Review by TheLastAvatar05

"Severely Overrated"

After playing Final Fantasy X for the first time (after many resets and urges to continue where I stopped halfway at the most in one run), I always felt that I had this bitter thought or feeling of, "Is there a point to this game, or is this actually going anywhere?" Regardless, the feeling kept sticking with me to the point that I could not honestly like this game for all it's worth.

Graphics (6/10): For an RPG of it's time, everything looks top notch from the cut scenes to the battle animations. However, this is where the problem lies. For once, during cut scenes, the characters don't actually mouth their words realistically and looks somewhat off. I couldn't stop laughing at how bad their mouthing of words or lines matched the movement of their lips. It's somewhat noticeable to a degree. Our main character and party members are nicely detailed and animated (What exactly did you expect from an Final l Fantasy game?), though I felt that the main character's appearance and clothing looked like he got dressed in the middle of the night. It didn't really click or make me wonder of who this main character is and what his objective is in this game. It looked like they wanted to make him look like some type of Japanese American Pop Star in order to appeal to North American gamers alike, which for me, is a turn off to begin with. I felt that when I first saw Vaah in Final Fantasy XII, it made me look into his character more throughly and kept me asking various question of who he really is despite the fact that the only information we knew of him in the beginning of the game was that he was living under an oppressive regime as an orphan. For some reason, our character in this game, didn't give me that same feeling. It just gave me this guy named Tidus who had this past history with his father and was a famous blitzball player. Otherwise, it wasn't making me ask of who this main character was and what type of personalty he had for the player to relate to him. The local towns or dungeons are nicely animated. It looks like your in their world to a certain degree. However some of the areas can look a bit generic and dull which may be unappealing. In terms of battling of moves and spells, against the common enemies, everything is at it's high point. I felt that each move, spell, or enemy attacks were the strong point of this game. Otherwise, the only minor compliant is that it can look a bit generic at times.

Storyline (5/10): Ugh, words cannot describe fully of why I disliked this storyline with a pure passion. Apparently your the main character of Tidus, a famous blitzball star player from Zanarkand, who's hometown is destroyed by this large creature called Sin. After it sucks you into it's gaping vortex, you land up in a different time period or a set amount of years into the future where everything you knew was gone and past history. You meet a series of characters, including a girl named Yuna, who is a summoner, and sole duty is to defeat the mythical beast that is Sin. Yawn, could we can any more generic than this? A mythical beast swallows you into this vortex where your thrusted into the future and must accompany a summoner to defeat it again before it destroys the world? It sounds like your average RPG, not like what you might expect from the next installment of the Final Fantasy series. Certain plots within the storyline seemed bland and generic to be honest. It didn't keep me at the edge of my seat wanting to learn more compared to Final Fantasy XII's storyline, which I felt, was a lot better and less complex. The ending is somewhat a tear jerker though I didn't even shed anything other than the expressional sign that I got done with this game once and for all. Regardless, some of the other typical raving Final Fantasy veteran fanboys will enjoy this even if the ending consisted of a black screen with the words, " The End", after the final boss..

Gameplay (4/10): Yes, apparently we get a sphere like grid to move our character's attributes around! And guess what, if you moved forward, there's always a high chance that you might have to move back a few steps to get that special spell that's effective against the ever so resistant enemy or boss! What fun! Unlike Final Fantasy XII's flawlessly executed level up grid, this one runs into multiple problems. For starters, if you never played an FF game and this was your first, you'll be scratching you head of how to move around the sphere grid. Moving adjacent to a certain spell or attack move from where you are sounds like an interesting style of leveling around the grid but it can cause confusion for even the most basic gamer. As such, you have to decide of what items you want to obtain first in a certain direction without realizing that you might backtrack a lot when you come across that certain enemy that can't be beat later on in the game. The sphere grid feels extremely linear despite the fact that it could give you a few options of where you want to go to obtain spells or attacks. I felt that it was a bit complex and unnecessary to create something so difficult just to show off how well it's incorporated within a FF game. Attacking enemies are completely random and expect the typical, "Five step = Enemy Encounter", feature in this game. Attacking or casting spells is a tedious process and can take a bit longer than expected than you normally would think, during combat. Apparently they decided to add a new mini game called Blitzball because they thought that, without a mini game, it'll break tradition within the Final Fantasy universe. Blitzball involves you playing underwater soccer literally and managing your own team of superstars. However, controlling or assigning them positions is almost unless because your team AI's would always act stupid during a match. Controlling them underwater seems clunky and cumbersome for beginners. Worst, there's a certain amount of steps you can take before your meter runs dry causing you to take a shot or pass it to another player. Though the odds of a successful pass of either one is always low because the opponent AI is always set as if it's ten times better than your players. Beating teams is an try or error type of thing. Other than that, it's only entertaining to those that actually gobble up anything that's related in a Final Fantasy game.

Sound (6/10): Generic cast of voice actors that really doesn't put too much effort into their animated characters, which I thought was disappointing. I felt that their combination of voice acting within this game really didn't affect me to feel any type of certain emotion to my characters. Hence, I was somewhat happy whenever my party members were killed off just to hear their pitiful moans or grunts before they expired, which was only the real highlight of this category. It seems that the use of generic music flows everywhere from the towns to the battlefields.

Replay Value and Closing Comments: Simply put, I was not moved by this game in anyway. From the appearance of our main character, to the ending of this game, it honestly feel like it reached me in any type of way. I play RPG to be moved and watch my character advance from his or her immaturity to a completely different character at the end. In this game, both of those aspects failed to connect to me which basically caused me to lose interest as I progressed. I only recommend that this game would be enjoyable over and over again to the most hardcore FF fans and not beginner fans a like. Toss it next to the pile of games you don't play anymore, I know my copy is still there since I got and finished it the first and final time.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10 | Originally Posted: 12/10/07

Game Release: Final Fantasy X (US, 12/17/01)

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