FFX: Love It or Hate It?

[Fleur]

I give it a more favourable reception than FFXIII and even then, managing to be better than FFXIII is hardly an achievement. Despite this however, it's still in that limbo between hate and love. I just can't physically love it. I don't hate it either, but it is still too bogged down with aspects of gameplay that I've just grown to hate and aspects of the storyline that made me want me tear my hair out from time to time. At best, I was very entertained by a lot of it, but I never could get myself to adore it like most people here. Do I think it's a bad game? Well...no, not really, but as a Final Fantasy game, it could have been a lot better and the team just managed to take the worst parts of FFX and crafted FFXIII out of it. Kudos to you, guys. The game gets a meh on my radar at least.

Okay, let me say that I hated Blitzball with a burning passion. FFX-2 managed to make me hate it even more which was just an astonishing achievement. It was just a snoozefest with each match being a dragging bout of boredom that wasn't enjoyable to play at all - goodness knows why I would want to keep playing it over and over again while scouting for new players. I also was not fond of the Cloister of Trials. While I appreciate them for incorporating into the temples some puzzles to break up the random grindy battles, the same tedious spheres thing was just an absolute chore that seemingly dragged out the game time needlessly while at the same time giving me in total several hours of totally unenjoyable to and fro running around. I had to do this...how many times now? And I ended up dreading the next parts of the game? That shouldn't be happening. I should be looking forward to the next parts!

I quite enjoyed the traditional combat system and I felt it was particularly well done, and about as solid as you can get for a turn-based system. I grew to appreciate the Sphere Grid thing even if I did hate it with a burning passion at first, even if it felt quite cumbersome a lot of the time. It was far meatier than what we got from FFXIII. I'm not too sure what I make of the linearity. On the one hand, the game isn't as horribly linear as FFXIII, which is a good thing. At least I can still interact with Spira, as in, speak with the NPCs, learn about the world, perhaps even grow to care about the plights of some voiceless NPCs whereas Cocoon and Gran Pulse felt like lifeless wallpapers (and shamelessly were). On the other hand, I wasn't fond of the fact that it was essentially a linear game of getting from one end of Spira to the next, mostly with straightforward paths stretching in one direction while an arrow was floating around largely useless. Still, at least game locations were revisitable, so I give it that.

Okay, the story. Yes, overall it was quite an enjoyable dramatic rollercoaster, covering the theme of religion and corruption well, and quickly becoming one of the most memorable storylines I've ever come across, but a lot of plot points just irritate me considerably. I found Rikku's and the Al-Bheds' goals idiotic. We capture the summoner to make sure he/she doesn't die yet use mechanical weapons to kill his/her guardians anyway? We save these few summoners yet sit back as Sin destroys another town the size of Kilika? Talk about the end justifying the blinking means! At the same time, Via Purifico was hilarious. We execute heretics by throwing them into a...sewer? And let's put in some guards at the exits to try and block their escape because uhh, you know, this plan is so great!

Seymour has to be one of the least impressive villains I've seen. No one bothers sending him after kicking his ass again and again and he just becomes a pest later on who just isn't threatening at all? Some stuff about Sin's toxin being a bit inconsistent? Yuna dragging out this whole "shall I marry him or not?" episode for a few hours, then deciding on doing it just to get to have a heart to heart with Seymour to get him to atone somehow (and possibly even send him at last!) when it's blatantly clear that it's never going to work. Oh yeah, and I'm not exactly a fan of Tidus. It's technically moreso Yuna's story, but hey! He's the leading man, right! He has to remind us that it's actually in fact entirely his story when Yuna's the one with such a burden of a destiny to follow. There's also the fact that at certain times I'm convinced that he's a total dumbass and the melodrama annoyed me more than anything. Wakka at one point says something so dumbass I wished they'd have just thrown him offboard. In fact, everyone's a dumbass, arguably bar Auron.

Oh, the laughing scene says hi. I know they haven't had much experience with voice acting then, but honestly, that was excruciating, yet oddly at the same time so bad it wasn't actually...that bad at all? Well anyway, while I don't hate it, I don't see the love either. It's all well and good if you do love it, and ultimately, different strokes for different people I guess, but I just couldn't make myself adore it at all.

[OmniWrench 8000]

Woohoo, 100th vote for Loved It!

Anyway, I haven't completed this yet. I've only completed IX, but I do plan to complete X next. I love the character designs and their emotions. I like Wakka and Auron the best. I also like Tidus, but mainly because he's voiced by James Arnold Taylor, who voices Ratchet in the Ratchet & Clank series.

Overall, one of the best FFs in my opinion.

