This review contains spoilers
Before I begin gushing about this game I just want to say that the version I played was the remastered version so my experience might differ from the original slightly.
Final Fantasy X is up there as one of the greatest JRPG's I've ever played. The gameplay, the story, the music, and the world design are all incredible and work together to make a truly special experience.
Focusing on the gameplay specifically, I was a little surprised coming into this game that it did not have the ATB bar like the other Final Fantasy games I have played at this point, but I quickly adjusted to the new style. The game uses more traditional static turn based combat but it adds a turn meter that determines when each character gets an action instead of just having every character on both sides of the confrontation get an action per turn. The turn meter is really a solid gameplay choice in my opinion and really allows for you to control the flow of combat once you get spells like slow and haste, which change up the turn order. Being able to get a combo of both spells going and then being able to just blast the enemy for multiple cycles and get a large amount of damage feels super satisfying. Inversely it can also up the tension exponentially when you can see that the enemy is about to get several turns in a row and you need to hope that they don't manage to wipe your party.
The turn order also ties into another mechanic I'm a really big fan of, party switching. The game lets you swap out who's in your party at any moment during combat (assuming the character isn't at 0 hp or any other state where you can't control them) and it allows you to try interesting new strategies with the entire party instead of just eventually having you stick to just a set party for the rest of the game. It also really helps with trying to level everyone up by letting you switch in a weaker member, let them get a hit, and then switch them back out for someone stronger to deal more damage.
Speaking of leveling this game handles leveling in a different way than most final fantasy's, that being that there technically aren't levels. Instead of levels you get the sphere grid, which is an incredible way of handling RPG stats. Everytime you level up in game you get a sphere level, which you use on the grid to move to different spots and then use spheres gained from battle to unlock new abilities and stats for your party. I really like this approach because it let you fully control how your character evolves and grows over the course of the game and encourages experimenting to try and see what kind of build could work for your character. The grid never feels like you're struggling to make it move forward as long as you're actively fighting monsters on your way through the game either, which also gives a feeling of constant progression which I love personally.
The game also has its own limit break style system known as Overdrives, which I personally think are a really good evolution on the concept. You start off with only being able to charge overdrives through taking damage but as you go through the game and fight more battles you begin to unlock more and more ways to charge them, such as through doing damage to enemies, seeing your party members get damaged, or through healing. This lets you customize your characters further and really set how you think they should function and create your owns kinds of builds and strategies between sphere grid customization and overdrive selection.
Another gameplay system that I think is worth noting before I get to the story is the summons system. You have a character who can summon this game's version of summon monsters, known as Aeons, and then the summons on the field actively fight as if they were their own party member with their own spell lists, overdrives, and health instead of just showing up for one attack and disappearing like in the other Final Fantasy's I've played. This system allows for some really fun strategies and timings of when to pull out a summon to save yourself from a high damage attack or to deal some really big damage yourself over a few turns. Summoning as a mechanic also ties deeply into the story of this game which elevates this mechanic a bit for me; as I tend to like it when game mechanics are important plot wise.
Getting into the story it revolves around Tidus and Yuna, a sports star taken out of his own time and sent a thousand years into the future and a summoner who is training to defeat the ancient evil Sin respectively. They're accompanied by Yuna's guardians, Auron, Wakka, Lulu, Rikku, and kimahri as they all travel across the country of Spira in order to find a way for them to defeat Sin once and for all; as well as a way for Tidus to get home. I'm going to not get too deep into spoilers or specifics for this game because I feel like the story is something that should be experienced firsthand, but I do want to talk about a few spoiler filled points; namely Tidus's relationship with his father Jecht, Yuna's journey, and the reoccuring antagonist of the game Seymour.
Tidus and Jecht's relationship is a big plot point throughout the game, with Tidus slowly discovering more and more about the kind of person his father was as he follows his footsteps throughout Spira and has to struggle to mesh this with his preexisting feelings on his father. What I find really interesting about this is how the game explores the dynamic between the two of them without the two of them meeting in present time until the very end of the game. The game really manages to portray how Jecht and Tidus's relationship was before while also showing how Tidus grows to understand his father and who he was, but still having him be able to acknowledge that even with what Tidus knows now he still can't see his father as a good person. It's a really interesting dynamic that adds a lot of emotional impact to the climax of the game. Tidus's journey of understanding with his father is also interwoven throughout the plot with Yuna's journey to try and stop Sin.
