So I have a bit of a weird history with this game. The first time I tried playing through Kingdom hearts 2: Final Mix I was playing on Critical mode, the hardest difficulty, because the person who was walking me through the series told me it was the only way to play the game. This ultimately did not pan out and I put the game down for about a year where I then picked it up again and started a new file, still on critical mode because I was still being pushed in this direction. This scenario happened two more times until I kind of just, gave up and didn't really have a desire to play the game again. Then Sora in smash happened and I figured I might as well give the game another shot but on my terms (standard/normal mode), and oh my god I am so glad I did because this game is incredible.

To explain quickly, Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix is a game that mixes elements of Final Fantasy with classic Disney movies and then interconnects them with their own original plot. The plot of the series up to this point follows Sora, a boy from a place called the Destiny Islands, as he tries to find his friends Riku and Kairi after they all got separated and flung across the multiverse due to an invasion by the heartless, which are beings made of hearts corrupted by darkness that are trying to consume other hearts in order to make Kingdom Hearts; which is effectively the coalescence of hearts into an extremely powerful heart. After joining up with Donald and Goofy, Sora managed to stop the villain of the first game, Ansem, from creating Kingdom Hearts but unfortunately was not able to go back with his friends. Which lead to the events of Chain of memories where he got trapped in a castle and lost his memories prior to Kingdom hearts 2. From here on out I will be talking about spoilers for the general plot and one main plotline of Kingdom Hearts 2 so be warned if you care about any big plot spoilers.

The story of this game is something I was blown away by because despite how silly the game can be conceptually, it actually does a lot with its plot that I found really interesting and engaging. The game mostly follows Sora as he reawakens and has to set out with Donald and Goofy to find his friends, King Mickey, and stop a new group of bad guys knows as Organization 13 that are using new creatures called Nobodies (essentially the opposite of a heartless, where instead of being a corrupted heart it is a body without a heart that is created when someone who is strong of heart becomes a heartless) in order to defeat more and more Heartless in order to help their master, Xehanort/Xemnas create his own Kingdom Hearts. The game does a lot of things that I found really interesting with this premise and I enjoyed seeing how all these plans of the Organization members played out over the various Disney worlds plus the one Final Fantasy world. Though, nothing in the game stood out quite as much for me as the Roxas plotline did.

To explain, at the beginning of the game instead of jumping right in as Sora you play as Roxas, a young boy living in a place called Twilight town that is just trying to enjoy the rest of his summer vacation with his friends. Roxas later disappears as you awaken Sora, and throughout the game several members of the Organization refer to Sora as Roxas, which points towards an the idea of Roxas being Sora's nobody. This is of course later revealed to be the case. There are two really great scenes between Roxas and Sora that revolve around this plot; both before and after Sora learns of this and both of them are just downright incredible at portraying who Roxas is as their own person, even if they originally are just part of Sora. The moment that really solidified Roxas as an amazing character and the plot revolving around them as one of my favorite things about this game had to be the scene where Roxas and Axel talked atop the clocktower in Twilight Town. Not going to go into too much detail but this scene does such a great job of conveying who Roxas and Axel are as characters and how much their connection means to them even if they don't have hearts or emotions. It's such a well crafted scene that really lets the both of them shine and is way more emotional than I thought a game mixing Disney and Final Fantasy could be.

On that note, if there's one thing this game does shockingly well its its emotional beats. This is a bit of a personal thing but I am not usually one to get teary eyed over media. It has happened to me a few times but never more than once in most works. Somehow though this game got me to tear up four or five times which is surprising to me. If you had told me a month ago that I would have been emotionally messed up due to a scene of Winne the Pooh and Sora having a chat I wouldn't have believed you but here we are. Being a bit more serious though I do think this game does have a very good sense of how to do emotional scenes despite how silly the game itself is. For the most part anyway, the Goofy "death" scene was played weirdly straight for something that was very obviously not going to result in a death. That aside though moments such as the clocktower conversation between Axel and Roxas, Axel's death, and the entire ending sequence from the moment you hit the point of no return all just really hit me emotionally and I'm impressed with them for being able to pull off legitimately incredible emotional beats in a game where you watch Goofy get hit in the head with a rock and then "die" in a scene that's treated extremely seriously.

Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix is one of those rare games where Everything works in just the right way so that it makes a truly bizarre experience that doesn't feel like it should work become an insanely enjoyable experience. I've never been a big disney guy so a lot of that aspect of this crossover was lost on me, and I can't help thinking about how weird this entire thing is when I take a step back from it, but I think for me at least that does add a lot of the charm to this game. Like, having a realistic Captain Jack Sparrow next to some giant edgy heartless, a cartoony human Sora, and then just Donald and Goofy from the Mickey Mouse cartoons is so bizarre conceptually that I can't help but love it. However, besides the bizarreness of it I do think a large part of what makes me love this game is its combat system.

I feel like this game's combat is vastly improved over Kingdom Hearts 1's style of gameplay and basically refined what the first game did into something truly magical. Not only do actions and the abilities you unlock all around feel better to use and to chain into each other, but it all feels so much faster and more fluid in a way that made me really want to master combos and discover new ways to chain my moves together in order to get the highest amount of damage done to enemies in one combo. This mixed with a really nice chain of progression for unlocking and picking moves (which I will touch more on in a bit) makes a great basis for combat, that is also further improved by the things this game adds to spice it up.

One such thing is the reaction command system, which are effectively quick time event counters that give you really cool cutscenes as rewards for pulling them off. What I think really works about these are two main factors, those being the sheer number of them and also how balanced they feel in terms of how they function. On the first point I think the fact that almost every single boss, heartless, and nobody in the game has special reaction commands that are just for them and can only be done on them really adds to the experience because it makes each of them feel unique. It really makes it feel a lot more special to use than a standard "press square to counter" type situation and I really appreciate that. Now as for the second point, I think with almost all of the reaction commands they balanced the amount of cool cutscenes versus player having to get involved and press something just right as to where it keeps you waiting for the next chance to push the button but still gives you more than enough time to see something fun over just spamming buttons continuously the entire time. I'm kind of surprised this isn't something that caught on with other action games, since this seems like a perfect way to balance quick time events and make them feel enjoyable for the player in my opinion.

Part of this game's combat that also really shines through in my opinion is the drive form feature, which once you get enough points in your meter allows you to enter a form using either Donald, Goofy, or both in order to boost an aspect of your stats; or just all of them with some of the later forms. There are five selectable forms that you can get throughout the game, known as Valor, Wisdom, master, limit, and final forms. These really add a lot to combat to make the player feel strong while also allowing you to choose which stats to boost depending on the situation you're in. The thing that I find really cool about these is that while you do get better and better forms as the game goes on there is still a sense of balance to them that keeps them from being an instant win button. The most readily apparent part of this balance is the inclusion of Anti form, which unlike the other forms activates on a hidden meter depending on how much you use the other drive forms (minus final form) and will have a chance to activate instead of the form you select at higher parts of the anti meter. It adds a really cool risk and reward system to the drive forms for most of the game and keeps you from just abusing the drive ability to plow through every fight. That being said anti form isn't a push over either, since in that form you still do massive amounts of damage easily; you just have to be careful because you don't have access to party members, healing or reaction commands in that form.

The other neat way of balancing these movesets was how they function in terms of moveset. Each form has a different combat moveset for Sora to use that I found were more useful in some situations over others, such as Valor form being more useful for one on one fights over Master form which felt like it was much better suited for fighting groups of enemies. This balance is kept throughout the game between the four forms you get throughout the main story and I think it does a good job of incentivizing using the different forms in different situations. The only one that kind of breaks this is final form, which is pretty much just better master form and better than the rest of the forms at pretty much everything while also removing the anti form penalty entirely. However I don't hold that against the game since its something you have to go out of your way to unlock and isn't possible to unlock until right at the very end of the game, so at that point its more or less just a fun thing that you can use to bring some real carnage to the final area of the game.

Another really cool aspect of the drive forms is that you unlock better versions of movement abilities for normal Sora, which brings me to this game's level up system. So you have traditional level ups based on exp like in most rpg's but you also get a really cool feature where even when you unlock new abilities you have to manage which ones you can use based on how many ability points, or AP for short, that you have. The AP system feels really interesting to me because it really makes you weigh your options and choose the skills and abilities that would best fit your current situation or plan out how you're going to spend your limited points to build out Sora. It feels like a really unique way of doing a skill tree type unlock system but in a way that isn't just following branches down a path and more just letting you full pick and choose how you want Sora to feel and play with his moves as you gather more over the course of the story.

