There are some things, I concede, like Bruce Lee and Super Mario Brothers 3, that are, as they say, "Worth the hype." I usually remain skeptical until I satisfy my curiosity completely. For years, as a teenager, I heard about the great game the was Final Fantasy X for the Playstation 2, released at the turn of the millenium. Now we will see if that proved to be the case.
Final Fantasy X is a turn based RPG made by SquareSoft in 2000, with a soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu. I'll explain why that was significant later. This game was a launch title for the Playstation 2 system, back when it came out as the Dreamcast killer. I was a sophmore in high school at the time, and also a Dreamcast owner and fan. During the brief stint that I owned a PS2 through a temporary trade with a friend, I actually owned this game and played about 2 hours into it before getting my Sega Dreamcast back. I was turned off to how overly cinematic the game was, feeling more like a movie than an interactive experience. This was coupled with the fact that I was dedicated to its competitors. Grandia 2 on the Dreamcast, I would argue with my friends, was a better RPG. Grandia 2 is still an amazing game today, but I had no idea my feelings would be challenged.
Final Fantasy X is the story of Tidus- a blitzball player from a land called Zanarkand. In the outset of the journey, a large creature later known as Sin, attacks his hometown, and obliterates his world. He is saved in the process, and pulled to another parallel world that he doesn't understand, yet there are some consistent ties between the 2. He meets a cast of characters who share the goal he soon realizes, of finding and defeating Sin. He is more involved than he knows at first, and the entire battle they work towards in itself becomes a struggle for him. In the game, the character Wakka, who he meets when he washes up on the shore of the new world- Spira, also plays blitzball, and they bond through that. He meets the other characters, and they soon begin a pilgrimage to collect powerful beings called Aeons, to assist in the fight against Sin. The priests of Yevon guides the pilgrimage of all summoners, and Yuna, who leads this group, is very interested in Tidus, and respects his father. She is the only one who believes Tidus' story, and shares similar memories and relationships. Towards the end of the game, more of the history of their parents and how they also fought Sin is revealed. Auron is the one person from Zanarkand that Tidus remembers, and he somehow makes it to the new world with him, and they meet again along Tidus' journey.
Blitzball is a recurring game in FF, and is stupidly difficult. You can recruit random and obscure people in the world throughout the game, and play seasons and tournaments to win prizes. Winning a Blitzball game is like winning the NY State Lottery. It won't happen to you. I gave up after the first couple of blowout losses. Your performance depends on stats of your roster. You have Passer ratings, block rating, Shot ratings, Attack rating, and Defense rating, When you dribble the ball, you can be encountered by up to 3 opposing players. If you try to shoot, your shot rating has to trump the block rating of the collective players. It is based on a range, so if it manages to be close, you have a chance. However, your shot's success is also calculated by the distance it has to travel, and the defense rating of the goalie. When it comes to dribbling past the players, or "Breaking," your attack has to be higher than the player you pass. You can choose to break only 1 or 2 of the potential 3 or 4 players. You can also pass to a teammate, perhaps after breaking a player or 2 to increase the odds of the pass not being stolen or blocked and actually caught by your teammate. All of this is just as convoluted and unfair as it sounds. You have no where near the stats, number wise to beat even the weakest of teams. I lost the introduction game of blitzball, at the tournament for Maester Seymour. The items unlocked for victories never saw daylight in my playthrough. Bless the fools that found a way to master than nonsense.
The game has a battle system that allows you to change weapons during your turn in combat, and switch party members as well, which you will do constantly. Lulu, who is a mage on your team, specializes in Dark Magic, while Wakka has a skillset perfect for flying creatures. Auron and Kimhari- who was the primary guardian of Yuna, have weapons build with the piercing attribute, making them great for armored foes. You have a sphere grid that maps out the progress of your party and is used for leveling up. You must use Attribute Points (AP) earned in combat to move along this board, and manually upgrade you HP, MP, Strength, Defense, Magic, and Magic Defense. You also learn abilities on the board, and can get items that allow you to warp to other areas of it. It is a very tedious process, but in time, you will make progress. You have to be aware that you move methodically, because if you miss vital abilities on a characters grid, you will have to spend time and points making you way back to the needed sphere to acquire the ability. All the while your character won't be improving at all statistically.