This journey is particularly interesting to me because of context we learn later in the story, that being that Yuna will have to die in order to defeat Sin in the traditional way. Yuna's determination to defeat Sin and do whatever it took, and then Tidus and the group's determination to steer her away from this path and find another way created a really compelling narrative for me and I loved the dynamics that come into Yuna's character and relationships with other characters that stem from this. My favorite scene around this is one on the trek to the final temple where Tidus finds a message sphere that Yuna had dropped that functions as her goodbye to everyone else. It's such a bittersweet moment hearing her talk about her life and her friends like this as a goodbye knowing that by the time anyone sees it she'll already be gone, and it really impacted me emotionally. This journey and how she feels about what is necessary in order to make people happy directly coincides with the main villain of the game, who holds the exact opposite ideology and resolve that Yuna has.
Seymour is this game's Kefka/Sephiroth equivalent (despite not staying around the main plot as long as them), and I think he may stand up there beside them as one of my favorite villains in gaming. Seymour is a troubled high ranking religious leader of the group that regularly sends out summoners to try and defeat sin. Within FFX's story he tries to get Yuna to become his wife so that he can use her to defeat sin and then become the new sin himself to wipe out Spira all together. While this does sound like a pretty basic villain plot, I do think the reasons he does what he does is the most interesting part of him. Seymour parallels Yuna in how their upbringings were and it creates a really interesting dynamic between the two. Both were missing or separated from their parents due to sin, both got dragged into the battle against Sin because of their parents, and both of them ultimately have the goal of freeing Spira from the sorrow that Sin brings; just with different methods of reaching this goal.
The two of them function as different sides of the same coin in their background and their surface level goals, but one key difference lead them down two different paths: Isolation. Yuna grew up and had friends in the form of Lulu, kimahri, and Wakka to keep her happy and to make her want to try and defeat sin to preserve everyone's happiness. Meanwhile Seymour ended up completely alone, and slowly grew to think that the only way to end the sorrow of those in Spira was to end Spira itself; due to noting how those that perished around him stopped suffering when they were no longer living due to the no longer being of this world. Seymour not having anyone to steer him away from that line of thinking and to be there for him is ultimately what turned him into the monster he becomes throughout the story. He and Yuna form an interesting commentary on how one's environment growing up can influence and change the person they will become, and to me it is was handled really well throughout the story and really adds to it overall for me.
One final note on the story stuff that I wanted to touch on was the voice acting. This game's VA tends to get a bad rep for a certain scene (which actually is a good scene in context, people just like to use it out of context because it sounds funny and is easy to dunk on) but I think the VA work for a large portion of the game is really solid. There are a lot of moments where it's clear that the VA's weren't given the proper context for scenes in order to have them properly voice with the correct cadence and tone, but a lot of the really emotional and important scenes still manage to land with great tone and diction. The scene where Tidus finally sees Jecht again hits me really hard due to how Tidus's VA delivers certain lines, which I won't spoil here because again its something that I think needs to be seen to fully understand why its so good in my opinion.
Speaking of sound, the soundtrack to this game is phenomenal. I can't name a single bad track in this game in my opinion, even the sonic adventure esque song during the first two phases of the final boss is kick ass and fun in its own way. I do think this game has probably my favorite rendition of a final fantasy main battle theme as well, but I may be biased in that due to my affinity for trumpets from playing Pokemon Emerald for hundreds of hours growing up.
Finally, the art direction and locations of Spira are just really aesthetically pleasing and I constantly found myself going "man this place is pretty" or "Wow this would be fun to explore if it didn't have giant monsters everywhere". Spira is just such a charming world to me and I loved getting to explore it and see everything it had to offer and seeing all the weird and wonderful things within it. Except for blitzball. Playing that once was enough.
Overall, Final Fantasy X is a game that I cannot recommend enough. There's definitely a reason this game has withstood the test of time and to this day is seen as one of the best games in the franchise, and I think everyone with even a passing interest in JRPG's should give it a shot because it does everything on such a fantastic level. To me, Final Fantasy X is a truly unforgettable experience.
