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Final Fantasy X. Fuck me what a great game.

VanEs

Member
All I can think of when this game is mentioned is the terrible PAL port on the PS2.

Yes, not only did it take forever to finally come out in Europe, the PAL version was one of the laziest ports I've had the displeasure of playing.
Widescreen televisions could mitigate some of the (gigantic black bars) problems with zoom/picture size settings tho.

So glad we don't have those NTSC/PAL conversion problems anymore.
 

Madflavor

Member
As much as I love the setting, I really hope they never make FFX-3. If that Audio Drama was an indicator of where the story would go, fuck that.
 

Zog

Banned
People praise the Sphere Grid, why? It's a linear progression system that only appears to be non-linear. You may as well just have automatic level ups with scripted stat and ability increases. The ability system is less open than Final Fantasy VI was.

People praise the ability to switch characters in and out of battle, it's great at first but gets old quick when you realize that this is pretty much required if you want to end battles quickly. It's less interesting than paradigm shifting in Final Fantasy XIII. The switching part is flawless, it's fast and it doesn't cost a turn but it still gets old after a hundred or so battles.

The Cloister of Trials sections are just horrible. They are boring and tedious.

The music is fantastic and the story is pretty good too but alone those don't make a great game, they can make a good movie but not a great game.
 
This is incredibly contradicting.

If one game is enough to say 'Im done' then you never loved the series in the first place...
Well, perhaps the fact that Final Fantasy games made afterwards haven't been stellar also helps.

Sometimes you see where something is headed and just turn off.


I too, didn't like FFX at all. And Loved FF4 to FF7 (FF1 to 3 I didn't play) and FF9.

For me, FF8 sucked, and FFX was like a sequel to the direction I didn't like on it. I do think, underneath, FFX is the better game (sphere grid was indeed great) but I just didn't like it, and believe me I tried. I liked FFXII better than X, but I also never finished it - I think deep down it suffers a little from the same Final Fantasy X "Square-Enix demography tone-deaf normalization" that belittles it.

I managed to finish FFXV, with all quests and everything but I found it generic and didn't like the characters or the gameplay. It was just an somewhat interesting train-wreck to dissect. FFXIII I didn't go far.

I understand completely, turning off after FF9. The base formula is not even the same anymore, structurally it's unrecognizable but still relies on nostalgia a lot, you can't do that. It's like... say, Modern Sonic, or Modern Star Wars.

It's those cases where the content, because of the franchise it's linked to, becomes objectively worse, than without it.
Even towards the end of the PS2's run, FFX was still one of the better looking games on the console.
Ugh, I have to disagree.

FFX was always jarring to me, because of the different LOD models used. Sure the high definition models were actually good looking (better than the later port ones, for some reason) but the switch was so obvious, happened everywhere and the low poly models were so low poly that it was really evident.

That happened because they just couldn't show more than two of those cutscene models at once (and they had to, lots of party closeups with 7 members plus villain and sometimes npc's or sumoons) that it almost never looked that good in a consistent way. It felt like a Dreamcast game, and I really don't think they were tapping into the vector units or anything special, PS2 hardware-wise.

Environments were the best part about it, because camera was fixed and you couldn't see them upclose.

It was a very low-poly game, with bad animation to boot (I always remember the running animation in the beggining, very floaty), horrible NPC modeling and bad textures everywhere, it was first and foremost a first generation PS2 game that while ambitious didn't manage to push or mitigate the hardware shortcomings at all.
 
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PapyDoc

Member
People praise the Sphere Grid, why? It's a linear progression system that only appears to be non-linear. You may as well just have automatic level ups with scripted stat and ability increases. The ability system is less open than Final Fantasy VI was.

People praise the ability to switch characters in and out of battle, it's great at first but gets old quick when you realize that this is pretty much required if you want to end battles quickly. It's less interesting than paradigm shifting in Final Fantasy XIII. The switching part is flawless, it's fast and it doesn't cost a turn but it still gets old after a hundred or so battles.

The Cloister of Trials sections are just horrible. They are boring and tedious.

The music is fantastic and the story is pretty good too but alone those don't make a great game, they can make a good movie but not a great game.
About the Sphere Grid just 3 word : Expert Sphere Grid.
About the paradigm shifting, to be flawed it is flawed. The first switch animation can kill you! Just for the sake of doing less menuing (on the paper) in a turn-based/action RPG. It was dumb and bad and dumb...FFXIII in the nutshell.
 
