“Everyone has lost something precious. Everyone has lost homes, dreams, and friends. We can make new homes for ourselves, and new dreams. But the people and friends we have lost, the dreams that have faded. Never forget them.”
In 2000, with the Playstation 2 already released, Squaresoft released Final Fantasy IX for the Playstation 1. A grand adventure full of obtuse side content and immaculate presentation, FF9 felt like the culmination of generations of experience making these games. A year later, Final Fantasy X arrived for the Playstation 2, beginning a new era for the franchise that took all those lessons learned and used them to pivot the franchise into an exciting new direction. One that clearly owed thematically and structurally to its predecessors, but that wasn’t afraid to excise and build until it felt so much like its own thing that a new Final Fantasy was able to feel truly fresh. And it paid off in spades, because Final Fantasy X is maybe the single truest 3D masterpiece of the franchise.
The key differences with FFX and what came before it lie in the nitty gritty of its gameplay approach. Most notably, the ATB system that had been iterated on so prominently for the last several entries has been entirely replaced by a more traditional turn based system. Characters get EXP for participating in battle, but you can only have three in battle at a time. Every character has a specific use-case, and where the game brings it all together is in its switching system. You can switch an active character with anyone else in your roster on their turn, and the switched character will still get to act. This is brilliant, and battles will often center around figuring out when a certain character needs to use a specific maneuver against an enemy and swapping around to capitalize. Using Tidus to cast Slow on flying enemies that can petrify your party, then swapping over to Wakka who specializes in taking down flying enemies and taking them all out before they can move. It’s a really snappy system and it feels very good to play. After the molasses slowness of FF9’s take on ATB, FFX feels like a colossal readjustment for the better in every conceivable way.
The other significant changes are with the leveling system and the gear system. I won’t go as in-depth with these mechanics, just know that it’s all in the service of allowing the player to truly customize their experience. Traditional level ups have been replaced with an insane gigantic skill tree, with each level giving a character a single move along the tree. This allows you to pick and choose how you want to progress your characters - make your white mage the strongest physical attacker on the team, turn your nimble protagonist into a Vivi-tier black mage, do whatever the hell you want. Coupled with the new gear system, which completely removes stats from equipment and focuses entirely on passive buffs, mastery and excessive play can allow you to essentially turn your entire party into invincible demigods that turn every fight into a joke. But it’s a long journey there.
Narratively, Final Fantasy X centers around a pilgrimage. A few great characters, traveling together on a journey to a specific destination, making a few necessary stops along the way. FFX’s most obvious difference in world design from the games that came before is its linearity, but because of this narrative structure it feels kind of hard to fault it. Of course you’re going down straight linear paths - you are doing a tried and true journey and following in the footsteps of your forebears. It’s definitely an early mark against the game regardless, but I think this narrative conceit is the reason people are less harsh on FFX for this as opposed to, say, FFXIII. The game also does a great job pacing itself, every long linear path is usually punctuated with some sort of switch-up, whether that be a series of intense boss fights, a dungeon, a puzzle sequence, or some awful underwater soccer. There’s enough variety to keep things fresh despite the repetition of its general level progression, which is a huge boon that helps wipe away some of the disappointment from the lack of freedom.
Towards the very end of the game, it opens up substantially. Once you can go wherever you want whenever you want, suddenly there are a million things to do. Many of them are annoying, many of them are obtuse, and many of them are difficult. I didn’t do all of them, but I did go through the hassle of acquiring everybody’s Celestial Weapon and all of the Aeons. And while dodging 200 lightning bolts and playing like six hours of Blitzball did suck, that’s kind of… the fun? It’s an impossible feeling to describe, but there’s something about overcoming an obtuse and ridiculous challenge and getting rewarded by becoming so strong you can sleep through endgame superbosses that makes you feel incredibly accomplished. It’s sort of like the game’s own narrative structure - journey through something painful to experience a relaxing calm.
What a wonderful journey it is, too. Final Fantasy X tells possibly the single greatest story in the franchise, with a unique and well thought out world populated with interesting characters. Not all of them get tons of development, but they don’t have to. They all serve a role in both battle and the group dynamic, and they’re great to have around. When they do have a role in the narrative - and they all do - it’s always done with tenderness and weight. And I think that’s the best way to describe the game’s story and script: tender and heavy. So many great individual lines, individual moments, individual scenes. The early PS2-era animation and voice acting cruft largely wears off early on, so by the time you’re getting to the seriously impactful scenes you are all in, and the actors are doing great work. Tidus especially is given a lot of work to do, and actor James Arnold Taylor is able to pull it all off. From confident braggadocio to covert sadness to out and out despair, he’s able to make it all work. Even the infamous laugh scene works well in context and is called back to many hours later in a way that felt genuinely moving. I have no complaints about the narrative, which trucks along at a pretty good pace and ends perfectly. No notes.
So what we have here is a Final Fantasy for fans and first timers, one that reinvents so many aspects of the series while maintaining the core of its soul. Through its excellent storytelling, phenomenal soundtrack, and deep gameplay it marks itself as possibly the single greatest rpg of its era and easily one of the top Final Fantasy games.