[JCAragaki]

I absolutly love it.~~This is the first FF game I play and always is my favourite. I can really feel the emotions of characters. I especially love the scene when they arrive Zanarkand and everyone sillence and thought that yuna is going to sacrifice.
I love this type of battle system more than ATB as you got enough time to decide what is the best attack next instead of rush rush and rush~~~The soundtrack is awesome just like other FF games~~)~~the one thing I have to complaint is the English voice is just extremely terrible compare to Japanese. Luckily, I can read japanese and thus I played japanese version~~~

[soldier first class]

I absolutly love it.~~This is the first FF game I play and always is my favourite. I can really feel the emotions of characters. I especially love the scene when they arrive Zanarkand and everyone sillence and thought that yuna is going to sacrifice.
I love this type of battle system more than ATB as you got enough time to decide what is the best attack next instead of rush rush and rush~~~The soundtrack is awesome just like other FF games~~)~~the one thing I have to complaint is the English voice is just extremely terrible compare to Japanese. Luckily, I can read japanese and thus I played japanese version~~~

One thing I can say for FFX that you mentioned was the soundtrack. It did have good music in my opinion. The whole dream world thing threw me off though.

[Lirael]

I absolutly love it.~~This is the first FF game I play and always is my favourite. I can really feel the emotions of characters. I especially love the scene when they arrive Zanarkand and everyone sillence and thought that yuna is going to sacrifice.
I love this type of battle system more than ATB as you got enough time to decide what is the best attack next instead of rush rush and rush~~~The soundtrack is awesome just like other FF games~~)

I couldn't agree more! I would, however, like to add that the world is beautiful! I am particularly fond of Besaid, Killika, and Macalania Forest. =]

[vyxsin.]

I absolutly love it. I especially love the scene when they arrive Zanarkand and everyone sillence and thought that yuna is going to sacrifice.

i would probably want to Spoiler tag that comment..

But yes, I agree playing the japanese version was fantastic. Had to play the PAL version as well for the extra features.

[JCAragaki]

i would probably want to Spoiler tag that comment..

But yes, I agree playing the japanese version was fantastic. Had to play the PAL version as well for the extra features.

I am sorry that if I said anything wrong or impolite. may be I just too love this game and this is the first FF game I play, thus give me a great impression.

[ultimadream]

Love it.

In my opinion this is probaly the most polished FF game there is, while it is not my personal favourite I cannot help but stand in awe from it.

The game just excells in every area, It has the best battle system by far. It has the ATB we all love from classic FF's, set at a fast pace. You can change the party in battle! And you can control summons just like you can control the party. It's just so well done I never tire of playing it (I only just completed it 100% with Penance and I'm already starting it again.)

The game also broke boundaries for the series with its fully 3D enviroments & voice acting. At the time it was just beyond anything we'd ever seen in the RPG world. The scale was huge, while there was no world map, each enviroment was so detailed and interesting to explore I had no problem with that for FFX.

Then there is the story, which is so deep and interesting there is always more to look into with each replay. I loved how they departed from the futuristic style and built a religion over it. The characters we're all deep and had their own motives. You also had many antagonist's within this game all deeply connected to the party which made it all the more personal.

I cannot fault this game, if you played the Pal verion and had the challenge of the Dark Aeon's this game can last easily over 150+ if you try and do everything. As I said, I beleive this game delievers the best overall, While I have personal preferences to others in the series, This game will always be the best in my mind.

[vyxsin.]

I am sorry that if I said anything wrong or impolite. may be I just too love this game and this is the first FF game I play, thus give me a great impression.

Haha not impolite! Just don't want some poor soul who hasn;t played the wonders of this game yet to read and be distraught! Haha, unlikely!

[Bad_Brett]

I realise this has been discussed dozens time before, but anyway...

I just finished this game for the first time. I remember playing it for maybe 10 hours over at a friend's house ~10 years ago, but didn't enjoy it enough to buy a PS2. Anyway, my GF bought this game to me this summer because she knows how much I enjoy FFIX.

I've spent about 200 hours on it, beating Penance, maxing out luck stats, playing Blitzball and so on. But did I really have that much fun?

The most frequent complaints about the game seems to be that it's too easy and that the story is too shallow. I actually enjoyed the story, especially the religious aspects. It became a bit weird in the end, but in overall it was decent. The only thing I had a problem with was Tidus as a narrator, because it made me feel that I running around in some flashback.

The difficulty level usually is pretty low in most FF games, so no surprise there. In the beginning I actually enjoyed the Battle System a lot. The CTB made it possible for me to focus on tactics instead of button mashing. I also enjoyed the fact that the different characters were good at defeating different enemies. Status spells had finally become effective, which was nice as well.

But suddenly something happaned. The encounter rates increased drastically after a while. When I was crossing the Thunder Plains, I could run for a few seconds between the random encounters. And the enemies were always the same, except for higher HP and different elemental weaknesses. For the first time in my FF history, I avoided searching for treasure chests, just because I knew that I would be forced to fight 5-10 battles just to get there.

