Final Fantasy X

So I finally broke down and started playing Final Fantasy X, mostly because I can play it with my daughter. So far (3-4 hours in), it feels like cutscenes stitched together with faux gameplay (in which, no matter what you do, you are likely to triumph). Is that an accurate perspective or does it get better?

I want to figure out the answer before ordering Final Fantasy XII. It’s hard to pay full-price for cutscenes.

Well, later in the game, you become less likely to triumph, and sometimes die.

Which means you reload and try again until you triumph, to advance to the next cut scene.

/for what its worth, I did finish the game, so its not like I hate it. But, if you are complaining about the cutscenes now, it only gets marginally better IMO.

Final Fantasy X doesn’t really get good until about 3/4 through, when you’re given the ability to wander freely around the world. It’s not a terrible game, and there are some difficult battles, but it will take you a while to get to the good stuff.

From what I’ve played of the japanese version of Final Fantasy XII, they’re nothing alike. In fact, if I were to write an article of FFXII, I would title it: “Hey, you got CRPG in my JRPG!” Aside from being much more difficult, you’re also given a lot of freedom. It’s a pretty enjoyable game, but I’m going to wait for the US version before I get too deep into it.

At only 3-4 hours in, you haven’t really gotten to the point where the game has stopped “teaching” you how to play and let you free. It is, however, a relentlessly linear game up to near the very end, and if the cutscenes are bugging you now you probably won’t make it to the end.

For what it’s worth, the word on Final Fantasy XII is that it is a large departure, in a good way, from Final Fantasy X and the like, but I bet there’s still an assload of cutscenes.

Yeah, once past a certain point it comes from a more " Cutscene to get some play in" and to a more “Play to get a cutscene”. Despite any elitism you may get, FFX gets to be a fun game, just give it some time.

The main thing you have to remember about Final Fantasy X is that you have a choice to make:

  1. Do you want to emphasize fun strategic battles that are hard to win, and fun to fight in turn-based gameplay? Or…

  2. Do you want to explore the game and discover all its extra little side quests and secrets and secret weapons, and extra rewards?

Unfortunately the two are mutually exclusive.

If you choose Path 1, then try to finish the game as fast possible. Do not dilly dally in any area. Never stick around to fight any extra enemies in an area because you’ll have more random encounters and you’ll level up like crazy. If you truly want to have fun in the later boss fights, you’ve got to keep plowing forward, and forget about any extra missions or exploration. The game makes it pretty intuitive about where you have to go next in the linear storyline. If you choose path 1, then go the intuitive route. Go for the straight storyline.

The first time I played through the game, I inadvertantly chose path 1 because I had rented the game, and I’d never played a FF game before, and I just wanted to finish as soon as possible. I’m a huge fan of PC RPGs like Fallout and Planescape, and I kind of looked down on Console RPGs at the time, so I just wanted to get through FFX ASAP. What I discovered was that the tactical combat was really tough and really fun to figure out. This was further complicated by the fact that I was playing with a friend of mine who hated Auron, so we never gave him any play time and therefore didn’t level him up much.

FFX changed my opinion on console RPGs, and I ended up buying the game. And I played it through with a different friend of mine, this time choosing Path 2. We gave the whole party experience, I did all the mini games, I got all the side paths, did the sidequests, got all the ultimate weapons for everyone. It was fun discovering all those things, but… the game was really easy. I mean, really really easy. It was just not fun from a tactical battle point of view. It was a cakewalk.

The third time I went through the game, my plan was to try to do a little of both. I wanted to show a third friend of mine the game, show him some sidequests while we played through the game, while still keeping the game challenge. That’s the time I discovered that Paths 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive. Even if you tarry just a little bit in any part of the game, you soon level up your character to a point where the next boss fight isn’t as challenging any more. We also discovered that Auron is a really strong character who doesn’t have to be levelled up all that much to be too strong. If you’re going for Path 1, I advise staying away from Auron, or at least don’t level him up as much as the others.

