When I first played this game I dropped it after 20 minutes, because I had just finished a replay of FFX and was extremely put off by the drastic shift in tone and dramatic change in the returning characters' personalities. In 2021 I gave it another shot, approaching it as completely its own thing rather than comparing it too much to one of my favorite games of all time. And... I dropped it after 5 hours instead.
The change in tone is not inherently a problem, and it absolutely makes more sense for this game to be more light-hearted than its predecessor considering that the world has been freed from its spiral of death and misery. But the tone is not just "light-hearted", it's incredibly goofy, dumb, and absolutely loaded with cringe-worthy attempts at fanservice centered around Yuna and Rikku. A more light-hearted game set in a freed Spira is fine. Brother screaming in my ear about how he wants to see his cousin get half-naked and dance for his amusement is not fine.
The change in characters is also not inherently a problem. Yuna in particular has gone through a lot and it makes perfect sense for her to have grown and changed, and even become much more outgoing and confident. The big problem here is mostly that we did not actually see most of that change happen, only the catalyst and the endpoint. On top of that, with how fanservice-laden this game is, it's kind of hard to look at her personality shift entirely in a vacuum. How much of this was a logical progression for her character, and how much was a cynical excuse to put her in booty shorts and make her an idol?
Rikku on the other hand feels less like she evolved and more like she's been flanderized. She's always been the upbeat bubbly kind-of-annoying one, and even in FFX she had her moments of grating or cringey dialogue... but in this game it feels like all of her worst traits have been amplified at the expense of all the charm she had. I dreaded every line of her dialogue, and she has a LOT of dialogue. This was especially not helped by her "chemistry" and frequent exchanges with Brother, who was fine as a bit character in FFX but is insufferable as one of the main supporting cast in X-2.
The game overall feels like it's trying to be an ecchi comedy anime, which is not exactly a genre I'm fond of. From the new skimpy outfits, to the combat system relying on the main girls changing into different clothes, to the multiple idol dance sequences, to the constant awful attempts at humor, not a single thing that happened in this game endeared me to it.
As far as the actual gameplay... it's fine I guess. I've seen some people online sing it's praises as the "best ATB combat in the franchise", but as someone who's never been a huge fan of the ATB style in the first place I found it simultaneously way harder AND way more boring than the slower turn-based style of FFX. I'll try to explain why.
As for why it's harder: The fast pace of battle and ability for enemies to attack while you're in the middle of an action makes it extremely easy to lose control of a fight. Combined with the seemingly high damage that early-game monsters can dish out, unless you spend a while on early-game grinding it's really easy for opponents to down one or more of your party in a couple of moves. Items and healing magic are also substantially worse in this game compared to X because of the "charge time" they take, which effectively makes them cost 2 actions (and makes the caster incredibly vulnerable to being killed while trying to heal).
As for why it's more boring: because magic and most special moves take way longer to use than basic attacks (on top of costing mana), it rarely feels worth it to use them. I very quickly fell into a loop of simply basic attacking with two of my party members and healing with the third, every single round until the battle was over. This probably isn't actually the most optimal strategy for most fights, but it gets the job done well enough that I didn't see much reason to change it up. The fast pace of ATB battles discourages me from changing it up, because every second spent thinking about what would be better is lost DPS and increased incoming damage. There is a "pause" mode which is supposed to pause the ATB timer during menu selection, but it only pauses during the sub-menus which means you're still losing time if you need to go in and out of multiple menus to look at your options and think.
This is all exacerbated by the "dressphere" class and leveling system, which replaces the Sphere Grid from X. Leveling is a completely linear set of vague stat increases (not even communicated upon leveling up), and instead of having a large party with many specialists you instead have only 3 party members who can switch classes at will. Because switching classes takes an entire turn (as opposed to party switching being free in X) it doesn't make sense to switch frequently, and this in turn leads to less variety in strategy. On top of that, since all the classes level separately, if you at some point realize you need (or could really use) a class that you haven't been using, then you'll need to grind it up to a reasonable level before it's worthwhile. Even in my short time playing, this discouraged me from switching classes even further; I didn't want to spend time on tedious grinding, but I also didn't want to divide my XP between more than a few classes since this would hamper my progression. All in all, I found the progression system much less interesting and engaging than the Sphere Grid system.
From what I've read online, the "proper" way to play this game is to go everywhere and talk to everyone EXCEPT the stuff that will progress the story forward, including revisiting every single area in Spira during every single chapter, and completing dozens of barely-relevant minigames and side objectives. While I'm generally a fan of games with tons of optional content, apparently the "good" endings of the game are locked behind full completion, and based on the combat and progression systems I got the impression I was expected to do a lot of that extra content in order to decently level my classes and get good enough stats to win consistently against tough opponents. I really don't like the idea of tying the "good" ending of a game to MISSABLE side-quests - especially not early-game side-quests - and I think if that is the "intended" way to play the game then it should really be communicated somehow in-game. The few times I ventured off the path of the main story I was met with road blocks telling me to come back later, so I eventually just powered through Chapter 1 without going to most of the areas on the map. Learning afterwards that I was now locked out of the true ending was what made me put down the game for good.
As for the story... I can't comment on much since I dropped the game shortly after it seemed like the "real" story might be starting, but what I got was boring and felt completely pointless. And the music is fine, but it's a real step down from X in my opinion.
TL;DR: I really did not enjoy this game. I found the characters and tone insufferably dumb and annoying, I found the core combat and progression systems boring and unengaging, I found the story/mission structure unclear and frustrating, and I found myself annoyed by a world I normally love. I'm glad that some people love it, and I have no ill will towards those people, but I thought this was a terrible game, and I have no desire to play any more of it.
