Today I’m going to be reviewing Final Fantasy X out of Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remastered. Final Fantasy X is a JRPG that originally came out in 2001 on the Playstation 2, but the remastered version released on various platforms throughout the years starting on the Playstation 3/Vita in 2013 and finally hitting Xbox One and Switch in 2019; the PC version released in 2016.
The remastered version was largely handled by the Chinese studio Virtuos whom received some assistance from Square Enix - who also handled the publishing. The original version of the game was developed by Square. From my understanding, aside from upgraded textures and enhanced graphics, the remastered edition contains content that was previously only available in the international versions.
I happened to play the PC version. I never had any crashes and it was a stable and bug free experience for me. One thing I found interesting is that on Steam it has its own launcher and you have to select between X, X2, or the after stories, and then the game proper launches.
I have a lot to unpack here with this game, but before we get started, I feel that I have to say that I’ve never been so on the fence about whether or not to recommend a game. It was such a mixed bag for me. Because of that, I’m going to start with the huge elephant in the room, the difficulty.
Difficulty wise, this game is really hard. I’ve seen a lot of members of the Final Fantasy community claim that not only is it the best, or one of, but also the easiest game in the franchise. I honestly can’t attest one way or another whether this is true as I have only played this entry, 14, around half of 13-1, and a small smattering of X-2 back when I was a kid, but it is anything but easy if it’s your first time playing it and you go through it blind.
I’m actually pretty convinced that most of the people who comment that it is an easy game are doing so with the hindsight of having beaten it before, got the items that allowed them to easily cheese the bosses in a few hits, or they are REALLY used to building fantastic character builds.
Actually, speaking of cheesy items that allow you to beat bosses in a few hits, that’s sort of my main gripe with this game. To elaborate, whenever I hit the metaphorical wall on boss enemies and struggled, and anytime that I’d google, the general answer was “go make such and such awesome item that will give you an immunity to x status effect”.
That’s all well and good, except the part of the explanation which often gets left out is the fact that said items are usually only gotten through stealing off of monsters and the most effective way is to complete a side quest where you have to capture a number (think it was 10?) of each monster which will open up an arena that will then allow you to do so. Either way you are looking at a multiple hour grind there.
Me being my naive self, opted to just grind more levels each time I struggled instead of grinding out those items and doing the side quest because I wanted to get on with the story, and I mean, why would I need those items, the game is easy, right? I always persevered through it; until the final boss.
To backtrack a bit, I did once try some optional content that was highly recommended by a large segment of the community. There’s this powerful creature you can get to help you called Anima and I had done all the prerequisite stuff to unlock it. But as it turns out, it is blocked by a monster. The monster in question is low on health and pretty weak, but you are forced into using three specific characters for it (which is normally fine in and of itself), however said monster has a one hit kill that turns you into stone and makes said party member shatter so they can't be revived. I tried 7 separate times against it, but there’s only so much you can do when it kills your party members in one hit and they are non revivable.
This time there were two solutions offered. One was go grind out a minigame called Blitzball to get a character an awesome ultimate move (we’ll get to Blitzball in a few ranty paragraphs) or, “Go build a set of armor that blocks petrification”, which required grinding a specific item.
Anyway, I said nah, I’m not going to bother and started the endgame content with the final bosses. Which, wouldn’t you know it? The final boss of the game has the same exact move as that earlier boss, just reskinned. It was at this point at 52 hours in I decided to give up on the game entirely. Final Fantasy X is a difficult game, but only because a lot of the boss fights have really cheesy, cheap 1 hit kill mechanics.
One other thing worth noting, is that you cannot skip cutscenes. You can pause them, but you CANNOT skip them. So if you die at a boss with a long cutscene a lot, then you are going to end up with some of the game’s dialogue seared into your brain.
Disregarding the 4 or 5 boss fights I temporarily got stuck at, I’d say that the rest of the game is easy.
