After 111 hours of playtime and all achievements completed I think this is it, it's finally it... I think this is the greatest turn-based RPG I have ever played, Ya?

Now before anyone gets startled by what I first said I'm talking about the gameplay and not the overall story, I think this is one of the most fun turn-based RPGs to play.

For the sake of getting this review organized, I'm gonna separate each main topic into multiple categories.

The story

Now here's a tough one, I honestly think in all of Final Fantasy X this is its weakest point but it's not as bad as it sounds. I think the way Final Fantasy X tells its story works well because it overall just feels like a pretty basic adventure tale but is filled with charming characters making the whole experience really chill. I think this word would be best to qualify most of Final Fantasy X, I think this game is really chill, it never really gets tense or anything like that it's just a very sweet tale that feels more like a romance story if anything. The characters all fit together since they all share a common goal and the only way to reach it is to work together but even though they have to work together they all happily do it without any hassle since in the end, they are all Yuna's guardians and their main goal is to protect her on her journey. I think the main end goal is alright it's just about defeating the big bad guy who terrorizes the world, though, of course, it's much more complicated than that with the twist the story provides. I think the story is enough to drive you to the end of the game without getting too much if you only care about the story, it's definitely not as novel as how Final Fantasy 7 was but X's story is still great nonetheless. Do I recommend the game for its story alone? Sure I think this story has a lot to appreciate and it mostly comes from the characters themselves. I think each of the characters feels unique enough, I mean at this point it's kind of a Final Fantasy trademark to have rememberable characters now. I do like Tidus even though it's Tidus and he's not really for everyone... I actually don't know who is supposed to relate to Tidus since usually game protagonists are supposed to be slightly relatable to but Tidus? But Tidus is just a fun character and I like him that way. Yuna is great she's just a lovable girl that only wants to make others happy even if she has to sacrifice herself in the process, I find it interesting that Yuna even though considered a "Secondary main character" most of the story rolls around her and isn't really about Tidus's story at all. They both have interesting arcs which rely on each other with both looking to be as great as their fathers. Wakka is honestly one of my favorite "Bro"
trope he's just really fun and has a really silly talking quirk that doesn't get annoying like most talking quirks. I love my little Wakka even though he's a tiny bit racist toward Al Bheds. I think Lulu and Kimahri are the most forgettable characters of the party, I think it's mostly because they don't really talk much. I feel like they kind of become irrelevant once Rikku and Auron join the party. Though I do not dislike them I think Lulu has a great relationship with Yuna making her more like her mother so it's fair if she's a little more serious than the others. But Kimahri I can't help but not care about him, unfortunately, he barely speaks and his only development is when his brothers attack him in Mt. Gagazet but other than that he's just the silent bodyguard. Rikku is fine, I think she could've been a lot better but the way they reintroduced her into the story felt way too rushed like she just instantly meets up with Tidus and the party and joins it with no issues, and then she acts as if she has always been part of the party I think it's kind of odd. But other than that she's just a sweet girl and I find her adorable even though she doesn't really bring anything to the story. And my personal favorite, Auron. God he's so badass the very first moment he appeared I knew he was the coolest, his design is so good and he actually matters in the plot he's cool! Though he's kind of just the average trope of a "mysterious guy that knows everything but only reveals important info at the end" which is more common than you may think.
Overall like I previously said the whole party and story are just very chill and they all work together, this game feels like a real adventure with friends and that's what a lot of Final Fantasy titles are but this one does it really well.

The graphics

Like I previously said I played the HD remaster so it definitely looks better than the original on PS2 but I think both have charm so the HD version doesn't really replace the original but it's still a way better experience. So based on the HD remaster graphics I think the game looks really nice, it really has that early 2000 vibes and I think this is the most Tetsuya Nomura art style ever. I don't think there's a lot to say about the graphics themselves other than some models definitely looks a bit dated but design wise this game rules.

The Gameplay

Here's the most important part of the game, the gameplay. I think Final Fantasy X has the Turn Based RPG gameplay I have ever played and I'll explain why it works so well. First of all, I think the difficulty is on point throughout the game it never gets too hard or too easy, you might get some random difficulty spikes during gimmick bosses but other than that most of the game is kind of a cakewalk. I think it works so well due to how some of the fights work especially in the early game which definitely inspired Final Fantasy XIII's combat, I'm talking about the puzzles combat where almost all characters have unique abilities to defeat each type of enemy. This might sound confusing if you haven't played the game but if you did you know what I'm talking about, for example, Auron is great at dealing damage to characters with high defense so you'll make him attack them, and Wakka has a better aim so he's gonna attack flying characters, Lulu can deal magic damage so she's gonna deal with element enemies and so on. I think the way this game makes use of all characters is wonderful especially when the party is filled with 7 characters most normal players just play with one main party but this game forces you to switch characters and it's just great. Overall the only two characters in the party that ends up useless are Rikku and Kimahri since Kimahri's main gimmick is to be able to work off other's ability but it quickly gets useless once I'll be talking about the skill tree, and Rikku's damage output is just too weak when you first get her so I didn't bother maxing her stats till the very end of the post-game, her only quirk towards enemies is that she can instantly kill Al Bhed robots with her steal attack which definitely comes in handy from time to time.
Begone basic RPG levels said Yoshinori Kitase and introduced the weird at first but really cool at the end type of leveling stats called the sphere grid. This is why I think Final Fantasy X has one of the best Turn Based RPG gameplay ever, it's the ability to freely edit your character's stats and pretty much lets you be whatever the hell you want on any character. With this system, any character can become Healer, Fast DPS, Tank, Magic damage dealer, and whatnot, completing the sphere grid for each character is no easy task though it requires insane post-game grinding but if you want 99,999 damage output on each character? Go for it!
As for the combat in general this game I personally think is as smooth as it can be and I never thought it was too awkward to navigate through menus or anything like that.

