When you hear of Final Fantasy, the most common debate that comes up is which one is best. Although I will admit Final Fantasy VII is the most common answer, there is a strong community for Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy VII may have been way ahead of its time, but without nostalgia holding me back I think Final Fantasy X is the best one I have played in the series.
Like I mentioned, the community often praises FFVII, however it could be because of my age group, but the one game in the series that all of my friends played as kids was FFX. Hearing how much my friends praised the game I made sure to buy the game on the PS3 when they made the remaster. However, for whatever reason I didn’t even get passed the first hour. Several years later after FFVII Remake was announced, I decided to go on a Final Fantasy binge, buying FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, and FFXII when they were all 50% off. Finally worked my way to FFX and the game lives up to the hype.
When I played FFVIII Remastered for PS4 the game still felt like a PS1 game, sure the
character models looked decent, but the backgrounds just looked like wallpaper. Thankfully, FFX looked completely different. This truly felt like a PS4 game. The character models, the backgrounds, and even the menus all felt like a genuine PS4 game. Although the game does offer a remastered soundtrack, I used the original just for a more traditional feel, but this was really appreciated; one of the best remasters I have ever played.
A big reason why I love FFX is that it was the first Final Fantasy game to have voice acting. After playing FFVII and FFVIII, playing a game with actual voice acting really makes you feel more engaged to the story as opposed to just reading it. I would have appreciated the option to play the game in the original Japanese, but with that being said aside from a few cringy moments, the voice acting was pretty solid. One thing that I wish they had changed was the fact that you can name the main protagonist. Ever other character is named, however Tidus (or whatever you decided to name him) is never referred by name because it could be whatever you chose. This kind of took me out of the moment because they would use words like “he, the kid, the boy” I just wish they just named him outright so that the story had more weight.
The voice acting worked in great conjunction with the amazing story. The story of Final Fantasy X centers around Tidus and is some of the best story telling I have ever seen in a video game. It offers some of the most heart wrenching moments and one of the best love stories ever seen in gaming. I don’t want to spoil too much, but there is a mystery that the farther you get the more you will eventually piece everything together and was an absolute joy to experience.
Controversial opinion that I have is that I actually loved Final Fantasy XIII, however the big flaw that the game has is reasonable and FFX also does the same thing: both games are linear. Now I personally loved FFXIII and have no problem with a linear game. There is a huge saturation of open world games so in all honestly this didn’t bother me. However, I am aware a lot of the community does expect some form of open world so just be warned before stepping in.
One of the downsides for me personally to the game were the side quests. There are very few side quests and the few ones that FFX has I did not enjoy. Every character has a signature weapon called a celestial weapon and you will have to do some side quest to complete it. I personally hated most of these side quests. Tidus has to do a chocobo race with horrible controls, Lulu has to dodge lightning 200 times and Wakka has to win the whole blitz ball tournament just to name a few. Granted if you are skilled enough you can complete this, but I just found them so tedious that I didn’t even want to do them and essentially only did the main story for the entire game.
The gameplay is where Final Fantasy X shines. In terms of combat the game follows traditional menu-based combat. The game also uses a conditional-turn based combat system. This is where the turns aren’t used in rounds like in Pokémon or some of the previous Final Fantasy games, but it follows an act list where the player with higher speed gets put higher on the Que for their next action. This will make it so characters with a slower speed will have less actions to perform in a battle as opposed to a character with higher speed. I experienced a similar battle system in Digimon Cyber Sleuth and I absolutely loved it, its incredibly addicting and allows me to make constant strategic moves with my party.
When you play JRPG’s traditionally I find that you stick to your party of 3 and don’t touch anyone else. What I loved in Final Fantasy X is that you genuinely feel like part of a team because you use everyone on the roster. Each character has an advantage over a certain enemy which makes it so you will constantly need to switch up. For example, Wakka can attack airborne enemies while Lulu can use offensive magic on those weak to magic attacks. This makes it so I was constantly switching between characters and analyzing the enemies for the best strategy to win as quick as possible. Constantly switching characters in battle throughout the 50-hour story made it so by the end of the game all my characters were evenly strong and I had no liabilities on my team. This genuinely makes it feel like you are part of a team instead of 3 people carrying you.
Far and away my favorite part of Final Fantasy X is the leveling system known as the Sphere Grid. FFX does not have traditional leveling system like other RPG’s, but uses a giant grid system in order to improve your stats. The more you battle, the more experience you get to acquire a sphere level. Each sphere level allows you to move ahead on the sphere grid and acquire a sphere node. Most of these sphere nodes allow you to either gain stat boosting upgrades (increase strength, magic, HP, etc..) or you can even get new abilities. Although the remaster has 2 forms of the sphere grid: standard and expert, since it was my first playthrough I went with standard. In the standard sphere grid, all of the characters are on the same grid, however they are all on different spots on the grid. So, although each character specializes with a specific style, if you maxed out a character, they could do anything another character could do if you put the time into leveling them. The sphere grid was incredibly addicting and it made me constantly want to participate in battles instead of running away because more battles, means more sphere level which in turn means proceeding farther along the grid.
My biggest downside to FFX is the weapon customization. Around the half way point in the game you can add certain abilities to your equipment if they have extra slots. However, this involves you using certain items to gain these abilities. This I found kind of annoying because I would just save the items because I would never be sure if I would need them later on and made it so I never really took advantage of the equipment customization. I basically only used this ability on the final boss when I passed the point of no return and I would still have the items after beating the game. Also, one important thing to note was that you aren’t able to do this through the equipment menu, but have to go through a specific menu for customization and it made it incredibly annoying having to go through hundreds of items to find the one you want to customize. This was incredibly tedious, but I guess its because of the time the original game was made.
PROS
- Voice Acting
- PS4 Remaster looks stunning
- Combat is addicting
- Sphere Grid
- You feel like a team
- Amazing Story
CONS
- Linear
- Side Quests aren’t as good
- Weapon Customization
- Main character is not named
CONSENSUS
After playing several Final Fantasy games, despite a few annoyances Final Fantasy X is the best game I have played in the series. With an addicting combat system, first with voice acting and one of the best leveling systems I have played in video games FFX definitely is worthy of all the praise.
RATING
9/10: EXCELLENT
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