I will begin this review with a confession. I’ve never actually finished a Final Fantasy game. Ever. The reason is the same every time; I reach a point where I need to do such a massive amount of grinding to clear that I cannot be bothered and give up. Coupled with the fact that I have always been an xbox player it means that most of the series I have never played. The two I have tried the most at Final Fantasy Type 0 and Final Fantasy XIII (the latter is a series I liked; especially XIII-3 but my 360 died and by the time it dropped on xbox one I had moved on). I was though aware of Final Fantasy X when it launched though I never paid that much attention. I was aware of character of Yuna but the image I knew was her look from the X2 game and not the original. As a result I had no preconceptions about the game when I picked it up second hand from Cex; though a friend had warned me that the voice acting was perhaps not the best. I also was aware that despite being a re-master this is a twenty year old game so in many ways it would never be able to compete with more modern JRPG; that being said the game is being sold at full price on the Nintendo store I.e. £44.00 at the day of writing this. At that price then sorry I will treat it as if it were a brand new game.
Booted the game up on the switch in hand held mode and it loads smoothly and the opening load screen and accompanying cut scene look impressive. There is no odd glitching, pausing or other issues and I start a new game. We then get a repeat of the opening cut scene which seems a bit odd but whatever. We then get a lower quality cut scene rather than a full animistic which introduces us to Tidus who I immediately took a dislike to, more later on that. Tidus is a blitzball player and we get an extended opening scene which ends with a giant ball of water attacking the city of Zanarkand. This is the main antagonist Sin but that’s about all we know at this stage before we are thrust into the tutorial missions alongside the character of Auron who happened to just be there when the attack happens. Combat is Final Fantasy standard with turn based mechanics and a mix of normal attacks, skills, items and special attacks called overdrives. If you have played any Final Fantasy games in the series before FFX then you will know what you are dealing with. It feels fine though I do miss the skip turn and defend options as it robs the game of tactical options but it’s a small thing. The tutorial ends with Auron throwing us into the sphere of water and we then wake up in the ocean before being recognised by a group of masked people who do not speak the language we do. One however does and this is Rikku and she explains that the ship belongs to the Al Bhed and we need to earn our keep. When she asks where Tidus is from she breaks the news that Zanarkand was destroyed a thousand years earlier but says nothing more. We then have an underwater/swimming mission and again the game play initially feels fine. The resolution is a little low by modern standards but it’s not unpleasant or jarring. What is jarring though is the camera control or rather the lack of them. The camera is fixed position and you cannot pan around which is a real pain on an RPG map as explorations is much harder. We get our first boss fight and we are introduced to teamwork mechanics to defeat it. The fight is not bad and is not overly long and once done we return to the ship where we are still treated as an outsider. There has been the introduction to the side quest to find primers to learn the Al-Bhed language and Rikku chats to us but we are then attacked by Sin again; this time looking like some sort of underwater leviathan and we pass out after being thrown overboard.
Wake up and we are near an island and a floating football, well blitzball, and we get a cut-scene of Tidus performing an acrobatic move which greatly impresses an audience of men with a distinctly Polynesian vibe (and a design which was clearly heavily influenced by MC Hammer). Their leader is Wakka and he doesn’t believe Tidus when Zanarkand is mentioned but he agrees to take us to the nearby village and Tidus agrees to help him win an upcoming blitzball tournament. More cut scenes and we end up going into a temple to try and locate the missing summoner. Temples in FFX are puzzles and they are often quite difficult. On this occasion though the puzzle is easy but where to put the final sphere is hard because the slot is so hard to see because it is at the far end of the camera range and on handheld mode is very hard to see. More cut scenes and we meet Yuna and if the cover of the game box did not make it clear that there was a romance element between the two then this cut scene should end it. Foreshadowing? Its a billboard which is beautifully rendered but is not subtle. It is agreed that Tidus will join Yuna’s party and the party head for the port, stopping along the way to do a fight using Yuna’s aeon. Along the way there are the random encounters and we get enough experience to level up skills and we see the sphere grid and my god this is horrible. I’ll explain why later but this is a horrible skill tree.
Boat journey time and more cut scenes including one with Yuna and Tidus where the latter’s daddy issues come to the fore and the fact that Yuna insists that Tidus’ father died ten years ago which seems at odds with Tidus being told his home is a millenia dead. Sin attacks again and we get a mini boss scene which is straightforward but does have some nice tactics before more cut-scenes and we see the party’s destination being heavily damaged by Sin’s attack. Arrive for the aftermath and get a beautiful cut-scene of Yuna ‘sending’ the souls of the dead to the farplane. This is where the game does shine and with the music it is probably one of the best cut-scenes I have seen in any JRPG I have played.
