Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X was arguably a great game, many believe one of the greatest in the Final Fantasy series. Admittedly, it was the first in the series to be on the PS2 which means it had the best graphics yet and it was the first to have voice overs, so that meant a lot. But really to me, it was the game about water. Yes, PS2 had new water effects, and somebody at Square decided to take advantage of this by using water for everything and basically building an entire story aound water. I mean the main character Tidus wields a sword called Brotherhood that is made of water and they play a sport called Blitzball that is all underwater. The theme of the game is most decidedly water. It looks incredibly cool, but there are some glaring flaws that make it clear this game was a little half-assed.

Where to begin? How about the weapons and armor system? Ever since sprites got a greater detailed appearance it has been hard to justify armor so the armor options were quite limited, but this game skewed things around exceptionally. It was innovative that they came up with a system that lets you customize weapons and armor, but upon closer inspection we realize that there is a problem. Most games make weapons increase in power steadily throughout the game, but in this game there is really just one base weapon for every character that you can increase as you go along, and then one ultimate weapon you can get near the end, and of course the Brotherhood which is probably between the ultimate weapon and the next best weapon you can make. The armor system doesn't even have any ultimate options so really this game comes down to customizing the best you can for your playing style, which you can probably do near the beginning and you really don't have much need to upgrade through the whole rest of the game.

A much bigger problem than the equipment is the setting. Spira is impressive at first glance. It is the first game in the series to skip the over world map in favor of a continuous path of equal scale areas, which is interesting, until you realize just how small that makes the world. At the beginning of the game there are only six cities, two of which get destroyed during the story, so when all is said and done, there are only four cities left at the end of the game. There aren't even ruins of other cities, except of course Zanarkand, but that's a whole other ball of wax. Admittedly, the whole story revolves around a monster that destroys the world on a regular basis, but it does beg the question, how the hell did these people last a thousand years of this crap? Seriously, ever decade or two a giant flying whale rips apart the world, but we can hold it together long enough to play Blitzball?

Despite all of this, the story itself does play out pretty solid. The only real problem with the story is that it just rehashes the same sword wielder protects healer/summoner girl and falls in love with her, though it definitely did it with the most flash to date. And then there's the twist ending which is a bit disappointing, unless you play the sequel. For the record, the sequel's best ending ties with the last seconds of the original, which means it is the true ending. I believe in the end, Tidus is the Aeon of Water and ends up being Yuna's final summon after all.

Go ahead and play it, it's still fun, it's just not the best. Except the soundtrack, this game had the best music, opening on metal, hell yeah!