It's around twenty years since Squaresoft released an NES role-playing game that was said to be their 'Final Fantasy' of success – the games subsequent popularity has since lead to the release of more than twenty follow-ups, sequels and spin-off's. The series tenth anniversary was marked by ... Read review
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characterisation, strategic combat, fun mini-games and hours upon hours of captivating gameplay, and the 10th title in the series is no exception. This is the first timeFinal F...
Final Fantasy X
The 228 page official encyclopaedia to Final Fantasy[registered] X. The most comprehensive ... more
guide ever produced by piggyback leaves no stone unturned in exploring every facet of the epic Final Fantasy[registered] X. These 228 full-colour pages are packed with exclusive artwork high-resolution screenshots detailed information statistics maps and more.
Final Fantasy X-2
This 238 page book will be your friend for life and accompany you through all of Final ... more
Fantasy X-2. The walkthrough is so comprehensive it shows you how to attain a 100% completed score. You will discover all sidequests all mini-games and all hidden endings with the extensive Secrets chapter. Detailed maps reveal where to find every item in each of the 5 game Chapters. All 17 dresspheres and their corresponding 384 Commands explained. All the information you need on items accessories Garment Grids and abilities. The Monsters chapter explains the strengths and weaknesses of all enemies.
Final Fantasy X - Piggyback
The 228 page official encyclopaedia to Final Fantasy[registered] X. The most comprehensive ... more
guide ever produced by piggyback leaves no stone unturned in exploring every facet of the epic Final Fantasy[registered] X. These 228 full-colour pages are...
A review by tom1clare on Final Fantasy X (PS2) June 3rd, 2007
Author's product rating:
Gameplay/Playability
OK
Graphics
Excellent Graphics - visually stunning
Sound
Good sound effects & music
Value for Money
Advantages:
Amazing graphics, good soundtrack, plenty of lifespan
Disadvantages:
A mediocre tale of unremarkable characters, linear, no explorable World Map
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
It's around twenty years since Squaresoft released an NES role-playing game that was said to be their 'Final Fantasy' of success – the games subsequent popularity has since lead to the release of more than twenty follow-ups, sequels and spin-off's. The series tenth anniversary was marked by what is generally seen as their magnum opus – the spectacular Final Fantasy VII, which finally allowed the series to move out of the considerable shadow cast over it by Enix's Dragon Quest, and in doing so, introduced the world to the 'modern' RPG.
If anything, the global success of FFVII seemed to intensify Japan's love of RPG's. In 2006, highly-respected Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu compiled a list of readers' 100 favourite games, which threw up some interesting results. Firstly, the stable we now know as Square-Enix held no less than eight of the top ten places; four Final Fantasy's and three Dragon Quest's among them. The biggest surprise however, was the game adjudged to be better than all others in history, was Final Fantasy X.
For a number of reasons, I found this rather disquieting. FFX is not the best game ever; neither is it best RPG. For that matter, it comes nowhere close to being even the best Final Fantasy game. And before I hear any cries of anti-FF bias, I will explain now that my favourite game on any format happens to have been a Final Fantasy. But if at some point you realise that graphics do not make a game great in themselves, you'll find what is perhaps the series least satisfying entry since 1992's Final Fantasy V.
And that is not to say the game is awful of course – far from it; it has many of the hallmarks that make Square's series so enduring; peerless presentation and visual splendour, assured controls, a tried-and-tested battle-system and a great deal of longevity. FFX contains much that is comparable with Final Fantasy VIII – the most evident references are the spell names and the remarkably similar music, but the similarities run deeper. The focus in both cases seems to have been on the technical side of things, with a greater complexity of menus and options disguising slightly shallower gameplay, with a more clinical set of characters and a direct examination of their emotions and squabbles rather than the bigger picture. So, depending on whether you enjoyed the depth 'n' detail of the eighth instalment or preferred the more-rounded gameplay of the others may determine how much you glean from FFX.
Final Fantasy X, first released in 2001, follows the quest of a Summoner named Yuna as she embarks on a lengthy pilgrimage aiming to rid the world of the evil entity known as 'Sin'. Her quest largely involves visiting temples so as to amass the backing of various mythical creatures known as 'Aeons', with her final task being to summon the 'Final Aeon' – said to defeat Sin but also end her life. The story is played out however from the perspective of Tidus, a spiky-haired blonde youngster (where's that been used again?) who becomes a guardian to Yuna, making for the inevitable 'will they, won't they?' love interest.