Well, other than the optional minigames. I had read and heard that the Chocobo Racing Minigame was such a hairpulling, RNG filled chore that I honestly just decided to avoid it entirely. There’s also a lightning dodging minigame that’s pretty hard to time. If you dodge 200 strikes of lightning in a row you get a prize! Then you have Blitzball, which is a sports minigame somewhat similar to football where you have two teams trying to score goals. Everyone on both teams have levels and level up the more you use them in matches. At one point in the story you are forced to do a match and you can choose to read up on how to play it. I did the tutorial for it (which is broken up into chunks) and still struggled to understand it. I ended up winning the match, but only after going into overtime with the butt-clinching score of 0 to 0.
I guess these don’t really classify as minigames and more as puzzles, especially since you are forced into them as part of the main story, but you have these trials you have to complete which are puzzles that revolve around moving spheres around and placing them in proper spots as well as occasionally moving blocks around. The first one was simple enough with trial and error. The others required a guide for me to complete. Funnily enough, I am of the belief that is why those puzzles are in the game, to help sell the game’s strategy guides because back in 2001 when it was on the PS2, there was no YouTube or any other real alternative to help out and no one will convince me otherwise.
I think that’s kind of my other problem with the game, all of the optional content just isn’t, at least in my opinion, fun.
Those personal grievances of mine aside, I think it’s a decent game with an amazing story. I found the story to be very engaging and unique. Most of the time I experience the story of something, whether it is in a book or a game, it shares similar beats with another story I have experienced before, but that wasn’t the case for me with Final Fantasy X.
I really loved the overall theme of having to decide whether to adhere to or let go of tradition.
I also found the companion characters to be some of the best companions out of any game I’ve ever played. They all had their own complete arcs, unique designs, distinct places in the story, and were just really pleasant. Plus, the voice acting for them, in the English Dub at least, fit them well. The voice actors really brought their A game. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but one of the characters, Wakka, is voiced by John DiMaggio (Bender from Futurama) and it took me well into 20 hours into the game to realize that, and only because he sort of slipped into his Bender voice when the character got angry.
There’s a lot of strange mechanics at play in the game as well.
Leveling up has this sphere grid mechanic. Each character has their own place on the grid and you have to move around and select which spheres to unlock. So like, if you want to raise a character’s attack then you need a power sphere to place on the attack slot, but in order to move on the grid you need a level. One level equals one movement, and it costs to move back over places you’ve already been on the grid as well. The grid is massive and would take ages to entirely fill as each characters’ grids intersect. That’s not a bad thing tho, as that means any character can learn any other character’s moves.
There are two equipment slots for each character. One is for a weapon type that is unique to them and the other is for an accessory type that is unique to them. As you get farther into the game, you’ll eventually unlock the ability to customize certain pieces of equipment which allow for the adding of status effects that you can inflict on enemies.
There are also tons of hidden systems at work behind the scenes. I don’t really understand it all, and not a lot of people do, if even anyone properly does at all; as there are tons of spreadsheets of data for a lot of things. For example, there’s a hidden creature that you can recruit which can instant kill any enemy, even bosses, at the cost of you paying it money. But the amount of money it takes to do the move with that chance to instant kill is based on a hidden unseen metric of how much it likes you which also ties into how much you’ve offered it each time for doing that move.
There’s also a specific scene where you get to ride a snowmobile with a companion and which companion you ride with is based on which one likes you the most, but that metric is hidden from you.
Some of the boss battles allow for what is called trigger commands. Trigger commands are specific to characters. I found this to be creative as it sometimes allowed for an alternate way to handle a boss, like by activating a crane and crushing it for example. However, I also found trigger commands to become frustrating as for certain battles you’d need to do trigger commands to move away from a boss’s attacks and that trigger command would take your entire turn. I realize I’m being a bit vague there, but I’d rather not spoil anything.
On the flipside, you can switch between companions who are on the field and who aren’t without it costing you a turn. You can also always see the turn order which is a really nice touch, so there’s never any confusion about who moves when.
So… Would I recommend playing Final Fantasy X? That depends on you. It’s a game, not a book - and the farther into the game I got the more sour I became because I largely wanted to experience the story above all else. If you like challenges and grinding to break the game, then I’d say it’s definitely worth it. If you don’t like grinding, then I’d say maybe give it a pass unless you are dying for something to play with a REALLY good story (although there is a rumor of a Remake being released in 2025/26 so you might want to hold out and see if that is any easier).
