REVIEWS Review Page Review Guidelines Judge Gamer's History Multimedia Stuff About Us Message Board Links Contact Information

Final Fantasy X Genre Publisher Developer Release Date Role-Playing Game Squaresoft Squaresoft 12/18/2001 When I received my demo disc in the mail and saw it had Final Fantasy X (FFX), I was stoked just being able to play a Final Fantasy on the PS2 and I did have high expectations for when it comes to playing the game and just the quality of the character/creature design, spell effects, backgrounds alone blew me away because for the most part, the realistic-ness is something rarely seen in a RPG and I almost thought it was real for a split second. Now this is how a game is supposed to look. The storyline involves Tidus who is a blitzball player who thanks to sin, gets taken to this other world. He is greeted by a group of people whom will become his fellow party members. One of these characters whom you meet a few minutes after is named Yuna. She is a white mage and is to be sent on a pilgrimage to do the final summoning and hopefully defeat sin. This quest is going to be dangerous so she has her guardians (the party members that I mentioned in the previous sentence.) They include a black mage, a blitzball team captain, a ronso (big hairy strong creature). Yuna feels comfortable having Tidus around so they all go on this quest. As usual when it comes to a Final Fantasy game a few elements change. They introduce the Sphere Grid. It’s a gigantic grid with all these circles (called nodes) connected to one another. To move from node to node it costs one sphere level. To obtain a sphere level you have to collect a certain amount of AP. To get AP, you have to defeat monsters. The real unique thing about this is that there are some empty nodes (and later on you can obtain spheres that will fill them…for example, if you get an HP sphere, it will take an empty node and will transform it to where when a character activates it, their HP goes up 300 points). There are various nodes for HP, MP, Strength, Defense, Magic, Magic Defense, Abilities, Accuracy, Evasion, and agility which strengthen your character. To activate a node, the character must be either A…on the node, or B connecting to another one. (Example O----X----O | if your character is in the middle, he or she can activate the nodes on either side). Nodes to be activated also require a sphere from one of the 5 categories (Power, Magic, Speed, Abilities, and Luck). I know it sounds a little confusing at first, but one of the best advantages behinds is that each character starts off in a spot on the grid. As the games goes on, you can make the characters go down which ever path you want. Overdrives (also known as limit breaks in the previous Final Fantasies) are back and what I like is that as the games goes on, you can set how your overdrive charges. By default it’s in stoic mode (charges when your character gets damaged) but you can change it to victor (charges when a character delivers the final blow), warrior (attack the enemies) and more. Most of the characters, their overdrives and effectiveness require you to do something. (Hit the button at the right time, rotate the stick, and push bottoms combinations, just to name a few) Aeons (Summons or GF…whichever term you wish to use) are back; however, unlike the previous versions, they don’t just come to do their overdrive, no….you get to control them just like a basic character. They can attack; do certain attacks, use magic (they pretty much can’t use items). When they take and/or receive damage their overdrive meter charges and when it’s full they do their big attack. A great addition because it once again gives the player more control and requires them to get into the game more versus “I’ll just summon Bahamut”. Speaking of Aeons, they give don’t give them to you. To acquire an Aeons, you must complete various trials (puzzles). As you go through the game, you will come to these temples where Yuna must summon an aeon. To get to the aeon, you have to complete the trial. Just like any FF game, there are a few bonus aeons that you can find, that are if you got the time and energy. everything in this game is just solid and from previous experience, each of the other Final Fantasy games I have played…there was always one flaw (polygon characters in FF7, ease in FF8, FF9s lack of originality). I’m a huge fan of the game play because it is more of a turn based game versus time attacks. Sure one can argue that knowing when the enemy has its turn makes a game easy but the counter attacks and some of the challenging bosses will make you think otherwise. as I said in one of the previous paragraphs, FFX allows you to customize character’s abilities and stats (with the help of the sphere grid). You can also customize weapons and armor. Each weapon/armor comes with up to 4 slots and some of the slots are empty. If you have the right items, you can add abilities…remember, once it’s added, it’s stuck. (Towards the end of the game there is a shop that will sell you weapons and armor with 3-4 blank slots). You basically have to convert the items you have for the abilities. Abilities include the basic increase of stats, as well as elemental/status attacks and defense I am thankful that finally a game breaks limits instead of using the typical 9999 HP and 999 MP and 9999 damage maximums.) If you have the right items you can make a pretty powerful character. (My Yuna for example has over 25,000 HP and when it comes to an enemy that doesn’t have a super high defense, she can do over 30,000 points of damage alone with her staff.) The mini game of choice for this Final Fantasy is Blitzball. At one point in the game you can play it and eventually recruit members to your team. It’s a physical game that has a jump ball similar to basketball. Afterwards you try to make your way to the goal by breaking through attacks and throwing the ball (just like football) and you risk passes being too short and/or interceptions. (Blitzball is game that is based on stats and you can also use attacks that give character status effects). Once you get to a good spot you can try to take the ball and throw it (or kick it) into the goal. All u have to do is get the ball past the goalie. Overall, the game is solid and it's not only a keeper, but it was designed to last. Any RPG that takes a good 45 plus hours to conquer is worth it. To find all the goodies and have a surpreme file, be prepared to spend over 100 hours on the file. It's got a good mix of an awesome soundtrack, fantastic voice acting. The only thing I could ask for is that more games were of this quality. The Display The Noise The Wiring The Core The Boomerang Overall 9.5 9.7 9.5 10 9.8 9.8