9.5/10
Final Fantasy X is up there as one of the greatest JRPG's I've ever played. The gameplay, the story, the music, and the world design are all incredible and work together to make a truly special experience.
Focusing on the gameplay specifically, I was a little surprised coming into this game that it did not have the ATB bar like the other Final Fantasy games I have played at this point, but I quickly adjusted to the new style. The game uses more traditional static turn based combat but it adds a turn meter that determines when each character gets an action instead of just having every character on both sides of the confrontation get an action per turn. The turn meter is really a solid gameplay choice in my opinion and really allows for you to control the flow of combat once you get spells like slow and haste, which change up the turn order. Being able to get a combo of both spells going and then being able to just blast the enemy for multiple cycles and get a large amount of damage feels super satisfying. Inversely it can also up the tension exponentially when you can see that the enemy is about to get several turns in a row and you need to hope that they don't manage to wipe your party.
The turn order also ties into another mechanic I'm a really big fan of, party switching. The game lets you swap out who's in your party at any moment during combat (assuming the character isn't at 0 hp or any other state where you can't control them) and it allows you to try interesting new strategies with the entire party instead of just eventually having you stick to just a set party for the rest of the game. It also really helps with trying to level everyone up by letting you switch in a weaker member, let them get a hit, and then switch them back out for someone stronger to deal more damage.
Speaking of leveling this game handles leveling in a different way than most final fantasy's, that being that there technically aren't levels. Instead of levels you get the sphere grid, which is an incredible way of handling RPG stats. Everytime you level up in game you get a sphere level, which you use on the grid to move to different spots and then use spheres gained from battle to unlock new abilities and stats for your party. I really like this approach because it let you fully control how your character evolves and grows over the course of the game and encourages experimenting to try and see what kind of build could work for your character. The grid never feels like you're struggling to make it move forward as long as you're actively fighting monsters on your way through the game either, which also gives a feeling of constant progression which I love personally.
The game also has its own limit break style system known as Overdrives, which I personally think are a really good evolution on the concept. You start off with only being able to charge overdrives through taking damage but as you go through the game and fight more battles you begin to unlock more and more ways to charge them, such as through doing damage to enemies, seeing your party members get damaged, or through healing. This lets you customize your characters further and really set how you think they should function and create your owns kinds of builds and strategies between sphere grid customization and overdrive selection.
Another gameplay system that I think is worth noting before I get to the story is the summons system. You have a character who can summon this game's version of summon monsters, known as Aeons, and then the summons on the field actively fight as if they were their own party member with their own spell lists, overdrives, and health instead of just showing up for one attack and disappearing like in the other Final Fantasy's I've played. This system allows for some really fun strategies and timings of when to pull out a summon to save yourself from a high damage attack or to deal some really big damage yourself over a few turns. Summoning as a mechanic also ties deeply into the story of this game which elevates this mechanic a bit for me; as I tend to like it when game mechanics are important plot wise.
Getting into the story it revolves around Tidus and Yuna, a sports star taken out of his own time and sent a thousand years into the future and a summoner who is training to defeat the ancient evil Sin respectively. They're accompanied by Yuna's guardians, Auron, Wakka, Lulu, Rikku, and kimahri as they all travel across the country of Spira in order to find a way for them to defeat Sin once and for all; as well as a way for Tidus to get home. I'm going to not get too deep into spoilers or specifics for this game because I feel like the story is something that should be experienced firsthand, but I do want to talk about a few spoiler filled points; namely Tidus's relationship with his father Jecht, Yuna's journey, and the reoccuring antagonist of the game Seymour.
Tidus and Jecht's relationship is a big plot point throughout the game, with Tidus slowly discovering more and more about the kind of person his father was as he follows his footsteps throughout Spira and has to struggle to mesh this with his preexisting feelings on his father. What I find really interesting about this is how the game explores the dynamic between the two of them without the two of them meeting in present time until the very end of the game. The game really manages to portray how Jecht and Tidus's relationship was before while also showing how Tidus grows to understand his father and who he was, but still having him be able to acknowledge that even with what Tidus knows now he still can't see his father as a good person. It's a really interesting dynamic that adds a lot of emotional impact to the climax of the game. Tidus's journey of understanding with his father is also interwoven throughout the plot with Yuna's journey to try and stop Sin.