The remastered version was largely handled by the Chinese studio Virtuos whom received some assistance from Square Enix - who also handled the publishing. The original version of the game was developed by Square. From my understanding, aside from upgraded textures and enhanced graphics, the remastered edition contains content that was previously only available in the international versions.
I happened to play the PC version. I never had any crashes and it was a stable and bug free experience for me. One thing I found interesting is that on Steam it has its own launcher and you have to select between X, X2, or the after stories, and then the game proper launches.
I have a lot to unpack here with this game, but before we get started, I feel that I have to say that I’ve never been so on the fence about whether or not to recommend a game. It was such a mixed bag for me. Because of that, I’m going to start with the huge elephant in the room, the difficulty.
Difficulty wise, this game is really hard. I’ve seen a lot of members of the Final Fantasy community claim that not only is it the best, or one of, but also the easiest game in the franchise. I honestly can’t attest one way or another whether this is true as I have only played this entry, 14, around half of 13-1, and a small smattering of X-2 back when I was a kid, but it is anything but easy if it’s your first time playing it and you go through it blind.
I’m actually pretty convinced that most of the people who comment that it is an easy game are doing so with the hindsight of having beaten it before, got the items that allowed them to easily cheese the bosses in a few hits, or they are REALLY used to building fantastic character builds.
Actually, speaking of cheesy items that allow you to beat bosses in a few hits, that’s sort of my main gripe with this game. To elaborate, whenever I hit the metaphorical wall on boss enemies and struggled, and anytime that I’d google, the general answer was “go make such and such awesome item that will give you an immunity to x status effect”.
That’s all well and good, except the part of the explanation which often gets left out is the fact that said items are usually only gotten through stealing off of monsters and the most effective way is to complete a side quest where you have to capture a number (think it was 10?) of each monster which will open up an arena that will then allow you to do so. Either way you are looking at a multiple hour grind there.
Me being my naive self, opted to just grind more levels each time I struggled instead of grinding out those items and doing the side quest because I wanted to get on with the story, and I mean, why would I need those items, the game is easy, right? I always persevered through it; until the final boss.
To backtrack a bit, I did once try some optional content that was highly recommended by a large segment of the community. There’s this powerful creature you can get to help you called Anima and I had done all the prerequisite stuff to unlock it. But as it turns out, it is blocked by a monster. The monster in question is low on health and pretty weak, but you are forced into using three specific characters for it (which is normally fine in and of itself), however said monster has a one hit kill that turns you into stone and makes said party member shatter so they can't be revived. I tried 7 separate times against it, but there’s only so much you can do when it kills your party members in one hit and they are non revivable.
This time there were two solutions offered. One was go grind out a minigame called Blitzball to get a character an awesome ultimate move (we’ll get to Blitzball in a few ranty paragraphs) or, “Go build a set of armor that blocks petrification”, which required grinding a specific item.
Anyway, I said nah, I’m not going to bother and started the endgame content with the final bosses. Which, wouldn’t you know it? The final boss of the game has the same exact move as that earlier boss, just reskinned. It was at this point at 52 hours in I decided to give up on the game entirely. Final Fantasy X is a difficult game, but only because a lot of the boss fights have really cheesy, cheap 1 hit kill mechanics.
One other thing worth noting, is that you cannot skip cutscenes. You can pause them, but you CANNOT skip them. So if you die at a boss with a long cutscene a lot, then you are going to end up with some of the game’s dialogue seared into your brain.
Disregarding the 4 or 5 boss fights I temporarily got stuck at, I’d say that the rest of the game is easy.
Well, other than the optional minigames. I had read and heard that the Chocobo Racing Minigame was such a hairpulling, RNG filled chore that I honestly just decided to avoid it entirely. There’s also a lightning dodging minigame that’s pretty hard to time. If you dodge 200 strikes of lightning in a row you get a prize! Then you have Blitzball, which is a sports minigame somewhat similar to football where you have two teams trying to score goals. Everyone on both teams have levels and level up the more you use them in matches. At one point in the story you are forced to do a match and you can choose to read up on how to play it. I did the tutorial for it (which is broken up into chunks) and still struggled to understand it. I ended up winning the match, but only after going into overtime with the butt-clinching score of 0 to 0.
