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Final Fantasy X Review for PlayStation 2 (PS2)
Posted on Tuesday, September 16, 2003 @ 11:57:37 pm E.S.TThe tenth Final Fantasy game in the series is truly one of the most remarkable. The story begins with a famous Blitzball player named Tidus who is sent one thousand years into the future by a creature called Sin. He joins a group of people on their way to collect Aeons from temples all over the World of Spira. They must collect Aeons in order to defeat Sin. Spira is still being tormented by Sin, because they relied too heavily on machines. Until they atone for their mistake, they must suffer.
Graphics: Final Fantasy X shows what the PlayStation 2 game console is really capable of. The game has beautiful environments, and the facial expressions add a great deal of depth and feeling to the characters. The cut scenes are very well made, but the true greatness of Final Fantasy X’s graphics lie in the Aeon summonings. They are truly amazing and the details are exquisite. There are some slow downs throughout the game, but not many. You may not even notice them at all.
Design: Final Fantasy X has a whole new way of strengthening and leveling up your character. After every battle you receive Ability Points (AP). After you earn a certain number of AP, you will get a Sphere Level. The Sphere Level is used in the Sphere Grid. AP is pretty much like experience. After each battle you will also usually receive other spheres to use on the Sphere Grid. The Sphere Grid is a little difficult to explain in words, but basically you use your sphere levels to move to different parts of the Sphere Grid. As you move you will see nodes that contain upgrades for your character, like maximum hit point increases and strength increases. In order to get these upgrades you need to have the correct spheres that you receive from battle. You can also learn new abilities from the Sphere Grid. The Sphere Grid is pretty cool, because if your favorite character is only good at magic, you can take them to other characters areas and get strength upgrades.
Final Fantasy X’s battle system makes the game very easy. It is called a Conditional Turn-Based Battle System. You have as much time as you need to think about what you want your next move to be. This takes away part of the challenge in the game, because you no longer have to think on your feet. There are some good things about the battle system. For instance, there are a total of six characters that can be used, but only 3 of them can be used in battle at a time. The cool thing is that, while in battle you can switch characters in and out, so you can gain sphere levels easily.
Overdrives are also cool, because you may have to do certain things to get the full amount of damage from your overdrive, like putting in a sequence of buttons. Overdrives are like supers that do more damage than your regular attack. There are different ways to power up your overdrive. At 1st you can only power up if you are damaged, but later on you can power it up by damaging enemies or just by winning a battle. Something else that makes the game easy is that at a save point you receive full hit points and magic points automatically. This makes it easier to get sphere levels also.
Weapons and armor do not really affect your characters as much as they did in the previous Final Fantasy games. Weapons can give you a strength increase of 5-10%, maybe even more. They also come with different abilities like counterstrike or flamestrike. Armor can defend you from certain elements, so you don’t take as much damage from that element of magic. They can also give you an increase of defense or magic defense by 5 to 10%. You can also add certain abilities to weapons by using items later on in the game. For example, you can get Scan put on your weapon for 10 power spheres.
Sound: The music in Final Fantasy X is not as great as I would have liked. A lot of the time they use the same piano introduction with different instruments. On the contrary, the voice acting is great. The voices really show you what a character is like and how they are feeling at the time. The characters may also talk during a battle, which makes it seem more realistic. The sound effects in Final Fantasy X are pretty good. You can actually hear ice breaking when someone casts Null Frost. The sound of a sword hitting an enemy gets repetitive though because it sounds the same every time.
Addiction: How much you get addicted to this game really depends on how much you like the story. The story sort of draws you in, because something is always happening. Be it trying to find a boat, or trying to find a summoner, there’s always something to keep you occupied. I found myself playing this game 3 to 4 hours a day, and most of the time I was just trying to level up. There are also a few side quests available, just in case you beat the game and you want more. There are less side quests than there usually are in Final Fantasy games, but some of the side quests will take longer than normal. The game is 40+ hours in length if you just do the main quests, add another 10 to 15 hours for side quests. After that, you've done pretty much everything. Review By: Deepan Paul - 2987 Reads
Final Fantasy X Review Scores for PS2 :
| Gameplay |
| 9 |
| Graphics |
| 9.5 |
| Sound |
| 9 |
| Replay |
| 9.5 |
| Overall |
| 9.3 |
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