5 Things I Hate (And 5 I Love) About Final Fantasy X

I’ve not been feeling great these past two days. I know, I can just feel the pity. While I may not have been well enough to go to work, I was more than well enough to spend about 15–20 hours playing Final Fantasy X on my PS2.

I haven’t played this game in ages either, and I am enjoying it so much so that this post is dedicated to Final Fantasy X. In particular the five things I love about the game and the five things I really don’t.

P.S. I figured the title was quite clever, but at the same time, I expect there’ll be a fair amount of disappointed adult web-surfers heading my way.

I’ll start with the bad things first, and these are in no particular order.

5 Things I Hate about Final Fantasy X

You can’t skip any of the cut-sequences.

On your first playthrough, who cares? You’ll be glued to the screen like an eye-limpet, but on later playthroughs this really starts to grate. Some of the cut-scenes last for five minutes or more, and that can seem like a long time.

As a plus side, they do allow me to make a drink or go to the bathroom.

The dialogue can be a little bit… I dunno, off…

Maybe it’s a translation thing, or a voice acting thing, but there are some scenes which just bug me. If you’re familiar with the ‘Tidus / Yuna laughing’ scene, you might know why. In fact, here’s a clip… annoy yourself.

I admit this is made a lot worse by the unskippable nature of the cutscene.

Blitzball

One of Yuna’s guardians is a Blitzball player, which is a sport akin to underwater rugby. You have to play one Blitzball match as part of the game, but a hell of a lot more of them if you want Wakka’s Celestial weapon.

I wish I had some fantastic reason why I don’t like Blitzball. Is it the controls? Or the rules? I honestly don’t know, but it just doesn’t sit well with me.

Rikku

Rikku is another one of Yuna’s guardians, and she’s also her cousin, I think. Anyway, I just find her character annoying. She’s all bouncy and peppy. It might speak more for me than the character, but a little part of me dies inside whenever she’s in a cut-scene.

Maester Seymours hair.

I admit this one has almost no relevance to anything, but there is a character in FFX with the most ridiculous hair. Ridiculous in the sense that it is not physically possible. It’s not even Cloud from FFVII ridiculous. Vidal Sassoon and a skip load of his products would not be able to achieve this.

So with all that sorted, let’s look at the good side of FFX… again in no particular order.

5 Things I Love about Final Fantasy X

The Storyline

A young man is thrown into a new world, and even a new time. He joins forces with a young Summoner called Yuna and her guardians, who have sworn to protect her as she travels the land in order to defeat the ultimate evil known as Sin.

As game plots go, it’s not overly original, I have to admit, but you can’t really end a video game without a bit tough bad guy to destroy. If you want all the information on the storyline, you can go to the Wikipedia page, but it’s more fun to play the game… surely.

The Combat System

The combat system in FFX differs from all the Final Fantasy games I’ve played in one major way… the combat isn’t real-time. All the hero’s and monsters in a fight are put into a queue depending on how quick and agile they are. You can then choose each character’s action. Firstly, I like the time to think. I like to be able to plan my moves without having to rush and potentially make mistakes. This method also allows you to see when each monster will attack, so you can make sure it’s countered accordingly.

Oh, and finally, on this, you can swap characters in and out of combat. You’re not necessarily stuck with the same people until you get to a save point, like you could be with the other games. Everyone has a chance to shine.

The sheer number of secrets and activities.

Once you get to a certain point in the game, in fact, it’s the point in the game I’m at now, a whole host of other activities become open to you.

There are Ultimate weapons to get, or Celestial weapons as they’re called. For each weapon, you need the weapon itself, and then a crest and a sigil. These crests and sigils are usually prizes for completing the other mini-games, so you have to work to get them all.

There are Ultimate Bosses to defeat. In the case of FFX, they are dark versions of your summoned monsters (aeons) and unless, you are very well-prepared, they will kill you in one hit.

Then there is all manner of other stuff, like Chocobo Racing, or Cactuar Hunting. There’s even a mini-game that has you dodging lightning, which is better than trying to get hit by lightning, I suppose.

In short, once you get to explore everything a bit more, the game really opens up.

Aeon Overdrives

The aeons in Final Fantasy X are large spirit monsters that are summoned by Yuna during battle. The other party members disappear when you summon them, but they are formidable creatures by themselves. The reason why they’re in here is because of their summoning and overdrive animations… they’re pretty, maybe not by today’s standards, but they do look good.

Sin

It’s another visual thing. In most of the other games I’ve played, the big bad villain is often just a man with some abuse of power, magic or science, well, not in FFX’s case. Well, at least not at the outset. Sin is a giant slug-manatee-seal thing born from the people’s sin (hence it’s name). It looks impressive, and it makes a change from the power-mad genius trying to destroy the world.