| Final Fantasy X - Review | |
One Of The Finest Games Ever Created By: TheShroud13
Review Breakdown |
Battle System |
9 |
Interface |
9 |
Music/Sound |
7 |
Originality |
8 |
Plot |
9 |
Localization |
10 |
Replay Value |
8 |
Visuals |
10 |
Difficulty |
Hard |
Time to Complete |
40+ hours | | Overall | |
Criteria |
After all the hype surrounding Final Fantasy X, I did not think there
was any chance that the game could live up to the enormous hype.
However, a play through this game reveals that it is indeed one of the
greatest adventures to grace any system. A game of such great caliber
only comes around once or twice in a console's lifetime, and I doubt any
Playstation 2 RPG, past or present, will be able to live up to the bar
set by Final Fantasy X. One of the best-told games I have ever played,
Final Fantasy X has earned itself an instant spot into my hall of fame.
The Active Time Battle that had been the system of choice for Final
Fantasy battle systems is one of the first things scrapped from Final
Fantasy X, and it could not have come at a better time. The ATB system
was starting to show its age, and the long strands of dead-time, and the
clunky state brought by the ATB system are disbanded for an all new turn
based battle system, coined Character Turn Based (CTB). There aren't
words to describe how much better CTB is over the ATB system. Under the
system you can see exactly when your characters will have their next
turn, as well as seeing when your foes will have your next turn.
Because of this, you can strategically determine your next actions based
on the current state of the turns. You have to keep in mind the damage
you'll deal, what side effects you can use, how long your action will
take to execute, which makes the CTB much more fun to use than the ATB,
as you can evaluate the options in combat, with the only dead-time being
the time you have to spend determining what action to take. No more is
the waiting for someone's ATB bar to fill up, you just pick an attack
and watch the results come. In addition to all of that, each and every
character has a 'role' in combat. Not only does this make it easier to
incorporate all of your fighters into combat, it makes it nearly
impossible to neglect some fighters. Because you are able to freely
switch your three active characters in and out of combat without losing
a turn, it is easy to bring new players into combat as well. The
strategy involved in Final Fantasy X was absent in many other Final
Fantasy games, and that adds up to the game being much more fun than any
Final Fantasy before it, and a majority of other RPGs as well.
Of all the Final Fantasies, Final Fantasy X offers more opportunities
to fine-tune your party more than ever before. The most notable of the
ways to fine-tune your party is the Sphere Grid. Replacing the age-old
level of experience points and experience levels, this new system works
a lot like a board game. As you defeat enemies, you obtain AP instead
of experience points, and as your AP increases, you start gaining sphere
levels. For every sphere level you obtain, you can move one 'node' on
the Sphere Grid. Using special spheres, you can then activate certain
nodes on the grid to improve your characters' statistics and give them
new abilities. Although the sphere grid is very limited to you at
first, it opens up as you gain new spheres, and it is definitely an
original way to build your characters. It is a very simple, and
different way to build your characters, and it is an improvement upon
the old system, and definitely helps enrich the game.
| I would have said goooooooooal, but whatever. | |
Square also gives you another area to allow you to tailor your team to
your liking, through the customization system. Using this system, you
can take items that you have in your inventory and add different
abilities to your characters' items. For example, a certain number of
antidotes would bestow the poisontouch ability to your characters
weapons. This gives you the ability to create new and unique weapons
that you could not make in previous Final Fantasies. This system is a
bit more involved than the sphere grid, and requires more items than the
sphere grid, but it adds just as much to the game as the sphere grid,
and is yet another unique addition to the game.
For one of the first times ever in an RPG review, I am actually going
to have to spend more time talking about the sound than the music!
Where most previous RPGs had to use music to fuel emotion in their
games, Final Fantasy X's emotion is powered mostly by its voice acting.
