Fillip J Phry
Well-Known Member
I finished it a couple weeks ago, but I think I'm finally ready to unleash my thoughts on Final Fantasy X. For some background, this is one I saw bits and pieces of as a kid, but never played through myself. I went for a full completion here, getting all achievements and doing all the side content, like getting all fully maxed celestial weapons. I had a wide range of emotions on this one, so I'm going to try and break that up a bit.
Let's get the negatives out of the way straight ahead. The game pass version does not have the speedup option that the Steam version does. Not a huge thing, but contributed a lot to my total play time (160+ hours). The minigames all SUCK. Every single one. Easily the worst part of this game. And tied to that, the fact that some of the celestial weapons are just in a chest, and some are tied to hours and hours of grinding via these minigames, is very frustrating. Chocobo racing should be fun, but had the worst controls and RNG element ever. Blitzball started fun, but getting a few decent characters quickly made me so much better than the other teams I intentionally tried to give them every opportunity to score, and they still almost never did. Not to mention the fact some of the items you need from this are tied to them only having a CHANCE to show up as prizes for events that take multiple games to get through. I ended up playing around 60 matches just to get 3 items. But Wakka is the best end game character, so it had to be done. Butterfly catching would be ok, if you could tell where the butterflies actually were spatially. Lightning dodging is an absolute nightmare, and is worse on the HD edition because it has input delay. Finally, luck and fortune spheres. I would have skipped farming these entirely, except the Jegged guide recommended getting up to 120+ luck for some of the final fights. I ended up at around 140 for everyone, and was the longest, most boring part of the sphere grid grind.
Now, onto the positives. I complained about the luck/fortune spheres, but overall I really liked the Sphere Grid. Especially early on, it allows for some great customization and routes to quickly power up certain aspects of each character. When you max it out, everyone basically becomes the same except for overdrives and Yuna's summons. In fact, while I was grinding up Kimarhi and Lulu (maxed Tidus, Auron, Rikku, and Wakka first), Yuna was my main attacker because she was close to max, but not fully there like the others. Seeing her annihilate enemies with a simple swing of the staff cracked me up. The combat was another positive, I like the return to non-ATB combat, seeing the turn order and how moves might effect that before acting, and being able to swap characters without penalty were all great additions. Weirdly, I didn't mind the grind in this game at all, with the exception of the luck/fortune spheres. I also liked the side quests, and the end game bosses. My only nitpick there is having to grind specific armor just to do the Penance fight, but by that point in the game it went pretty quickly due to having lots of money and being maxed out. Fighting the Dark Aeons was fun. Most of the quests added more to the story, so they all felt worth it to me. The music of the game is good, not my favorite FF soundtrack, but solid nonetheless.
Finally, I wanted to praise the story. Lots of spoilers here, so I'll tag my thoughts from here:
Final thoughts: Great story, great combat system, well worth your time, just maybe skip the completionist parts.
Let's get the negatives out of the way straight ahead. The game pass version does not have the speedup option that the Steam version does. Not a huge thing, but contributed a lot to my total play time (160+ hours). The minigames all SUCK. Every single one. Easily the worst part of this game. And tied to that, the fact that some of the celestial weapons are just in a chest, and some are tied to hours and hours of grinding via these minigames, is very frustrating. Chocobo racing should be fun, but had the worst controls and RNG element ever. Blitzball started fun, but getting a few decent characters quickly made me so much better than the other teams I intentionally tried to give them every opportunity to score, and they still almost never did. Not to mention the fact some of the items you need from this are tied to them only having a CHANCE to show up as prizes for events that take multiple games to get through. I ended up playing around 60 matches just to get 3 items. But Wakka is the best end game character, so it had to be done. Butterfly catching would be ok, if you could tell where the butterflies actually were spatially. Lightning dodging is an absolute nightmare, and is worse on the HD edition because it has input delay. Finally, luck and fortune spheres. I would have skipped farming these entirely, except the Jegged guide recommended getting up to 120+ luck for some of the final fights. I ended up at around 140 for everyone, and was the longest, most boring part of the sphere grid grind.
Now, onto the positives. I complained about the luck/fortune spheres, but overall I really liked the Sphere Grid. Especially early on, it allows for some great customization and routes to quickly power up certain aspects of each character. When you max it out, everyone basically becomes the same except for overdrives and Yuna's summons. In fact, while I was grinding up Kimarhi and Lulu (maxed Tidus, Auron, Rikku, and Wakka first), Yuna was my main attacker because she was close to max, but not fully there like the others. Seeing her annihilate enemies with a simple swing of the staff cracked me up. The combat was another positive, I like the return to non-ATB combat, seeing the turn order and how moves might effect that before acting, and being able to swap characters without penalty were all great additions. Weirdly, I didn't mind the grind in this game at all, with the exception of the luck/fortune spheres. I also liked the side quests, and the end game bosses. My only nitpick there is having to grind specific armor just to do the Penance fight, but by that point in the game it went pretty quickly due to having lots of money and being maxed out. Fighting the Dark Aeons was fun. Most of the quests added more to the story, so they all felt worth it to me. The music of the game is good, not my favorite FF soundtrack, but solid nonetheless.
Finally, I wanted to praise the story. Lots of spoilers here, so I'll tag my thoughts from here:
I loved everything about the story here. I like that the base story was straightforward and didn't deviate into some convoluted secret boss in the 11th hour. You could argue that Yu Yevon was that to an extent, but you find out about when you start discovering why the Sin cycle has never been broken. Sin's been beaten many times, only to come back, so it's obvious very early something else is likely pulling the strings. I also like how this story is told from a side character's perspective. Tidus is essentially a summon sent to help Yuna complete her pilgrimage and defeat Sin/Yu Yevon. The moments between the two are always bittersweet, just two people dealing with the fact that that they are doomed. I wasn't fully sold on the game early on, but the laugh scene turned that around. Taken out of context in memes, this scene is supposed to be awkward and silly, and was one of my favorites. I liked the water scene a lot as well, it felt like again, two people who know they are doomed just trying to enjoy a tender moment with another person before the inevitable. You know well ahead of time what is going to happen in the end. They don't say it outright, but heavily hint that Auron is long dead but wasn't sent. They do state that Tidus will die once Yu Yevon is stopped, and I appreciate that exactly that happened. The final fights were easy being maxed out stat wise, but I think that actually helps the ending. To me, our party did everything it could to ensure that Yuna succeeds in her goal, to the point that it was an easy feat. Lots of feels at the end, starting with the part where you have to defeat all of Yuna's summons. This was inevitable, but being fully powered up meant that Yuna (and the rest) have come from a place where relying on the summons to survive is no longer necessary, that the power the provided early on allowed us to reach our maximum potential. Seeing Yuna's pained expression as you defeat each one was heartbreaking. Even knowing how things were going to go down, I still ended up crying at the end of the game, and admittedly, I felt very empty for a few days afterwards.
Final thoughts: Great story, great combat system, well worth your time, just maybe skip the completionist parts.
