So when you hear the word RPG game (That’s two words, but screw it), most people would immediately follow that up with Final Fantasy. I really like the Final Fantasy franchise, despite having only played a small, small category of a massive franchise. And I want to talk about one of my favorites from the franchise, a true classic from the good old PS2 days, before Kingdom Hearts took all the glory, Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X follows what any other Final Fantasy game would follow, a teenager with a lot of emotional baggage. This one in particular being Tidus, or whatever you wanna name him. After he gets transported to a mysterious world that is totally unlike his perfectly normal world, he meets a cast of wacky characters like awkward Yuna, busy Lulu, cool guy Auron, horrible racist Wakka, minority that Wakka hates, Riku, and big cat man Kimari. Together, they go on a journey to perform ceremonies while hearing about the teachings of a god that may be super evil, all while having to avoid the cruel plans of Seymour, the most obvious villain I’ve ever seen. The plot of X is pretty weird, weirder than usual for Final Fantasy, but one I still love. The game looks pretty dang gorgeous for being on a PS2. This was the beach era, where every game needed to be on a beach. Kingdom Hearts had a beach, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker had tons of beaches, and now Final Fantasy gets one and it’s fucking beautiful. I love it. All the environments in this game are real steller and nice to look at. But what’s an RPG without a battle system. Final Fantasy X probably has my favorite battle system in the franchise. Of your six characters, you can have three on the battlefield at a time. But, thankfully, you have the option of switching out party members on the fly to get some in, either because they have the stats you need or you just need a character with health to keep yours from dying. It’s a neat little system and I wish more RPGs used it. I also really like the Sphere grid, this games form of leveling up. You get a massive grid for your characters so you can level their stats up. If you play the game a lot, and I mean A LOT, you can totally max out everything on the grid for every character. And I like that you can turn a tank character like Auron into a magic user or give insane destruction spells to Yuna, the healer. And the Summons are a ton of fun. Yuna gets insane summons late in the game, as well as crazy optional ones that are insanely overpowered. Hell, a lot of side stuff in this game is from. From the Blitzball missions that I can’t play to save my life to collecting all of the rare weapons. And the soundtrack is amazing. I have nostalgia and love for the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack, but Final Fantasy X really kills it with classics like the Island music, the boss theme for Seymour Skinnard, and that classic To Zanarkand never gets old.
Final Fantasy is the latest game I have gotten to play and has easily become one of my favorite Final Fantasy games just for how much charm and how much fun I have had with it’s gameplay and it’s overworld. Shame that Final Fantasy X-2 is a fucking abomination of god. I look forward to playing this game again in even more beautiful HD graphics. And one more thing. Tidus is a good character. Fuck you! Fight me!