Final Fantasy X is an emotionally gripping story about the innocence of love and unavoidable sacrifices accompanied by a touching score of music paired with lovely characters and a snappy turn-based combat system.

As someone who experienced love many times, I can tell that the innocent love story is absolutely convincing. From time to time it is cringeworthy, but as cringeworthy as some moments are, they feel embarrassingly real. Despite having a convincing love story, this game never loses focus on the actual plot and its tragic and consequential story comes to an end.

Completing this game was hell, but one of my greatest gaming accomplishments. I still remember how I finally dodged 200 lightning bolts and got a 0 in the Chocobo race — frustrating, yet absolutely satisfying.

Final Fantasy X is my favorite entry in this series and one of my favorite games of all time. It is perfect as it is.

just an fyi that if this is your first exposure to FFX and you want to hop on the bandwagon of being a smug little brat about the supposedly "awful" voice acting (it's not, it's remarkably accomplished and effective considering the insane tech constraints the team was working under--the depth of performance these actors were able to achieve still blows more current games and their aggressively codified anime archetype voices out of the water! good luck finding protagonists with as specific and non-cliche intonations as Tidus/Yuna. Watching Hedy Buress' thoughtful interview featurette about playing Yuna literally makes me cry) you should know that you probably are feeling a weird friction between the voice/characters moreso because the hd remaster completely butchered so much of the animation and visual storytelling present in the faces of the original character models, which the english voice actors were directly responding to and taking influence from in their performances! OG Yuna had so much intimate detail written into her ps2-era features--her gentle, tired eyes, full of fatigue but never resignation. This new baby eyed smoothface Dissidia treatment has turned both our protags into puffy blowfish with hyper-saturated irises and deer in the headlights stares, and the pioneering facial animation from the og has all but been completely erased! literally you are seeing a vastly inferior treatment than 20 years ago. Devastating 2 observe this homunculus pantomime, truly can not bear it

also deriding the laughing scene for being cringe is so tedious, it IS cringe but in a beautiful and very real, well contextualized way and the reason the game contains this "cringe" scene is also the reason its literally the only convincing romance in like any videogame ever made !!!! sad how you've all forgotten how to love, i will be praying 4 u

FFX is an all timer for me and my connection to the mastery present in like every specific element of its original iteration have made playing this remaster completely impossible lol

maybe you will experience much less revulsion to the facial animation than me and i truly hope you do because this is one of the most holistically well considered and thematically cogent Final Fantasies and jrpgs in general. Just play the OG upscaled i literally just did and it looked infinitely more appealing than this

Final Fantasy X was a game in the series that really shifted things around. It broke some common JRPG rules and was a bit all over the place. This was the first JRPG I had ever beaten as a kid and was the first Final Fantasy I ever finished. I have a lot of fond memories of this game and the HD Remaster brought a lot of those back.

The core game hasn’t really been touched, but US gamers will finally get a taste at the tougher International version which adds an expert sphere grid and Dark Aeons which are the toughest enemies in the game (some have millions of HP). Outside of the game, the game is still the same with great characters that are memorable and beautiful locales. The story is a bit confusing at first but very original – if not very deep. You play as Tidus who is a young man sent forward in time hundreds of years into the future. His original home is now a sacred ruin and a giant being called Sin is destroying humanity. Every 10 years this Sin comes back and the Calm ends. Another summoner must go on a pilgrimage to gather all the Aeons and take down Sin for another 10-year Calm. Your goal is to put a stop to this cycle. You gather your crew along the way to level up an put and end to all this nonsense.

Before you jump into this game you must have a mindset from when the PS2 first launched. This game was fantastic back in the day and still holds up well. Most JRPG gamers will be thrown off by the Sphere Grid. There is no traditional leveling up where you gain levels. Instead, you acquire AP and get sphere points which allow you to freely upgrade various attributes and skills for each character. The expert sphere grid allows you to use keys to go off your path and learn other abilities from other characters. This is a lot of fun and gives you total freedom over your character.

