Collection essentials #477 & #478: Final Fantasy X (PS2) and Final Fantasy X International (PS2)

Final Fantasy VII had been the definitive RPG hit from the previous generation, with an impact that can hardly be overstated. In the few years that followed, VIII and IX released on the same console, selling millions of copies but almost inevitably having less of an impact than VII. And, well, no Final Fantasy game was going to be that big a deal ever again. But the brand new and powerful PlayStation 2 gave Squaresoft a chance to make a bigger impression than the previous two games had. Barely a year after the console’s Western release, we got the brand new and shiny Final Fantasy X.

The power of the PS2 is used to full effect to make FFX a much different experience than the previous three games, in a way that truly felt “next gen”. The graphics are a big step up. The previous games had high-quality FMV cutscenes at times, but FFX’s are more frequent and better-looking. And perhaps biggest of all, this is the first Final Fantasy game to feature voice acting. And the vast majority of the game is voice-acted too. Every significant line of dialogue in this game is voiced. This really presents a much different experience and brings the characters to life in a new way.

The game centers around a young man named Tidus, who is a star “Blitzball” athlete with many adoring fans. In the middle of a big Blitzball match in a packed stadium, the city they’re in is suddenly attacked by a huge and mysterious entity called Sin which seems to control the elements. Tidus is apparently magically whisked away somewhere. He wakes up having no idea where he is. Upon meeting people, he finds out that apparently the city was destroyed by Sin A THOUSAND YEARS AGO! Not only that, but Sin is still at large. He meets a young woman summoner on a pilgrimage with the hopes of defeating Sin, along with her guardians, and joins them on the journey. 

A huge strength of FFX is its characters and storyline. The writing is very well-done, as the characters feel like real people in the way they talk and interact with each other. The quality voice acting really brings this home. Obviously I’m not gonna name any spoilers, but there are twists and turns along the way, and relationships between different characters grow and change over time.

Gameplay-wise, FFX is a significant departure from the previous several games in a lot of ways. The previous six titles all used the “active time battle” system, in which each character had a meter that slowly built up in real time up to the point where they could take another action, which served to keep battles at a fast pace. FFX does something new and a little different. There’s no time element to taking turns anymore, and instead each character acts in a turn order dependent on agility. Having a lot of agility might mean a character can take multiple turns before the foe’s next action. The turn order is displayed at all times so players know how to plan ahead. Something quite different with this system is that, while there are three party members on the field at a given time, a player may swap to one of the reserve party members who can act immediately with no cost. This means that there are a lot of different options for every single turn, and all the game’s characters can get utilized. Boss battles often feel like puzzles rather than battles, as bosses often have a very particular strategy that needs to be countered in a certain way.

FFX also differs a lot in terms of how characters get stronger. This game ditches the whole “level” thing that the vast majority of RPGs use, so there’s no such thing as a “level 1” or “level 99” character to quickly tell you how strong they are. Instead, FFX’s main menu contains something called the “Sphere Grid”, which sort of resembles a huge board game, and each party member occupies a space on the board at all times. When gaining a “level”, a character gains the ability to move a space on the sphere grid, and they can grow in their stats or learn new abilities depending on which “nodes” occupy each space on the board. One cool thing about this is that players get some freedom on where their characters move on the grid, so they can somewhat customize the party to their liking.

FFX is certainly not without flaws. It’s not unusual for JRPGs to be rather linear, but this game is especially so. Many of the game’s areas are like tight corridors with little room for exploration. There’s no “world map” to freely roam around the world looking for new locations, and you don’t even have a choice on where you can go until fairly late in the game. A lot of times it feels like an “RPG on rails”. 

A rather obnoxious and baffling flaw is that cutscenes cannot be skipped. Sometimes they can be fairly long, and precede a difficult boss fight. The game’s bosses tend to have a bit of a trial-and-error element to them, as it can be very difficult to win on the first try if you don’t know what’s coming, and you’ll have to strategize according to your experience losing the first time. But without being able to skip cutscenes, you sometimes have to sit through a lengthy one that you’ve already seen for every attempt. Uuuuuugh.

Now, let’s talk a bit about different versions of this game. As you can see, I’m featuring two on the PS2, the original and an “International” version released in Japan. The “International” version came out half a year after the original Japanese and has the English voice acting, and optional English text as well, meaning you can play the game without any Japanese present. The main selling point of International is the brand new sphere grid. At the beginning of a new game, you can choose to play with the original sphere grid or the new one. In the new one, characters start much closer together, giving you more freedom early in the game with developing the characters, which is really cool and adds replay value. There’s other new content as well such as brand new optional boss fights. Since the “International” version came out before the game’s release in PAL territories (i.e., Europe and Australia), Square went ahead and made the “International” version the one that PAL gamers received from the get-go. The very strange thing to me is…we never got it in America!! Why the heck not?? The game was a big success here and it’s baffling to me that they didn’t bother to give us the updated version of the game.

There’s also been an HD rerelease of this game on various newer platforms. This serves as a serviceable and more-accessible way to get and play the game. It’s not without issues, however. For example, the characters don’t always emote in cutscenes like they do in the original release, and in a game like this where story and characters matter, that’s not a small detail. So you could argue PS2 International is the way to go, though I’ll bet fans have made “mods” to the modern PC release that make it just as good or better.

Final Fantasy X was already a departure in some ways from previous games. But this also a notable installment, because after this, Final Fantasy began to change much more drastically into something that no longer resembled the classic games in the series much at all. We’d never get the type of turn-based combat like in this game or in the ones before ever again in a mainline Final Fantasy. So FFX sort of feels like a “last hurrah” for people like me who are more fond of Final Fantasy’s old days, before the series drifted far away from what it was that enraptured many of us JRPG fans.

As for my own history with this game, it goes all the way back to its original release. I remember this game being a really big deal when it came out. I already knew Final Fantasy was great, and this game looked really advanced and impressive for 2001! I remember seeing advertisements for, and various friends and family members got the game. I believe it wound up being my cousin Eric’s favorite game of all-time, or at least it’s high up on his list. However, I had my sights on GameCube, so I had to go without Final Fantasy X for a while, only being able to see and try bits of it when visiting other people. 

Then, I got my own PlayStation 2 in the spring of 2004! Finally, I could play Final Fantasy X from the comfort of home!! Naturally it was one of the first games I bought. That and Kingdom Hearts were the big two Squaresoft games that were at the top of my PS2 wishlist. Kingdom Hearts, weeeeell…I found that game to be really disappointing, hence its absence from this list. FFX, however, was just as good as I was hoping for. It felt so good to finally have it for myself after seeing it so often the past two-plus years. A couple years after that, I grabbed a Japanese PS2 that came with Final Fantasy X International, and I got a pretty good deal for it at the time. RPGs don’t have great replay value in general though, so I never actually played through it back then. I did wind up getting to experience the International content as part of the HD remaster many years later.

While it’s obviously not state-of-the-art anymore, Final Fantasy X is still an incredibly good JRPG, a type that they just don’t make very often these days, with a great combination of story, interesting mechanics and strategic turn-based gameplay. It’s one of the games that I most closely associate with the PlayStation 2. Any RPG fan owes it to themselves to give it a go. A quintessential Squaressential, I guess you could say.