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LTTP : FF X-2 - WTF is this!?
- Thread starter HotHamBoy
- Start date
XANDER CAGE
Member
FFX-2 is a ton of fun. It's not the best game mechanically by any means but good lord was I relieved to return to Final Fantasy not taking itself quite so seriously.
Bronetta
Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
I legit hate FFX-2 without having played it. When I was a kid FF7 was my favorite game of all time and the only FF I had played. Some stupid FFX2 commercial would keep coming on TV and my brother kept making fun of me because he thought that's what FF was about.
Commercial:
https://youtu.be/ykG9AyNLTYo
Commercial:
https://youtu.be/ykG9AyNLTYo
It's a great game. Fantastic battle system, active job-changing mid-battle is a great idea, and the story is actually pretty interesting. The game is about how a society that has lived in fear for hundreds of years copes with its sudden freedom. It's full of things to make a player of FF10 happy, and fill them with disgust (Zanarkand's fate, in particular). The "Charlie's Angel's" aspect doesn't really stick beyond the introduction.
Moon_frogger
Member
well considering that most modern ff games are badly translated, cheesy nonsense with terrible voice acting and horrible, bullshit character designs I advise you to just enjoy the one with the best battle system and most replay-ability, ie this one.
Langdon Alger
Banned
It's awesome and the relaxed tone is perfect. The battle system is also great.
Yabberwocky
Member
ETA: Whoops, missed Aeana's eloquent summary. Yup, this!
X-2's plot is kinda a hot mess, OP, but at the same time it was interesting to play a game set in the aftermath of saving the day, and the politics and the dynamics of what happens after. Yuna being horrified that the ruins of Zanakard were turned into a tourist trap, for one. The politics aren't particularly well done, but there are some interesting ideas in there. The opening of the game is absolutely absurd, so I get your reaction, OP. (Catchy music, though. I'm not sure how the English version managed to out earworm the Japanese version, but they did.) The combat system is still one of my favourites.
On the one hand, I do absolutely agree with you, but on the other hand, it was really refreshing to play a game with three female leads that were close friends, had fun together, and had things to do outside of the male characters in their lives. There weren't many games like that at the time it came out, and, well, there still kinda aren't. While it's a bit glossed over, the game does delve into Yuna trying to find her place in the world where she's no longer a summoner, whilst also trying to figure out who she is as a person. She unfortunately thinks imitating Rikku is a great idea! X-2 on a whole seems to be some under-cooked interesting concepts that don't really get utilised.
...that being said, you haven't seen the embarrassing fresh hell that is Leblanc mini-game yet, OP. Being a kid and trying to play that while my mother was in the room, I nearly died from embarrassment. I tried to awkwardly mute the television, whilst playing it cool.
X-2's plot is kinda a hot mess, OP, but at the same time it was interesting to play a game set in the aftermath of saving the day, and the politics and the dynamics of what happens after. Yuna being horrified that the ruins of Zanakard were turned into a tourist trap, for one. The politics aren't particularly well done, but there are some interesting ideas in there. The opening of the game is absolutely absurd, so I get your reaction, OP. (Catchy music, though. I'm not sure how the English version managed to out earworm the Japanese version, but they did.) The combat system is still one of my favourites.
On the one hand, I do absolutely agree with you, but on the other hand, it was really refreshing to play a game with three female leads that were close friends, had fun together, and had things to do outside of the male characters in their lives. There weren't many games like that at the time it came out, and, well, there still kinda aren't. While it's a bit glossed over, the game does delve into Yuna trying to find her place in the world where she's no longer a summoner, whilst also trying to figure out who she is as a person. She unfortunately thinks imitating Rikku is a great idea! X-2 on a whole seems to be some under-cooked interesting concepts that don't really get utilised.
...that being said, you haven't seen the embarrassing fresh hell that is Leblanc mini-game yet, OP. Being a kid and trying to play that while my mother was in the room, I nearly died from embarrassment. I tried to awkwardly mute the television, whilst playing it cool.