This journey is particularly interesting to me because of context we learn later in the story, that being that Yuna will have to die in order to defeat Sin in the traditional way. Yuna's determination to defeat Sin and do whatever it took, and then Tidus and the group's determination to steer her away from this path and find another way created a really compelling narrative for me and I loved the dynamics that come into Yuna's character and relationships with other characters that stem from this. My favorite scene around this is one on the trek to the final temple where Tidus finds a message sphere that Yuna had dropped that functions as her goodbye to everyone else. It's such a bittersweet moment hearing her talk about her life and her friends like this as a goodbye knowing that by the time anyone sees it she'll already be gone, and it really impacted me emotionally. This journey and how she feels about what is necessary in order to make people happy directly coincides with the main villain of the game, who holds the exact opposite ideology and resolve that Yuna has.
Seymour is this game's Kefka/Sephiroth equivalent (despite not staying around the main plot as long as them), and I think he may stand up there beside them as one of my favorite villains in gaming. Seymour is a troubled high ranking religious leader of the group that regularly sends out summoners to try and defeat sin. Within FFX's story he tries to get Yuna to become his wife so that he can use her to defeat sin and then become the new sin himself to wipe out Spira all together. While this does sound like a pretty basic villain plot, I do think the reasons he does what he does is the most interesting part of him. Seymour parallels Yuna in how their upbringings were and it creates a really interesting dynamic between the two. Both were missing or separated from their parents due to sin, both got dragged into the battle against Sin because of their parents, and both of them ultimately have the goal of freeing Spira from the sorrow that Sin brings; just with different methods of reaching this goal.
The two of them function as different sides of the same coin in their background and their surface level goals, but one key difference lead them down two different paths: Isolation. Yuna grew up and had friends in the form of Lulu, kimahri, and Wakka to keep her happy and to make her want to try and defeat sin to preserve everyone's happiness. Meanwhile Seymour ended up completely alone, and slowly grew to think that the only way to end the sorrow of those in Spira was to end Spira itself; due to noting how those that perished around him stopped suffering when they were no longer living due to the no longer being of this world. Seymour not having anyone to steer him away from that line of thinking and to be there for him is ultimately what turned him into the monster he becomes throughout the story. He and Yuna form an interesting commentary on how one's environment growing up can influence and change the person they will become, and to me it is was handled really well throughout the story and really adds to it overall for me.
One final note on the story stuff that I wanted to touch on was the voice acting. This game's VA tends to get a bad rep for a certain scene (which actually is a good scene in context, people just like to use it out of context because it sounds funny and is easy to dunk on) but I think the VA work for a large portion of the game is really solid. There are a lot of moments where it's clear that the VA's weren't given the proper context for scenes in order to have them properly voice with the correct cadence and tone, but a lot of the really emotional and important scenes still manage to land with great tone and diction. The scene where Tidus finally sees Jecht again hits me really hard due to how Tidus's VA delivers certain lines, which I won't spoil here because again its something that I think needs to be seen to fully understand why its so good in my opinion.
Speaking of sound, the soundtrack to this game is phenomenal. I can't name a single bad track in this game in my opinion, even the sonic adventure esque song during the first two phases of the final boss is kick ass and fun in its own way. I do think this game has probably my favorite rendition of a final fantasy main battle theme as well, but I may be biased in that due to my affinity for trumpets from playing Pokemon Emerald for hundreds of hours growing up.
Finally, the art direction and locations of Spira are just really aesthetically pleasing and I constantly found myself going "man this place is pretty" or "Wow this would be fun to explore if it didn't have giant monsters everywhere". Spira is just such a charming world to me and I loved getting to explore it and see everything it had to offer and seeing all the weird and wonderful things within it. Except for blitzball. Playing that once was enough.
Overall, Final Fantasy X is a game that I cannot recommend enough. There's definitely a reason this game has withstood the test of time and to this day is seen as one of the best games in the franchise, and I think everyone with even a passing interest in JRPG's should give it a shot because it does everything on such a fantastic level. To me, Final Fantasy X is a truly unforgettable experience.
9.5/10