After the announcement by Square Enix that Final Fantasy Versus XIII was to be
renamed Final Fantasy XV, I’ve been
thinking for a while it would be a good idea to go through my favourite Final
Fantasy games so far – although I am going from the main, number titles – not
sequels, spin-offs or other games at this point. They might come later. So, for
this “top five” I’m starting with, yup, you guessed it – Final Fantasy X.
The story
I enjoyed FFX’s
story a lot but it was pretty basic. There wasn’t much mystery – other than
what really happened to Zanarkand and the truth about the Final Summoning. I
think I figured out what was going to happen around the Guadosalam area.
The game was very linear, in that you had to go in a
straight line for most of it. Sure, there are times you can turn back and
revisit some places but there’s always a limit until you get much further in
the game. That is kind of true of a lot of them, but there’s an option for free-roaming
in many of these titles and I enjoy that option, so this detracted a little of
the fun for me.
Tidus did annoy me overall, and Yuna, while strong in
battle, was portrayed as weak and under-confident through much of the game and
that annoyed me too. They were supposed to balance out but I never really felt
it got that balance. Lulu and Wakka, that was balance!
Combat and the sphere grid
Of all the Final Fantasy games I’ve played, this is the
easiest. If you save regularly and spend enough time growing stronger, there’s
nothing that can stop you. For more of a challenge, the monsters you fight can
have an active ATB, which means they will attack on a clock rather than waiting
for a specific turn. If this is turned off, it becomes a simple matter of
planning each move and having the supplies and skills to survive.
The sphere grid, while daunting at first, is surprisingly
easy to master. The easier setting sets it up for you, allowing each character
to master particular skills and fight certain enemies well, but you can do this
on the advanced setting just as well, and it changes how you approach the game.
This is interesting but it is very easy to make mistakes early on, especially
for inexperienced players – although I’ve made a fair few mistakes myself along
the way!
Blitzball
One of my favourite mini-games around is Blitzball and most
of my time on any FFX save was
actually spent on this. It didn’t matter to me you could unlock everything
right away, and that you needed to do certain things first – it was a decent
game that, with more work, probably could have stood on its own.
What did get to me was the stop-start nature, which is
designed to let players make the best decisions but removes some of the
pressure, and again, like the rest of FFX,
makes it a bit too easy. If I could see one thing changed in this HD remake,
it’d be to make Blitzball played in real-time and make it more difficult and
fun.
Summary
I enjoyed FFX – I
really did – but more at the time of its release. I was a bit younger and a bit
more taken in by the improved graphics (and voices). As I get older, it has
lost a bit of appeal to me but it’s still a good game, with a solid story and
one of the best mini-games I’ve found in many games, not just Final Fantasy. My
biggest problem with it is that it’s too easy, especially as you can make
monsters wait before they attack you. Why even have a pause button? Still, with
the HD remake on the way, I’ll be playing it again very soon.
Oh, and in case anyone HASN’T done it, collect the Al Bhed
primers and play the game again so you can understand the chatter early on and
throughout. It’s nothing huge, but you get the nice sense of achievement for
doing so.
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