Another map and path to a temple with more random encounters ending in more puzzles before we are off to Luca. More cut-scenes and a bit of exploration and the setting looks great with paths, hidden places to explore and a nice vibe. We then discover Yuna has been kidnapped so whilst Tidus, Lulu and kimahri go after her and fight a boss battle with some excellent scenery mechanics which needs you to charge a crane; Wakka and his team start the tournament. Rescue Yuna and we end up playing the blitzball final and I hate this entire scene. Games withing games are common in RPG games, the witcher has gwent, Old Republic has pazzak but they are relatively quick. This blitzball bit takes nearly 15 minutes and kills the pacing of an already slow story dead. Wakka’s team wins (despite never winning a game; guess power of positive thinking is stronger than I thought) and then he steps down to focus on being Yuna’s guardian full time. Auron reappears in time to help fight and joins the party, insisting that he is assistance is contingent on Tidus coming along and then it is off to the Highroads.
This zone was interesting. A couple of battles including one with a choccobo eater and we then catch up with Seymour and are told that the Al Bhed and a group of follows of Yevon will be luring Sin to try and destroy him. This predictably goes badly wrong and there is the first layered boss battle here. This was pretty tough one due to my relatively low damage output at this stage but once clear we get some more cut-scene and a brief period playing as Seymour is a change but the main thing I took from this section was the little scene between Auron and Kinnoc which show that the disaster was a set up to purge the Yevon church of non-believers (and weaken the Al Bhed). This is a nice twist and it is a shame it is not really carried on but the idea of faith vs science is a really strong narrative hook. The party head for Djose and another temple before reaching a giant elephant which will take the party to the next location. On the way Yuna is kidnapped by Al Bhed (again) and we fight as Tidus and Wakka against some kind of mecha octopus. Beat that and the story has us meet Rikku who had been controlling said machine but now joins us (After a brief scene of her stripping down to shorts and tank top with the camera coming to a stop just behind her backside. Really game? Really?)
We spend some time in Guadosalam and meet Seymour again. He proposes to Yuna for political reasons, we visit the Farplane
and then cross the thunder plains (annoying due to the constant lightning strikes which just slow us down) and we cross into Macalania. Yuna tells us she has decided to marry Seymour out of duty but before she can leave the party the Al Bhed attempt another kidnapping. Mini boss battle with the crawler which can stop magic attacks unless you destroyer a little drone which is a nice touch. Then we enter a temple and learn that Seymour committed fratricide and Yuna clearly knows this and is trying to stop him. Boss battle time and I get wrecked by anime. Is this the blocking moment that so many Final Fantasy games have reached when I have played them? Reload my save and when fighting the crawler I learn I can heal my aeon, maybe a tutorial said I could and I missed it, but interesting. That changes things. Before that though I interact with Lulu at the save point and get the line,
“I’ll add you to my list. Good luck, you’ve got a lot of work to do boy.”
The delivery of this line is beyond suggestive. Is there a romance side to this game? I check the wiki and find there is an affection system and it seems I had maxed it with Lulu. To be honest I just interacted her first at the save point scenes as her voice lines were the most interesting. Would have been nice if the game actually told you this system existed though. Anyway, a cut scene where we get Lulu riding side saddle and nearly learning that Jecht (Tidus’ father) is Sin and retry the Seymour fight. This time I wreck him using Shiva’s overdrive and more cut scenes. Another boss battle and then the party fall through the ice. Cut scene and then the party separates with Tidus waking up in the desert. Grind through and reunite with all the party bar Luna and we end up in the Al Bhed home. This is under attack by the Guado and we escape on an airship and after more cut scenes we go to rescue Yuna who is about to be married to a Seymour who is seemingly not dead. An annoying boss battle with a dragon type thing before a flash gordon-esq entry scene which ends with a wonderfully rendered scene of Yuna seemingly sacrificing herself but in fact she is just escaping via Valefor. A little cringy in terms of voice acting but it looks amazing.
Another temple and by far the hardest to date. I had to google in the end and seriously if you cleared this on the original game without a guide then serious credit to you. Fight another summoner and then it is Seymour round two but this time I was prepared. This fight is much easier than the first and in three turns it is done and it is time for the next zone.