Speaking of the story again because I couldn't find a good place to put it otherwise, but this game included the plot of Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar which I find extremely funny because I never thought anything would reference the shitty direct to dvd sequels a lot of the disney animated movies got so this game is perfect for that alone.

One other thing I did want to point out that I thought was really well done was the aesthetics of each world. Something that I think is nice about the game's format of traveling between several Disney worlds is that you get so many different aesthetics and designs for areas and I think its really cool how the game ties them all together. A subset of this that is super cool to me is when Sora and the rest of the gang get specific designs that coincide with the world. Like them getting halloween and christmas outfits in Halloween town and Christmas town, or their animal forms in the Lion King world. Another aspect of this that I really enjoy is the keyblade design. Since each world has its own keyblade that you can acquire through finishing stages of the quests there you get world specific keyblades along with a few other story specific ones. I got to say I do really appreciate them making Keyblades that are based entirely within the aesthetic of that world while also making them still look like keys somehow. Not really much more to say on this aspect I just find it neat.

A final note before wrapping things up, this game's soundtrack is killer. So many incredible songs play throughout the game like Sanctuary, the 13th Reflection, Sacred Moon, Rage Awakened, The Other Promise, Fate of the Unknown, Darkness of the Unknown, and so many more are just absolute bangers. This is one of those games where even if you don't end up playing it at least check out the soundtrack, it has some amazing music.

Ultimately I'd say this game feels like a passion project. There is so much love poured into every aspect of this game that I was not expecting to find in here. I also wasn't expecting to like this anywhere near as much as I did after my initial repeated struggles with the game but I'm glad I came back to this and gave it a fair shot. Who knows, maybe I'll even go back and try it on critical mode now that I understand how the game works and have played it fully. This game definitely lives up to the hype and acclaim its built up over the years and I can't wait to check out the rest of the franchise at some point now that I'm done with this. Seriously, go play this game. Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. Hope you got all this memorized.

10/10

I went into this game not expecting to like it as much as the original trilogy based on how often I see it cited as the where the series went downhill, and while I do have friends that liked this game a lot I still wanted to keep my expectations in check in case this game actually was worse than the the first three Ace Attorney games.

That being said, Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice is just as good as the original trilogy, if not better in some instances, in my opinion.


This game is just absolutely oozing with charm and has so much to love about it. Everything just comes together in such a fun way that really feels well crafted to me. The characters, story, art direction, and music all build off each other to make this game another incredible entry in the Ace Attorney series. I do want to start off by properly talking about the characters though, since in my opinion they're what really elevate this game and are the core part of it.

I will warn that this entire review will be filled with spoilers, since due to the nature of this game it's impossible to talk about without talking about extremely spoilery content so while I will try to avoid spoiling the main plot as much as possible, a good chunk of information about the story and characters will come through here.

Going into this game I was a bit worried about the cast, I've spent the past three games getting used to a certain cast of characters (minus the revolving door of prosecutors) so to suddenly have them uprooted and replaced with a new generation of characters did leave me a little uneasy. I'm glad to say that that worry was unfounded, because man is the cast of this game great.

The replacement for Phoenix in this game, and the game's namesake, Apollo Justice is an absolute gem. He feels distinctly more serious than Phoenix did in his games and I personally felt like it was a good direction to take the character. While Phoenix seemed to just embrace the wacky antics of the Ace Attorney universe's courtrooms right off the bat Apollo seemed to just be blindsided by the kind of shenanigans that happen in the court of law and it's a great thing to see as a contrast to how weird the cases in the universe get. Apollo's surprise at the weirdness of the Attorney world feels like a nice way to relate to new players who might be starting with this entry; but at the same time as someone who's played the games before this one I thought it was a nice (and pretty funny) change of pace to see someone go into what he thinks is a normal trial and then spend the next four trials just going through progressively more bizarre and intricate cases.