<loud bone cracking sounds>
GravityMan
Member
I strongly disliked the story, tone and characters in this game. Yuna and Rikku were more likable in FFX. (That said, I agree with those that said that the absolute worst parts of FFX-2 are at and near the beginning...it's less bad from the middle onward.)
However, the battle system is so good that it kept the game from being a total failure in my opinion...I stuck with the game to the very end. It's easily the best implementation of ATB and is one of the best combat systems in any JRPG.
However, the battle system is so good that it kept the game from being a total failure in my opinion...I stuck with the game to the very end. It's easily the best implementation of ATB and is one of the best combat systems in any JRPG.
Nice!
Classic Square commercial for the period. All FMV, zero gameplay. They started that tradition with FF7, I know it sold 12 year old me.
pirateluigi
Member
I love X2. A lot. It is my second favorite FF game after VI. The tone is goofy but it's fun and the job system is great.
I dont mind that the tone is goofy, i mind that it's poorly written, not funny and awkward.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Terrible followup narrative to a game that already had an overly convoluted narrative. Yea let's have an all female cast, and then have a fucking hot spring scene taken out of every high school anime ever. And a really lame but well sung and admittedly catchy song featuring ghosts and flashbacks with Not Tidus™.
Fuck. I forgot how much I love this game.
The aggressively tone-deaf Grrll Power stuff is so ridiculous and tone-deaf that it turns around on itself and becomes awesome.
One of the best things about it is how varied and engaging it is. I would stick with it.
X-2, V and XII are my trifecta in terms of favorite FF games.
Is the steam version legit? Is there a 60 FPS patch?
The aggressively tone-deaf Grrll Power stuff is so ridiculous and tone-deaf that it turns around on itself and becomes awesome.
One of the best things about it is how varied and engaging it is. I would stick with it.
X-2, V and XII are my trifecta in terms of favorite FF games.
Is the steam version legit? Is there a 60 FPS patch?
But it's not really as bad as everyone says it is. The vast majority of those with your criticisms dropped it at the same point that you did. That's not the game at all. If you hated the intro that much, then I understand, but make sure that you realize that you disliked the intro so much that you didn't want to play the game, not that the game that you didn't get any real experience of was bad.
Also, I do understand. I won't play a game that I hate just because others like it, and you shouldn't either. I just really think this one in particular gets misrepresented a lot precisely by the type of reaction that you're having.
super-famicom
Member
Best ATB Battle System of all time.
ALL.
TIME.
ALL.
TIME.
super-famicom
Member
That massage minigame sure was something.
charlequin
Banned
I am afraid you have totally missed the point.
The staff working on X-2, faced with creating the franchise's first direct sequel -- and to the game with the most decisive and final ending to boot -- looked at their options and made a brilliant choice: instead of even trying to capture what made X great given the narrative barriers to doing so, they took the setting and used it as a basis for a thorough, uncompromising deconstruction of the genre.
---
Look at the reaction you have here: where's the elegance and quiet emotion of FFX? Why is there all this ridiculous stuff going on? Why are people listening to pop music? All of that is entirely intentional. Spira is a world that's lived under the cloud of inevitable death and sacrifice for generations; every part of its culture was intimately tied to the cycle of Sin. But when you defeat Yu Yevon at the end of FFX, you usher in the Eternal Calm -- and destabilize the Yevon religion in the process. In most games you never see anything that happens after this really. You beat the final boss, maybe get a nice long epilogue, and that's the end of it. You never have to answer the question of how society adapts, or what the heroes do when there's no more ultimate battle for reality to fight.
X-2 dives right into it. Why is there ridiculous pop music and carnival games? The world was at war and they're free of it for the first time! Of course their culture is going to embrace frivolous, joyful stuff, and cultural trends that were repressed (like investigating ancient machina) will start to reawaken. Of course people will start questioning their religion and philosophy. Of course the Summoner Yuna -- who's literally trained her entire life to sacrifice herself for Spira -- will find herself at a loss of what to do and need some friends to push her into lightening up a little and actually living for herself.