The change in tone is not inherently a problem, and it absolutely makes more sense for this game to be more light-hearted than its predecessor considering that the world has been freed from its spiral of death and misery. But the tone is not just "light-hearted", it's incredibly goofy, dumb, and absolutely loaded with cringe-worthy attempts at fanservice centered around Yuna and Rikku. A more light-hearted game set in a freed Spira is fine. Brother screaming in my ear about how he wants to see his cousin get half-naked and dance for his amusement is not fine.
The change in characters is also not inherently a problem. Yuna in particular has gone through a lot and it makes perfect sense for her to have grown and changed, and even become much more outgoing and confident. The big problem here is mostly that we did not actually see most of that change happen, only the catalyst and the endpoint. On top of that, with how fanservice-laden this game is, it's kind of hard to look at her personality shift entirely in a vacuum. How much of this was a logical progression for her character, and how much was a cynical excuse to put her in booty shorts and make her an idol?
Rikku on the other hand feels less like she evolved and more like she's been flanderized. She's always been the upbeat bubbly kind-of-annoying one, and even in FFX she had her moments of grating or cringey dialogue... but in this game it feels like all of her worst traits have been amplified at the expense of all the charm she had. I dreaded every line of her dialogue, and she has a LOT of dialogue. This was especially not helped by her "chemistry" and frequent exchanges with Brother, who was fine as a bit character in FFX but is insufferable as one of the main supporting cast in X-2.
The game overall feels like it's trying to be an ecchi comedy anime, which is not exactly a genre I'm fond of. From the new skimpy outfits, to the combat system relying on the main girls changing into different clothes, to the multiple idol dance sequences, to the constant awful attempts at humor, not a single thing that happened in this game endeared me to it.
As far as the actual gameplay... it's fine I guess. I've seen some people online sing it's praises as the "best ATB combat in the franchise", but as someone who's never been a huge fan of the ATB style in the first place I found it simultaneously way harder AND way more boring than the slower turn-based style of FFX. I'll try to explain why.
As for why it's harder: The fast pace of battle and ability for enemies to attack while you're in the middle of an action makes it extremely easy to lose control of a fight. Combined with the seemingly high damage that early-game monsters can dish out, unless you spend a while on early-game grinding it's really easy for opponents to down one or more of your party in a couple of moves. Items and healing magic are also substantially worse in this game compared to X because of the "charge time" they take, which effectively makes them cost 2 actions (and makes the caster incredibly vulnerable to being killed while trying to heal).
As for why it's more boring: because magic and most special moves take way longer to use than basic attacks (on top of costing mana), it rarely feels worth it to use them. I very quickly fell into a loop of simply basic attacking with two of my party members and healing with the third, every single round until the battle was over. This probably isn't actually the most optimal strategy for most fights, but it gets the job done well enough that I didn't see much reason to change it up. The fast pace of ATB battles discourages me from changing it up, because every second spent thinking about what would be better is lost DPS and increased incoming damage. There is a "pause" mode which is supposed to pause the ATB timer during menu selection, but it only pauses during the sub-menus which means you're still losing time if you need to go in and out of multiple menus to look at your options and think.
This is all exacerbated by the "dressphere" class and leveling system, which replaces the Sphere Grid from X. Leveling is a completely linear set of vague stat increases (not even communicated upon leveling up), and instead of having a large party with many specialists you instead have only 3 party members who can switch classes at will. Because switching classes takes an entire turn (as opposed to party switching being free in X) it doesn't make sense to switch frequently, and this in turn leads to less variety in strategy. On top of that, since all the classes level separately, if you at some point realize you need (or could really use) a class that you haven't been using, then you'll need to grind it up to a reasonable level before it's worthwhile. Even in my short time playing, this discouraged me from switching classes even further; I didn't want to spend time on tedious grinding, but I also didn't want to divide my XP between more than a few classes since this would hamper my progression. All in all, I found the progression system much less interesting and engaging than the Sphere Grid system.
From what I've read online, the "proper" way to play this game is to go everywhere and talk to everyone EXCEPT the stuff that will progress the story forward, including revisiting every single area in Spira during every single chapter, and completing dozens of barely-relevant minigames and side objectives. While I'm generally a fan of games with tons of optional content, apparently the "good" endings of the game are locked behind full completion, and based on the combat and progression systems I got the impression I was expected to do a lot of that extra content in order to decently level my classes and get good enough stats to win consistently against tough opponents. I really don't like the idea of tying the "good" ending of a game to MISSABLE side-quests - especially not early-game side-quests - and I think if that is the "intended" way to play the game then it should really be communicated somehow in-game. The few times I ventured off the path of the main story I was met with road blocks telling me to come back later, so I eventually just powered through Chapter 1 without going to most of the areas on the map. Learning afterwards that I was now locked out of the true ending was what made me put down the game for good.
As for the story... I can't comment on much since I dropped the game shortly after it seemed like the "real" story might be starting, but what I got was boring and felt completely pointless. And the music is fine, but it's a real step down from X in my opinion.
TL;DR: I really did not enjoy this game. I found the characters and tone insufferably dumb and annoying, I found the core combat and progression systems boring and unengaging, I found the story/mission structure unclear and frustrating, and I found myself annoyed by a world I normally love. I'm glad that some people love it, and I have no ill will towards those people, but I thought this was a terrible game, and I have no desire to play any more of it.
COMPOSTCOMEFORTH
2 years ago