(1 Internet purchase and several weeks later)
Ok, so the game is even better than I remember. No the graphics and gameplay haven't improved over the years, plus the main characters are still annoying. The overall story, however, is really solid. Sure Square follows a particular formula for crafting their tales and the love aspect feels a little flat, but the overall concept is interesting.
Sorry for the SPOILERS! (9 years, 3 sequels and an entire console generation must be plenty of time to get around to playing this game, right?)
You play a promising professional athlete, named Tidus, who is ripped from his own time in the distant past and hurled into the far future where society is slowly rebuilding from a grand war that destroyed most of civilization. Upon entering this strange new land, Tidus (I named him Meg Ryan) meets up with a band of trusting 'guardians' who are tasked with leading a young girl on a suicide mission to destroy the ultimate evil. Along the way you pick up a few other miscreants who justify their presence by promising to protect Yuna (the young girl and summoner) on her death march. Eventually your conceptions of this future world and the beliefs of the residents gets flipped on it head; it is around this point that you find yourself actually liking the characters and possibly even finding them interesting.
This game marks the first entry of the Final Fantasy series on the PS2 generation (I think there might have been a few other consoles out at the time, not really sure). As such, it represents a serious step up in the fidelity of graphics and is the first final fantasy game ever to feature voice acting for the main characters.
These improvements definitely gave the title a 'evolutionary step up' feel. On top of that Square added their own classic brand of polish to every aspect of the game. Characters make relevant remarks to each other in the middle of battle and animations that would not have been criticized if they were absent were added for extra authenticity.The battle system is completely turn based, with each action adding a 'cool down' time to the next available action the character can take. This is represented by the list of upcoming turns that can be seen in the corner of the screen and will change dynamically based on your actions. One of the huge changes to the Final Fantasy formula this time around was the ability to change team-mates in the middle of battle. Gone were the days when you get sent back to the title screen with 7 fighters still alive because some uber-monster blasted the entire team. This also opened up the new dynamic of swapping characters in and out to promote even leveling. You can put a character in for a single action versus a huge boss just to gain coveted AP which can be used on the Sphere Grid to gain new abilities and raise attributes.
I particularly like the Sphere Grid system. It represented a huge shift in the way you think about a character's skill progression. You could battle a single insignificant minion, defeat it and gain enough AP to increase a skill. Also you could steer any character in any direction as far as the role you would like them to play during battles. You could make what could have been the strongest attacker into a healer and visa-versa. Granted the Overdrives lend their abilities to the paths each character is preset on, but an experienced RPG'er wouldn't have any problem tailoring each character to their liking.
Example: Yuna gains an AP after a fight and is able to move 1 space on the sphere grid. Now she is next to a Magic Defense Sphere, so you pop in a Magic Sphere, and Presto! Yuna's Magic Defense goes from 23 to 27.
You can do this as often as you like, after every battle if you want or save up a bunch of points for each character and do a lot of leveling at once. The system is really well laid out and I have heard that it is the basis for the system in XIII. Sounds good to me.
There are a few side quests/games included in the package that are worth playing as well.
The most notable of which being Blitzball, the sport the main character plays. It plays out like a real time strategy action game and is heavily based in Skill learning and stat leveling, but fun can be had with it given a chance. I pride myself in being undefeated in my first play through and only have a single loss in my current play though (not the Luca Tournament game mind you, just a random loss).The enemy designs are creative and overflowing with animations, the likes of which had yet to be seen up to this point. The characters have interesting back stories and become more interesting as the game progresses. In short, this game is still extremely enjoyable and should be picked up and played if you haven't yet. The only downside is that some more casual players may find the game length particularly daunting, taking well over 40 hours to run through. In addition sometimes the player is not able to save for over an hour and accidental deaths may cause some serious re-tracking through areas. This game is awesome and you can be too if you give it a shot; you should be able to find it for quite a bit cheaper than the new Final Fantasy game if you have a PS2 at your disposal. Who knows, you might even have a friend who is willing to lend it to you. PS: I didn't spoil the coolest plot twist in a Final Fantasy game ever, so that is another reason to check this one out.
Final Fantasy X gives my review a 30,400,000 damage out of 32,000,000 hit points.
