VII - Aeris dying was a rare moment of “Holy fraking crap!”, because there was no getting her back. How many hits on fake “How-Tos” do you get when you looked up how to either bring her back or avoid her dying? A lot. Plus, it was (for me) the first game you could play forever (figuratively). Getting all the materia fully charged and so forth, fighting the weapons…
X - Voice acting! No more “…”. It’s not great, but it doesn’t suck and I think it’s a step up over just text. Sure, it’s mostly an interactive movie, and blitzball is irritating but you can avoid blitz for the most part. I also like the Monster Arena.
IX - Felt “old skool” but still new at the same time. Not great, but not VIII either. Haven’t finished it, but oh well.
VII - Ugh. It felt like such a disappointment after VII. Junctions? The story just bugged me, too. I finished it, but because I was still in my super anal stage of “Can’t play IX until I finish VIII!”.
Did X-2 come out in the US? I missed it if it did.
X-2 hasn’t been released stateside yet, but I think it’s supposed to be out in time for the holidays.
I, too, was dissapointed by how on rails X was. After reading there was no overworld and you explored in full 3D landscapes, but then finding that was only true so long as you don’t want to go somewhere that isn’t on a major road. But the combat offered some interesting wrinkles. Swapping out characters during coombat added a whole new dimension to combat strategy, and made leveling everybody up easier (everyone gets a full share or AP so long as they take one command during the fight). Still wish characters not active in your party automatically kept level parity. I think Xenosaga actually did this, but I can’t remember for sure.
Yeah, it’s funny. They got a lot right with FFX (combat, sphere grid, etc.) but the lack of a true overworld makes it feel a little incomplete. I kept going, “When do I get to wander the world?” and it finally happens near the end of the game, except it’s just a menu with a list of places to go. I guess it helps keep the game focused, but I always liked being able to search the world looking for some town or dungeon that may not have much to do with the plot. Most people hated FF8, but it has the best examples of this with the Heaven and Hell islands. They didn’t mean anything to the plot (at least, that’s my memory), but if you walked around them you could get the best spells and fight the hardest monsters. With Quistis’ insta-death limit break, they really weren’t so difficult, and it was a great place to level everyone up for the final battles.