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cireza

Banned
FF X is a fantastic FF game, mainly because its mechanics are perfect and will never age.
- The turn-based system is excellent, fuck ATB always hated this system
- The sphere grid (whatever you call it in English) is a great upgrade system
- The characters are varied and you feel this in the gameplay opportunities each offer
- The world is pretty nice and varied as well
- Amazing soundtrack
- Blitzball is fun, still Triple Triad is the best mini-game (FF VIII is an awesome FF as well, they should have remade this one instead of VII)

Only complain is that it is tedious to have to swap all characters to gain experience.
 
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The Shepard

Member
kYXaRBI.jpg


DMh0KRa.jpg


I'll never understand why they done that, he looked fine before.

FFX is probably my 3rd favourite FF after 7 and 8. Its aged pretty well to, just wish the remaster had the sped up battles all the other remasters got.
 
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Aggelos

Member
Bumping this thread, only for the music!




00:00:00 Zanarkand (Arr. T. Narita)
00:03:53 Tidus' Theme - Yuna's Theme (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:11:50 Peril (Arr. T. Narita)
00:13:58 A Splendid Performance (Arr. T. Narita)
00:18:02 Guadosalam - Seymour's Theme (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:24:51 Yuna's Decision (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:28:26 The Wedding - Assault (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:31:54 Suteki Da Ne (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:36:37 Servants of the Mountain (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:40:58 Zanarkand - Hymn of the Fayth (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:47:58 Hymn of the Fayth - Final Battle (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)
00:52:49 Ending Theme (Arr. M. Hamauzu & T. Narita)





Benyamin Nuss, piano
WDR Funkhausorchester
Wayne Marshall, conductor
Compositions by Masashi Hamauzu, Junya Nakano, and Nobuo Uematsu
 
Actually my favourite Final Fantasy next to 11. And yes, i've played a majority of them. Something about it just appealed to me.

And for the last damn time, the Titus laughing scene isn't bad voice acting like people have meme'd it to be. It's SUPPOSED to be awkward and weird. Pay attention to the scene leading up to it. Cripes.
 

teezzy

Banned
Actually my favourite Final Fantasy next to 11. And yes, i've played a majority of them. Something about it just appealed to me.

And for the last damn time, the Titus laughing scene isn't bad voice acting like people have meme'd it to be. It's SUPPOSED to be awkward and weird. Pay attention to the scene leading up to it. Cripes.

People who laugh the most at the meme, obviously havent played through the game. agreed
 

Dthomp

Member
Actually my favourite Final Fantasy next to 11. And yes, i've played a majority of them. Something about it just appealed to me.

And for the last damn time, the Titus laughing scene isn't bad voice acting like people have meme'd it to be. It's SUPPOSED to be awkward and weird. Pay attention to the scene leading up to it. Cripes.

OG PS1 FFVII is still my favorite Final Fantasy, but 10, followed very VERY closely by 11 are my 2 and 3. 10 is the only one other then 7 that I have gone back and played multiple times upon finishing. Love the story, enjoyed the battle system so much.
 

Hugare

Member
It was the last good FF (until FF7R), but it also was the FF that introduced the things that would kill FF for 2 generations:

1. Removal of the world map (the worst single choice ever done to the series)
2. Bad VO acting for the English actors (FF7R is the first one to really fix that)
3. Linear to the extreme (everything is one giant tunnel) Thats still not been addressed even with FF7R (but here is hoping with FF7R2!)
4. Towns started taking a backseat to linear tunnels, idiotic choice.
About the linearity: it was necessary. Back then you didnt have 3d open world games in the PS2.

And the ones that we had looked like shit due to the hardware not being powerful enough.

They kinda tried their best to make something akin to that with FF XII, but ehh ...

Now that we finally have the hardware to do some crazy looking cities, the production costs and developers required to make something like that would be insane

I kinda would love to see a FF game with Witcher 3 scope. A big city like Novigrad and smaller ones around the map.

That's achievable
 

CloudNull

Banned
As many have said my second favorite FF behind the original FF7. I remember playing 12 and not finishing the game. 12 was the first FF I didn’t finish and realized the series would never be the same after X. I haven’t finished a FF since.

I still remember the ending as if I played it yesterday.
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
One of my favorite games of all time.


Kinda odd considering Tidus is one of the most annoying video game characters of all time.
 

Zog

Banned
About the linearity: it was necessary. Back then you didnt have 3d open world games in the PS2.