So what is it like to play? Well, as with most games of this ilk, battling and exploration are the two dominant themes. It's the most linear Final Fantasy I can remember in terms of the gameplay progression and the choices you are given – perhaps because it doesn't feature a World Map. The removal of this long-standing facet was a brave move on the part of the developers, but it ultimately does the game no good. After a time, it begins to feel as though you're playing an incredibly lengthy, vacuous platform game, with very few real traps to evade and the only points of interaction being the occasional passer-by and the odd treasure chest. A recurring pattern develops, seeing you traverse lots of monster-filled paths; reaching a random safe house; chatting with some innocuous people and then on to the next temple – the severe shortage of actual towns is uncharacteristic of the series and as a consequence, the varied communities we are usually able to immerse ourselves in are merely skimmed over. In fairness, the temples themselves do provide some surprisingly-cerebral (though often frustrating) block-pushing challenges, and outside of the main adventure, Tidus is able to partake in 'Blitzball' competitions (imagine turn-based American-football underwater and you're somewhat close) which are mildly diverting in the short-term and nicely conceived. Though allusions are made as to the goodies and side-quests you may uncover by backtracking, the reward factor simply isn't great enough to warrant such arduous treks.
Exploring in the field of play is highly staccato as well; there are points where you can barely move three feet without instigating another (often long-winded) cut-scene. Cinematically speaking, these sequences are nicely shot and really show off the games graphical clout, but quite often they bear little or no significant relation to the main story. The most notable 'improvement' FFX was said to possess was voiced dialogue, but because the majority of the characters are either whiny or insipid (another trait it mirrors with FFVIII), such scenes slip into the realms of the mundane. The English translation is punctuated by a host of broken sentences and uncomfortable annunciations – part of the advantage its non-dialogue predecessors had was that you could picture a Cloud Strife or a Squall Leonheart without a weird, high-pitched voice, but short of a mute button, you aren't afforded that luxury here.
The battle-system is one of the more successful elements in Final Fantasy X, again mimicking FFVIII with its own version of the 'Guardian Forces' idea in the form of 'Aeons'. These creatures can be summoned into battle by Yuna, and can actually be controlled independently for the first time. The likes of Shiva and Ifrit make a welcome return and showcase a range of fantastic-looking special attacks, and can even learn new abilities of their own, though as certain Aeons (such as Bahamut and Yojimbo) are so superior to standard attacks, a rather disproportionate emphasis is placed on using Yuna in your party, plus it is quite strange that you can kill certain bosses with one hit simply by bribing one of your Aeons to deliver a killing blow. Though fairly frequent in their occurrence, the turn-based battles move along at a pleasingly brisk pace; noticeably quicker than other RPG's and the inclusion of a new bar listing the order in which allies and enemies take their turns is a nice bonus.
The biggest change to the make-up of the game is that, strictly speaking, it has no 'level-ups' – these have been replaced by a 'Sphere Grid'. Using orbs and experience gained from battle, the player can move each playable protagonist around a giant board, increasing their individual stats and learning new abilities by lighting up the nodes on the grid. Despite my initial reservations, it's undeniably a very clever idea, and in the early stages where you are able to make many moves in a short space of time, it is very satisfying. However, the freedom it appears to grant the player is a bit of a pretence, as ninety percent of the time you will have to follow a set route of upgrades, with many potential detours being blocked off until later in the game. Because of the complexity of the Sphere Grid, you will occasionally have to backtrack over already-lit nodes, and due to the large quantity of 'empty' ones, your experience points will on occasions grant you nothing in terms of character expansion.
If you can overlook the minor gripe of the screen borders, Final Fantasy X remains one of the prettiest games of its era, even if some of its environments and locations hardly inspire on basis of design alone. All of the major protagonists look stunning; they are all truly individual in appearance and all lavishly detailed. The FMV sequences are utterly jaw-dropping; they're incredibly sharp, smooth and extremely well-defined – even though it was released in the comparative early days of the format, FFX is still at the very peak of anything witnessed on a PS2.
The musical score is also typically strong, lending a real ambience to the locations you visit. It has a great, chirpy battle theme that will get you humming along to it in no time at all, and the boss theme also cranks up the anticipation and tension admirably.