When you go to Zanarkand in X-2, it's like a slap in the face -- you think about the incredible song, and the emotionally wrenching scene you see every time you start up FFX, then you look at how Cid has has turned it into a tourist attraction. That feeling is entirely intentional -- you feel betrayed because Yuna feels betrayed, because her uncle took one of her most emotionally raw memories with her dead boyfriend and turned it into something cheap and tawdry for capitalist profit. When you perform a pop concert to solve your problems, it's hardly any sillier than the Voice of the Fayth in FFX -- if anything, Yuna's celebrity is only too realistic for the way people become famous in our world. And the fact that she chooses to do it as part of her story arc is actually huge -- at the beginning she's too uptight, too concerned about appearances, to be comfortable even with someone else performing a pop concert under her name, and too uncomfortable with her own role in life to make her own decisions and take her own happiness into account, so embracing the idol performance later on is a major catharsis.
---
Put all that aside. Ignore the story and the setting and the ridiculous music -- X-2 also has excellent gameplay. The open map -- again the exact opposite of X -- lets you rush through and face tough encounters, or crawl through carefully being a completionist. The garment sphere system is a great melding of the character swapping in FFX with the job system -- it gives you a huge tactical range in battles, and significant incentive to take advantage of it. But most importantly, it features far and away the most elegant and entertaining variant of the ATB system -- one where the exact timing of actions is very important, where your choices across your whole party have huge tactical significance in your battles. It's a shame that having achieved the pinnacle of this system in this game they never used it again -- it's got plenty of room for even more exploration.
So, in summary, this is a brilliant game with exceptionally clever storytelling, great gameplay, and a great arc for its protagonist.
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I thought the game was absolutely terrible and I really liked X. But I always played/play FF for the wow moments and story. x-2 for me had zero wow and possibly the most nothing story of any FF. I played it all the way through waiting for a twist that never came. Worst game I ever finished.
x-2 is great, i actually like it a lot more than the original. one of the best battle systems in the series, and the plot is pretty interesting once you get past the initial cheesiness.
(the cheesiness is also great)
this is the big one for me. it's the first ATB-based final fantasy where being real time actually mattered to the player's strategy beyond 'input commands as fast as possible to minimize enemy turns as much as possible.'
(the cheesiness is also great)
this is the big one for me. it's the first ATB-based final fantasy where being real time actually mattered to the player's strategy beyond 'input commands as fast as possible to minimize enemy turns as much as possible.'
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
It's the girly parody of FF.
It's like being shocked that Scary Movie isn't a regular horror film.
It's like being shocked that Scary Movie isn't a regular horror film.
charlequin
Banned
Yes, this is a really underappreciated aspect. I think coming out in 2003 it was before the discussions of this type of representation were a real thing, but look at it in the context of 2016 and still how many games -- much less Japanese RPGs -- have storylines focusing primarily on the friendship and evolving relationship between multiple women?
Storytelling-wise, the other thing that's pretty unique in FFX-2 is that it's the continuation of a protagonist from a previous game, who has a coherent narrative arc that stretches across both games. In JRPGs the only other real example I came up with was Yuri from Shadow Hearts (who also comes off as an unusually nuanced and interesting character as a result.)
Watching this again, what really gets me about this is that in 2016 terms this is actually too tame to be included in any currently active JRPG franchise.
Yep.
I've got no love for this scene, but if this game were made today then it would be dramatically worse.
MegaSackman
Member
You know... X is also cringe worthy, I mean you spent 1/3 of game trying to stop a wedding...
X-2 is better than X.
X-2 is stupid, nonsensical trash, but it's so playfully cheesy & charming that it's actually fun to play.
