Shoe in
Geez, am I glad it's finally over! YES!THE F IS FINISHED! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I think the biggest hurdle has been tackled with the Final Fantasy series, despite the fact that I have a gazillion games starting with 'S', at least they're not all the same series. Except for Super Mario, but who can get enough of our cute and cuddly little plumber? In fact, right after playing Super Mario Bros 3, we decided to get our own plumber at home, only it turned out he wasn't toilet trained and he kept biting people, so we had to put him to sleep.
He sure was hairy though!
So, as it turned out, Final Fantasy X-2 wasn't that much of an afterthought after all, since it still took me 30 hours to complete it, at 95%. To be honest though, it really depends on how much you WANT to get out of the game. I was playing this with my trusty Ultimania Guide at my side, and if you have that, you can squeeze every drop of gameplay out of it to try and get 100%, but if you don't, and if you know nothing about how this game works, it's easy to finish this within 20 hours tops, at least that's what it took me the first time, and miss out on a lot of optional stuff.
You see, the game has a rather unique way of build up. I think the ENORMOUS success of Final Fantasy XI had something to do with it, cos it kinda feels like Square was trying to bring MMORPG kind of gameplay to your home in a not so Massive Offline form, for only one player. The game is divided into 5 story-levels, and each story level has missions for you to find and complete to earn stuff. Most of these are optional though, and easy to miss if you don't visit every area every time on every story level. You only need to finish certain missions to advance in the story, so it's really easy to just breeze through this game in no time, but you'll be in trouble near the end.
You earn percentages by witnessing events and dialogue, so ofttimes, you just have to go to an area to talk to someone to earn some extra obscure points, so if you don't know what to do, you can basically forget reaching 100%. Even if you do find everything, the last 5% or so depend on your defeating extremely tough bosses so you might not want to bother. It seems you get one extra scene during the ending if you have 100%, I don't know its contents, so I couldn't say if it is worth the bother, but if you don't care much about the story, you won't want to bother.
Besides if you liked the story in FFX, you probably don't want to see how they put it all to complete waste in this game.
Again, like MMORPG's you get jobs to learn abilities, and there's a great variety, Thieves, Black Mages, Samurai, Berserkers, Item Shooters, you name it. It's not really necessary to bother with any of them though, I've been pretty much playing the first half of the game with the standard jobs you start in, and then I switched to Gamblers for the rest of the game, cos they get double experience and they have a high critical hit rate. The whole game is pretty easy, with the exception of the final optional missions, but you shouldn't bother anyway.
Also, it's a shame you can't customize your character by combining abilities from different jobs, which is a feature that WAS present in Final Fantasy V and Tactics, and indeed, in most Job-based RPG's, I'd wager.
The Battle system has shifted back to using Time Gauges again, which seems a shame after the ingenious system FFX introduced, but I have to admit, these battles are frigging FAST. Blink your eyes for a second and one of your characters might be wiped out completely.
It takes a while to get used to how fast these battles go, but once you're adjusted they work very well. It seems rather stupid therefor that the menu's are rather slow. They decide to make things flashy with lots of bright lights and special effects and starlets and thingies in the menu system, which can mess up the responsiveness of the cursor every now and then. It's no major deal, but it is something I noticed a couple of times, and it's annoying.
Another unusual change comes in the form of the Jump function you can use in dungeons etc. It's actually really stupid. They decided that Yuna needed the ability to Jump onto platforms and stuff, but it's really completely useless. You don't need to time or aim. You just keep the X button pressed, and if there's a particular place where you can jump, Yuna'll jump automatically. Greatest. Addition. Ever.
Grumbling aside, it is obvious that an experienced and technically proficient team has been working on this game, cos it's solid as a rock. It wouldn't be a Square RPG if it wasn't good fun to some extent, the Graphics are gorgeous, as usual (not a real surprise since they used about 80% of the environments of FFX. The new stuff is very impressive though), and the FMV is mind-blowing, great facial animation (when they bother to use it), superb motion capturing, the works.
As for the soundtrack, it's been widely criticized for, well, not being Uematsu probably. Don't expect any (melo)dramatic music, and don't expect any of the Ambient drivel from FFX either. Let's face it, all three composers did a lousy job on FFX, so how can it be much worse? Well, 'FFX-2' some would answer, and I'm probably the only one on this planet to disagree. People tend to dislike it because it's more of a pop soundtrack, to suite the High Bubblegum Factor of the game, but I actually think Noriko Matsueda does a better job at creating suitable BGM for the environments found in FFX than its predecessor's composers.
Samples!
I'll show you Hell!
Besaid Isle
Calm Plains
Anyway, if you don't mind a game that can be really really girlish and puerile at times, and that's even retrospectively insulting to the prequel, you have a very decent game on your hands. Very unusual for a Final Fantasy, but in now way a bad game at all. Stupid and unnecessary story? Yes. Solid gameplay and fun factor? Well, yes, but to a lesser degree than most FF's. Dungeons are kinda boring and straightforward, and battles don't offer much challenge or strategy, but it's decent enough in its own right.
An 8.0, ladies and gentlemen. Aren't we all happy?
Now, leave me alone, I need some more sugar.
posted by Ingen! @ 12:35 PM
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