Despite the apparent 'complex for complexities sake' theme that plagues FFX, it is relatively easy to get into in the early stages, helping the player to grasp (and adjust to) the numerous changes brought about for the series first PS2 outing, and for the first twenty hours or so, things move along at a good pace. However, quite without warning, the difficulty cranks up significantly – at one stage I had to set aside four or five hours simply for fighting monsters so as to be competitive enough to tackle a boss, and this becomes a recurrent theme in the second half of the game.
The final nail in FFX's coffin is its needlessly complex equipment system. Whilst in the path, weapons were judged simply on how much damage they could deal and you were lucky if they came with some special attribute. Here though strength and defence are judged (if at all) by percentage and most weapons and armour has to be customized to get the most of them. The problem is, this 'upgrading' usually requires a lot of items and there is such a large volume of equipment within the game, that it is not always easy to suss out what to spend your hard-earned Gil on. I can't understand why such an idea wasn't tested on a smaller scale, for example an 'accessory' option, rather than forcing you into assigning attributes to your major kit that might become obsolete soon afterwards.
Ultimately, it's hard not to be a bit disappointed with Final Fantasy X, due to a combination of immense, unfulfilled hype and that it has a multitude of problems that its older siblings didn't suffer from. The only real plus-point the generation jump from FFIX can be said to have brought is better visuals – in all other key areas, it is inferior to the classics that went before it. It's still a quality title, and provided that you have a preference for big-budget role-playing games, there's a good fifty or sixty hours worth of play within. It's just you get the nagging suspicion that alterations were made in areas that didn't need change, and that 'complex' concepts have appeared where 'simple' ones would have sufficed. A jigsaw puzzle of promising ideas, though Squaresoft lost some of the key pieces along the way, meaning FFX is destined to feel unfinished.
Advantages: | Exceptional Graphics | Lots of sub-quests | Will take you hours to complete Disadvantages: Cut scenes are too long | Can be frustrating | will take you hours to complete
...is the tenth in the Final Fantasy (FF) series, and the first produced for the PS2. That's not to say, it's the tenth that I've played, in fact I was rather a late starter to the series and began my adventures in the seventh instalment. Having completed that adventure I moved onto Final Fantasy 8 (FFVIII), was very impressed with the obvious improvement in both gameplay and graphics and then strangely moved onto number six, now a complete addict.
... ...before continuing with this. The final major difference is that instead of every character being able to use the aeons (powerful guardians) you are limited to only Yuna being able to summon them. This isn't really a problem, in fact it makes the game slightly more interesting as it can be a little harder to defeat those nasty bosses.
Which brings me nicely on to the variety of battles, there are quite a number of different monsters to face, but ...
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Advantages: Different gameplay, allows you to think before making a move Disadvantages: Cannot skip cut scenes
Final Fantasy X is a very addictive little game and different from other games out there.
You being as playing a character called 'Tidus'. He is a star 'Blitzball' player, which is a water sport purely invented for the game. The major city he lives in is a very materialistic, pleasure-seaking place until the day the city is attacked.
Tidus ends up floating on a shore line where he meets most of the rest of the crew that you will control. The village ... ...a strange section before the final boss fight that makes no sense. If your three active characters are all knocked out, it is game over - even if you have the other characters in reserve.
Cut scenes are not really played in an accurate way. Each person pauses before talking, particularly strange when one person interrupts another. The first stops mid-sentence, then a little gap, then the interuption.
Some don't like the characters voices but I ...
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Final Fantasy X is the first in the long-running RPG series to appear on the PS2, and it's success led to a sequel, which was also a first for the series. FFX is set in the fantasy world of Spira, and sees Yuna - a summoner - on a journey to Zanarkand where she can summon the "Final Aeon" to destroy Sin. Accompanying her on the journey are her guardians, one of whom is Tidus who claims to be from Zanarkand - despite it's existence having been in ... ...not completely).
Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, instead of the travels across the over-world map, linear paths connect the different regions. The continuity makes it realistic in a sense but the game is strictly linear, with there being no real exploration to be had until late on when the chance to backtrack arises. At least FFX had the decency to seperate the controversial random battles from the puzzles though, but the puzzles - which require ...
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Advantages: Classic RPG features with twisting story plot. Disadvantages: Voice acting is sometimes a problem.
