The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Sin City

Phew! That's the last Big Final Fantasy over with! Now all that is left is the after-dinner mint that is Final Fantasy X-2, and I can move on to the letter G, which means Grandia II, another 40+ hour RPG. D'oh!

But man, I think I've already reached the summit, cos, Hot Damn, Final Fantasy X is FANTASTIC. Seriously. More games should be like this. I have to admit that, having played it so many times already, the beginning is kinda stale, but no matter how often you play it, the more you progress the better it becomes.

Despite the fact that the game is pretty linear from beginning to end there's a SHITLOAD of stuff to do, really. It's easy to spend hours and hours on the dozens of subgames and subquests, and you'll always be rewarded handsomely.

But what sets this game apart from the rest of the series, which was already not too shabby, is the incredibly well worked out Battle System. ALL games should be like this. Gone is the stupid Active Time Battle Gauge Thingummy, there is no more waiting for bars to fill, like on so many saturday nights where I live.
Instead, we get a small column on the right of the screen, indicating who gets the move when for the next 15 turns or so, and should you wish, the order can be changed using speeding up or slowing down special attacks. This is incredibly effective, cos it makes the battles run smooth and quick. No more waiting, whilst adversely giving you enough time to think, cos as long as you do nothing, noone moves.

Also party members can be exchange on the fly during battle, giving you a great opportunity of keeping everyone on the edge, instead of letting characters lag behind because they can't come along. This works out awesomely, for your party is really well balanced. They all have their own specialties that are necessary for specific monsters and situations. Tidus is a Time Mage with average offense, speed and defense, Yuna is a summoner and White Mage, Lulu is a Black Mage, Rikku is a Thief, Auron is a Knight, Wakka is what in previous FF's would have been called a Hunter I guess, with great accuracy and some status attacks, and Kimahri is turned into an allrounder whom you can form into anything you want. His Overdrive makes him prone to Blue Magic though.

And that is where the Brilliance of the Sphere Board system comes into play. Every character starts in his or her own area (although I've been told the International Version puts them all in the same place, with different branch routes to choose from) and becomes what the game requires, but after that you are free to do whatever you want, and you can customize your characters to your heart's content. Of all the times I've played this game, my party never turned out the same in the end, and it's a great blast no matter what.

Then there's the presentation aspect of things, which is also near-flawless. The graphics still look luscious to this date, and the FMV is unparalleled.
Voice acting is SUPERB, and let there be no mistake that the Japanese version is far superior to the Western one, with great humor, adlibbing and emotion, and....uh....Kimahri. Halfway through the game I was like "Okay, you can shut up again now!" but that's the sole exception. Seymour especially, is GREAT, putting down a cool Badguy voice that is weirdly kick-ass as well as polite and respectable at the same time.
And Wakka is THE BEST piece of voice acting in any video game EVER. Screw that stupid Jamaican accent they gave him in America.

Amazingly, the story is NOT messed up for once, despite the game's look reminding us of Final Fantasy 8 so much. It is a beautiful and believable story of love (done right for a change) in a world that has gone to misery, with racial issues, and a good dose of Religion vs. Common Sense problems thrown in for good measure.
The Bitter-sweet ending with its partings and its reunions rounds the story off beautifully and perhaps causes a tear here and there. If you're gay. Which I'm not. Honest.

But a Video Game wouldn't be a Video Game, sadly, if there wasn't something to complain about. Perfection being impossible to achieve, even in polygons.
For one thing, the Equipment system. Although it works well on the outside, limited as though your equipment may be, you get Gazillions of weapons and armor throughout the game, all of them having useful specs or abilities, so you tend to hang on to many of them incase you're gonna need that 'protect from silence' ability sometime.
Since you have to deal with so many items, and the game lets you carry A LOT, a Sort option would be mandatory I say, but it's not in here. Selling stuff will cause huge gaps in your inventory, making it look untidy, and hard to see if you already have a similar piece of equipment somewhere else. A very simple sort function, that IS present in the normal item screen, would have done wonders, but alas.

And I'll be frank, the Soundtrack is a HUGE dissappointment. Uematsu seems to have thrown his towel into the ring, and gives up a lot of space for Hamauzu and Nakano. Hamauzu is decent, although he doesn't seem to realise that there are other instruments on this planet beside pianos, and Nakano is just plain bad, with his nondescript wannabe-ambient tripe, and his non-ambient stuff is even worse. Easily the worst in the series.

Other than that, this is one of the best games EVER MADE in the History of Mankind, let there be no doubt. It's long, but doesn't get boring for one second, the Boss Battles are ingenious and really fun, because they all have a gimmick of some sort, or require a certain tactic for you to find out, giving it a kind of puzzle element, and they are really the highlight of the game. If that is possibly next to so many other bright lights.

In other words, this is a modern Day classic, showing that the Genre doesn't need to be trite and unchangeing, as long as you put your mind to it. I for one, cannot wait for FFXII to see what Magic awaits us there, Square have at least shown me that they still got it, although this was already 4 years ago.
I can't really give this anything less than a 10.

But I did find a couple of nice tracks for you, which are the least bad so to speak, they're all by Uematsu, unsurprisingly, and the last one is the Orchestrated Ending Theme, which I normally wouldn't provide as a sample, cos it's not representative of the rest, but there simply is not enough good stuff in here for 3 good samples:

Silence Before the Storm

Auron's Theme

Ending Theme


時々でいいから、いなくなった人々のことを、思い出してくださいね

posted by Ingen! @ 11:50 AM