And the ones that we had looked like shit due to the hardware not being powerful enough.

They kinda tried their best to make something akin to that with FF XII, but ehh ...

Now that we finally have the hardware to do some crazy looking cities, the production costs and developers required to make something like that would be insane

I kinda would love to see a FF game with Witcher 3 scope. A big city like Novigrad and smaller ones around the map.

That's achievable

You are telling me that the hardware that allowed FF12 couldn't handle a game like.....FF12?

The choice they made with FF10 had nothing to do with weak hardware (as proven by FF12), it was just the direction they wanted to go in.

This is like when people say 'Turn based RPG's only existed in the past because of weak hardware' even though action RPG's were fine on those older systems and beyond.

This is what happened, they made FF10 the way they wanted and people complained so they made FF12 alot more open world and people complained more and then they went back to the tunnels with FF13.
 
Kept up the FF tradition of having an incredible opening sequence to hook the player, but I cannot remember anything about the story other than hating Tidus. Should've kept his darker hair from the original trailer/prototype. I remember also playing X-2 and being very confused by the job system, but some of the music was cool.
 

Ixion

Member
My favorite game of all-time. It's an incredibly memorable journey in such a cool, unique world (an "alien beach world" is a good way to describe it). The game blew my mind when I played it back in 2001 and ever since then I have to replay it every couple years. So many iconic moments that it's hard to list them all. This is just from the first 1/3 of the game...

original.gif


yED9Jg.gif


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AnguishedElatedGrunion-small.gif


6A55686C33DF957DE30E8CEA8DE0C360D004DC11


d5287c81a44866885fd670240caaae22.gif


picgifs-final-fantasy-x-9185855.gif


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..and that's just the story/presentation side of things. The combat-system is the perfect blend of crisp speed mixed with deep strategy mixed with simplicity. It's the best use of summons in the series. The music gives us an otherworldly blend of memorable themes from Nobuo Uematsu with the more atmospheric gems of Masashi Hamazu. The sound effects are charming as hell. The pacing is absolutely perfect and the adventure incorporates a lot of gameplay variety. I could go on and on...
 

bender

What time is it?
I was unemployed when it released and finished the game in around 35 hours of the course of three days. I think I died twice up until the last boss and then needed to grind the Omega Ruins for a bit before being able to roll credits. I don't really have fond memories of it. I remember thinking the story telling style was akin to the Wonder Years. Tidus and Wakka were annoying and the game was far too linear for my liking. Blitzball was also trash. Auron was alright I guess.

I should go back and play it with fresh eyes.
 

Velius

Banned
It was the last good FF (until FF7R), but it also was the FF that introduced the things that would kill FF for 2 generations:

1. Removal of the world map (the worst single choice ever done to the series)
2. Bad VO acting for the English actors (FF7R is the first one to really fix that)
3. Linear to the extreme (everything is one giant tunnel) Thats still not been addressed even with FF7R (but here is hoping with FF7R2!)
4. Towns started taking a backseat to linear tunnels, idiotic choice.
XII beats the everloving fuck out of everything in this shitty post
 

Hugare

Member
You are telling me that the hardware that allowed FF12 couldn't handle a game like.....FF12?

The choice they made with FF10 had nothing to do with weak hardware (as proven by FF12), it was just the direction they wanted to go in.

This is like when people say 'Turn based RPG's only existed in the past because of weak hardware' even though action RPG's were fine on those older systems and beyond.

This is what happened, they made FF10 the way they wanted and people complained so they made FF12 alot more open world and people complained more and then they went back to the tunnels with FF13.
FF 12 is not open world, so I dont see how FF 12 contradicts my point

It was an awkward game that wasnt linear and wasnt open world either. I hate how it ended up being. A semi-linear game divided in big chunks. Traversing was a bore because of this. Rabanastre being a bunch of loading screens sticked together.

FF X launched only 1 year after PS2's launch. If you dont think that the lack of familiarity with the hardware affect the game's design, I dont know what to tell you. I dont think that this is a coincidence that the more ambitious FF XII launched much later in 2006, when we already had Xbox 360's on the market, and Square knew more about the hardware.

Heck, Square staff themselves went to say already in interviews that they didnt want to remake FF VII during the PS3 era because "building cities in today's fidelity is fcking hard and costly"
 

Ixion

Member
Final Fantasy as a series hasn't recovered since Sakaguchi left. FFX being his last.

Enjoyed FF12 as a game but didn't feel like Final Fantasy to me.