...Graphics:
This was the first Final Fantasy title to be released on the Playstation 2. Square-Enix are well known for their intricate design and explosive production of cinematic FMV or CGI sequences and they certainly took advantage of the PS2s' potential. Cut scenes are seemlessly woven together with in-game graphics, which aids the plotline in its attempt to flow from one 'chapter' to the next.
When the player is free to roam and explore, the ... ...ever since the release of Final Fantasy 7. There is always something pretty to look at.
The character sprites themselves are impressive, both in and outside of combat. They are fluent in motion, and attractive in detail. A real step up from those used in Final Fantasy 9.
Basic Gameplay:
Its similar to most Final Fantasy titles in its progression through a linear storyline. The plot opens up, until you find yourself in possession of an airship ...
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Advantages: Visually stunning, fun combat, innovative use of summons Disadvantages: Annoying voiceovers, not Uematsu's best musical score
Final Fantasy X caused a real stir when it came out, as it was the first FF titles to be released for the PS2. FF fans all over started salivating over the prospect of another Sakaguchi epic, rendered beautifully in liquid PS2 graphics!
Of course, to those who were not familiar to the games, nostalgia alone would not sustain their interest: the game, like all games, would have to be GOOD if they were to play it for 50 hours plus.
Fortunately, FFX ... ...The FMV (Full Motion Video) sequences are as crisp and succulent in detail as ever and the in-game graphics (thanks to the then new PS2's capabilities) are suitably rich to please even the 'Next-Gen' demographic society.
The plot is a suitably complex one, as one would expect from a FF title, and it deals with the conflict that occurs when religious schisms tear societies apart.
The main character, Tidus, is trnsported from his home-city of Zanarkand, ...
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Advantages: Lots of hours of gameplay, value for money Disadvantages: Bit too linear, tricky for beginners
...Well, spring is coming, and in the tradition of all the best designers, Square have decided now is the perfect time to unveil its new collection. The eagerly awaited FinalFantasyX-2 (FFX-2) is here, and RPG fans, young boys who like Japanese women in bikinis, and anyone who loves a good romp on the PS2 should rejoice.
I’ve decided in this review to answer the questions I usually have about games before buying them, and some of the questions I get asked a lot by people who don’t really like RPGs or don’t understand the thrill of FinalFantasy (FF).
SO IF THIS IS A SEQUEL, DO YOU HAVE TO HAVE PLAYED THE OTHER FINALFANTASY GAMES TO PLAY THIS ONE?
No, not at all. It might help to play FinalFantasyX (FFX), as this is a sequel to that game, but each FF is usually a self-contained story with brand new characters. FFX-2 could be...
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Advantages: Great Graphics Disadvantages: An old game
...When FinalFantasyX was released on the PS2, there was a lot of anticipation. For the first time we would get to hear the characters speak. The story line was fun to follow.
For the first time ever, it was then announced that rather tha release a new FinalFantasy game, a sequel was being written.
So, what we now have si FinalFantasyX-2
Upon first loading this into my PS2, I was entranced with the opening video. The graphics are amazing and smooth, the sound fantastic.
The first fight and things still seem pretty damn good.
After a while, you start to learn how the system works. With this, instead of traveling around a grid placing spheres as in the first game, instead you use the spheres to dress up!
Basically, you aquire different dress spheres which represent different skills. If you equip a Black Mage Dress...
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Advantages: Long gameplay, can be fun in parts, furthers the story in Spira Disadvantages: Can't skip some movies, storyline is very dull, very girly
...FinalFantasyX was one of my favourite games so once that was completed (eventually!) it was obvious I was going to try FinalFantasyX-2.
Background
Set two years after FinalFantasyX, this game follows Yuna and Rikku as "Sphere Hunters". Added to the party is a third character, Payne. There are the only three characters you can play as, which is disappointing after the choice of 7 through much of the previous game.
A "Sphere Hunter" are groups of people who are looking for... well... spheres! These can contain movies and Yuna has found one which appears to have Tidus (from FinalFantasyX) on it. She wants to find more spheres to find out what this is all about and to try to find Tidus again. But is it possible?
Gameplay
Different from FinalFantasyX, fighting is real-time whereas the previous game was turn based...
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Introduction:
Ask the serious final fantasy gamer 'which Final Fantasy game was the best one?' and they will immediately tell you that Final Fantasy VII was by far the best one ever produce. Now this incredible game is going to be on our handheld... more
17.03.2004
18.06.2004
