Final Fantasy X Review

Final Fantasy X was a classic that defined the PS2 era. It was one of the first games that truly showcased the exceptional graphics capabilities of its generation and received stellar review scores at the time of release. It had cemented a place in gamer’s hearts with its bittersweet story and bright, cheery graphics, along with its oftentimes cringe-worthy voice acting.

I’m not normally a fan of JRPGs, and when this game first came out, I wasn’t a fan of RPGs in general. I was a young gamer who was heavily into fast-paced action games. I felt that the Final Fantasy series, despite being astoundingly popular among my peers at the time, was over-rated and boring. The grinding and stats-crunching elements did not interest me whatsoever, and I couldn’t appreciate this game for what it was at the time.

Thankfully, the game has been re-released as a HD Remaster edition for all the modern consoles. I picked up the PS3 edition myself with some glee, as I had discovered a love for RPG games that had been kindled thanks to my experiences with modern games such as The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Dark Souls. I felt that maybe now with my personal growth in patience and maturity, I would be able to enjoy this game to a far greater aspect than I had before.

The first thing that struck me about the HD Remaster of Final Fantasy X was the graphics. They were every bit as beautiful as I remembered. The world of Spira is wonderfully colourful and every single screen of this game looked like a work of dazzling fantasy art. I felt that everything had aged beautifully. This can be attributed, in part, to the shiny HD gloss that the Remaster has given to the game but honestly, I don’t think this version of Final Fantasy X is all that improved, or at least not to a significant game-changing level.

That is not to say that it is a poor remaster; in this case, it’s more my opinion that they didn’t need to change all that much to still have a beautiful game. I think that it is just a glossing-up to improve the already-good graphics to a level acceptable for the HD console era and this serves to make the game stand out. This game was an impressive piece of art for its time and it can even stand out graphically today.

The gameplay of Final Fantasy X is a bit weaker than its beautiful graphics. My main gripes are with the random encounter system; the frustration of being abruptly pulled from exploration into a battle screen in the most jarring way possible is something most gamers can relate to, and it is obvious to see the reasons why modern games have largely done away with this system.

The combat system itself, however, is enjoyable and more rewarding than I remembered. Typical to most RPGs and JRPGs there is an element of walking pointlessly back and forth to grind arbitrary stats and this can be boring, but FFX is one of the better games on the JRPG spectrum.

The system is built much more around the speed stat and the order of character actions. You have a neat little tooltip at the side of the screen that shows whose turn is up next and a large part of the game’s strategy is formed around manipulating the turn order to give yourself the biggest advantage. This drew attention well to status spells; in most RPG games I’m guilty of playing only with offensive spells or attacks and largely ignoring status effects and buffs.

On the other hand, success in Final Fantasy X is largely governed by using buffs tactically to guarantee a win in battle; this forces you to strategise, which brings about a rewarding experience from battle. There are a ton of other systems at work, as well as a huge variety of moves you can use, such that the game has hundreds of hours of content packed just into mastering its combat.

The levelling system of the game is interesting as well. Instead of traditional levelling, this game opted to have you improve your own stats through something called the Sphere Grid, by placing spheres into slots in a menu to improve the stat assigned to that slot. It is a system that at first, I felt was a little tedious; but by mid-game I had really gotten into it.

There are a multitude of minigames to keep you occupied from the main quest, although they are varied in their quality. Chocobo racing was a frustrating experience. For a lot of people, Blitzball in particular has been singled out as a significantly bad minigame. Unfortunately, these sidequests are hit and miss and not every gamer will enjoy them. Blitzball in particular is polarising, and easily seen with disdain, however, with patience and mastery of the mechanics behind the game, it is not the horror that some gamers have exaggerated it to be.

Making matters worse is the fact that to get the highest level items the player is required to beat some of these minigames. If they weren’t required for certain late-game content, I wouldn’t have minded their inclusion.

The sound design of this game is nigh-on perfect. The atmosphere of the game is as clear and beautiful as the graphics. Not one track felt out of place and I really enjoyed every single track of music, with some songs I consider beautiful as far as background music goes. The music that plays as you enter Zanarkand is so emotionally charged it makes one feel melancholic as they press onward. Even the opening cutscene that plays when you start the game has beautiful music, and serves as a fitting prelude to the adventure ahead.  

One aspect that famously drags down the sound design is the voice acting. Characters tend to have annoying, poorly-synced line delivery in places, and oftentimes the emotions that the actors played did not match the emotions they should have been playing. Part of the guilt for this has to go to the screen-writers, who were guilty of a few hit and miss scenes.

 Wakka was one character who became completely unlikeable to me in the latter stages of the game, and even irrelevant. On the other hand, I will say that as the first entry in the series to have voice-acting, there would have been a lack of experience all around. Still, it’s a real shame, as the sound design is beautiful overall, and the voice acting was totally below-par.

The storyline of Final Fantasy X is beautiful, even if it doesn’t make sense at times. Spira is a place where you want to be and each and every single part of the game feels like a labour of love. There are some seriously breath-taking moments, from the first time you set foot in the Calm Lands to Yuna’s dance in Kilika, there are a lot of amazing storyline moments.

People say Final Fantasy X had a poor story compared to other games, but I think this game’s story was creative and well-told enough to overcome its many issues. At its heart, it was a bittersweet, tragic love story, about learning to overcome misery and mostly, a human story about people trying to find a way to defeat sorrow.

The character of Yuna became very sympathetic to me; emotionally, she is just about the strongest character I’ve seen. There are some stand-out characters other than Yuna and just about everyone you see in the game you can feel something for; even Jecht, who initially was cast as a villainous character you had to hate, became a very sympathetic and likeable character by the end.

This game may be deeply flawed; many minigames will leave you frustrated, the voice acting is laughable, and there are questionable elements of design that just serve to confuse the player. There are a lot of influences of often-times weird Final Fantasy tropes that result in a love-it or hate-it style. However, with the game’s beauty and artfulness in the big picture, there is something worth suffering through its worst moments for.

This is a game I would recommend if you’re willing to sink a lot of hours into the game to understand its systems, if you’re not too frustrated by random encounters, and if you are able to look past some big flaws. I wouldn’t recommend it to the easily frustrated, or to anyone who doesn’t like JRPGs in general. It is both a great game, and a deeply flawed one, but if you’re willing to brave the journey, the world of Final Fantasy X will leave you feeling like it was definitely worth the adventure.