Final Fantasy X Review

Final Fantasy X has always had a bunch of firsts attached to it. It was the first Final Fantasy game on the PS2. It was the first Final Fantasy game to receive a sequel. It was the first Final Fantasy game to use voice acting. Now, it has had another first placed with it. It is the first Final Fantasy game to get an HD Remaster. Today we are going to look at the HD Remaster of FF X and see how it holds up today and against some of the previous Final Fantasy games.

The story of Final Fantasy X is as follows. A young Blitzball player named Tidus's city of Zanarkand is attacked by a beast known as Sin. Auron, a friend of Tidus's father, guides Tidus to the world of Spira using Sin as a conduit. Here, Tidus meets the summoner Yuna and her guardians Wakka, Lulu, and Kimahri and sets off with them on her journey to defeat Sin. However, none of them believe he came from Zanarkand, as in this world it is a ruined city, having been destroyed by Sin a thousand years ago. On their journey, Yuna is visiting various temples to gain the use of Aeons after praying to Fayth, who are martyrs stuck in a state of eternal dream. Along the way, it is also Yuna's job to guide the souls of the dead to the farplane lest they become beasts as well. The group catches up with Auron, who is a famous guardian having also protected Yuna's father Lord Braska, who was the last summoner to defeat Sin. The group eventually becomes entangled in a political struggle with the leaders of the world, the Maesters of Yevon. They have forsaken the teachings of their own religion in order to gain everlasting life through undeath. They war with a group called the Al Bhed who use technology forbidden by Yevon. Eventually, they are all sent to the farplane by Yuna sending the religion into chaos. The one surviving member is Seymour, a guado summoner who's mother became the fayth of the aeon he controls. The pain from his mother's loss caused him to poison his own father, and drives him to try and control Sin to cleanse the world. However, after many fights, Yuna is finally able to send Seymour as well.

It is revealed that the death and rebirth of Sin is a cycle caused by the eternal summoner Yu Yevon. The final aeon summoned by a summoner will kill both the summoner and Sin, however Yu Yevon will recreate Sin around this Final Aeon. The group devises a way to infiltrate Sin to get to Yu Yevon and defeat him once and for all thus ending the cycle. Doing this causes the Fayth to finally end their dream. However, it is revealed that Tidus and his father Jecht are manifestations of this dream, and so they must vanish.

This is an extremely truncated version of the plot which contains a myriad of side plots and relationships, but the important stuff is all there. It is a good story with by far the most cut scenes so far in the series. We are really given in depth examples of just how destructive Sin is, as well as just how far the corruption in Yevon goes. Nearly every cut scene in the game is voice acted and gives the game a far greater cinematic feel than any other game in the series. Also, many cutscenes have been redone in a glorious 1080p resolution and just look absolutely amazing, but we'll get into this more later. All in all, it is a very engaging story and really pulls at you from many different angles.

Next, let's look at the gameplay elements. Gameplay in FF X really goes between three different modes. There is story sections where you spend a lot of time talking to people and watching cut-scenes. There are battle sections where you advance along what is basically a completely linear path getting from Point A to Point B. Finally, there are puzzle sections. When you enter each temple to gain a new Aeon you must first conquer the Cloister of Trials. These sections involve moving spheres around in certain ways to open up paths to both find the exit and to obtain treasures. The game does a very good job in balancing the sections. As you progress through the main plot, you will switch back and forth between these sections very often, and for the most part you never feel like you're spending too much time in story mode, or too much time without seeing any plot advancement.

The battle system in FF X is a departure from the previous games in the series. For the first time since FF III we are not using an Active Time system. Instead we use a priority turn based system. Characters get turns based on their agility stat and a number of different buffs/debuffs. Haste and Slow have always been important spells in Final Fantasy but in this game they feel so much more powerful as you can actively see how many more turns you are getting because of them. This gives a lot of strategy to fights as you can time when you want certain effects to go off or what order you want to attack things on, based on when they are going to get their turn.

