Love the review, an interesting take on FFX. I just wanted to put my 2 cents in. FFX-2 was all about the combat. In my opinion it was a way for SquareEnix to say sorry for the crappy system in FFX. FFX-2 had a much more compelling battle scheme than X. I loved the game only for the great combat. The story can kiss my ass. ;)

Actually I think FFX's system was quite good for bosses. The Active Time battles from FFs 4-9 got boring when they got too easy or slow (they varied on how much this happened). I don't know of a surefire way to make required random battles actually fun for very long. The Tales of [Phantasia, Vesperia, Symphonia, Bubblonia] series tries very hard with button-mashing and but even that wears off after two or three hours.

Anyway, if you haven't tried FF5, you should. It's a lot like FFX-2, except more complicated and harder.

@LemmingRush

FFX's battle system is wayyyyy better than X-2's! You just don't like thinking.

@Sanders

I agree about the story being amazing. I think that's probably why this was one of my favorite games in the series. It makes me sad to hear that the graphics haven't aged well. Back in the day, it was one of the best looking things around. Heads and shoulders above the PS1 games, which didn't even bother trying to animate faces, and didn't have voice acting.

I remember getting the same feeling of "this would be a good place to explore, but I want to find out what happens next!"

@Rose: I disagree, they're just different. FFX-2's system is far more exciting for normal battles and the boss battles almost get that nailbiting sense of excitement from FF12, just without much of FF12's strategy. FFX conveys a much better sense of dread because the boss comes up with something that cuts EVERY character down to 10% HP and now you have all the time in world to figure out how to deal with it. But only three turns. The two systems just fit with two dramatically different games. Which, fortunately, FFX and FFX-2 are.

Graphically, FF7 was amazing when it came out and it's aged even worse than FFX. Square is good at impressing with graphics in every game, so their first next-gen game looks amazing even though it's superceded by its sequels. eg FF4, FF7, FFX, FF13 (probably...)

The real graphical problem is that, at the PS2's 480i resolution, for characters over 20 feet away, half of my complaints don't matter since you can't read expressions anyway (or notice the palsy). But they had excellent camera work in FFX, which means a good number of close shots of the head. Still doesn't really excuse the bad gestures and moonwalking, which in hindsight look distinctly PSX-era.

FFX is, without a doubt, the greatest final fantasy game ever made. It has been widely underrated by pretentious FF7 fanboys and all around ignorant reviewers. What do they complain about exactly? They complain that the game has too much story….. Wow….. that’s an intelligent argument. You people do know you are playing an RPG right? You do know that you are playing a final fantasy game right? You do know that Final fantasy games are meant to be plot driven right? You do realize that you are making a total jackass out of yourself right? FFX has the most epic, deeply moving, tragic, engrossing, amazing stories in video game history. It destroys FF7’s obvious, shallow, predictable storyline. The characters in FFX have deep inner conflicts and don’t just bitch about it like cloud does. There is actually character development in FFX and it has a very intruiging plot. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, so you the reader will just going to have to play it and find out. Anyway, complaining about FFX’s constant storyline is absurd for these reasons

1) The creators realized that during your 50+ hours of gameplay, there is an opportunity to tell an intricate and high-depth story. This was the first RPG to feature voiceovers at such a high amount. It was revolutionary for the time and set the ground-work for modern video game story telling. It allowed to the game to convey much more powerful messages and made the characters more like real people. Why wouldn’t they capitalize and make use of this technology and tell an interesting story. They took new technology and used it to create all whole new cinematic gaming experience. But of course, you bias FF7 fanboys don’t care about that. You aren’t grateful for any of the innovations this game made to the franchise. You just want to find something to complain about.

2) The storyline is amazing. It was the only game to ever make me feel emotionally attached to the characters. The story was moving and actually put you in the character’s positions. It envoked more emotion in me than any movie ever has. That’s pretty impressive considering I am a calloused bastard. So, to be ungrateful of the storyline and to complain about it, reveals your own immature and close-minded attitude.

3) Its not like there isn’t gameplay. These haters act like the game is 99% cutscenes when that really is not true. There are enough cutscenes to convey the story line, no more no less. There is a perfect equilibrium between the gameplay and being able to sit back and enjoy the story.

