I'm Breaking Up With Final Fantasy X: A Review

You don’t have to keep dancing with the one what brung ya.

Final Fantasy X means a lot to me; I named my dog after the game’s heroine. Shortly after I received my first Playstation 2, a friend moved away and gifted me three games for the system (I only had Kingdom Hearts 2, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, and a couple others lost to time). Final Fantasy X was one of those games, and I poured hundreds of hours into a number of playthroughs. My parents didn’t often buy me games, so I wore through what I had.

There’s this idea in Final Fantasy communities that generally, someone’s favorite Final Fantasy is the first one they played. I’ve never personally believed in that, partially because while Final Fantasy X brought me to the party, when I finally got my hands on a copy of XII a couple years later (worth noting my gaming years were as a teenager; I got that Playstation 2 when I was 12 in 2006, the same years the console’s successor released, so all games I played had also been out a while), it absolutely claimed my heart. The more recent Zodiac Age version of the game is probably the best Final Fantasy has ever been. But in my heart, I was still dancing with X occasionally. There’s still a special fondness there for those days as a 13-year-old grinding on Mt. Gagazet for a particularly difficult fight against Seymour.

I don’t think X and I will ever dance again, though. I recently attempted to replay the game and set it aside after just shy of 15 hours, having just reached the notorious Thunder Plains. I didn’t set it aside because the Thunder Plains are one of the worst areas in the franchise’s history, though (though they are); I set it aside because the game wasn’t what my young, hormone-addled mind believed it was, and I had finally reached the point I could no longer go on.

Many people have criticized the game for being too linear, but I absolutely love that linearity. It paces the game out well and pushes you ever-forward, reminding the player that there is a specific goal and there is little room for detours. That said, I realized this time just how small each area actually is. Areas like the Kilika Jungle or Mushroom Rock Road are one or two screens each, easily traversable in moments were you not being constantly interrupted by random battles. You would hardly notice these areas at all without the fiend’s harrying your every step. Once I realized how small each area truly was, the world began to feel cramped. After the Crusaders are slaughtered in their effort to defeat Sin, for example, we continue up the path to the Djose Temple (one of the most visually striking locations in the game). But that path is a single short road from the beach Tidus wakes up on to the temple. It just didn’t feel right.

Something else that didn’t feel right was the battle system. The core idea of it is that everyone has a thing they can do; Tidus hits fast lizards and wolves, Wakka hits fliers, and Auron hits armored enemies, etc. Except, there are characters who don’t really have enemies they specialize against. Yuna, while a Summoner, acts primarily as a White Mage, Rikku specializes against machines (an infrequent enemy type) but otherwise acts as a thief, and Khimari starts as an all-rounder/Blue Mage before you decide which of the other party members you most want him to emulate. If you were to play through the game normally, these three members in particular would fall far behind the other four on the Sphere Grid (X’s version of a leveling system). This is because characters only gain Sphere Levels by acting in battles. Anyone who’s played Final Fantasy X before will tell you that the way to avoid this is to switch every party member in and out every battle to ensure your more niche characters keep up with Tidus, Wakka, Lulu, and Auron.

That system sucks, but there truly is no other way to keep your characters viable. It slows every random battle down to a crawl and results in you being damaged far more than you otherwise should be. Enemies are rarely if ever particularly challenging, but things can get annoying when Khimahri gets petrified for the fifth time on Mi’ihen Highroad because I had to leave an enemy alive longer so Yuna could switch in and get her levels. A smarter way to go about this can be seen in other JRPGs, where benched party members get a percentage of experience, leaving them behind the others but not uselessly so.

Finally, a word on the voice acting. I’ve been a defender of the voice acting in Final Fantasy X because most of the people who attack it do so with the Yuna and Tidus’s laughing just before they depart from Luca, a scene that is meant to be awkward and that if you allow it to go on just past where it’s always cut off devolves into more natural laughter. That said, it is hit-or-miss. Most of the main party are solid, but a lot of the secondary characters you run into are stilted and awkward, and Lulu keeps the monotone, detached thing going even when it feels like there should be a bit more life to what she’s saying.

Like an old high school girlfriend, I can look back on the time Final Fantasy X and I spent together fondly, but with an understanding now that to try and make things work would be a foolish waste of time. There is no going back, not with this one. And that’s sad, but it’s also a little bit freeing. I love you, Final Fantasy X, but I can’t be with you.