Only other Final Fantasy I have enjoyed since is FFXIII-2

FF13 and FF15 were garbage.

I would check out FF7 Remake if you haven't. In a lot of ways it feels like a spiritual sequel to FFX (and FF7 obviously). It has more flaws than those two classic games, but for the most part it nails it and gives you that "feel" people always talk about.

XII beats the everloving fuck out of everything in this shitty post

I love FF12 almost as much as FFX. They're basically the two opposite ways you can interpret a Final Fantasy game, and they both pull off their visions really fucking well.

FF12 excels at the open and vibrant world, the excellent voice acting, the well-written dialogue, and the seamless blend of exploration/fighting. The story and characters aren't as memorable as something like FF7/FFX though, and the battle-system can get robotic/monotonous after a while, which I think is why some fans don't care for it and don't see it as a real FF. But if you focus on the positives, there's so much to like.
 
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Bkdk

Member
While the game is linear, the world, music, combat and upgrade system is also great and keeps the game fun to play.

Also I do love ffx-2. Great fan service sequel, fun combat, focus on bringing out the most attractive side of the characters, many secrets to discover, plus a few different endings, together it makes 10 and 10-2 such a unique saga.
 
The last FF to have the fucking balls to have non-human characters as a party member (that isn't online).

WTF is up with FF moving away from the Fantasy in their games and trying to be "like real life, but with monsters" and not just a goddamn Fantasy game?

I want my Kimahri's, my Fran's, and my Vivi's as party members SQUARE, fuck out of here with your wannabe real life human characters in your recent games.

Fuck em all to hell.

Sorry, needed to get that off my chest. Just severely disappointed that Final Fantasy games take so long to come out, and when they do many years later, it just sucks seeing them go farther away from the Fantasy and try to be more modern.

Well, let's hope this changes come FF16!
 

Alphagear

Member
I would check out FF7 Remake if you haven't. In a lot of ways it feels like a spiritual sequel to FFX (and FF7 obviously). It has more flaws than those two classic games, but for the most part it nails it and gives you that "feel" people always talk about.



I love FF12 almost as much as FFX. They're basically the two opposite ways you can interpret a Final Fantasy game, and they both pull off their visions really fucking well.

FF12 excels at the open and vibrant world, the excellent voice acting, the well-written dialogue, and the seamless blend of exploration/fighting. The story and characters aren't as memorable as something like FF7/FFX though, and the battle-system can get robotic/monotonous after a while, which I think is why some fans don't care for it and don't see it as a real FF. But if you focus on the positives, there's so much to like.

Completely agree.

I really enjoyed FF12 as a game even though it felt like a departure from previous FFs. Though I think with a few tweaks it had the perfect ingredients for future FF games which you have stated above.

I think more than story, characters etc. the biggest issue is the structure of the past few games. I don't think Square Enix are getting the balance right between a cohesive story and an open/Vibrant world.

FF7 didn't address that issue either because it was linear which I believe was intentional because Square Enix are still struggling with the structure of the games. So they decided to make it chapter based. First chapter linear. Expect the next to be open world. They can't seem to get a balance between both.

FF13 was entirely linear with one chapter to grind and explore. FF15 was the complete opposite. Open world with barely any story until we got a few linear chapters at the end.

Thats why I'm excited by FF16 because it seems the focus is more on substance than style.
 
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sephiroth7x

Member
I saw it as the beginning of the end for the classic Final Fantasy formula.

As soon as voice actors were involved I was hesitant. Then the game came out and it was great, it ticked all the right boxes (kinda) but you could see the direction the series was going to go with modern technology.

It is possibly the most focused game of the series in some ways. I just didn't engage with the story as well as others I don't think. Plus, and I may get some backlash for this, I wasn't a fan of the OST.
 
Love FF10. For me final fantasy is all about story, gorgeous art and high quality cutscenes.

Sadly FF will have to appeal more to Western mainstream tastes in the future.
 

GenericUser

Member
Best combat system of all the final fantasies, that's for sure. You could always see who was next and change characters mid-battle at will. Very flexible and had a lot of strategic depth. Story, characters and wold on the other hand? I didn't like it that much. Square abandoning the pre rendered backgrounds meant no more big cities. They also abandoned the classic 3D world map. That was a huge step back from the PS1 games. Having a proper 3D world map was always something I really liked in the PS1 FFs.

But I can see you really liking the game OP, lot of people actually do. At least I can understand that. What I will never understand however, are people that praise FF13 - lol.
 

