I played X-2 when it came out, and remember thinking it was ok and liking the dress sphere system. My opinion of it has definitely changed with this playthrough of the remaster.
The remaster itself is ok. It is a remaster of the international version, which brings a couple of new dress spheres. I didn't find much use for the Festivalist, but the Psychic has enough base stats that it is pretty good for everything, which felt overpowered, but a bit boring.
Technically, I ran into a lot of crashes, missing models, and jank. The remaster doesn't really play on Steamdeck at all.
On to the game itself!
The main attraction here is the Dressphere system, which I ended up hating by the end. At a surface level, it looks and acts a bit like a job system, letting you change classes and gain new abilities whenever you want. Unfortunately it does everything it can to undermine the interest of a system like this and just ends up being boring and basically pointless. Job systems are cool because you can mix and match abilities from different classes, creating a unique or overpowered combination through experimentation and level-ups. X-2 has two ways to mix abilities, both are extremely restrictive and uninteresting.
There are a few (hidden -- as in, "search a random pixel on a screen somewhere" kind of hidden) accessories and a small number of sphere grids (basically just a UI element that lets you make specific jobs available to a character) in the game that grant the command abilities (not the passive abilities or other special stuff) of a specific job. So if you use the Black Mage grid or Black Lore accessory, you can always cast black magic, but you don't gain access to the Black Mage's Focus ability or MP draining ability. Beyond black and white magic, there just isn't much that is more compelling than a class gives you on its own, so you are creating a White Mage or Black Mage with the hp and mp of a Psychic or Dark Knight, rather than some interesting combination of abilities.
This is made even worse by the fact that Dark Knight and Psychic on their own basically outperform every other class. There is no reason to use the job system when you can turn everyone into Dark Knights and spam darkness to win every battle or make every character a Psychic and absorb all elemental damage.
There are a couple of jobs that are potentially interesting, like the Trainer, Alchemist, and Samurai, but there is just not really a reason to use them, since you can't really utilize any of their abilities. There are a lot of jobs that just fail to bring anything to the table (Thief, Warrior, and Black Mage) which makes leveling them up feel like a huge waste of time.
The actual combat is fine, but boring. Enemies mostly do percentage damage (a bandaid on the fact that some jobs have extremely low health, so they wouldn't otherwise be viable), so every fight was spamming Cura and whatever attacking ability I felt like. There are a couple of attempts at enemies that present some interest or challenge, but I never really had to adjust my strategy.
The narrative in X-2 feels really forced, which is expected because it is just slapped on the end of Final Fantasy X. The game is presented like some sort of Charlie's Angels-esque girl power thing, but it doesn't pull it off that well. Most of the "missions" you are going on are for unclear or contrived reasons or are just mini-games that are worse versions of things from Final Fantasy X or just broken and boring.
Blitzball has been reduced to some sort of automated viewing game that hardly makes sense.
The card game analog has esoteric rules that just boil down to "do some math" and hope for lucky numbers.
The Creature battling game is also automated, tedious, and has overly convoluted means of collecting and keeping creatures.
Fortunately most of the mini-games are avoidable.
There is a special ending and special dresspheres if you get 100% of the content, but the way the game measures this is intensely draconian, requiring you to have specific conversations, make specific choices, and not skip cutscenes or dialogs. It is not worth doing, but the fact that the game wants you to play this way left a pretty bad impression with me.
The narrative itself follows Yuna, Rikku and a new character, Paine, as they solve problems and deal with a new antagonist who is actually some previous age's version of Tidus trying to get revenge for his girlfriend who was killed in a war, or something? And he uses a giant cannon that is underground that can only destroy the world, I guess? There is also forced political drama and some sort of war buddies plot involving the new character, Paine. Almost none of it makes any sense and none of it is compelling.
I expected to like this game a lot more than I did, but there is just nothing here. The narrative is boring and pointless. The Dressphere system is a cool idea, but any potential it had is squandered through basic systemic flaws and clumsy balancing.
I don't think Final Fantasy X-2 is worth playing.
The remaster itself is ok. It is a remaster of the international version, which brings a couple of new dress spheres. I didn't find much use for the Festivalist, but the Psychic has enough base stats that it is pretty good for everything, which felt overpowered, but a bit boring.