Levelling too is quite a departure. For only the second time in the series, characters do not have experience levels. Instead characters gain stats and abilities by moving around a sphere grid. By defeating monsters, characters who have taken part in the battle will earn AP which is then converted into Sphere Levels. For each sphere level a character has they can move one space on the grid and then place spheres into pieces they are either on or adjacent to to gain specific stats and abilities. There are two different grids that can be selected at the beginning of the adventure. A normal grid which places characters at the start of very predefined paths which place them into certain job types such as healer, black mage, white mage, etc. There is also an expert grid which has far less defined paths for the characters and lets the user pick whatever role they would like for the different characters.

Limit breaks in this game are called Overdrives. The new thing with them in this game is that the user has a lot of control over how their gauge fills. By participating in battles under certain conditions the character will learn new modes for filling up their overdrive gauge. And the overdrives range from massive attacks to using Blue Magic to being able to combine different items.

Also new in FF X is how summoning works. Instead of being just a spell that a character can use, summoning actually replaces your team on the field with the Aeon and you get to control it in battle. For most of the game this gives you a way of going one on one with strong monsters in the game. Late in the game this can be used as a tanking ability to let the Aeon absorb a heavy attack that might wipe out your team.

Weapons and Armor in the game are unique in that they have no innate power in themselves. Damage and defense in the game are calculated completely on your stats. However, you can customize your armor and weapons with certain abilities to enhance this or give them an elemental property, etc. For experts in the game, they can craft some weapons and armor to make some bosses incredibly easy. However, it is certainly not something that is required until you start getting to the endgame. Really, for the most part you don't have to use it at all, and it is a bit of a disappointment to me.

For completionists, FF X HD Remaster has a very long and involved endgame, that goes through many phases. The first phase of the endgame involves collecting the seven Celestial Weapons. These weapons are super powerful weapons that deal their damage based on different formulas and ignore all enemy defense. They are required for beating many of the super bosses in the game. To collect these weapons, a character must collect the weapon itself which is usually found around the world somewhere along with a corresponding Sigil and Crest. The crest is found in a treasure chest somewhere in the world and is not very difficult to collect. The Sigil on the otherhand involves complete mastery of one of the games sidequests or minigames.

The largest and most involved minigame in FF X is called Blitzball. This is a sport similar to underwater rugby, and is really a mini RPG all in itself. You can collect team members from around the world and level them up by having them perform actions in games. You can collect prizes from winning leagues and tournaments, and you can learn abilities by watching an opposing player perform the move. It is a very addictive mini-game that does a very good job in maintaining a decent level of difficulty for the most part.

Other minigames include Chocobo racing which is incredibly frustrating due to its high learning curve due to some tricky controls. Lightning dodging which tests your reflexes to be able to press a button at precisely the right time to dodge a lightning bolt, oh and you have to do this 200 times in a row. Butterfly catching, which is basically being able to memorize a path to collect the correct color of butterfly. Cactuar catching where you play a red-light/green-light kind of game to open up the hidden home of the cactuar. The final minigame is monster catching, which opens up the next tier of the endgame which I'll get into now.

Deep in the Calm Lands lies the monster arena. By travelling around the world you can catch monsters by killing them with a certain weapon. As you catch more and more monsters, the owner of the arena will begin to create completely new monsters for you to kill. All in all, you must capture 10 of each type of enemy. It is incredibly time consuming. However, once you do this you gain access to fighting whatever monster you want at any time. These new monsters the owner creates also can drop unique items. Most importantly, most of the monsters created by collecting all of a species of monster will drop spheres you can place in your sphere grid to increase your stats. Once you gain enough power to start killing these reliably, you can basically take your time and increase any stat you want as much as you want. Once your power is high enough from doing this, you can take on some of the arena owner's original creations. Basically, these are unique super bosses. Defeating all of them will cause the owner to unleash his ultimate creation, Nemesis.

Nemesis was the strongest monster in the original version of the game... however, in the international version and now the Remastered version there is still one tier of challenge to go. Upon reaching the endgame, 8 Yevon summoners go out into the world to get revenge for what Yuna has done to their religion. Each of these summoners controls a dark version of one of Yuna's aeons with stats higher than anything you've seen so far. These battles are incredibly difficult and require lots of stat grinding and lots of strategy.