The first time I played through the game, the boss fights were just absolutely deliciously challenging. We were almost always on the verge of dying if we made one wrong move. We really had to think about every turn based move. We had to analyze every single consequence of our action. The list of whose turns were coming up in the battle screen is essential in planning out how your moves turn out.

Now, all this happens later in the game, of course. With only 3-4 hours under your belt, I suspect you’re still in the part of the game where I was thinking “Console RPGs suck, this is like watching a movie and hitting X once in a while when the battle screen comes up”. Believe me, that will change, especially if you choose Path 1. It will change drastically. I highly recommend Path 1. I know most people’s RPG-playing instincts tell them to explore when they get the chance and to level up their characters a little more, but believe me, the fights are a lot more fun and the game is an absolute blast if you try to tear through it.

Plus the story is excellent. It gets a lot better. Yuna is an awesome lead character, and Tidus makes a decent sidekick for her. That’s another thing I kind of enjoyed: playing a sidekick in an epic story was a little different than playing the main avatar around whose actions everything revolves.

P.S. Another tip: Most people’s paths along the levelling up screen are fairly linear, but Khimari’s path is pretty much wide open. You can take him in any direction you want, so keep an eye on that. We took Khimari down a path that most Final Fantasy players scoff at, saying “that’s the not the best way to utilize Khimari”. Well yeah, DUH. Who cares how to best utilize him? We wanted to make him unique, and we did. And we had a blast with it too.

Final Fantasy X doesn’t really get good until about 3/4 through, when you’re given the ability to wander freely around the world. It’s not a terrible game, and there are some difficult battles, but it will take you a while to get to the good stuff.

While I can see why Scry would think the game only gets good when you have the choice to go where you want to go in the world, keep in mind that if you go to places other than where the straight storyline is suggesting you go, you will be choosing Path 2. You’ll level up too much and the boss fights will be less challenging, and the game won’t be as fun. So if you choose Path 1, ignore the freedom of choice when you get to 3/4th done with the game, and always choose the linear path. Don’t worry, if you really have a tough time with a boss fight which you can’t beat after 5 or 6 tries, just go a save game before the boss fight and fight some monsters, just levelling up a little bit makes a HUGE difference, and you’ll be able to beat the boss fight much easier.

But if you dilly dally, there’s no way to do the reverse. There’s no way to make the boss fights more challenging. Its easy to make them less challenging. So I highly recommend Path 1.

It’s not a bad game once you get past the opening part. It’s kind of late by the time you can go where you want (that is the thrust of X-2, basically, they decided to let you go where you want for the whole game, plus the main characters don’t whine all the time*) but even before then it’s not bad once you start getting some reasonably complex skill sets and the like. The various semi-hidden optional things to do are considerably more challenging than the main plotline.

*Thus addressing the two main complaints about X.

I didn’t realize why Tidus was the protagonist until I was playing FFX-2, but after you’ve won FFX, it becomes about as obvious as it ever will.

FFXII seems like Square played a lot of Oblivion and Knights of the Old Republic and this is what happened.

Oblivion? No way. I don’t even see a shred of similarity. It’s more like Chrono Trigger crossed with KOTOR crossed with Final Fantasy. Even the music is very reminiscent of CT. Also, love the usage of FF4 music in the intro.

Wow, for the most part**, I disagree. The main plotline was considerably more challenging for me, as long as I didn’t do any ancilliary stuff the first time through.

If you just play the game, and try to finish as fast as possible, the main plotline is a lot more challenging. If you have to go back to a save point, for example, don’t fight random battles on your way back. Just equip Tidus with a FirstStrike sword, and flee from battle. That way you don’t inadvertantly earn any extra experience, and make the main storyline too easy for yourself.

Plus its important to go with the flow most of the time. Don’t save up your overdrives for boss fights.

Our general rule of thumb was: just play the game, if we get impatient, we flee. Always go for the next plot point, never do anything extra, and never save up Overdrives on purpose for boss fights. If we happened to have a character on overdrive, or could build up an overdrive during the boss fight, then that was fine.