Outside of the sphere grid is the obvious combat. Yes, there are random battles and some areas are so bad that you hit one every 2-3 seconds; literally. A max of three characters can battle at once with the freedom to swap out. It’s the usual JRPG turn based battle system but there are overdrives which are crucial to winning boss fights. Characters learn new drives as they battle. Aeons are also essential but only Yuna can send them in. They are large heavy hitters that will take away massive damage and can also be overdriven which is probably the #1 technique to winning tougher boss fights. Like any other JRPG learning enemies’ weaknesses and battling with magic is a must. Some bosses nearly turn into puzzles where you must cast Reflect on them so their healing spell bounces off of them onto you. Some bosses will cast status ailments that can cripple your entire party. If you don’t grind a bit and stay ahead of the game you will struggle.

Outside of battle, there are the Cloister of Trials which are a huge pain and aren’t fun at all. These are puzzles in which you place various spheres to unlock doors. Another huge pain is the Blitzball mini-game. This isn’t fun at all and requires math to actually play. It’s stiff, shallow, and just plain boring. I hated it as a kid and I hate it even now that I know math better. It’s all nearly luck based and is a roll of the dice. You have almost no control over characters.

FFX is also full of pre-final boss content but there are a lot of requirements to get this stuff. Ultimate weapons are a must have to do more than the 9,999 HP damage limit. However, they require you to be in certain areas, acquire certain other items, or even get through harder areas which require getting through other areas just to get to that area. Sounds confusing? It is. I spent a good 15 hours just trying to figure all this out and could get only one optional Aeon (Yojimbo). Anima is another optional Aeon but requires getting through a tough boss with the 3 weakest characters (Tidus, Rikku, and Wakka) and then getting all the destruction spheres in every Trial. It’s a huge pain and requires a lot of running around and backtracking and can make you frustrated. You can also monster hunt but this requires training a Chocobo (which is tough as nails to get through) and then capturing the toughest monsters in the game easily requires Ultimate weapons which require more backtracking. It’s a frustrating mess but also somehow extremely satisfying once you do it.

With the main game out of the way let’s talk about visuals. The HD upgrade isn’t exactly what you think. Most of the game has been remodeled and all the main characters are completely redone, however, many monsters and NPCs just had a few passes of texture filtering and that’s it. It really looks ugly in spots but isn’t so bad if you’ve played the game before. I just wish the Japanese voice track was on here since the English voice acting is so terrible and embarrassing to listen to.

The entry for the PC port bundles X and X-2 together so I'm using this one for it.

This is the first Final Fantasy game that after finishing made me think "damn I want to replay this already", the turn order and rock/paper/scissor combat system is such a natural evolution from the ATB system that makes the game just so much more fun because it gives you control of everything that happens while still facing an adequate challenge.
I also love the sphere grid because it's a cool way to add variety in your builds.
I feel like the only real flaws this game has are the PC ports jankyness, the fact that menus are not able to be scrolled fast and that some areas feel pretty barren, but these are so minor and overwhelmed by the great story and my favorite gameplay in the series that they are null in my eyes.
On a side note the arranged music is amazing, with tracks like "Assault" being an absolute standout.
Amazing game and great entry point if you need a feel for the modern FF games.

even after the remaster it this




game




is





still




slow

Final Fantasy X has the best story in the series for me, the characters are amazing because relationship between them feels natural. The characters know each other slowly and then when they fall in love or something bad happens, you want a happy ending for them. Really i wanted a happy ending but i don’t say how is the ending.

