Final Fantasy X remastered
The Final Fantasy games have always looked beautiful and the remastered version of Final Ffantasy X is no exception, but does the gameplay hold up in 2017?
Like most of the series, the story is pretty weird and convoluted. You play Tidus, a teenage blitzball star for the Zanarkand Aces. During a match, the city is attacked by a huge monster. You are sucked into a vortex and wake up in a world where people tell you Zanarkand has been destroyed for thousands of years. You meet a colourful group of characters and become a guardian to the summoner who is trying to save that world from Sin, the monster that you met at the start of the game.
Along the way, you will fight a lot of battles in standard jrpg fashion. The spells, summons, actions and items will be familiar to those who have played earlier games in the series.
One improvement is that you can swap characters in and out midbattle with no penalty- and you will want to do so as often as possible to keep everyone at a similar level in terms of power.
Instead of gaining XP, you earn AP which allows you to move around a grid, unlocking new abilities and gaining stats. This allows you to customise characters and is more interesting imo. You also find new equipment and items which you can use to customise your equipment with various buffs and immunities.
There is a lot of dialogue in the game- told both using in game visuals and FMV. Only the FMV can be skipped through so if you are not a fan of story over gameplay this may be an issue for you. THere are some light puzzles, which come in the form of the cloister of trials which you find in the temples of many cities you travel to. Most are easy but you might want to consult an online guide as there are things you may miss which will cause you to have to go back if you want to get one of the most powerful summons later in the game.
There are of course side quests and a minigame to extend the games life if you so desire. There are blitzball tournaments to enter, new players to sign, skills to learn. There is also a monster arena which you capture creatures for and then larger creatures are created there which are much more powerful than anything in the main storyline. There are also dark aeons to fight. To defeat these you will likely need the celestial weapons which not only need to be found or won but upgraded using celestial sigils and runes.
The remastered version adds a few features/cheats. You can change the frequency of random battles and speed up the game (turbo mode). You can also give yourself 99 of every item. This can help you avoid or speed up the grind if you want to focus on the story.
I don't think the fighting system holds up well to modern games but I still enjoyed my time with the game. It's not overly grindy and the grid upgrade system makes the random battles palatable when you really want to get to the next new skill. The story is, for the most part, well told. At times the script for the voice acting is disjointed but this was due to trying to match up English words to the mouth movement and facial animation created for the original Japanese dialogue.
Release date: 2016
Rating: 75
Steam price $29.99
Sale price: $14.99
Like most of the series, the story is pretty weird and convoluted. You play Tidus, a teenage blitzball star for the Zanarkand Aces. During a match, the city is attacked by a huge monster. You are sucked into a vortex and wake up in a world where people tell you Zanarkand has been destroyed for thousands of years. You meet a colourful group of characters and become a guardian to the summoner who is trying to save that world from Sin, the monster that you met at the start of the game.
Along the way, you will fight a lot of battles in standard jrpg fashion. The spells, summons, actions and items will be familiar to those who have played earlier games in the series.
One improvement is that you can swap characters in and out midbattle with no penalty- and you will want to do so as often as possible to keep everyone at a similar level in terms of power.
Instead of gaining XP, you earn AP which allows you to move around a grid, unlocking new abilities and gaining stats. This allows you to customise characters and is more interesting imo. You also find new equipment and items which you can use to customise your equipment with various buffs and immunities.
There is a lot of dialogue in the game- told both using in game visuals and FMV. Only the FMV can be skipped through so if you are not a fan of story over gameplay this may be an issue for you. THere are some light puzzles, which come in the form of the cloister of trials which you find in the temples of many cities you travel to. Most are easy but you might want to consult an online guide as there are things you may miss which will cause you to have to go back if you want to get one of the most powerful summons later in the game.
There are of course side quests and a minigame to extend the games life if you so desire. There are blitzball tournaments to enter, new players to sign, skills to learn. There is also a monster arena which you capture creatures for and then larger creatures are created there which are much more powerful than anything in the main storyline. There are also dark aeons to fight. To defeat these you will likely need the celestial weapons which not only need to be found or won but upgraded using celestial sigils and runes.
The remastered version adds a few features/cheats. You can change the frequency of random battles and speed up the game (turbo mode). You can also give yourself 99 of every item. This can help you avoid or speed up the grind if you want to focus on the story.
I don't think the fighting system holds up well to modern games but I still enjoyed my time with the game. It's not overly grindy and the grid upgrade system makes the random battles palatable when you really want to get to the next new skill. The story is, for the most part, well told. At times the script for the voice acting is disjointed but this was due to trying to match up English words to the mouth movement and facial animation created for the original Japanese dialogue.
Release date: 2016
Rating: 75
Steam price $29.99
Sale price: $14.99
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