Technically, I ran into a lot of crashes, missing models, and jank. The remaster doesn't really play on Steamdeck at all.
On to the game itself!
The main attraction here is the Dressphere system, which I ended up hating by the end. At a surface level, it looks and acts a bit like a job system, letting you change classes and gain new abilities whenever you want. Unfortunately it does everything it can to undermine the interest of a system like this and just ends up being boring and basically pointless. Job systems are cool because you can mix and match abilities from different classes, creating a unique or overpowered combination through experimentation and level-ups. X-2 has two ways to mix abilities, both are extremely restrictive and uninteresting.
There are a few (hidden -- as in, "search a random pixel on a screen somewhere" kind of hidden) accessories and a small number of sphere grids (basically just a UI element that lets you make specific jobs available to a character) in the game that grant the command abilities (not the passive abilities or other special stuff) of a specific job. So if you use the Black Mage grid or Black Lore accessory, you can always cast black magic, but you don't gain access to the Black Mage's Focus ability or MP draining ability. Beyond black and white magic, there just isn't much that is more compelling than a class gives you on its own, so you are creating a White Mage or Black Mage with the hp and mp of a Psychic or Dark Knight, rather than some interesting combination of abilities.
This is made even worse by the fact that Dark Knight and Psychic on their own basically outperform every other class. There is no reason to use the job system when you can turn everyone into Dark Knights and spam darkness to win every battle or make every character a Psychic and absorb all elemental damage.
There are a couple of jobs that are potentially interesting, like the Trainer, Alchemist, and Samurai, but there is just not really a reason to use them, since you can't really utilize any of their abilities. There are a lot of jobs that just fail to bring anything to the table (Thief, Warrior, and Black Mage) which makes leveling them up feel like a huge waste of time.
The actual combat is fine, but boring. Enemies mostly do percentage damage (a bandaid on the fact that some jobs have extremely low health, so they wouldn't otherwise be viable), so every fight was spamming Cura and whatever attacking ability I felt like. There are a couple of attempts at enemies that present some interest or challenge, but I never really had to adjust my strategy.
The narrative in X-2 feels really forced, which is expected because it is just slapped on the end of Final Fantasy X. The game is presented like some sort of Charlie's Angels-esque girl power thing, but it doesn't pull it off that well. Most of the "missions" you are going on are for unclear or contrived reasons or are just mini-games that are worse versions of things from Final Fantasy X or just broken and boring.
Blitzball has been reduced to some sort of automated viewing game that hardly makes sense.
The card game analog has esoteric rules that just boil down to "do some math" and hope for lucky numbers.
The Creature battling game is also automated, tedious, and has overly convoluted means of collecting and keeping creatures.
Fortunately most of the mini-games are avoidable.
There is a special ending and special dresspheres if you get 100% of the content, but the way the game measures this is intensely draconian, requiring you to have specific conversations, make specific choices, and not skip cutscenes or dialogs. It is not worth doing, but the fact that the game wants you to play this way left a pretty bad impression with me.
The narrative itself follows Yuna, Rikku and a new character, Paine, as they solve problems and deal with a new antagonist who is actually some previous age's version of Tidus trying to get revenge for his girlfriend who was killed in a war, or something? And he uses a giant cannon that is underground that can only destroy the world, I guess? There is also forced political drama and some sort of war buddies plot involving the new character, Paine. Almost none of it makes any sense and none of it is compelling.
I expected to like this game a lot more than I did, but there is just nothing here. The narrative is boring and pointless. The Dressphere system is a cool idea, but any potential it had is squandered through basic systemic flaws and clumsy balancing.
I don't think Final Fantasy X-2 is worth playing.
rentheunclean
1 year ago
Thinking about it, the Dressphere system is almost like a prototype for gambits in Final Fantasy 13. It is gambits with only Medics (White Mage and Alchemist), a bad Synergist (Songstress), a couple of Sentinels (Warrior, Psychic), and a bunch of Commandos (everything else).
If 13 had multiple slightly different versions of a Commando role it would work like the damage classes in X-2 do -- you would only use one. X-2 is gambits without everything (specifically the Ravager and gambit combo setups) that make it (barely) work.