After very little exploring (and very much fighting), I arrive to the destinated area, which usually means several minutes of cut-scenes. There were rarely any weapons worth buying (I know they can be effective in certain speed runs, but still). There weren't any fun minigames or sidequests, except for Blitzball, which I will get to later. So basically, the first 2/3 of the game looks like this:

Cutscene --> Run in a straight line and fight 20 battles --> Cutscene --> Run in a straight line and fight 20 battles --> Cutscene...

You know what I mean.

There are different kinds of FF players: Some people are looking for challenge, others are only interested in progressing in the story and some (like me) love to explore the mysterious world to gain secret spells and weapons. But the problem in FFX is, there are no spells or weapons to search for. Every ability is visible on the Sphere Grid from the beginning. And you constantly get tons of new (but mostly useless) weapons. The only surprises are the Aeons, but you have to get them in order to progress in the story.

But when I got really tired with the game, I got to the Calm Lands and could start catching monsters and stuff. It was fun travelling around, looking for clues in Ah Bhed to locate secret weapons. I figured out the whole celestial mirror thing without any help from a guide, which also was fun.

But sadly, here's when things starts to get really bad. After some initial excitment of finding new aeons and celestial weapons, the game turns in to some endurance test. In order to beat the hardest bosses, you'll need upgraded celestial weapons, and to get those you must do ridiculously boring tasks such as dodgin 200 lightning bowls or playing that stupid chocobo game.

Then I realise that the bosses are so quick and have such high evasion, that there's no way I can beat them without drastically increasing my stats. So I customize weapons with Overdrive->AP, armors with auto-phoenix, start a battle with a jumbo cactuar... and then I press X until he's dead. When I want agility spheres or luck spheres... same thing, for hour after hour. And in order to just be able to fight these fiends, I must run around for hours capturing fiends.

And then I realised. After a while, everything is about grinding. Even blitzball. My strategy was to score quick goal, then swim back to my goalkeeper and do something else for 10 minutes. Then come back, start another game and to the same thing. It was fun to score 7-8 goals for a couple of time, but after playing 30 games I just couldn't see the fun in it. And when you want a break from the grinding, you can catch butterflies, race chocobos or dodge lightning bolts...

After about 100 hours of grinding, I decided to fight Penance and won after a few tries. I thought the battle would be fun and challenging, but again, it's incredibly repetive. Basically you do the same thing over and over for 30-45 minutes (quick hits and dispel). I really can't see why I'd ever want to do this a second time.

Having almost forgot what the story was about, I went to kill the final bosses... and to my surprise the were a lot easier than any of the special monsters in the monster arena. Anyway, I guess the ending was kind of nice.

Having thought about this for about a week, I realised that the game (in my opinion) has some huge design flaws that kind of ruined the experience for me:

1. Shorter distances between towns = more random encounters and less sense of exploration

2. Linear and repetive gameplay. Too many cutscenes and too few options

3. When the world finally opens up, it's all about endurance. Capture hundreds of enemies, fight hundreds of enemies in the monster arena, dodge hundreds of lightning bolts, race the chocobo for two hours until you get lucky, catch butterflies for hours until you learn the correct path...

4: Unbalanced battle mechanics make the boss battles boring and repetive. There are tons of abilities, but in order to beat the hardest bosses you'll only attack with Quick Hit.

***

It's like they wanted to make the game as an interactive movie, and then felt forced to include some really tough challenges for the hardcore fans. But all these challenges come at the same time and therefore interupts the story. All minigames take incredibly long time finish. You'll have to play Blitzball for 10-15 hours to get Wakka's sigil. Catching all fiends will probably take even longer. In my opinion it's neither challenging or fun... it's just about endurance.

And all this made me realise why I enjoy FFIX so much. Even on disc 1 it was possible to take a break from the story by chocobo treasure hunting or catching frogs.

Anyway, I bought FFX-2 and thought I was going to hate it, but to my surprise it I find it quite fun. I can actually run around searching for treasures without being interupted every other second. The minigames aren't perfect, but still quite fun in my opinion. The music that was supposed to be so bad is mostly ...jazz music? No complaints there. Nobuo is one of may favourite composers, but much of the music in FFX is crap. I agree that the battles are a bit easy, but overall I think that the game is quite fun and most importly, has much greater replay value.

So sorry for this long post, but I really can't get why people seem to love FFX so much (and how they can dislike FFX-2 so much). Are there actually those who enjoy playing Blitzball for 20 hours, winning every game with 10-0? Are there those who find it fun to fight 200 Earth Eaters or dodging 200 lightning bolts? I just don't get it.