It's hard to know what to choose to upgrade, because many abilities aren't noticeably useful until much later in the game, such as Hastega. This game, like many Final Fantasy games before it, has may status changing spells, like Slow, Petrify, Poison, Strength enhancement, Speed enhancement, Berserk, Blind, Confuse, Sleep, Doomed, etc. You will get spells like this, but many times they seem useless, and enemies that you would benefit from using them on, will almost always be immune to the effects. Yuna has her Aeons, as you fight and collect them at the various temples. As she grows in power, so do they, and some of the special ones have the Break Damage Limit attribute in them, which is immensely important in this game. Another reason that status spells seem useless at times, is the fact that most of the challenging fights in the game, have you fighting an enemy that effects or kills the entire party at once. Every fight is spent trying to survive and deal damage quickly to end it as party members are dropped constantly. You don't ever really have time to slowly add buffs or status effects on enemies. You have the ability, once you meet a party member named Rikku, to customize your weapons and armor, with the right items, and add resistance to poison, berserk, stone, and many other status effects. That will be something you will be mindful of, because each weapon and armor in the game has a limited number or custom slots. It's rare to find one with more than 2 or 3 open slots, and you cannot remove attributes.
You also have the familiar Limit Break system in this game, where the characters have a special meter, much like a fighting game, that when reached, gives them access to special attacks and powers. In this game, the meter can be charged in various ways, not only by receiving damage. You can charge on your turn, when an ally takes damage, when you deliver damage, or when a battle is won, or an enemy is defeated. However, this too has to be earned through many battles, and meeting certain criteria.
Getting back to the composer Nobuo Uematsu, I must commend his complete body of work. He has been at the helm of the entire Final Fantasy series from day one. And we all know and love the memorable jingles that he has composed, many of which have made appearances in every game. This game is nothing short of astounding. The motifs and themes are so strong and resonant. In every region of exploration, you get an immersive feel of the location and characters. The game has a hymn that the summoners all know, as well as many of the people of Spira who visit the temples. It is beautifully written, and makes you want to sing along. Later in the game, Tidus admits to hearing his father sing it often. The way they introduce the motif is very effective, from a musician's perspective. You get little pieces of it at different speeds and moods, and then more of it is sung as the game progresses, by different characters. When you visit the home town of Kimhari- the Ronso people, they too sing the Hymn to encourage the heroes.
The hero Tidus, and Yuna share the same perspective of their fathers, having both lived in their shadows, and they teach each other, over time to step out and be bold. They become a voice of comfort to each other, and over time, it becomes a strong, loving bond. You witness it over time, as they genuinely get caught off guard falling for each other. When I see things like that, I can't believe it was written from fiction. These stories come from somewhere. When Yuna is kidnapped early in the game, Tidus teaches her how to whistle to call him for help, which she struggles with and has to practice. Eventually she learns, and she tells him to do the same, for her to rescue him. They have the most emotional scene in the game, right as he learns that Yuna and all summoners have a grim outcome at the end of their pilgrimages. It really makes you feel it, and wish it didn't have to be. But not long after that, Tidus reveals he has a grim future as well, and the fight becomes to change the course of history for friendships and for love.
I have to get into the things that make many want to harm the developers, because these are all valid complaints. First, I have to say that the Aeons are the crutch of the game. As they get stronger, they can eat what would be game ending damage, as well as deliver bulks of damage on their own with their attacks and limit breakers. They can be customized and trained to learn abilities and spells from the roster, as well as consuming attribute spheres and items to grow in strength, defense, and other levels. You acquire an Aeon names Yojimbo, if you complete certain tasks and missions at the Cave of the Hidden Fayth. The Fayth are fallen summoners, who through their dreams, create the Aeons that battle Sin. Tidus finds that he is involved in that process, in a very tragic and strange way. Yojimbo works on a bounty system. You pay him gil- which is the currency in all FF games, and depending on a ridiculous algorithm, he may perform an attack called Zanmato, which instantly kills any character or boss in the entire game. This may sound like a game breaker, but trust me, not only is it needed, it is not enough.