At this point you start to realize something very interesting about the various gameplay elements. At this point all your characters have very similar stats and pretty much all the abilities, so there's no difference in them right? Well, no. You see, another thing you've learned to do at this point is basically have your overdrive active most of the time. This basically gives the difference to most of your characters at this point and you start to realize that the party role of some of your characters have completely changed. Yuna at the start of your quest is a healer, but now at end game, her summoning makes her the most effective tank on your team. Rikku, a thief at the start, now uses her mixes to become the most effective buffer/healer on your team. Very interesting.

So, anyway, once you've defeated all of the Dark Aeons, quite an accomplishment in itself, the final weapon of Yevon is summoned. This weapon is called Penance and is a very difficult endurance fight. It is not the best superboss fight in the series, but after all the work you put in to raise your stats high enough, to master all sorts of strategies, and to create specific armors for different fights, defeating Penance is a very good ending and feels like a great accomplishment.

One other endgame mechanic I haven't gotten into. As I said before, at the monster arena you can fight any monster you want anytime. Now, each monster has 4 separate item tables. They have a table for different armors and weapons they can drop. This can be used sometimes if maybe getting a certain item to customize the weapon and armor is difficult, but for the most part just gives you stuff to sell. There is a steal table, both a common and rare table which you can use to get a lot of items in the beginning of the end game. There is an item drop table, which again can be used to get some very rare and unique items. The final table is the bribe table. You see, once you have a ton of money, monsters actually become shops in the end game. You can buy almost any item from the right monster, though some cost an arm and a leg. Its nice as it means the money you have is NEVER useless.

The graphics in the game have really been mostly redone, and for the most part they look wonderful. All the character models have been completely redone, alot of the monsters and NPCs as well. There are some instances where you see some NPCs which haven't been remastered together with remastered ones, and in those rare instances, it looks a little odd. The cutscenes have all been redone and they look completely gorgeous. If you haven't seen the cutscene in Macalania Lake after the remaster, you should go look it up, it is truly wonderful work. The most amazing improvement in the graphics is the backgrounds. The remastered backgrounds are incredibly detailed with much improved draw distance. The first time I got into Besaid Island and saw the lush vegetation I was truly blown away. All in all, the work SquareEnix put into redoing the assets of this game were well worth it.

Nobuo Uematsu music has always been a strong point in the Final Fantasy series and this is no different. However, all this music has been remastered as well. First of all, it sounds wonderful coming through a good sound system. Some of the songs have been completely redone as well. I really urge everyone to go listen to the remastered version of Battle With Seymour to hear what I mean. Beyond this, though, the soundtrack is amazing. I always thought one of the key points of FF X is that the opening screen plays To Zanarkand, an amazingly emotional tune that just draws you in, and you can't help but feel something any time it plays during the game. For the most part, the game uses a rather light soundtrack while you are travelling. This does a good job to differentiate the important parts of the game which for the most part use a sadder tone... a lot of minor keys. Strangely absent from the soundtrack is the actual Final Fantasy theme. I'm trying to remember which other games actually omit this theme. None come to mind. (Okay, I just looked it up, it wasn't in FF II either, and apparently its not in XIII)

All in all, this is a fantastic game which I feel doesn't get enough respect from the community as a whole. It has a great story with just enough length, and I can't think of another game in the series that comes close to it as far as completionist content goes. Bringing the graphics and music up to date with the remastered versions does a lot to draw in players who may not have played this game before, and the new bosses and expert sphere grid are just enough to bring people who already love the game to try it one more time. This is not a perfect game. The battle system might be a little simplistic, and some of the minigames can be incredibly frustrating. What makes it so great, however, is that it perfectly balances the simplicity necessary for newcomers and the complexity to appeal to experts. If you have a PS3, pick up the HD Remaster, you won't regret it even if you've never played a Final Fantasy game before.