And in good Final Fantasy fashion, this game has summons called Aeons and the only person able to use them is Yuna since she is a summoner. They are fully controllable and just serve as over-the-top beasts which are great to deal damage to bosses. We have the common Bahamut, Shiva, and others but the new ones this time are Anime which is my favorite one, Yojimbo with one of the most interesting hidden mechanics in Turn-based combats, and the Magus Sisters which are just weird I never bothered using them. Though the last three are new they are only obtainable at the end of the game and are pretty much just extra Aeons you can unlock.

What about world exploration? I think it works great even though 90% of the game is linear. Final Fantasy X is an examplar game in the way it tells its linear story, it is somewhat similar to how older JRPGs did it where you just walk forward and find a new city and location without the ability to go back, well not until the very end of the game but you get my point. I have seen people comparing both Final Fantasy X's story pacing with XIII saying that people were too harsh on XIII's story when X's pacing was similar. I will not tolerate this X's slander especially when XIII is incapable to create a sense of discovery when all of its stages are linear roads with no NPCs whatsoever and it all feels like a cover shooter. In X I feel like I'm exploring a world and I'm going to my destination, In XIII I feel like I'm going through a string of bad stages with barely anything linking them together.

One last this game offers are the temples where Yuna gets new Aeons to fight with, they are unlocked after doing weird puzzles about the sphere and whatever the hell it wants. It's honestly weird and doesn't really serve anything, they are not awful or pace breakers but it's just odd to have them here, if they remade the game and decided to cut them out of the game I wouldn't give a damn.

The 100% Completion

My god, this is... this is something else and it ruined my life. I think the true way to fully appreciate this game is to complete it to 100% or at least complete all super bosses and get all celestial weapons and fully upgrade them. The 100% completion is a road full of bullshit grinding and balls-shattering minigames, but even with all of that, I think it was worth it and I actually recommend it, completing this game is definitely a gaming achievement on its own. I'm gonna talk about each celestial weapon and then talk about the super bosses.

Wakka's celestial weapon is probably the longest one to get since you need to know how to play Blitzball, actually, you need to learn Blitzball because I doubt any human would want to play Blitzball after the forced match from the story. It takes about 24 Blitzball matches to get the sigil and the three unique overdrives for Wakka. This ruined so many hours of my life and I thought the 100% couldn't get any tougher and dear god I was so wrong about that.

Tidus's celestial weapon is quite tough to get with the Chocobo racing minigame, it's an unfair race with weird controls and you need to get to the finish line without taking damage and picking up enough balloons to reduce your score to 0:0 and it requires a perfect run and a bunch of RNG. It sounds awful and it is but it's far from the toughest one.

Yuna's celestial weapon is pretty easy to get, that is if you bothered to do the destruction sphere minigame in the temples, otherwise you'll have to go back to each temple and do them. The only issue with this is that you have to defeat Dark Valefort which appears once you reach the town in Besaid. Dark Aeons are secret bosses found in the post-game, there's a Dark Aeon for each Aeons in the game and they are really tough boss fights that are often referred to as super bosses in the Final Fantasy Franchise. They are only recommended to fight once you are done statsmaxing your party.

Lulu's celestial weapon is the infamous Lightning Dodge Minigame where you need to dodge 200 bolts of lightning in a row. This is both physical torture and mental torture as well, whoever thought this was a good idea probably loved the passion of the christ. The idea of forcing us to do a tight button press 200 times in a row with very strict timing actually blows my mind, what made them think it was a good idea? 100 times is already enough so why 200? Doing this is terrifying because you don't want to miss it, it gets tougher and tougher as you keep counting up to 100+ but damn if I wasn't happy when I completed it.

Kimahri's celestial weapon was honestly fairly simple it was just about walking from one point to another while catching the blue butterfly and avoiding the red ones under strict timing. It wasn't fun but it wasn't as unfair as the other ones.

Auron's celestial weapon is about completing some part of the monster arena. The monster arena is something you unlock at the end of the game located in the Calm Plain, it's used to refight certain monsters you captured for a small fee, you capture monsters with weapons that have the "capture" effect on them. This is pretty much obligated if you care about the 100% since the very last super boss is unlocked after capturing each monster 10 times and killing at least one time each special enemy you unlock in the arena. It takes a lot of time especially when you have to work with the random encounter RNG.

And the last one is Rikku's celestial weapon. It's just a dumb hide-and-seek minigame with Cactuars based on cryptic hints. Just use a guide for this one otherwise it would be a pain, it's not hard at all it's just boring.

After getting all of the celestial weapons I started maxing out my stats to become almost invincible to most enemies and able to kick the ass of super bosses. After killing the last Dark Aeon you unlock one last final boss which is strong as Nemesis (the monster arena super boss) and blam you are done with the game. There are a few other noticeable extra achievements such as getting all 5 treasure chests during the Chocobo race at the temple which is really frustrating and my personal least favorite achievements that stole many hours away of my life, Perfect Sphere Master which is about completing the Sphere Grids for all main characters and this is a long and tiresome grind.

The Soundtrack

The soundtrack is amazing in this game, especially the HD remastered soundtrack which pretty much remade the whole soundtrack with real instruments and not weird Playstation 2 Soundfonts. Here are some of my favorite tracks of the game:

- Movement in Green
- Auron's Theme
- The Splendid Performance
- Battle Theme
- Tidus's Theme
- Prelude
- To Zanarkand
- The Trials
- Brass de Chocobo
- Thunder Plains