While I had my doubts early about the voice acting, the more I played
the game, the better the voice acting seemed. The voice actors did a
very good job of giving the characters a level of personality that could
not have been reached in previous games. While there is an occasional
rushed line or awkward pause, the voice acting is generally very good in
this game. Unfortunately, while the voice acting takes center stage, I
still would have liked some better music. There is an occasional good
song on this game's soundtrack, but the overall score is basically
filler music. Only a handful of the songs are actually memorable, and
the ones that are are repeated many times throughout the game, with
slight variations. While the addition of voice acting is so well done
that the musical woes are easy to forget, it still would have been nicer
to have gotten a better soundtrack.
Being the tenth addition to the legendary Final Fantasy series, you
wouldn't expect such a great deal of originality in a game such as this,
however, Square manages to pack in more originality than they had in a
number of their earlier works. The new interfaces are very original,
and the plot isn't a bad job of originality either. It is one of the
more original games I've played in recent years. While some of the
game's characters aren't completely original, the majority of the game
is very original, and I thank Square for making such a good game
different from the others.
| Overkill, roadkill, same thing. | |
While Final Fantasy X doesn't sport the greatest story ever to grace a
role playing game, it is executed marvelously. The characters are
easily the richest characters to grace an RPG. Every character has a
well-crafted personality, only aided further by the voice acting, and
their roles in combat. The characters interact amongst each other more
realistically than any other characters before, and they are played
consistently, it is a very rare event that any character steps out of
their personality, adding to their already relatively realistic stories
and actions. Final Fantasy X is helped even further by one of the most
believable and well crafted game worlds ever created. Every city has
its own architecture, culture, and the different races of the world are
well thought out as well. The beliefs and rituals of the people play a
major role in the story, and help add to the believability of the
world. Aside from the excellent characters and wonderful world the
plot, albeit nothing remarkable, is the perfect compliment to the rest
of the game, and is still a very good story. Throughout the game, you
are treated to rich dialogue, exciting plot twists, and an ending more
powerful than any I have ever seen. Best of all, Square does an
excellent job of localizing this game for America so everything sounds
smooth, and the grammatical errors, if seen, don't detract from the
game.
Yet another strong point of Final Fantasy X is its replay value. While
many Final Fantasy games were basically one time through games, Final
Fantasy X is not. Despite being one of the most linear games in the
series, the game opens up toward the end with a vast number of side
quests and mini-games that add depth to playing the game over and over
again. You can also play the game again to see what kinds of new
creations you can make through customization, how you can build up a
better Blitzball team, and a number of the many possibilities that are
offered in Final Fantasy X. The game is also a bit more challenging
than most RPGs, but not to the point where you cannot enjoy the game due
to high difficulty. The game will take at the least probably 40 hours
to play, but because of just how good it is, I've heard of players
spending anywhere up to 100 hours playing the game!
If there is one thing that Final Fantasy X does best, it is the
remarkable graphics. Everything in the game is beautifully crafted.
The level of detail on some buildings, characters, and monsters is
simply amazing. There is not a point in the game where I am not totally
in amazement from the beautiful visual effects. Every animation is so
smooth, detailed, and beautiful that the game would be worth playing
just to see the amazing things that had been created in the imaginations
of the people at Square. The level of detail in Final Fantasy X's
visuals is something people simply have to see for themselves. Thanks
to breathtaking locales, disgusting monsters, and so much more I could
spend hours just looking at Final Fantasy X and still have a good time.
| Just adding to the realism of the game's world. | |
Never have I played a game that has pleased me in so many different
ways. From the fun battle system, to the beautiful graphics, Final
Fantasy X can please any one somehow, and if you don't play this game,
it is a sad thing for you. If you have any appreciation for fine
storytelling at all, you simply have to play Final Fantasy X.
Cosmetically wonderful, fun to play, and packed with an emotional, and
well-told story, Final Fantasy X is a fine last effort for Hironobu
Sakaguchi.
TheShroud13's Bottom Line: Final Fantasy X is the closest game to
perfection I have ever played. While I don't view it as completely
perfect, it is the only game I have ever played that I can honestly say
deserves a perfect 10. There is something amazing happening during
every second played of Final Fantasy X.
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