Final Fantasy X review

Overview
Like I said, the game starts out pretty slow. You're a young Blitzball star named Tidus, and in the middle of a game, your city is attacked, and when it's all over, you end up 1,000 years in the future. You're a stranger in a strange land, but it seems like fate has something in mind for you. Anyhow, once you get to Besaid, the game really interesting because that's when you start making friends. First you meet Wakka (GREAT voice acting!). And a little while later, you meet Yuna (the heroine) and her guardians (Lulu and Kimahri). It took no time at all for me to fall in love with the cast of characters.

Characters
The characters are what make this game great. Tidus isn't all that cool, but he's interesting. Yuna is the most charming girl without pigtails you could ever imagine. Lulu is cool in her own dark and serious way, and she uses little stuffed dolls to cast magic. Kimahri doesn't have any personality at first, he sure looks cool. Wakka is great too... the voice acting on him is SO good that it makes the character. Later on Auron joins, and he's not too likable, but he's a good guy to have on your team. And even later (about 16 hours?) Rikku joins. She's ultra cute, but quite strange. The only complaint I have about the characters is that some of their outfits are downright silly (e.g. - Tidus!).

Storyline
It's a simple storyline, but it's very interesting nonetheless. The world of Spira is a giant ocean with islands scattered about. It looks like a paradise, but everybody lives in fear of a huge monster named "Sin". You play Tidus, and you're lost in time. You eventually end up joining Yuna and her guardians on their pilgrimage (since you don't really have anything else to do). Yuna is a priestess and summoner who will someday try to defeat Sin. It's a great storyline so far... classic Final Fantasy!

Miscellaneous
The graphics are awesome! The CG movies look great, but they're really not much better than the regular gameplay (that's how good it looks). And, it's all in 3D. You can't control the camera, but it looks much better nonetheless.

Now, when you summon a monster (aka Aeon), you get to control it. I think that's very, very cool! But, the monster designs look kinda silly.

There's a very strange system by which you upgrade your characters. You don't gain experience and level up like you used to... instead you get spheres and points with which you can move a long the grid and gain more speed, HP, abilities, etc.

Also, you don't raise your stats with weapons, armor, etc. They just have different abilities, and that's a little confusing because you end up with a ton of junk, and what's best depends you your situation.

Blitzball is a playable game, and it's absolutely stupid! Not only that, it's a pain in the butt. It's the one thing about the game that I really, really do not like! I would rather have another card game or something like that.

In this FF you get to switch characters right in the middle of a fight, and I think that's probably FFX's biggest improvement because it adds some interesting strategy, and it allows you to use everybody.

I got the strategy guide by Brady. It's not nearly as bad as the idiotic FF9 online BS, but it's still not very good. Brady just makes bad guides... it's not easy to use, there are lots of mistakes, and a lot is missing. But, I'll take a crappy Brady guide over a FAQ any time! This game doesn't really require a guide, but I use one because I don't have much time, and I wanna do as much as I can, as fast as I can.

More thoughts...
Well, it took me about 3 1/2 weeks (86 hours of gameplay) to finish! That may not sound like it was fast, but that's over 3 hours per day average. I lost a lotta sleep to play that game. Anyhow, my opinion of the game didn't really change now that I'm done. I'm not quite as high on the game as I was before, but it's still my 2nd favorite Final Fantasy ever (as far as characters and storyline goes). However, as the game went on, some problems did arise.

One problem was the fact that there really aren't any side quests until you're almost done with the game. For the first 95% of the game you just go from A to B to C to D to E and so forth. It's real obvious where you should go, what you should do, and that you can't do much else. That may bother some people a lot more than it did me. The storyline was fun, and that's what I really care about. But it would have felt better if you the game wasn't 50 hours of straight storyline for the first 95% of the game, and then 35 hours for the last 5% plus side quests. BTW, all this is considering that I only played about 7 Blitzball games! I hated it, and never wasted any more time with it. If you can stomach Blitzball, that'll give you something else to do during the first 95% of the game.

Another problem with the game was that some of the side quests were annoying. I think they meant for 'em to be challenging, but they was annoying, not challenging. For instance, there's a side-quest were you have to dodge 200 lightning bolts in a row. Okay, that's a pain in the butt, but it can be done if you save and back-up your game every once-in-awhile... so I thought! I found out the hard way (2 hours of wasted time) that you LOSE your count if you save!!! 200 times in a row without saving is almost impossible.

I had a little problem with the ending, but since I can't really talk about it without giving anything away, I'll leave it at that. Well, let me just say it was good (long and surprising), but I kinda wanted more. But that's just my personal opinion.

And as I said in the first review (and many other times)... Brady's guide sucked! They left out way, way, way too much. My book is full of notes (unlisted secrets and discoveries) and corrections. Usually their books are best for maps if nothing else, but their maps were hard to read, so you're probably better off saving your $15.

The voice acting ended up being pretty good. The only problem was that the lip synching was kinda off... so many times their mouths would move, but no sound came out! I thought that was kinda funny. I don't really hold that against them.

Final thoughts
Although I spent a lotta time just criticizing the game, I really did love it! It exceeded my very high expectations and was the best FF since 7. I say that mainly because the graphics were cool, the storyline was a lotta fun, and I loved all the characters. This is definitely a game that I will replay in a year or two.

If you like RPG games with beautiful graphics, cool characters, and a pretty cool storyline, then you gotta pick this one up. The only people who should not get Final Fantasy X are lazy people who can't sit through a long and involved game, or people looking for some a big challenge.

FINAL SCORE!
I'm scoring this one a little bit differently than I usually do. It's still 10-0, but here a 10 means perfect (e.g. Cammy), a 5 is average, and a 0 means horrible (e.g. shotoclone Ryu). Hopefully this'll help you put my opinion in perspective.

Characters = 9 (personality 9.5, style 7)
Voice acting = 9
Graphics = 9.8
Gameplay = 9
Challenge = 4
Storyline = 8.6
OVERALL FEELING/SCORE = 9.2