Otherwise I do love how Apollo comes into his own as attorney over the course of this game. Seeing him start as a scared first timer who has to have his boss arrested with the help of a disgraced pro and then growing into a confident person in his own right who solves a seven year old case centered around the people from the first case of the game is great and really feels like a great character arc for him; that while not directly about him does feel right to have him at the center of in these instances. Though Apollo is great on his own, he is made infinitely better by his dynamic with Trucy Wright, his co-counsel.

Trucy was a character that I was especially unsure about going into this game. Trucy is the adopted daughter of Phoenix and the head of the "Wright Anything Agency", which is where you work for most of the game. I was a big fan of Maya and Pearl as our co-counsel in the original trilogy so going into this I was worried that I wouldn't like Trucy as much since she didn't seem as interesting from what little I knew about her at the start; but I have to say that Trucy is probably one of the best parts of the game for me. The way she interacts with Apollo and messes with him gives me brother and sister vibes reminiscent of Phoenix and Maya, while also putting their own spin on it and making the dynamic feel like it's own thing even with the similarities to how Phoenix and Maya were.

Outside of her banter with Apollo though she's great on her own. Her way of seeing the world feels deceptively innocent when you first meet her but it becomes very clear as the game goes on that she's wise beyond her years. You're given hints about how Trucy came to be Wright's daughter and other small tidbits about her life through cases 1-3 but once you hit case 4 and get the full picture it really puts into perspective how strong Trucy is as a character and how intense her determination to make others happy is after she's endured so much; yet she basically pushed all that down in order to ensure that she can help Phoenix after his life was ruined. Trucy is a really well written tragic character and I cannot wait to see how they follow up on her story in future games. Speaking of future games, lets talk about a character that we probably won't see much of going forward: This game's prosecutor, Klavier Gavin.

As I mentioned earlier the prosecutors in this series tends to change to a new main one every game, and considering I liked all three before this I was expecting to enjoy whoever the new one was well enough. Enter Klavier Gavin, the best prosecutor this series has seen so far. Everything about this man just hits the right notes for me and it actually kinda surprises me how much I enjoyed him in this game. From the moment you first meet him he just has this aura of "I'm better than you, but like in a respectful way." and it's super interesting to me because of how generally the prosecutors up to this point have been a lot more meanspirited and aggressive at first. Gavin on the other hand, is friendly from the start and makes for a really fun dynamic between him and Apollo.

Despite his friendliness with Apollo, Klavier still acts as a formidable rival in the courtroom. Calm, collected, yet fierce he challenges you at every turn throughout the three cases he's in. He manages to capture the energy of a friend who wants to push you to be the best that you can be, and the way he starts working with Apollo throughout the trials once the truth starts to become clear is always so much fun. This is due mainly to the fact that much like how being the best and revenge drove the other prosecutors, the main drive that Gavin had was finding the truth. I find this aspect of him really interesting because it's a fresh take on how the prosecutors usually are in this series when you first meet them. He's just a guy who wants the true culprit to be caught, and even if he loses the cases he's just glad that the real criminal got put away. We also actually get to see where Klavier Gavin's quest for truth started in game which is cool; ir also just so happens to coincide with Phoenix Wright's fall from grace.


Full disclosure I knew about old man Phoenix coming into this game, I've seen the design around a lot but I had no idea what the context of it was. Seeing him as the defendant of the first case though, and from there seeing how much he's changed in the seven years since the end of AA3 really caught me off guard and got me extremely invested in the main plot of the game. Slowly being given details about what happened to Phoenix through the first three cases and then having it all be revealed to you in a section where you get to play as him again in case 4 for a flashback was great and I think they did a great job of revealing all the information around what caused him to become this person.

An older, more cynical Phoenix that's been warn down by being framed and kicked out of the job he's dedicated his life too felt like a compelling place to take his character in this game and helped to provide a continuous hook throughout the game of wanting to find out how he became this tired, kinda sad guy after being a lively fun person in the original trilogy. I think what this game absolutely nails about him though is it showcases just how smart Phoenix is. His entire plan to not only clear his name, but finally get closure and justice for the case that ruined him seven years ago was brilliant and showed that while the years had dulled his spirit, they hadn't dulled his mind. Phoenix isn't the only returning character though, he returns with forensic expert Ema Skye who functions as the new detective to help (or hinder you sometimes) you during investigations.

