I've played Final Fantasy X about four times start to finish, with my most recent run being the HD remaster on PC. It's not unusual for me to come back to games I like periodically, if not annually, but Final Fantasy X isn't a game I like. Rather, it's a game I desperately want to like and keep returning to under the foolish notion that maybe, just maybe, I'll learn to love it THIS time. And for a while it seems like this might be the run, I start to actually have fun with the game and get lost in its systems... And then Tidus laughs and I realize I have 40 more hours of this shit.
I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to narratives in games. Get the tone right and tell a halfway interesting story and I'll find something to be happy about. I can't count the number of negative reviews where I say something to the effect of "I love every part of this except where I play the game." Final Fantasy X is an inversion of this, however.
Every Final Fantasy game likes to introduce its own wacky system that drives combat. Sometimes they land, sometimes they're the Junction system and I start to have violent intrusive thoughts. X mostly gets things right. The Sphere Grid, which is both a sphere and a grid, is a lot of fun to screw around with. It's somewhat similar to the Materia system from FFVII in that you have a lot of control over how you build your character, but still starts each party member on a part of the grid that represents their class. Whether or not you veer off from that is up to you. I also really enjoy being able to hot-swap characters in battle, which gives you the freedom to box yourself in to the characters you prefer or experiment with different party dynamics on the fly. In a lot of ways, the core systems driving *X don't feel like crazy reinventions of what Final Fantasy is so much as injecting QoL improvements into what's already there.
Sure, there's plenty of things X still gets wrong about its gameplay. Buffs, debuffs, and ailments still mean jack shit. Minigames like Blitz Balls are a total drag, the video game equivalent of eating your broccoli before you can have dessert. There's some really bland dungeons and patently dull puzzles that utterly destroy any momentum the game might have been building. Some of this is alleviated in the HD version of the game which allows you to fast forward or outright cheat your way around portions of the game, and at some point including these features feels like Square admitting that some of the stuff they threw at the wall didn't stick and is now rotting on the floor and filling the room with a noxious stench.
Speaking of stenches, the story stinks.
At its heart, it's trying to say something critical about organized religion, living in harmony with nature, and about breaking from the well worn path to forge something new. It's also about your dumbass dad getting turned into a giant water monster. Way to go, pops.
I think having a Final Fantasy game without a true villain is interesting in concept. You and your party are fighting against the nature of this world rather than any one being with a master plan. The closest the game gets to this is Seymour, who feels shoehorned in because the developers felt they couldn't totally get away without having a true antagonist. As such, he never quite fills the role and just exists somewhat awkwardly within its narrative. His hairstyle is impossible and he looks like a freak of nature, too. Never in my life has a character design been so bad that I actually get mad the longer I look at it. If you show me a picture of Seymour I will actually get pissed.
X's themes and more heady concepts are constantly undermined by poor writing, laughably bad voice acting, and the flattest cast of characters the series had to date. Again, I've played this four times to completion, and I constantly forget everyone's background or place in the narrative besides Tidus and Yuna. There's that one guy who likes Blitz Ball, he's voiced by Bender, and uhhh... the mage with big boobs. You know the one, she's got all those belts. What do they actually do in service of the story? What do their characters say about the nature of this world? I don't remember! One of the games "antagonists" can be effectively summed up as "trailer park dad."
I've seen some very thoughtful write ups about the story and what it means to people, and every time I read them or listen to someone talk about what they appreciate about this game I think "you know, maybe I didn't give FFX* a fair shake. I should play that again."
sideshow bob stepping on rakes
I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to narratives in games. Get the tone right and tell a halfway interesting story and I'll find something to be happy about. I can't count the number of negative reviews where I say something to the effect of "I love every part of this except where I play the game." Final Fantasy X is an inversion of this, however.
Every Final Fantasy game likes to introduce its own wacky system that drives combat. Sometimes they land, sometimes they're the Junction system and I start to have violent intrusive thoughts. X mostly gets things right. The Sphere Grid, which is both a sphere and a grid, is a lot of fun to screw around with. It's somewhat similar to the Materia system from FFVII in that you have a lot of control over how you build your character, but still starts each party member on a part of the grid that represents their class. Whether or not you veer off from that is up to you. I also really enjoy being able to hot-swap characters in battle, which gives you the freedom to box yourself in to the characters you prefer or experiment with different party dynamics on the fly. In a lot of ways, the core systems driving *X don't feel like crazy reinventions of what Final Fantasy is so much as injecting QoL improvements into what's already there.
Sure, there's plenty of things X still gets wrong about its gameplay. Buffs, debuffs, and ailments still mean jack shit. Minigames like Blitz Balls are a total drag, the video game equivalent of eating your broccoli before you can have dessert. There's some really bland dungeons and patently dull puzzles that utterly destroy any momentum the game might have been building. Some of this is alleviated in the HD version of the game which allows you to fast forward or outright cheat your way around portions of the game, and at some point including these features feels like Square admitting that some of the stuff they threw at the wall didn't stick and is now rotting on the floor and filling the room with a noxious stench.
Speaking of stenches, the story stinks.
At its heart, it's trying to say something critical about organized religion, living in harmony with nature, and about breaking from the well worn path to forge something new. It's also about your dumbass dad getting turned into a giant water monster. Way to go, pops.
I think having a Final Fantasy game without a true villain is interesting in concept. You and your party are fighting against the nature of this world rather than any one being with a master plan. The closest the game gets to this is Seymour, who feels shoehorned in because the developers felt they couldn't totally get away without having a true antagonist. As such, he never quite fills the role and just exists somewhat awkwardly within its narrative. His hairstyle is impossible and he looks like a freak of nature, too. Never in my life has a character design been so bad that I actually get mad the longer I look at it. If you show me a picture of Seymour I will actually get pissed.
X's themes and more heady concepts are constantly undermined by poor writing, laughably bad voice acting, and the flattest cast of characters the series had to date. Again, I've played this four times to completion, and I constantly forget everyone's background or place in the narrative besides Tidus and Yuna. There's that one guy who likes Blitz Ball, he's voiced by Bender, and uhhh... the mage with big boobs. You know the one, she's got all those belts. What do they actually do in service of the story? What do their characters say about the nature of this world? I don't remember! One of the games "antagonists" can be effectively summed up as "trailer park dad."
I've seen some very thoughtful write ups about the story and what it means to people, and every time I read them or listen to someone talk about what they appreciate about this game I think "you know, maybe I didn't give FFX* a fair shake. I should play that again."
sideshow bob stepping on rakes
6 Comments
Man it's cool how they messed the site up so putting asterisks around a single letter breaks the formatting instead of putting it in italics. Anyway, I'm not fixing it this time. If you want to know why it looks like that, it's because there was a point in time that actually worked like it's supposed to.
In six months it'll get fixed and this comment will make me look like a psycho.
In six months it'll get fixed and this comment will make me look like a psycho.
I missed the days when using three asterisks made it so it was bold + italicized instead of just, bolding but this time you have the greater than symbol appear. If I wanted that I'd do it manually!
All I ever wanted to do was use asterisks to toss in cheeky footnotes but I guess I'm a pyscho. And now I use a caret which just looks dumb
I mean I think the actual answer here is to just have a toolbar like any normal text field on the Internet, but I just hate how the current system keeps breaking/changing and making me look dumb!!
Been slowly writing a review for Disco Elysium today and it's been the one time I've felt the need to spoiler stuff, so I feel that.
FallenGrace
1 year ago
Pumping up the sphere grid to get maximum stats, auto haste and break damage limit to kill the final boss in two hits with Yuna, and only two due to a cutscene and a second form, will never not be hilarious to me.