Lone Denjin

Member
It was a great game, just had some bad parts to it. Need i mention the dodging lightning. The super bosses were really fun as was the way you could cheese them with Zamanto from Yojimbo. It was 10/10 effort for Square's first take on voice acted FFs they got some right (Auron, Yuna) They have become ionic to me as how they sound. My only big issue is that Kimari was quite under developed. You had if i remember 2 scenes with him and one was his solo boss battle against Beran and Yenke. I mostly forgot about him both in gameplay and in the story.
X-2 was a weird one. But less said about the X-3 story the better.
 
Yeah X is great.
Nice world, nice visuals and music and I really like some of the stuff they did with combat like being able to swap party member mid-battle and turning summons into more than just a strong attack with a lengthy animation. The story is also fun even if the actual writing is pretty bad.
It was the last great mainline FF IMO. XII was a good game but the story and characters weren't as engaging and I never liked the offline MMO vibe, XIII was shit and XV was pretty bad too.


I'm still not sure WTF that Tidus redesign in the remaster was supposed to be though:
kYXaRBI.jpg
Wtf man, what's up with those retarded redesigns of classical FF characters.

Same with Squall:

final-fantasy-viii-remastered-squall.original.jpg
 

ROMhack

Member
It's a good game for one big reason: the combat, which is probably the best in the series. Really tight and satisfying.

The characters and story though are rubbish. Rikku, Wakka, Kimahri have no development.

Amazing as an early PS2 game from a development perspective of course.
 
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Kimahri

Banned
The last FF to have the fucking balls to have non-human characters as a party member (that isn't online).

WTF is up with FF moving away from the Fantasy in their games and trying to be "like real life, but with monsters" and not just a goddamn Fantasy game?

I want my Kimahri's, my Fran's, and my Vivi's as party members SQUARE, fuck out of here with your wannabe real life human characters in your recent games.

Fuck em all to hell.

Sorry, needed to get that off my chest. Just severely disappointed that Final Fantasy games take so long to come out, and when they do many years later, it just sucks seeing them go farther away from the Fantasy and try to be more modern.

Well, let's hope this changes come FF16!

Couldn't agree more. I think partly the increasingly more realistic graphic styles are to blame. I suppose they just can't fit all these cool species in. I dunno.
How about just scrapping the whole style then? Go back to something slightly more cartoony or charicatured or just something a little bit more exciting than what usually just amounts to a bunch of models wearing swords.

But we shouldn't be surprised. I've interviewed Kitase, and asked him what's he thinks is the most important thing in a Final Fantasy game, and the translator said "attractive characters" first. I was confused and asked if he meant interesting or endearing or something like that. But no, attractive. There you have it. The most important thing in a Final Fantasy game is that the leads are pretty.

Kinda explains a lot. I heavily doubt Sakaguchi would have given the same answer.
 

Lone Denjin

Member
Lol but no, they failed hard with their more anime-esque redesign.

images
There was a lot more wrong with that "remaster" as well. They didnt upscale the backgrounds very well at all. Painted background Cid is one funny example. Xs remaster was quite nice in retrospect for it. Other than the silly change to Tidus's model and changing Seymour's battle theme quite drasticlly.
 
There was a lot more wrong with that "remaster" as well. They didnt upscale the backgrounds very well at all. Painted background Cid is one funny example. Xs remaster was quite nice in retrospect for it. Other than the silly change to Tidus's model and changing Seymour's battle theme quite drasticlly.
Can even be worse than that.

Let us not forget what they did to FF VI

Final-Fantasy-VI-4.jpeg
 
Even though it's not my fave Final Fantasy game, it is still stellar. It's probably #4 on my rankings because VI, VII and IX respectively are my fave games of the series. IV is still up there too because of the story of Cecil's redemption from being a dark knight and then a paladin was awesome. And yes, all of the OSTs in these games are awesome but I do prefer IX's OST which has become a regular listen for me over the years since its release.
 

Elios83

Member
It's not one of my favourites. I liked FFXII more back in the days and even recently having played the remastered versions again.
FFX always felt too linear and it was the precursor of the terrible FFXIII design which is basically X made worse without the towns and free pace of exploration.
The story ummmm, Tidus is insufferable (especially his voice actor), and the whole big secret in the plot doesn't even makes much sense.
It's obviously still a great JRPG overall.
 

DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
The insane convoluted story about SIN is peak FF IMO. I was completely lost yet interested the whole time.
 
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