This is certainly one of the best JRPGs for a beginner and of its time and I quite enjoyed my time. Let’s discuss why.

The story of Final Fantasy X is a slow burn but I will say that when the game sinks its teeth into you it will immediately get you hooked, I played this game for 14 hours at a time and it just kept getting more and more interesting and not just the mystery of Sin and wondering what happened to Zanarkand, but the themes of organized religion using fear and dogma, the concepts of sacrifice, forgiveness and moving on from the various traumas of life alongside the fact that death is a constant looming presence ends up creating a fantastic and intriguing story that you don’t see done often and while fantasy still has many of these tropes imbedded into the world and plot, X does it fantastically and also the ending is the best in the series, I cannot emphasize enough how great it is.

As for the writing, I thought the cast was filled with likable characters and as for the protagonist Tidus, I thought he was a good protagonist and while I can understand people finding him annoying as his antics did get a bit tiring. It does make sense considering the guy is a teenaged star athlete that was sent to an entirely different land out of nowhere and he’s just consistently out of his element for like a good portion of the game. That being said I found his character quite likable and I also really quite enjoyed the cast especially Yuna, Wakka and Lulu. I will say though I wish the other characters got some time dedicated to them I.E Rikku who I ended up liking the least, I think her personality has potential but she needed time in the oven.

There are some great standout characters like Auron, who became my favorite character and Seymour as an antagonist is also damn good and one of the better executed tragic antagonists in the series although I kinda wish he was less transparently evil as per his design being a crimson red flag of “I am your main antagonist for this one.” It certainly would’ve made some moments more impactful albeit I do understand he is meant to be a hated villain. And if I had to praise any member of the main cast in particular it’s Wakka. An incredibly prejudiced character no doubt, but he also has a kind personality and the dude goes hard as a friend but what I also love is that despite the fact he absolutely despises the Al-Behd’s due to literal propaganda and indoctrination the guy ends up developing to renounce his views and to become a much better human being. I don’t understand why this type of character isn’t done more often honestly.

The romance between Tidus and Yuna is the best in the series so far and probably will remain so, Tidus and Yuna are already good characters with a nice amount of chemistry but the romance builds up nicely and they have plenty of memorable scenes together (yes I found the fake laughter scene, as iconically purposefully cringe as it is, a cute moment.) yet the ending is so bittersweet and beautiful that they end up being one of the better romance couples in gaming, something that many games cannot write well.

Graphically and artistically this game looks fantastic and I actually like a lot of the designs. Yuna, Lulu, Tidus, Sin, Auron and Jecht and I understand Tetsuya Nomura gets some criticism for his later games but artistically the guy’s a really solid character designer and I think Yusuke Naora and Shintaro Takai deserve a ton of praise for the games overall look, the setting is based off the South Pacific and I wish they got represented more in games because they really fit the setting being fascinating and completely different than what we’re used to considering a lot of JRPGs will utilize Japanese or more Eurocentric settings.

I understand that the HD remaster did screw some things up most noticeably the faces but some of the backgrounds look worse here than on PS2 and I have no idea why Square Enix’s track record with remasters are as spotty as it is. My issue with the faces is largely because they seem rounder in shape compared to the original and not only that but they all have this weird thousand yard stare that certainly has the characters look more uncanny than they need to be.

Also, side note but what the hell was the thought process with Rikku’s design? I can excuse a skimpy design and all but why give one to the fifteen year old girl? 

The soundtrack for Final Fantasy X is damn good, there are gorgeous tracks on here. Zanarkand is a generational song but I have some other standouts like Besaid, Spira Unplugged, Calm Before The Storm, The Travel Agency and Fight with Seymour. The PS2 originals version is fantastic and has aged beautifully two decades later, but then we have the arranged soundtrack which was added in the remaster and it just doesn’t hit the same. The PR’s arranged soundtrack was gorgeous and definitely upgraded so many of the songs but this one just loses a lot of impact. I think Servants of the Mountain takes a big hit due to the drums being worse in comparison to the original.

In regard to audio this is the first mainline Final Fantasy to have voice acting and this is one of the only aspects of the game that I’m mixed on, the voice actors are actually fantastic at what they do and I’ve loved their work on other games but the voice direction for this game really hinders it. While the VA for Auron does great, Yuna’s gets handicapped because she has to sync it with the mouth movements and as a result Yuna’s lines are delivered with emotion but the cadence just makes it sound more exhausted due to all the pauses and the more rushed delivery is a problem other characters have including Tidus at times.

I know that a lot of people think voice acting was something that was consistently poorly done back then but that couldn’t be further from the truth, beyond animated shows and movies there was a good amount of games with great voice acting. Metal Gear Solid, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment etc had really good voice acting even today. And if you wanna argue anime dubbing then Berserk ‘97, Cowboy Bebop and Fooly Cooly takes the cake.

I’d argue that the voice acting for FFX reminds me of those old 4kids/Toonami dubs where the voice actors are talented but the voice direction prevents it from being really good so as a result the voice acting ends up varying from decent to pretty solid.

The gameplay of Final Fantasy X is a more linear style compared to previous games and you can’t really revisit previous locations as that’s more of an endgame thing. The linearity makes sense from a narrative point of view and this is actually quite common for JRPGs at the time so I could understand.

The combat ditches ATB and now adopts the CTB system which is a damn nice breath of fresh air after six games of it. It’s more akin to traditional turn based and to top if off it adds in a little display to showcase the turns which party member gets and this is based off stats and you could even adjust it which adds a decent level of strategy alongside the fact it’s no longer active battle so you could take your sweet time to think, and quite honestly this is a better combat system than ATB off of functionality alone.

As for other mechanics it ranges from quite functional and intuitive to “what the hell”. The Sphere Grid is the way you level your characters and it works as intended. Linear, straight to the point and nice. Expert Grid is kinda fun to experiment around with too which I can appreciate.

Blitzball is the big minigame this time, is it better than Tetra Master yes, is it better than Triple Triad god no. I love the idea of blitzball but man is it kinda lame to play. I understood the mechanics just fine but it explains the mechanics kinda poorly and it is rng reliant which I am not fond of because the game suffers from that. I can understand losing your first match because you’re playing with a bunch of scrubs but playing it afterwards is still not very interesting.

The other minigames are just mundane and they’re kinda acceptable but the greatest issue is getting the endgame weapons through the minigames, dodging 200 lightning bolts is one thing but having to grind Blitzball for Wakka’s ultimate? No thank you. And it’s not as if the minigames are terrible they’re just unbelievably boring, blitzball is a game where I understood the mechanics absolutely but it’s not even that fun to play it’s just a tedious minigame among other tedious minigames like the Chocobo racing and the butterfly catching.

Overall. 8.5/10 game. Beat FFX-2 and thought that game was really fun and added a good amount of improvements even if the plot wasn’t as good. Also the normal ending is much better than the best ending you could get in that game. TLDR don’t look up FFX-2.5 that was a mistake, I have no idea how that didn’t get canned from the first draft.

Beat Final Fantasy X Lol Here’s My Thoughts