You may have realised by now that the comments on each zone in this review have become shorter. The reason is simple. I was utterly bored by this stage of the game. I finished the game and the story and cinematic are amazing; the ending has great power and if you do not feel a measure of pain and empathy with what Yuna goes through then you shouldn’t be playing JRPG. Yet despite this massively powerful story I was fundamentally bored with the game and there are a number of reasons for this.
Firstly I felt no connection to the world of Spira. The zones look fantastic even though they are now two decades old; they have stood the test of time and whilst some of the NPC characters look like a cross between a bikini model and an MC Hammer tribute act there are plenty of them. And at no point did I care what happened to them. When researching after I finished I saw there were some side quests but there is not the usual collection of side quests you find in most RPG. Yes, these can be used to pad and draw the game out but as FFX is already quite slow paced this would not really make things worse. Without the quests you just feel you are passing through places with no connection to them. As the main story scenes are quite drawn out there was nothing else to hold me in and I just became bored.
Second is the sphere grid. I hate this. The grid has the character skills laid out in a sphere with a pathway between them and you move along the path by levelling up from killing enemies. Again fine in principle but the grid navigation is very clunky and padded out with blank nodes. These nodes convey no skills or stat boosts but you need to spend a movement point to get around them. This draws out the whole process of levelling up and you end up needing more levels than there are actual benefits and stat boosts. It feels like they wanted to stop you becoming overpowered too soon but this is a frustrating solution to the problem; it would be better to just level lock skills than pad things this way. The skill trees in most final fantasy games annoy me generally as they often constrain your character builds and give the illusion of choice rather than an actual choice and the same is true here; but as this applies to most games in the series I’ll leave that be.
Third is the party interaction; or rather the lack of party interaction. The interaction between Tidus and Yuna is fantastic, albeit a little heavy handed, but between the other characters it’s practically non-existent. I mean I completed the ‘romance’ element with Lulu without even realising I’d done it. I get that this is now an old game but it was released around 3 years after the original Baldur’s Gate and that had a massive character interaction element. Knights of the Old Republic came two years later and that had party interaction and quests using the same generation of tech. The whole point of a party RPG is learning about and working with the party but here it is missing. Rikku and Wakka have some scenes where the whole faith v science is discussed and there is so much scope for plot, conflict and growth here. I mean the whole Yevon plot line revolves around loss of faith, corruption of faith and ensuring compliance through fear and ignorance. It could be an incredible plot hook but it just gets lip service and this is not a system resource issue; but rather a design choice. There are good characters here, yes Tidus is annoying and I never quite got the point of kimahri but Lulu, Wakka and Auron are all solid characters who are never given a chance to shine.
Fourth is Yuna, or rather her game play mechanic. Yes at times in the plot she is a bit of a Mary sue but it’s not unbearable. In game play terms though she is a problem and one that most games using the white mage mechanic have, here though it feels amplified. Game designers seem to want to make sure you use the character so they boost the magic stats so you have a good healer but in FFX I was able to max out on potions at every trader without running out of Gil due to the drop rate and frequency of the random encounters. This meant I never really needed to use her a healer outside of boss fights and her aeons, whilst having powerful overdrives, were not really that useful in the general game as Lulu gave much of the same skills. Later on though Yuna becomes massively overpowered when I have her the -ga spells using black magic spheres and she proceeded to do 7k damage with standard weapons against the dedicated black mage’s 2 to 4k damage using the same spells. This meant that in the post Seymour fights I was one shotting a lot of enemies with her and Lulu and it became a dull grind. By the time I unlocked holy I was hitting 9999 damage without using any damage breaks or celestial weapons. The whole white mage build suffers if you initially constrain them as an uber heal stick but then give them black magic powers. Either give them white magic attacks early on and level it up (like Octopath Traveller did but that had balance issues) or don’t give them attack powers at all.
FFX is by no means a bad game, in fact in most measurable ways it is a solid and decent game. From a technical standpoint I respect it enormously but I just cannot bring myself to love it and it never grabbed my imagination in the way that even now KOTOR does. I can see why it ranks so highly but I can also see why it never eclipsed FF VII. The older game managed to be ground breaking and undoubtedly changed the genre whereas FFX feels like it is a bit of re-skin with some enhancements. There is nothing hugely new here and you get the impression that Square were playing it safe. FF XIII is divisive but at least it tried to do something different. It may have gotten it wrong on a lot of levels but it tried. If you have never played it then FFX is well worth picking up and giving a go and it is a rock solid entry in the JRPG charts but for me it definitely remains in the shadow of its older sibling and KOTOR.
Score 7/10
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