I really, really like this game's cast and worldbuilding. Compared to other FF games I felt like this game's party dynamics were super strong. Very good characterization all throughout, but my favorites were Yuna and Auron.

I was not crazy about this game's combat. The sphere grid system is really cool, but most fights in the game feel slower than they should be. This is partially because of how party members are required to participate in a battle to get AP, and partially because once you get to the late game the damage cap becomes a very real obstacle in terms of killing things in a timely manner. Also, a lot of the endgame optional content seems to require a lot of grinding to improve sphere grids, and if it's not grinding, it's some ridiculously hard minigame like lightning dodging or frame perfect butterfly catching. The monster catching is similarly grindy. tl;dr, a lot of the gameplay in FFX is stuff that is cool on paper but kind of sucks to actually do. Also, shoutout to the remaster version for adding a bunch of superbosses to the map that makes running around in late game way more annoying than it was in the original.

However, the boss fights in this game are generally very cool. They require strategy and are the points in the game where I always feel like the choices I made on the sphere grid are tested the best, which leads to a lot of satisfaction. There are, of course, some puzzle bosses that are not very fun, but generally these are outnumbered.

Overall I liked FFX a lot and can see why it has as good of a reputation as it does.