A look back at: Final Fantasy X

 

The Final Fantasy series never seems to disappoint, even when it is disappointing. Or something like that. But whatever. Final Fantasy X is heavily revered, for being the first on the PS2 and also for just being a really interesting game overall. While I do miss my Active-Time Battle System, the one here isn't that bad since you can definitely switch turn order, or characters, on the fly. I guess the main issue at least for bigger fights is to get all of your characters in on the action so that everyone gets experience (cause if your character sits there and doesn't take action, no EXP for you!). There's as always a lot to take in, from the different niches of the characters and fiends, the concept of death itself, the new summoning mechanic, the minigames, the family relationships and the different races, the somewhat confusing tutorials (yeah, there were lots of them), just a lot to take in! But really, you do gotta experience it just to see what it's about, let's be real here.

Overall though, FFX did great. Combat was fun, even though it's heavily niched in favor by how certain characters seem to fair better against certain enemies than others, meaning some characters get way more experience than everyone else in some areas. The Overdrives, the limit breaks of this game, have some action commands to them. The statuses are a lot more urgent to treat than usual. The way levels work means that every time you gain a sphere level, you go to the grid and spend a sphere and a level grade to get a new stat or move, and the grid can get quite complex. There's a number of ways to customize this, such as making Yuna or Rikku into hardline fighters instead of their own niches, or giving Kimahri lots of black and white magic spells to be a backup mage. Then you got the many strange plot points, the annoying minigames such as lightning dodging and butterfly catching, plus the boring ones like Blitzball but all of these tend to getting those game-breaking Celestial weapons.

But other than getting those weapons, I played the game more or less normally. Surprisingly, the overall gameplay if you plot to the letter is much shorter than I expected. Everything's much more linear, you don't get to an overworld screen at all in this game and you just do the "dot-to-destination" ordeal a few other RPGs may have done. I'd say this is one of the weaker parts of the game. But hey, having maps and decent healing/saving spots is nice.  The cutscenes really slow the pace of the game, but overall, the story remains interesting. And that's even getting to the fact that the protagonist is a kid with a big mouth and an athletic attitude. But he warms up, as does everyone else around him, and the story ends up rather tragically as we realize that this kid's gotta defeat his father, and that he wishes for the endless cycle that Spira has to deal with must end somehow.

To think this Final Fantasy game would get a direct sequel, as opposed to just creating a new Final Fantasy setup or even a spinoff in a similar location. This definitely means that that's gonna be on my bucket list someday, despite what I've heard about it.