FFX has turn-based combat like the previous 9 games and the combat is fast-paced and fun, new skill-tree system called Sphere Grid is really enjoyable and makes you feel the improvement, it seems to complicated at first but it isn’t. When you understand the logic, it is just becomes a puzzle. Random encounter…I hate random encounter, i just wanted to tell. Why Japanese developers don't want to make a flawless game? The Dungeons and level design are too linear so exploration isn’t fun, everything is in front of you. Level design is clearly a result of a hard work like games other aspects i know that but this can’t be an excuse for it. Soundtrack is awesome, I often listen it, probably i will be listening in the future, I was listening to Suteki da Ne while i write this review over and over again. Now it’s time for me to cry

Apart of the infamous Tidus' laughter and the entire voice acting, FFX is an amazing game.
The skill tree is well done, each character has more or less a pre-established pathway at some point.
But what drew me into the game was the story, this parallel world, it's one of the most interesting worlds, I just wanted to progress to understand more of the characters and Spira.
I love so much the ending of this game, in my opinion there shouldn't be a continuation to the story, even more considering that trash X-2 released after.
FFX has my favorite FF battle system. The last true turned-based, being able to switch your party members without losing turn was simply amazing.
Very linear game, which is fits well when the story and characters are the focus.

I wish I liked this game as much as everyone else does, I really really do. It's got some of the best feeling turn-based combat in the franchise (and probably in the whole genre) but so much of the rest of the game just didn't click for me. I liked a few of the characters, but my favs were all left with rather short and unsatisfying storylines whereas the characters I didn't care about very much all the focus. On top of that, the voice acting is.... well it's historically significant and it's important that it's there but it's really rough. It was genuinely hard for me to sit through all those cutscenes.

This game is massively important to Final Fantasy and to JRPGs and maybe to gaming as a whole but to revisit it in the modern day is tough, especially for someone like me with no nostalgia for it.

So, playing this Final Fantasy was a loooong time coming. A bit of history, I remember hearing about this game for years that it was everyone's favorite and was the best Final Fantasy. After years of hearing this I slowly grew to resent hearing about it so much and then when I played Dissidia Final Fantasy...I honestly wasn't a fan of Tidus in that game, add all that on top of me not having a PS2 back when the original game released and you can see why it took so long to ever play this.

The one thing I didn't think I'd like about the game was the setting, I had seen screenshots and media about the game and kinda figured it would mostly take place in a more nature type setting, but as I hear people talking it seemed to have a religion vs technology theme to it. Back then, this didn't sit too well with me, but now after having played it, I really should have just jumped into this game sooner. The setting and the story is very well done, I love it's paced, I love how focused it was.

The characters are what really sell the game, this has to be the first Final Fantasy ever that I absolutely loved every character in your party. I was hooked from the very start, the game kinda gave me this Tales of Abyss feel, that it took me a while to really understand what was going on, which since you play the role of Tidus who is outside his element is very fitting to the story being told. It was quite a ride from start to finish.

I was actually kinda shocked at the gameplay, I was expecting it to sort of play like the other Final Fantasy games either of the past or one of the recent ones, but it actually doesn't exactly. Sure it has attack, spells, items, blah blah, but the game has a sort of turn ladder system where it shows you when each character takes a turn, so it's no longer set on a bar timer, if you've ever played Lord of the Rings: The third Age, it's exactly that. Also there's a sort of rock, paper, scissors going on that you have like Tidus who can take down nimble enemies that most everyone else would miss, and more like that with other characters but that would make this too long.

I wish I could say more about the music, it's amazing, probably the best soundtrack in the series, I think I would still put Final Fantasy 6 over it but that's about it. The voice acting is actually pretty good, it's got some weird lines and hiccups in places, but for Final Fantasy's first voiced game they did an amazing job.

If I had to talk about the flaws of the game, I can't really thing of many, the only thing I kinda don't like and it's sort of a barrier to entry, back when I talked about gameplay, the character's get spells and abilities from a sphere system, if you're familiar with a skill tree, it's something like that accept think of giant webs and circles and that's how you get any kind of skills, it's a neat system, but it's thrown at you with little explanations and since levels are no longer in the game, this is leveling system so it can't be ignored. That's honestly about it besides it being possible battles can feel same-y since you're just matching your party make up to what kills that formation faster, but even that isn't as bad to me.

I can't stress how much of a great time this game was, it's sits VERY high on my favorite Final Fantasy games.