Chronicles of the Last Fantasy Part 4

Final Fantasy X marks a rather important milestone in the Final Fantasy/Square saga. Most obviously it was the series’ first outing on the Playstation 2, but it also marks the point where poor Japanese developer Squaresoft, in catastrophic bankruptcy spirals after Spirits Within flopped, were bought out and merged with the American Enix corporation. Call me a bitter fanboy but this takeover combined with the numerous staff shakeups, including the departure of classic composer Nobuo Uematsu from a full time position, led to a streak of titles which frankly aren’t up to the standard of older iterations. Coincidentally, Final Fantasy X finds itself teetering on that same border of excellence and decline as its developers that led to what was ultimately a fun experience but with some misgivings that left a sour taste.

Critically X was of course a great success (currently ranking in the top 5 PS2 sellers of all time), and for good reasons too. Foregoing some of the expected norms in Final Fantasy mechanics, the new style of gameplay and systems were genuinely interesting; with armour granting specific special abilities, the battle system becoming truly turn based and strategic and the levelling replaced by the vast sphere grid, the upgrade nature certainly provided more hands on feeling of progression than simply watching your level flick up another integer. Rather than your stats increasing automatically, the level of control on hand for you to take your own routes and activate desired stat nodes on the grid was a welcome feature in my eyes.

But of course, not everything new that Final Fantasy X brought to the table was a welcome addition. A technical marvel of Playstation 2 hardware, the fantastic quality cutscenes and musical score brought with it an annoying character design and worse yet, was topped off by an awful cast of American voice artists who detracted from the experience so much more than if I’d had to sit and just read the onscreen dialogue as in the games of old. Yuffie is a so much better and sufferable annoying little girl than Rikku for one reason, and that is I don’t have to listen to Yuffie speak. And perhaps this is the biggest and most unforgiveable crime of Final Fantasy X, the heralding of an age where every character to come out of Tetsuya Nomura’s studio looks like they belong in a Japanese pop music video. Damn it, in one instance a character was a damn Japanese pop artist. Remember Final Fantasy X-2? That’s one god awful sequel that I’d happily forgotten ever existed.

Aside from the fact that something must be held responsible for this turning point, Final Fantasy X is not without its other issues. The driving force behind any Final Fantasy title, the story, simply wasn’t as compelling or interesting as anything you might expect from the series. Whilst not short on its existential baddies and dramatic devices, Final Fantasy X never really comes across as particularly epic. There is always the sense that the writers didn’t have enough time to craft exactly what they wanted, even the biggest plot turns are either predictable, insignificant or just given away too early. “Your dad is the big evil whale”, bummer. “You don’t really exist”, I hadn’t noticed.

And yet despite these personal criticisms you may be shocked to hear that I actually enjoyed Final Fantasy X very much, reflecting back on it now certainly shocks me. The 250+ hour save which I still boot up occasionally is testimony to the addictive and entertaining gameplay X has to offer. One day my all-star pop group will all have maximum stats across the sphere grid and Simon Cowell will tell them that they have the X Factor (zing). It’s certainly consumed about as much time as Final Fantasy VII and my quest to defeat the Emerald Weapon has. Despite its foreshadowing of dark times ahead, Final Fantasy X has enough staying power to ensure that I begrudgingly love it.

Posted by D Kennedy
Categories: Gaming