oh, this guy would do well”, and then switch that out, but then having to wait till a complete turn over before I can use that character. Here, see enemy, select character, use character, really is as simple as that. It makes the battle feel all the more alive knowing you can pick anyone from your party at any time, like it actually feels like your team is with you the whole time.

As mentioned before, you don’t “Level up” in this game, but otherwise get sphere moves, which you can use to move around the sphere grid, and then use physical spheres to use on the nodes which power that character up. This gives more flexibility to the user, but otherwise I find it a painfully slow experience from the traditional “Lvl up!” standard. What’s more, in order for a character to receive AP (the “EXP” in this game), the character must perform one action in the battle. So you can’t really use summons anymore to use their powers to destroy your opponent. Well, you can, but that means only Yuna will get the AP, which would be bad. It isn't that hard to include everyone in the battle, just a little hassle really, and the AP isn't split between characters, which is nice, and it helps you feel that complete team work effect when in a battle. It's rare that a game can emulate that, and I haven't felt it so strong there since playing Star Fox 64.

The music starts off okay, then bad, then fantastic in my personal opinion. It’s a bit of a mix in my eyes. Some parts I find it just plain annoying, but in most other parts I find the music decent at the worst case. The battle music thankfully takes a page out of FF VII’s book and makes it awesome to listen to over and over again. Other sections like emotional scenes work out surprisingly well with music, setting the tone just right for a tugging of the old heartstrings. In various other sections, I can justify some, but rarely can’t with others. Also nice to see the sound effects level out nicely with the background music. The voice actors also know what they’re doing. I can actually feel the personality brim from them with every sentence. It could have been terrible like a poorly dubbed anime, but seriously, the voices are so clear and distinct in their personalities that it’s possibly one of the most well done sections of the game.

For the most part, the graphics are what to be expected. The backgrounds are superb, the monsters designs are creative, the weapon design is a really nice touch to the battle grounds, and everything really blends together to create a mysterious and intriguing environment. I might say the surrounds are a little too stereotypical for a fantasy adventure genre, but that’s just me. When the game goes “SUPER GRAPHICS MODE” (i.e. when the game uses superior graphics for specific cut scenes only), it’s not really a smooth transition, and I think I prefer the normal game graphics, because although the cut scenes look gorgeous, the facial expressions are really stiff and unemotional. Also, I really despise rendered backgrounds. I don’t know why, they just get on my nerves. They feel really out of place in this game. The good looking 3D models looks like they’re standing on a frame half the time, and it’s even worse when the rendered background has to animate and run at 4 frames a second, and make the whole thing feel outdated compared to the smooth flowing movements of everything else.

The game includes a really simple equipment section. Weapon and armour, that’s it. However, at a certain part in the game, you can customise your weapons and armour to an extent, giving them the attributes you want (such as HP +20% or 1MP cast), so long as you have the right items for it. This adds the level of depth that the RPG needs in item customising and tactics, and it is really a nice touch. You can create powerful things with this. However, there are (as with several final fantasy games) ultimate weapons that are far superior to normal weapons. These are found in three parts, finding the actual weapon (which is useless), and then finding the crest and Sigel. These two will make the useless weapon powerful. Oh now there’s the fun of performing seemingly random tasks to get the items!
And last but not least, Blitzball is a mini game that can be played at ones own leisure after the Blitzball tournament. Blitzball is a game played underwater, with two teams of 5 against each other. One plays as the goalie, while the other four play as the actual ball passers. The aim is to score as many points as possible, while preventing the opposing team from scoring any. The team with the most points wins. If it’s a draw, it goes into over time until the score is no longer even.

The game is rather interesting by adding RPG elements into a sports based game. This is yet another example on how sports games can be made infinitely more interesting while still keeping the sports feel. There are several factors that determine the outcome, and if you ignored the tutorial, then after playing the game for a while you’ll start to understand the mechanics. It’s rather simple actually once you get your head over it, and I must say it is a load of fun. The Bltzball players level up depending on how much they participated in the match and so does the enemy team! You also have these weird moves that can inflict sleep or poison onto the enemy team player which can make you score, or can cause you to loose the ball. It’s way more addictive that I like to admit, and can easily pass a few hours.

Overall, I give this game a 8.4/10         When people say this is a work of art, I can’t really find a fault in that, it is a very emotional game (Eventually… ) but I wouldn’t go as far to say it is the best final fantasy game. Most emotional and tear jerking of the series yes, but not the best. The combat wasn’t up to scratch for me since I prefer the FF VII format more, and I found the weapons and armour thing to be a weird mix of incomplete and balanced at the same time, but it was too simple for me even with the customising aspect. If you want a good story, then this game is worth your efforts, as for everything else, it’s worth playing if you’re a final fantasy fanatic. For the rest of us, just keep in mind it’s supposed to be a “different” final fantasy game, and everything will fall into place.

Darkpower508 :

Sowong : Fair points to be made. In fact the game is much better at telling more than one story than I previously thought. This links to the villians, because there is a lot of power play in the religion of Spira, and how the bad guys of the game use the religion as a way to get what they want or to twist the situation towards them. Yevon banned machina, but certain preists and guards used them anyway, since there are unspoken "exceptions". Since most of the characters were firm believers of Yevon, they too are on a journey that changes their perspective on what they believe in, and the expressions and voice acting does a terrific job on making you believe their struggles as well. It does feel very alive.

In essence, this is very similar to Christianity of the modern day and age and many of its stereotypes with it, and it does teach us that being a good person relies with your own actions, and not just your religion (if any). But apart from the main bad guy, the rest seemed bland in comparison. Oh how could I forget that wondering scholar that gives you information on the lores of the land? Darn, he was my favourite character. He has such a wonderful voice, and the information there does richen the place with more depth of history. When you look at it, FF X does have a much more packed and informative world than some other RPG's I know. Everything also nicely ties in as well, with still some room for debate (although not as much as some people might expect).