In this game, there is a limit, as mentioned to all things. Damage, Power, Defense, and every other related attribute. There is also a limit to the amount of spheres on the grid for all characters. The HP limit in this game is 9999. You will have quite the fight just to get to that limit. And guess what? If you reach that limit with all of your characters, which would be a small lifetime, it would mean absolutely nothing to the later content of the game. After grinding for 70 hours, I was confident that I was overpowered, and went in to fight the last boss, who is someone close to Tidus that they all dread having to fight. The boss decimated my party several times, and cast Petrify on my party often, sometimes killing me that way. I was despondent, and confused as to what the heck I missed in all of the level grinding. I had to make specific armor to protect against status effects, and I also needed to buff my damage. I decided to go on a quest to get the extra weapons and equipment mods needed to give myself the boost needed, and that is where the wicked joke began..
I had to go online to find out lore and other info that the game never mentions. I found coordinates that reveal places with items on the world map, as well as a few extra temples and dungeons. I heard about the famous Omega Ruins, where a Dark Aeon of Yevon was imprisoned. I figured I was strong enough, so I went there to grind and hopefully find needed items. I traveled to the Calm Lands, where there was not only the Monster Arena where monsters could be captured and stored, but also rare fights in certain areas that you could bribe or steal items from with a very low probability. Bribe is an ability inherent to Rikku that can be learned by others if they activate that node on the sphere grid. It requires a large amount of money based on the HP of the enemy to be offered for a chance at them leaving combat and relinquishing the said item. Every single item I needed to help boost my attributes and equipment required layers of chance filled grinding and danger to achieve. It became infuriating. I found that to get needed items to contend with the last boss, I had to fight dark Aeons that were several times stronger than he was, which made absolutely no sense at all. Yojimbo came into play, as I was able to amass over 1 million gil and bribe him into Zanmato, taking down 1 or 2 dark aeons. This got me vital items. I wanted to get what were called celestial weapons for all my characters, and to do that was a nightmare. These weapons break the damage limit and that is needed. You see, all of the end game enemies have HP on the millions, and do damage over 9999 with each hit. So you can be maxed out as a party, but without the limit breaking customizations, you won't stand a freaking chance. And acquiring the many components needed to craft these items requires taking down some of these over powered fiends in the process. It felt like a dig from the developers.
To start, in order to get the weapons, you need a mirror that you get from winning a chocobo race in a place you wouldn't even know exists unless someone told you. Then you have to go to Macalania Woods, an area way back in the early parts of the game, where you go on a fetch mission, similar to Zelda for a couple and their lost son. After the convoluted tasks are complete. The person blocking the shrine on that road, moves and gives you access to it which turns the Cloudy mirror into the Celestial Mirror. By now, your head is spinning at the inanity, but trust, that is a tip of it all. You then have to get the weapons themselves, and each weapon also need a certain sigil and a certain crest to go with it. When you have them, you go back to that shrine in Macalania Woods and fuse them to create the celestial weapon. Let's just go into how I got Tidus'. After I got the dang mirror, I went back to the Calm Lands. There is a man blocking a road in the north. He wants you to do something special. So somehow I should know that was to race Chocobos. The funny thing is, there is no directly stated chocobo race. There is a chocobo trainer that appears in the Calm Lands at different locations, and offers to let you ride one around, to avoid battles, and also to train them. You train them, and after completing 3 training missions, the training turns into "racing." Talk about misleading. Anyway, on the 4th trial, you race to beat the trainers time on a course. If you time is good enough, you get a reward, and the man blocking the path moves. You now present the forged mirror to the glyph, and the Caladbolg- Tidus' weapon appears. Now you need the items- the Sun Crest, and the Sun Sigil. For the crest you have to go back to where you fought one of the major bosses of the game, Yunalesca. Yuna is named after her, and once wanted to follow her, until she learned the sinister nature of her and Yevon. Somehow, you had to figure out that a chest behind that battle site contained the crest. Next is the Sigil. LOL. Many who have played the game will be laughing now.....