4) FFX like most RPGs centers around its story-line. When you play a final fantasy game, you should be expecting a story. Getting angry because FFX has too much story is like complaining that contra has too much action and not enough storyline. Of course contra doesn’t have much of a story-line! Whats the point of contra? To have fast-paced action and challenging gameplay. Whats the purpose of final fantasy? To put you in an amazing world, to let you experience a memorable adventure and to engross you in a deep storyline. I don’t understand what these people were expecting, coming into this game. Seriously, you FFX haters should not be writing game reviews. Keep your unintelligent, uneducated, bias, lame-brained, half-baked, thoughless, asinine opinions to yourselves.

Anyway, enough of that rant. Lets get down to business.

Graphics: absolutely amazing. It really showed off the ps2’s capabilities early on in the console’s life. It is what attracted many, many consumers to the console. I consider the move from 2D pre-rendered level graphics, and polygon character models, to 100% pure digital art to be easily as significant a leap as any of FF7’s accomplishments. We still have yet to see a final fantasy game that surpasses FFX graphically, 7 years later (that will change once FFXIII releases). FFXII really couldn’t make much improvements to the graphics, showing once again that FFX was ahead of its time. Now I haven’t even talked about the cutscene graphics. What is there to say? They blew us all away back then and they still do now. They went as far as games should ever need to go to look like real life.

Storyline: like I said before, it is amazing. It has, in my opinion, the best storyline of any video game ever (and beats most movies). FF7 gets put to shame. All games before then get put to shame. All games after then should be put to shame. I don’t want to spoil it, but there are some great plot twists throughout the game, especially at the end. If you haven’t played it and experienced the story, you are missing out.

Gameplay: perfect. It reverts back to a style we haven’t seen since FF3. finally we had a real turn based FF game where you could plan out your turns and strategize. Don’t think by eliminating the ATB bar it eliminates the challenge. This is a game of wits. There are some very challenging bosses in this game, trust me. It keeps things simple but diverse. Characters have basic attacking and defending moves but at the same time, a wide variety of special moves that were open for all characters to learn. It also introduced the ability to change armor, weapons and party members in battle. Also, it added certain elements of skill into the battles. When using overdrives (your most powerful attacks) each characters have their own special challenge in order to pull off an effective strike. For example, Auron required pressing button combinations at a fast pace, lulu required quickly rotating the analog stick and wakka required getting the right combinations on an elemental slot machine. These are just a few of the innovations FFX introduced. I would explain the sphere grid, but that would take a while. Trust me, its awesome ;)

Music: awesome. It had the highest quality video game music of the time in a technical sense and unlike its successors, FFXI and FFXII, the music is very memorable and it is filled with superb (and underrated I might add) tracks. I would recommend you go on youtube right now and look up “FFX to Zanarkand” “FFX battle theme” “FFX otherworld” “FFX Seymour theme” and “FFX challenge.” Those are just a few of the great tracks in this game.


Replay-ablility: tons, but it will take you a while to complete the game 100%. There are a lot of secret items, hidden bosses, secret aeons and side quests. It will keep you busy for a while but trust me when I say it is totally enjoyable. It gives you a long, satisfying gaming experience without wearing on your patience and becoming jaded. I always found FFXII to be the only FF game that was too long but FFX didn’t have the problem.

So overall I give this game a 10 out of 10 (the highest grade I have given any final fantasy game). The only ones that come second are FFVIII and FFVI (which I each gave a 9 out of 10). one thing I should comment on, which some people complained about, is the dubbing. The audio doesn’t perfectly match up with the words at some points but it really isn’t that big of a deal because
1) this was one of the first games to have frequent audio dubbing in cutscenes and in basic game activities. Be f###ing grateful!!!!!!
2) they creators had to translate and re-dub well over 5 hours worth of dialogue in a very short time. I don’t think people realize how much trouble that is. They needed to find hundreds of voice actors, reword numorous parts so that they could be fitted better and they had to edit in all the voices. Once again……. be F###ing grateful!!!!!!!!!!!
3) any translated Japanese game or movie will have some dubbing issues. Just accept it and quit your pathetic whining.
4) the story gets so serious and it draws you in so much that, I promise, you will not notice when a few words are a millisecond off base. Near the end of the game, the world is falling apart for your characters and for spira as a whole. The last thing on your mind will be tiny dubbing errors.

Well that’s all for my ranting. This game is perfect inside and out. If you haven’t played it, you are missing out. If you are one of the many FF7 fans who think that by playing FF7 they have seen all Square has to offer, you are TRULY missing out.

That was a rather epic post...a review in response to a review.

arbitor365, if you ever read this, you ought to start posting reviews at gamerhighway.com. You may find that you like it.