This gave us a couple of options if we ran into really tough boss fights: We could try the boss fight in different ways, trying anything we could to win, but if it was still too hard, then we could reload the last save, and then build up some overdrives on Yuna’s summons, or on the other characters. And then go into the boss fight, and that usually made a huge difference for fights we couldn’t beat. But saving up overdrives on purpose just seemed like a crutch, so we didn’t go out of our way to do it.

By the time we got to the last battle, we spent almost as much time trying to win the last boss fight in the game as we did the first couple of days playing the game. It was one of the toughest tactical battles I’ve ever fought.

Unfortunately, in the end we gave up and admitted defeat, since we had to return the game to the video store. :(

We went to the last save before the final battle and fought about 3 random battles (which were worth a LOT of experience), which made it so that Yuna learned “Holy”, Lulu learned “Ultima”, and Tidus learned something too, I forgot what it was. And that made the last boss fight cake suddenly. I really felt like the game defeated us. We just couldn’t do it without going back and levelling up. :(

** I say “for the most part”, because there are some battles in the extra stuff where you fight things in the monster arena, etc. that are virtually impossible to beat even with the ultimate weapons for every character. So that’s what the extra stuff is like: either too easy, or WAY TOO FUCKING hard, so I thought it was a wash overall, it just wasn’t worth it. I mean, I already had their ultimate weapons, so why try to beat those near impossible things anyway? In comparison, the main storyline’s fights were a lot better balanced and really hard if you chose to flee some battles and didn’t level up too much.

I was thinking more of Oblivion’s whole singleplayer MMO vibe. FFXII is like singleplayer FFXI.

The Monster Arena fights are supposed to be that hard. They’re there as postgame content, so naturally you got your ass kicked.

I put about 400 hours into FFX for a strategy guide, back in the day. The only ways to clear some of the later Monster Arena fights are either bringing in aeons to take the hit, or Entrusting full Overdrive meters to a ludricrously overpowered Wakka so he can spam Attack Reels.

You also wind up doing a lot of backtracking on the Sphere Grid, deleting old +1/2 attributes so you can replace 'em with +4.

You also wind up doing a lot of backtracking on the Sphere Grid, deleting old +1/2 attributes so you can replace 'em with +4.

This is the most tedious process known to man. My roommate did it and I was bored to tears just knowing that’s what he was doing.

Anyway, I found FFX to be a lot of fun, but Rockman is totally right about the regular game getting ruined with overpowered guys. I got the easy ultimate weapons, screwed around with the monster arena a bit, played blitzball 'till I was bored, and then one-shotted every single enemy in the final dungeon. It was ridiculous seeing these crazy scary “Boss is changing modes!” animations and then my dude casually dispatches him and on to the next. There’s just a tipping point(right around the time you first gain access to the break damage limit stuff IIRC) where the game goes from reasonably challenging to wayyyy too easy with absolutely no stop in between. But the 3rd quartile of the game is quite brilliant, I loved the little temple puzzles, and the sphere grid was the best character advancement system since Fallout.

P.S. The ending is stupid. Sorry to spoil it for you. But it’s really, really stupid.

I don’t know, I thought the ending was all right.

Qenan: if you’re playing FF X so you can play with your daughter, why don’t you just let her decide whether to keep playing?

I had the international version which had even more ludicrous Dark Aeon fights at the end of the game. I made it to the second one (Shiva? Ifreet?) and gave up.

My impression is that it is single-player FFXI set in Ivalice. I see Thomas W. mentioned this already. I’ll find out soon enough. Until then, I’ll be playing some awesome RPGs like Shin Megami Tensei and Shadowhearts… and I’m currently playing through FFVII again. Mostly because we forgot about the story and were a bit confused in Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus, but it totally holds up (gameplay-wise, not necessarily graphically).

Yeah, I’ve read about those. Just hearing about some of the shit they can do annoyed me, like being able to punch straight through a Ribbon accessory to petrify you? That’s just dirty pool.

The ending ruined it for me.

I thought the ending was decent. FFX-2, though, don’t even get me started on that girl power/barbie dress up shitfest.