"We had no choice." "Always, we had no choice. Those were our magic words. We repeat them to ourselves again and again. But the magic never worked. The only thing we have left is regret."

Final Fantasy X-2 is a weird, cool, messy as hell little game. As a followup to the absolute masterpiece of Final Fantasy X it is undeniably a tremendous disappointment, but I don't really think that's the right way to look at it. I sort of look at it more like the Majora's Mask to Final Fantasy X's Ocarina of Time. In that sense, it's also a tremendous disappointment, but what can you do.

Final Fantasy X-2 is weird, man. Structurally the game thrusts Yuna and Rikku (along with newcomer Paine, who rocks but has pretty much nothing to do) into a Cowboy Bebop-esque scenario, roving Bounty Hunters with a cool motorcycle airship who fly around and take on odd jobs and do cool shit and shoot people with guns. It's certainly not what I would have come up with for an FFX sequel, but that's why it's rad. The tone is wacky and irreverent, the vibes are kooky, it's playful and sexy in the campiest and most sincere ways. You pick which locals to visit, find a quest to do, do the quest. This all builds up your % Completion, and at the end if you get 100% you get a big cool secret ending. That's all cool!

Also weird is the completely reworked battle system. FFX has a pretty simple but extremely enjoyable turn based system. FFX-2 has scrapped that entirely in favor of bringing back ATB and introducing Garment Grids and DressSpheres. It's a whole huge thing and I won't get into the nitty gritty, but safe to say that combat here is extremely customizable and you have nearly infinite options to tweak your party to your liking. Battles themselves are typically fast and frenetic, but very satisfying and fun to play. Once you figure out how you want to approach fights, it feels fantastic to tear through enemies and get to that awesome looking Rewards screen with that slick glimmering game logo in the corner of the screen. It's the little things that stand out! There are a lot of optional superbosses and bizarre endgame challenges that require careful play and management of abilities and DressSpheres, but the main game is shockingly easy - I killed each of the 5 final bosses in under 2 minutes each. Still, the depth is here if you want it, and the challenge can be found if you know where to look.

Knowing where to look is one of the big problems though. Final Fantasy X-2 points you in the direction of progression, but doesn't give you too many indicators for how to approach uncovering its TREMENDOUS amount of side content. Herein lies another comparison to Majoras Mask: Finding out where to go and who to talk to start and progress these sidequests, which often span multiple chapters across the game and are easy to miss or mess up. Some of these involve extremely frustrating and tedious minigames, so I stopped bothering with trying to get 100% pretty early on. I appreciate a game that has content meant for Freaks and Freaks only, but FFX-2 kind of feels like a whole game built around that. It's a little much for me, and so much stuff is either easily missable or tremendously lame to access that even I, a person who usually feels inclined to see and do it all, decided that I would skip a good chunk of content within only the first 5 or so hours of the game. I finished with 78% story completion, not too bad if I do say so myself. But the rest either required rigorously following a guide or dealing with some abhorrent minigames, so forget it.

The story is... boy, it sure is in there. I think the game tackles some interesting topics - the power of art to communicate feelings and the way artists can use their talents and life experiences to spread empathy is a very interesting theme for a Final Fantasy game. I just wish they were better explored. While the game does succeed at giving us the flavor of a lesbian road trip, and this does rule, everything else comes up short. It's either unclear, unsatisfying, or just plain lame. I lost interest extremely quickly in whatever was going on with the lead villain (whose name I forget even though I just beat him in a boss fight 30 minutes ago) and while the climactic scene of him embracing Lenne does somewhat work as a cathartic moment, it doesn't hit nearly as hard as it would if the game had been at all successful in establishing or expounding on these characters and what they represented. The similarities with Yuna and Tidus are so clearly intended thematically and narratively but the game barely ever mentions it and the whole thing winds up feeling half-baked. Pretty much a total miss for me, even if it was nice to see FFX's characters and settings repurposed for some interesting new themes.

"So cherish me. And I will cherish you."

For all its flaws, I'm glad I played FFX-2. The goofy sci-fi gay roadtrip vibes alone made this worth experiencing, there's a real heart and soul here that shines through under all the cruft and tedium. The UI is flashy and stylish, the character designs are audacious spectacles, the music is... well, it's there. There's plenty to like about Final Fantasy X-2. Even playing is usually pretty fun thanks to a great combat system, even if you can sleep through even boss fights by the end. But all that glitters ain't gold, even if the glitter got stuck to you during a dope-ass rave. The structure is overly harsh and unpleasant despite being cool on paper, and the writing and story feel downright unfinished. Still, games like this don't get made anymore. If Final Fantasy X-2 got made today and came out like this it would be lambasted by gamers and critics alike and be such a massive bomb that we'd be reading thinkpieces for years about what a woeful misstep this was for Square Enix's fortunes. So we should celebrate that a game like this got made at all, even if it came out kind of fucked up. FFX-2 represents a better time for its medium, and I can't help but be charmed by it.