To get the Sun Sigil requires not only winning in the final Chocobo race, but getting better than a perfect time. First, after the first race, you have to meet certain time criteria before you unlock another trial race where you are dodging birds and collecting ballons while running straight to a post. There are 2 modes of this. Once your time is good enough, you unlock the ability to be challenged by the trainer to an all out race on a course. The course is from the south end of the Calm Lands to the north, traveling east and west along the slope. You have randomly generated balloons that allow you to get 3 seconds taken off of your time. You have randomly generated birds that appear as you run, and home in on your location. You only control your chocobo moving left and right. You can only press these directions for specific angles, and if you hit a barrier, the chocobo rebounds in the opposite direction. You have to get a time of 36 seconds or better, with 15 balloons and no more than 1 hit by the birds to achieve a perfect time. This minigame has haunted people for years. Some people have tried and failed for 18 years and running. I read a comment by a person who had cerebral palsy and managed to get close after ages of trying and realize that it wasn't good enough. The bone chilling threats and murder he wished on the developers in his post will bring you to tears of laughter, and tears of pity. The minigame is really that hard and poorly made. You can literally be stuck forever. The birds home in unfairly, and can hit you even when you dodge them. People want to kill the developer for that design flaw. I watched tutorials online, and I even tossed my system once or twice. I was just about done. You do have to have good reflexes and talent, which thankfully I do have. After I decided to keep trying, I started to see the method. The issue with this game is that you have to beat a perfect time. You need better than 0 seconds to beat the challenge. The stars have to align for you to even get a time of under 10 seconds. I was stuck at 7.9 seconds for almost a week. Then I locked in and managed to get the best time I've heard so far. I was in shock as I got the Sun Sigil. I ran to the temple and fused the Celestial weapon. That alone took me over 5 hours.
When it came to armor. To go beyond the damage limit, you need Break HP limit modules. The only way to get that is by collecting Wings of Discovery. You need 30 for each mod. I went back to Requiem temple where I raced the chocobo the first time. Somehow, you have to know that you need to race him and collect 3 chests on the course while doing so, and not bumping into any of the course markers, to get 30 Wings of Discovery. That was BS. I read about that, and completed it. I chose to mod Auron first, as he was close to 9999 HP already. Now I'm thinking that his HP would jump once he reached the limit. After all, Tidus was now doing on average 24,000 damage with every hit. So I grinded for about 5 more hours until Auron was ready to break the limit. Guess what? He broke nothing but my heart. His HP only went just to 10130. I was disgusted, because he had almost filled his Grid chart, I don't see any way of getting to 99999 without some kind of hack. They say there are enhanced grid spheres that will net 300 0r 400 HP to empty nodes instead of the usual 200. I don't see how that would be nearly enough to get any character all the way to 99999. I've seen people playing the game with every character at that high. To get more Wings of Discovery requires bribing certain enemies with money that you would take months to accumulate, or fighting a certain monster in the Arena. And of course, that monster is 4 times as strong as the last boss, and hits beyond the damage limit, meaning it's an instant death as soon as the fight starts. And that was the path of least resistance. I tried to get all of Yuna's summons to at least get around the deficit. You have to go back to the temples from earlier in the game if you failed to pick up certain items. The problem, is that if you failed to do so, the Guado people, who turn on Yuna and her friends, have a bounty on the party. They will be waiting for you at each of these temples with a Dark Aeon. These Aeons are several times stronger than the last boss, and hit well beyond the damage limit. The battle is a wash without HP mods up to 99999 for every character, so I just gave up, and went after the last boss. I was plenty strong enough for him at that point, and got vital abilities such as the Break Damage limit for Tidus and Dual Cast for Lulu, which allowed her to cast multiple spells at once. I also got a One MP mod for her and Auron, which is a weapon mod that allows the character to spend 1 MP for every spell cast, essentially making Lulu a powerhouse.