X has a shite story, irritating characters, and an inferior (still great, mind you) combat system. The only thing X convincingly beats X-2 at is OST, where it's arguably one of the greatest a game has seen.
X-2 is stupid, nonsensical trash, but it's so playfully cheesy & charming that it's actually fun to play.
X has a shite story, irritating characters, and an inferior (still great, mind you) combat system. The only thing X convincingly beats X-2 at is OST, where it's arguably one of the greatest a game has seen.
Lumination
'enry 'ollins
Look past the jpop surface
and you'll find a legitimate sequel to FFX. I don't think it touches quite as many notes as its predecessor does, but it is a legitimately fun game. I'm incredibly happy that X-2 exists because it allowed me to visit Spira one more time.
But yeah, if you can't get past that first section and hate the best ATB battle system, feel free to drop it. Don't blame you at all.
and forget about that massage section
But yeah, if you can't get past that first section and hate the best ATB battle system, feel free to drop it. Don't blame you at all.
The freaky thing is that your write. Most notable JRPGs coming out now have some pretty pervy things in them. I mean, just look at the 'witch' from Star Ocean 5. She's apparently supposed to be a serious character, from what I'm told.
hurricanes
Member
Still doesn't make it less cringe inducing. And X-2 Yuna wish she could be 1/10 of the character Yuri was.
The Spoony Hou
Member
The game is amazing. It shits all over FFX and I love it for that.
I feel this way about Final Fantasy X. Whiny and annoying protagonist, cringe worthy dialogue and a goofy story. I was in college at the time of X-2 so I never played it but it seems like it is much worse than X. I know many people love Final Fantasy X but IX is my favorite.
poodaddy
Gold Member
Yeah the games awful. I couldn't force my way through it but the wife managed to and she said she felt insulted by it lol. Maybe the gameplay is decent but it's an rpg, and to me writing always comes first in that genre. That being said I don't really like FFX either though so I guess I'm just a weirdo. Love FFXII though.
Either this or IX are the most underrated FF. Story and dialogue is pretty cheesy and sometimes cringeworthy in X-2, but I honestly did like seeing Spira again and the changes it went through. I found the whole New Yevon/Youth League thing a logical consequence of the last game so it was pretty interesting to see how everything developed. I really like Leblanc, too, and of course there is Superman as well.
The battle system is its biggest strength. It's easily one of the best in the series, if not the best. Too bad Blitzball got gutted hard, poor Brother and Wedge nerfs :C.
The battle system is its biggest strength. It's easily one of the best in the series, if not the best. Too bad Blitzball got gutted hard, poor Brother and Wedge nerfs :C.
Oh man. The dialogue, the delivery and the super awkward pauses between each line is soooo bad. Some of you guys like this? It's not even goofy in a fun way, it's just slow, stilted and weird.
God damn, I have always hated Yuna's english VA, though.
No, it's more like watching Scary Movie and finding out that it's not funny.
Just because it does satire and deconstruction doesn't mean it does it well. It doesn't get a pass for being goofy when the goofiness isn't good.
If it was genuinely funny, and not just awkward and dull (or annoying, as it may be), I'm sure I would enjoy it.
OP all I can say is give it a chance. It's actually a really good game if you get past that cheesy opening sequence. I get you- the whole "YRP" thing is corny as hell. It's girl power on steroids, but the game is very good, and fills in a lot of lore from the original. I've been playing it lately myself, trying to get the platinum, and while some frustrating design flaws regarding "100% completion" tried to hold me back, I'm almost there now.
When I compare this spinoff to games like FFXIII-2 and LR, there is no comparison- this one is superior without question.
When I compare this spinoff to games like FFXIII-2 and LR, there is no comparison- this one is superior without question.
I don't believe you.
And you don't have to convince me that it's better than the XIII spin-offs. That's like saying one person's fart smells better than another's.
poodaddy
Gold Member
I like you OP. I like the cut o your jib.