I guess these don’t really classify as minigames and more as puzzles, especially since you are forced into them as part of the main story, but you have these trials you have to complete which are puzzles that revolve around moving spheres around and placing them in proper spots as well as occasionally moving blocks around. The first one was simple enough with trial and error. The others required a guide for me to complete. Funnily enough, I am of the belief that is why those puzzles are in the game, to help sell the game’s strategy guides because back in 2001 when it was on the PS2, there was no YouTube or any other real alternative to help out and no one will convince me otherwise.
I think that’s kind of my other problem with the game, all of the optional content just isn’t, at least in my opinion, fun.
Those personal grievances of mine aside, I think it’s a decent game with an amazing story. I found the story to be very engaging and unique. Most of the time I experience the story of something, whether it is in a book or a game, it shares similar beats with another story I have experienced before, but that wasn’t the case for me with Final Fantasy X.
I really loved the overall theme of having to decide whether to adhere to or let go of tradition.
I also found the companion characters to be some of the best companions out of any game I’ve ever played. They all had their own complete arcs, unique designs, distinct places in the story, and were just really pleasant. Plus, the voice acting for them, in the English Dub at least, fit them well. The voice actors really brought their A game. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but one of the characters, Wakka, is voiced by John DiMaggio (Bender from Futurama) and it took me well into 20 hours into the game to realize that, and only because he sort of slipped into his Bender voice when the character got angry.
There’s a lot of strange mechanics at play in the game as well.
Leveling up has this sphere grid mechanic. Each character has their own place on the grid and you have to move around and select which spheres to unlock. So like, if you want to raise a character’s attack then you need a power sphere to place on the attack slot, but in order to move on the grid you need a level. One level equals one movement, and it costs to move back over places you’ve already been on the grid as well. The grid is massive and would take ages to entirely fill as each characters’ grids intersect. That’s not a bad thing tho, as that means any character can learn any other character’s moves.
There are two equipment slots for each character. One is for a weapon type that is unique to them and the other is for an accessory type that is unique to them. As you get farther into the game, you’ll eventually unlock the ability to customize certain pieces of equipment which allow for the adding of status effects that you can inflict on enemies.
There are also tons of hidden systems at work behind the scenes. I don’t really understand it all, and not a lot of people do, if even anyone properly does at all; as there are tons of spreadsheets of data for a lot of things. For example, there’s a hidden creature that you can recruit which can instant kill any enemy, even bosses, at the cost of you paying it money. But the amount of money it takes to do the move with that chance to instant kill is based on a hidden unseen metric of how much it likes you which also ties into how much you’ve offered it each time for doing that move.
There’s also a specific scene where you get to ride a snowmobile with a companion and which companion you ride with is based on which one likes you the most, but that metric is hidden from you.
Some of the boss battles allow for what is called trigger commands. Trigger commands are specific to characters. I found this to be creative as it sometimes allowed for an alternate way to handle a boss, like by activating a crane and crushing it for example. However, I also found trigger commands to become frustrating as for certain battles you’d need to do trigger commands to move away from a boss’s attacks and that trigger command would take your entire turn. I realize I’m being a bit vague there, but I’d rather not spoil anything.
On the flipside, you can switch between companions who are on the field and who aren’t without it costing you a turn. You can also always see the turn order which is a really nice touch, so there’s never any confusion about who moves when.
So… Would I recommend playing Final Fantasy X? That depends on you. It’s a game, not a book - and the farther into the game I got the more sour I became because I largely wanted to experience the story above all else. If you like challenges and grinding to break the game, then I’d say it’s definitely worth it. If you don’t like grinding, then I’d say maybe give it a pass unless you are dying for something to play with a REALLY good story (although there is a rumor of a Remake being released in 2025/26 so you might want to hold out and see if that is any easier).