Even with all of this power, there was a particular couple of enemies in the game that almost cost me a system. In typical FF fashion, hokey nonsense ruins the freaking day. Spirit, Black Element, and Great Malboro are 3 characters that made me wish more than I ever have, that I could digitize myself and jump into the game to change the rating to Mature Audience Only, as I savagely ripped them apart cell by cell. These enemies were designed with extreme spite and stupidity. No matter how strong you get in this game, do not underestimate status effects. There are 2 attacks I want to focus on in particular- Poison Mist, and Bad Breath. Spirit uses the first, and Great Malboro uses the latter. I got to the point where I was strong enough to traverse Omega Ruins without any issue. I had left, and gotten enhancements and returned twice. I worked my way to the boss area, and would walk back to the entrance to grind for max experience. On 2 occasions back to back, I traveled this route for 2 hours, grinding while at work. I was trying to max out HP for Auron. At the end of the run, I went back to towards the entrance to save. On the way, I ran into on one occasion, the Spirit, accompanied by 2 black elements. I attacked first, and hit him with a less than lethal attack. On the next turn, he cast Poison Mist, which I figured I would just heal and finish him from. Little did I know, that the entire front line would stay poisoned and in Berserk mode, attacking each other, while he cast thundaga and healed himself, and the 2 black elements blasted us with attacks. We got almost wiped out on one or 2 occasions. Then I stopped seeing so much of that enemy. After a 2 hour run of grinding, I ran into Great Malboro. I had leveled up substantially, on top of already being strong when I arrived, so I figured that I would handle him like any other time. Then I learned the worst attack in the game- Bad Breath. It poisons, inflicts slow, berserk, confusion, darkness, and silence at a 100% rate for supposedly 3 turns. The truth is that it is longer than that. You can't switch out, and the effects don't stop. He merely watches you and attacks you randomly as you kill each other and die of poison effects. It is a game over attack, and the problem is that he has the initiative buffer, so he ambushes you whenever you face him, allowing him to go first. The only way to counter this and survive, is to either have status effect resistance on your armor, or counter with initiative on Yuna's weapon and summon and Aeon to wipe him out without facing "Bad Breath." I was in disbelief when that happened the first time, thinking it was dumb chance. I restarted the run, thinking I would be ready if I ran into him, and the game literally threw Greater Malboro at me at the exact same point, ending each 2 hour grind. He did the same thing to me again, and I threw my system harder at the wall than I have in years. I thought I broke it.
When the last battle ends, I was very surprised by the emotional storm that came. I've commented on my last review and in my review of Crisis Core and Final Fantasy 8, how well Square does relationships and chemistry. And I meant every word. But I've never meant it like I do now. I've never felt like I did with this game. I've played Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which stays in my memory, being a game that made me raise a fist in the air and get goose bumps at how powerful the plot was. I also remember Red Dead Redemption having such a moving story of revenge and loss. I even felt moved by Final Fantasy 8 and it's romance chemistry between Squall and Rinoa. I even felt moved at the end of Super Mario Odyssey, when Bowser has a heart and joins Mario in his efforts after decades of being his villain, with a gripping soundtrack behind them in the process. None of these games made me want to shed tears like FFX. I fought them back, and if I wasn't so torn with priorities and distractions, I probably would have cried. This was the beauty of Tidus and his love for Yuna. The understanding they had and the pain they felt at having to be apart. When she gave a speech afterwards to the rebuilding world of Spira, she had flashbacks and added a final thought to her speech, thinking about how Tidus meant so much to her, and encouraged everyone not to forget those they lost. That rose everything to an even higher level of feeling, and it was capped perfectly by the emotional and masterful musical arrangement by Nobuo. This game was such a marriage of music and beauty. I don't think of it as overly cinematic any longer. Every piece was so important. This one was from and for the heart. It made my heart sing. I love this game.
10/10
