Quite possibly the most recent entry in the Final Fantasy series to receive near universal praise; is Final Fantasy X worth the hype?
What Is It? You are Tidus, the young star of your major city’s Blitzball team. Fans fawn over you after every game as you come and go from your highrise condo. Life is good. Then, one day… BOOM! You’re transported to a seemingly distant world which seems to be a few hundred years in the past based on technology. But, hey, at least Blitzball is still a thing here!
A classic fish out of water tale, FFX takes many predictable turns after Tidus finds himself roped in with a girl, Yuna, destined to save the world. You know the drill; the fights are epic, the situation is dire, the characters learn to love, and chocobos are there to be raced.
The game relies heavily on the Sphere Grid progression system to allow you to customize your party. With experience, characters can upgrade their skills on particular paths. These make sense to start; the warrior increases strength, mage/magic, healer/healing spells, etc… The fun twist here is that, eventually, these paths start to cross and you can start mixing and matching abilities within one character. The system is a bit overwhelming, visually, but by the end you’ll have a decent grip on what you’re doing and will be leveling your characters how you want.
Otherwise, this is a pretty standard turn-based RPG game. The bosses are huge with tricks up their sleeves, your characters get special abilities, you heal a lot and move onto the next fight. One pretty big change from the FF formula up to this point is that FFX is mostly a very linear game. You don’t gain the ability to freely travel until you are nearing the final areas. This was/is probably the most divisive aspect of the game, but I did not mind at all except when it came to grinding.
You will need to grind to beat this game, or at least I needed to grind and hunt down top tier weapons to beat the game. The game does not make it very obvious where or how to do this. There is one area with a giant open field where you can do a lot of extra stuff, but it’s also incredibly easy to miss your first time there if you, you know, just listen and go where the story tells you to. The net result here was that the late game was stretched out quite a bit for me. After getting soundly trounced by a boss, I retreated back to the overworld then spent an extra 8-10 hours leveling up before returning strong enough to make it through the last bits of the game. There is nothing really wrong with this approach, but I would certainly have preferred if those extra hours could have been spread out over the entire game. Even if it was, technically, on me for not veering off the main path until the end.
The Best Part: The combat system here is fantastic. Battles play out incredibly smoothly, and the ability to swap party members mid-battle is fantastic and necessary to make sure they all get that precious XP. I was really impressed with how the game didn’t get bogged down in all of the big spell/attack animations that were possible on the PS2, but rather picked its spots wisely so most special actions only took up a few seconds allowing fights to play out quickly.
The Worst Part: Apologies to so many people, but I could not get into Blitzball. This is the side game in FFX, it is a strategic sport where you construct a team and play out games passing, dribbling, and shooting a ball while underwater. Maneuver into the right position, have the right player take the shot, and score the goal. This is the most minor worst part possible as this side-game is almost entirely skippable if it isn’t for you, but I still have to call out that the mandatory game or two you have to play were quite boring for me. I even tried later after recruiting some other talent to the team, but that had no effect on my feelings towards Blitzball.
The Verdict: Final Fantasy X does just about everything well, but for me it doesn’t really do anything exceptionally. The combat, story, world design, linear-ness, customization, and everything else were “just” good. There’s nothing wrong with making a game that does everything well, but without anything rising above that level, the overall experience, especially when wrapped in a 40+ hour playtime, ends up feeling a bit underwhelming.
How to Play: Original: PlayStation 2. HD Remaster: PS3/4, PSP, Xbox One, Switch, PC
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