While I did like Ema Skye, I do think she's the one character that didn't reach the same standard of the other new generation characters from me. I still think she was great but the character she was replacing, Detective Dick Gumshoe, was just too good in the original trilogy. Her personality is distinct and different from his enough to make them two very different characters who ultimately function differently and are enjoyable on their own; but it does still feel like she's missing something when compared to who she's replacing.

I will note that while I would like to focus on how all of these characters stand on their own, it is a tad difficult to do so when they are all effectively replacing other characters. It's the unfortunate risk writers run when they try to introduce a new cast to an ongoing series, it can be hard to get out of the shadow of what you've done previously. Ultimately I do think the game for the most part does manage to live up to the expectations of having the same great core cast the trilogy did and I love how all of them are throughout this game's story.

Regarding the story, I really liked how they managed to pull off the style of overarching plot that AA3 did again. I feel like as Shu Takumi worked on the series he became a better and better writer and that is exemplified here. So many small things throughout each case that felt like they would be irrelevant to the main plot of the case all end up factoring in and as I started to realize this it was fun trying to figure out which minute details would become important to the endgame of the case. This game has its fair share of sudden twists and turns throughout the cases like all the other games, and I do love how it all comes together in the end with case 4, which is tied for my second favorite case of the series.

The overarching plot of the game focuses on the mystery of Phoenix's final trial seven years ago and what really happened that day that got him disbarred. I've mentioned it a few times in this review already but the way they managed to weave breadcrumbs throughout every case felt organic and like it was never detracting from the current focus, but still reminding you that plot was still going on in the background. The way everything came to a head in case four was so damn cool and I just absolutely loved how they wrote that entire case. The whole idea of trying to use a jurist system for this case instead of the evidence only approach was a fun idea that I hope continues to show up in future games as it felt fresh and unique in how the case was presented due to it not needing to be won in the same way as every other case so far. Apollo Justice's story is great and definitely a fun time if you decide to playthrough it.

While the story is great, I do think part of what makes this game so great is the presentation.

Playing this game you could really tell Capcom were taking full advantage of the ds's visual abilities. The bounciness and general movement of the sprites, as well as just how clean they look visually, was super neat to me and really made all the fun new character designs pop much more than they would have if they had the more static look of the gba games I feel. The designs are also just all really fun in general as well. I think it says a lot that when trying to think of my favorite design pretty much all of the main cast come to mind. The animations and art are definitely made even greater by the music though, which may be my favorite soundtrack of the series so far.


Like I said with the FFX review I'm not the best at talking about why I like music, I just know when I like something I like something. That being said, I just wanted to say that Apollo Justice's soundtrack is phenomenal. Tracks like their renditions of the cross examination and the cornered themes in this game are some of the best I've heard so far, and new themes such as Klavier Gavin's theme are just incredible. Even if you don't play the game give some songs a listen, they're great.

Though I've spent most of this review talking about aspects of the games that I love, there were a few things about the game that did rub me the wrong way.

I think one of the two places this game is lacking though, are the investigation minigames. This time around during the investigation portion of cases you will often enlist the help of Ema Skye in order to gather evidence left behind at the crime scenes that you couldn't get through normal means. Cases two and four have one or two new minigames that cover gathering evidence in different ways. For example you make casts of footprints in case two, using an X-ray machine to read a letter through an envelope in case four, etc. case three meanwhile has a soundboard that you have to adjust and listen too carefully in order to hear sounds that help build your case in that specific trial. While most of these are fine and not that big of a deal they felt not super fun to play at best and just tedious at worst like with the aforementioned X-ray minigame. While I'm bringing up tediousness, that brings me to my other big problem with the game: repetition.

While this may seem like a petty complaint, I was extremely not a fan of just how often the middle cases would use flashbacks and make us reread parts of the game that we've already read. Or in the case of case three specifically, replay the same clip of video on repeat every two minutes or so during a section that was reliant on talking about this piece of video. I do understand to some degree that it was necessary for people to see the different clues and stuff that they may have missed when they weren't specifically looking for them, but I do think it still went overboard to some degree.

All in all though, Apollo Justice is a lot better of a game than I think its given credit for online. Fun characters, incredible writing, great music and visuals, all ingredients in the recipe for a good Ace Attorney game. Give this game a shot if you're on the fence after the trilogy, it's a great time.

9.5/10

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