When Final Fantasy X was released back in 2001 I was very new to the series. I had only recently gotten a PlayStation 1 of my own and was busy catching up with all the cool titles I’ve missed on that platform. When I finally got my first chance to play the game properly years later, I didn’t like it at all. The tone, the characters, the setting – it all just didn’t click with me and I decided to move straight into XII. Almost another decade later I decided to give this game a proper chance. And since Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster version I’ve got on PC also had the direct sequel of the game and a bunch of complimentary stuff, I decided to give them a go as well. This was… something.
Something irks me about the setting of Final Fantasy X and I can’t quite explain why. Maybe it’s the island/tropical mood of it. Maybe it’s the size. There’s something off about it that was one of the hurdles I had to overcome during the first hours. The characters I met and played as didn’t help either – they were pretty annoying and full of themselves. But I decided to let the game tell its story and let it grow on me. I’m glad that I did, though, since the setting turned out to be far deeper than just sunny beaches and oceans, with a surprising depth to its internal logic and society. And the whole thing clicked.
Having finished the game, I can now call the storytelling and the themes of Final Fantasy X to be among the strongest in the series. Especially ever since the series started using voice acting. While not without blemishes, especially on the visual side (they really didn’t know what to do with the camera back then) and occasionally with voice acting (the English one), there is a strong, well paced narrative and, to this day the best attempt in the series to tell a linear story, while also keeping the traditional jRPG gameplay. Characters develop in very interesting ways, plot points are well delivered even if you know them (I had the story spoiled for me years ago, and still enjoyed it), music is consistently amazing, themes are great in their mixture of hope and bleakness and everything is just right.
Gameplay mechanics might be some of the strongest in the series as well, even though I personally didn’t enjoy them. There’s an interesting shift from racing for the highest damage numbers of previous games to constantly using the correct counter-actions. Use magic against enemies weak to magic, blind and weaken physically powerful enemies, hit flying enemies with the ranged character – all of this has been done before, but it is enforced here like nowhere else in the franchise. While this game isn’t exactly designed to be comfortably played without leveling up, it is possible, because ultimately it’s the correct use of resources that wins fights, not just higher stats. And it’s all powered by the “sphere grid” system for leveling up, that removes the usual “levels” and “experience” and instead gives the players control over how and when each attribute or ability will be assigned to a character. It’s also a great idea and clearly had an influence on the leveling up systems ever since, even without looking at something like Path of Exile that reuses the concept almost verbatim.
However, while the concept is good, the execution is a bit questionable. I found it ultimately too heavy on micromanagement and tedious and eventually resorted to the cheat buttons and options available for the Remastered version of the game just to speed things up. You see both leveling up and doing the counteracting to enemy types requires constantly going into menus and watching animations for every little thing. The simple act of bumping your strength to +2 isn’t happening automatically when you kill enough enemies, but is instead a manually triggered action with several boring steps and menus. While in combat you might often need to bring in a character to do a specific action, only to then switch that character out again because the original formation is more optimal for the fight past that. It’s nice that you can swap characters in and out at each turn, but honestly I would’ve rather preferred more limited character change, but a 5-character party that has more options with less menus and animations to go through. And even the Sphere grid could be simplified, since the majority of players will most likely play with the standard “grid” won’t stray from the “intended” character development, until the ending parts of the game where they will start experimenting.
Yet, I feel like a lot of people can live with that, because it is a cool system. What was often criticized, yet personally I found it well done, was how linear most of the game is, up until the very end. I felt like it actually made perfect sense for the game pacing and was a far better attempt at this type of storytelling than the garbage that we would see later in XIII. You have the ability to do pretty much everything apart from occasional side-quest things on your first trip, but also get an option to return before the final confrontation. And at the same time this whole linear progression doesn’t feel restricting but rather like going on a real journey.
If only some emotional scenes didn’t get broken up by random encounters occasionally… Or “puzzles”. The “puzzle” temples are genuinely some of the worst I’ve seen in my life and some of the side-quest things, especially those changed or added in the International release of the original game (and retained in this modern port) are obnoxiously rude and not fun. Also the final dungeon of the game feels absolutely unnecessary, but luckily the very end is really well done.It is weird to look at the game now and be amazed at how cool a lot of it still is, even visually. It has a surprising mix of pre-rendered elements and real-time visuals that, I sometimes even wish, could’ve been continued in other titles. But then I also remember how limiting it can be and in this game lead to a really annoying fixed camera.
But… I really liked the story of Final Fantasy X. I was glad to have gone past my initial dislike of it and admire what it did. Looking back at it now, it feels like the last consistent and fully thought out Final Fantasy title, at least in terms of original releases. And I can easily see why the decision to make the first ever direct sequel to a Final Fantasy came to be…
But boy could I not handle it at all. It took me about 3 hours into Final Fantasy X-2 to give up and not want to play it again. Gameplay-wise, it’s a fun refresh on the “ATB” system of older FF games, with faster-paced combat and on-the-fly switching of “jobs”. From what I’ve played of the game, gameplay was by far it’s best element. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to hold me. Because the rest of the game is horrifying.
If Square Enix really wanted to make a dumb stereotypical “chic comedy buddy action” game in lieu of Charlie’s Angels, I’m not sure why they chose to make it a sequel to a Final Fantasy about death, loss and acceptance of that loss. You get the dumb stereotypes, you get the horrible “jokes”, you get characters turned into flamboyant over the top idiots for no reason, you get horrible music and you get the plot that undermines the whole point of the original game. It is insufferable even on its own, but going straight from X feels like a slap with a rotten fish to the face.
So i couldn’t finish force myself to play more of it. With the terrible Lightning Trilogy, I guess, I just had more stamina, but with this, even though it’s far less disgusting than Lightning Returns, I just couldn’t. But maybe you can, because the gameplay really seems pretty fun.
Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster is a really nice package to have. It’s not an absolutely perfect way the compilation of all things FFX could’ve been handled since there are still some differences from the original releases that some might care about and the way the cheaty buttons were implemented is a bit annoying (I wish turbo could’ve been assigned to a controller button), but it’s a nice version of the games that are worth checking out if you like Final Fantasy. And the PC version didn’t have any serious issues on my system either, running really well. Not a Final Fantasy I would want to revisit in the future, but certainly a collection I’m glad I have played.