I never want to play Blitzball again.
In 2000, with the Playstation 2 already released, Squaresoft released Final Fantasy IX for the Playstation 1. A grand adventure full of obtuse side content and immaculate presentation, FF9 felt like the culmination of generations of experience making these games. A year later, Final Fantasy X arrived for the Playstation 2, beginning a new era for the franchise that took all those lessons learned and used them to pivot the franchise into an exciting new direction. One that clearly owed thematically and structurally to its predecessors, but that wasn’t afraid to excise and build until it felt so much like its own thing that a new Final Fantasy was able to feel truly fresh. And it paid off in spades, because Final Fantasy X is maybe the single truest 3D masterpiece of the franchise.
The key differences with FFX and what came before it lie in the nitty gritty of its gameplay approach. Most notably, the ATB system that had been iterated on so prominently for the last several entries has been entirely replaced by a more traditional turn based system. Characters get EXP for participating in battle, but you can only have three in battle at a time. Every character has a specific use-case, and where the game brings it all together is in its switching system. You can switch an active character with anyone else in your roster on their turn, and the switched character will still get to act. This is brilliant, and battles will often center around figuring out when a certain character needs to use a specific maneuver against an enemy and swapping around to capitalize. Using Tidus to cast Slow on flying enemies that can petrify your party, then swapping over to Wakka who specializes in taking down flying enemies and taking them all out before they can move. It’s a really snappy system and it feels very good to play. After the molasses slowness of FF9’s take on ATB, FFX feels like a colossal readjustment for the better in every conceivable way.
The other significant changes are with the leveling system and the gear system. I won’t go as in-depth with these mechanics, just know that it’s all in the service of allowing the player to truly customize their experience. Traditional level ups have been replaced with an insane gigantic skill tree, with each level giving a character a single move along the tree. This allows you to pick and choose how you want to progress your characters - make your white mage the strongest physical attacker on the team, turn your nimble protagonist into a Vivi-tier black mage, do whatever the hell you want. Coupled with the new gear system, which completely removes stats from equipment and focuses entirely on passive buffs, mastery and excessive play can allow you to essentially turn your entire party into invincible demigods that turn every fight into a joke. But it’s a long journey there.
Narratively, Final Fantasy X centers around a pilgrimage. A few great characters, traveling together on a journey to a specific destination, making a few necessary stops along the way. FFX’s most obvious difference in world design from the games that came before is its linearity, but because of this narrative structure it feels kind of hard to fault it. Of course you’re going down straight linear paths - you are doing a tried and true journey and following in the footsteps of your forebears. It’s definitely an early mark against the game regardless, but I think this narrative conceit is the reason people are less harsh on FFX for this as opposed to, say, FFXIII. The game also does a great job pacing itself, every long linear path is usually punctuated with some sort of switch-up, whether that be a series of intense boss fights, a dungeon, a puzzle sequence, or some awful underwater soccer. There’s enough variety to keep things fresh despite the repetition of its general level progression, which is a huge boon that helps wipe away some of the disappointment from the lack of freedom.
Towards the very end of the game, it opens up substantially. Once you can go wherever you want whenever you want, suddenly there are a million things to do. Many of them are annoying, many of them are obtuse, and many of them are difficult. I didn’t do all of them, but I did go through the hassle of acquiring everybody’s Celestial Weapon and all of the Aeons. And while dodging 200 lightning bolts and playing like six hours of Blitzball did suck, that’s kind of… the fun? It’s an impossible feeling to describe, but there’s something about overcoming an obtuse and ridiculous challenge and getting rewarded by becoming so strong you can sleep through endgame superbosses that makes you feel incredibly accomplished. It’s sort of like the game’s own narrative structure - journey through something painful to experience a relaxing calm.
What a wonderful journey it is, too. Final Fantasy X tells possibly the single greatest story in the franchise, with a unique and well thought out world populated with interesting characters. Not all of them get tons of development, but they don’t have to. They all serve a role in both battle and the group dynamic, and they’re great to have around. When they do have a role in the narrative - and they all do - it’s always done with tenderness and weight. And I think that’s the best way to describe the game’s story and script: tender and heavy. So many great individual lines, individual moments, individual scenes. The early PS2-era animation and voice acting cruft largely wears off early on, so by the time you’re getting to the seriously impactful scenes you are all in, and the actors are doing great work. Tidus especially is given a lot of work to do, and actor James Arnold Taylor is able to pull it all off. From confident braggadocio to covert sadness to out and out despair, he’s able to make it all work. Even the infamous laugh scene works well in context and is called back to many hours later in a way that felt genuinely moving. I have no complaints about the narrative, which trucks along at a pretty good pace and ends perfectly. No notes.
So what we have here is a Final Fantasy for fans and first timers, one that reinvents so many aspects of the series while maintaining the core of its soul. Through its excellent storytelling, phenomenal soundtrack, and deep gameplay it marks itself as possibly the single greatest rpg of its era and easily one of the top Final Fantasy games.
I never want to play Blitzball again.