In Defense of X-2

[Laddy]

X-2 is not a bad game.

There, I said it.

Is it brainless? Mostly. Does it have a reason for existing? Not really. Did people want it? Definitely not.

But you know what? I don't care. It has a dumb story and stupid moments aplenty. But it's so lacking in pretense, so self-aware, and so shameless that I can't help but respect it.

Its battle system is fast and enjoyable, its job system is an excellent advancement to the concept, its non-linear structure gives you a variety of missions, sidequests, and minigames you can't help but find something to keep you entertained, and I appreciate that in a series that, quite frankly, was needing to take a step in that direction.

It's a dumb game, yes. But it's also the game the series needed. There was some legitimately great ideas in this game and it's a shame that people dismissed it.

[Yar]

My favorite of the PS2 era, but definitely a sign that Final Fantasy was beginning its decline in quality.

[qwertysaur]

The battle system is the best of all FF games. Q.E.D.

[maybee]

It has Baralai and Gippal so it gets automatic cool points :jess:

It's about 7th on my Top 10 FF's list.

[Aulayna]

I liked X-2 a lot and loved the girlie comradarie but I'm a sucker for that stuff. Though I will say the Battle System was terrible. I literally got through that entire game by just hammering X to Attack and not bothering with Dress Spheres at all. Maybe occasionally stopping to use a Potion.

Now don't get me wrong I loved the Dress Sphere system but at no point did it really feel like you had to use it smartly to overcome situations compared to say the Paradigm Shift system. Whereas in other FF games sure you could probably do alright hammering X to Attack but you'd also probably get your fair share of Game Over screens or narrow victories. X-2 I never once felt in danger of Game Over by doing it.

[Shauna]

I thought it was pretty fun to play, which in the long run, is all a game really needs to be for it to be considered good in my eyes. :p

[Formalhaut]

For me, X-2 is a lesson in pretty good gameplay, but rather shoddy storytelling. I liked it, though I do agree with Aulayna. The game was so easy to begin with, that any tactics to be used with the Dressphere system sort of melted away. Seriously, all you really needed was:

Dark Knight using Darkness
Dark Knight using Darkness
White Mage / Alchemist healing everyone

That would get you through virtually every main game battle, leaving more niche dresspheres such as the Trainer or Songstress gathering dust. The Warrior dressphere, while invaluable in the early game, is abandoned after Dark Knight is obtained at the end of Chapter II.

Besides from that, the Dressphere system was quite good, and brought back some jobs from other earlier games.

The sidequests were generally amusing sometimes and the minigames were cool (Leblanc's massage) though they did cripple Blitzball. While the game is pretty much easy, the Via Infinito did raise the difficulty triple fold. Chac, Concherer, Paragon, and Trema being utterly devastating bosses, not to mention the normal enemies at that time were tough as well.

The storyline itself though, was... decent. It's not terrible, but it's just loosely binded together.

Chapter One: Going round sphere hunting.
Chapter Two: Infiltrate Leblanc's chateau!
Chapter Three: Save the temples.
Chapter Four: Concert making.
Chapter Five: Defeat Vegnagun.

Chapter four being a great bore, going round with those commspheres.

[Mirage]

I clocked like three times as many hours in X-2 than I did in X.

It is a good game.

[Karifean]

Yeah, I think I clocked 300 hours of game time before getting the perfect ending for the first time. The one thing that still really stands out to me is the Via Infinito which is so awesomely hard it's amazing. Plus when I got the International Version, I had a good reason to play it some more. Now I'm just waiting for the English Patch :D

[Formalhaut]

Yeah, I think I clocked 300 hours of game time before getting the perfect ending for the first time. The one thing that still really stands out to me is the Via Infinito which is so awesomely hard it's amazing. Plus when I got the International Version, I had a good reason to play it some more. Now I'm just waiting for the English Patch :D

The thing with the Via Infinito is that the rest of the game is so so easy, that when you do enter the Via Infinito, it's a "whoa!" moment, at least for me. The first 50 floors are rather managable, but once you start encountering packs of Lacerta or Mushroom Clouds... oohhh...

If only they distributed the difficulty more evenly.

[Cloudane]

I actually really enjoyed it. It was a fun and relatively lighthearted game which was nice (as a one off) as a break from the usual FF heaviness. I loved the dress sphere system and the addiction of levelling them all up across a few new game+ replays.

The girliness didn't faze me at all
<-- pony
and I actually sort of enjoyed the girl power thing :p

Sure it has its flaws. Once you get Dark Knight (though it's not obvious as I didn't even pick it up first time) it breaks the game, the things you have to sit through to get 100% are quite dull and tedious e.g, the sphere CCTV thing, etc. But don't they all.

Also, though I didn't achieve it until the second play, I think it's nice to get Tidus back for Yuna. They're too adorable. And the ending to X was too sad that way. Yeah it's not exactly a realistic thing as you can't bring back the departed in the real world. But I guess it's much the same as wanting Aeris back - it's a fantasy darnit, sometimes you want a happy ending!

Oh and yeah, Via Infinitio .. Damn. An exercise in tedium, but amazingly satisfying. I think I went in there at level 50ish and got my backside kicked all the time, and emerged at level 99. Talk about being "toughened up", awesome.

[Jinx]

FFX-2 is insanely fun. Does it have a stupid story? Oh, hell yes. But that doesn't take away its entertainment value.

[Madame Adequate]

FFX-2 is awesome and anyone who says otherwise is just taking everything too seriously and refuses to admit they enjoyed something frivolous.

[Nebulance]

It's a dumb game, yes. But it's also the game the series needed. There was some legitimately great ideas in this game and it's a shame that people dismissed it.

I don't know if it's the game the series needed -- if only because the story was rather dumb. I agree on your points about gameplay, however. What they should have done was a prequel -- and I recall some interview way-back-when with some of the developers where that was the original plan. They scapped it, because they thought this story based on the three girls would be 'fresher'. It may be more fresh, but that doesn't mean it's a good choice.

I don't play it anymore because, despite it somewhat tying up the story with Yuna and Tidus (however convoluted it was), I just can't get into the general story where Yuna's personality has completely changed.

[Elly]

i don't see it as her personality completely changed... rather, i see it as Yuna shaking off the repression she was born into and enjoying her newfound sense of freedom and self discovery... she's no longer marching to her own death with every passing moment of her life, she has a right to finally be happy...

[Cloudane]

She has certainly earned the right to be happy and if anyone in the world has a right to kick back, say they've done their bit for Spira and look after their own interests: she does.

Though I still preferred the Yuna who always put literally everyone else before herself. It's completely unreasonable, but hey, it's a fantasy, people can be perfect in fantasy :colbert:

Didn't put me off the game though.

[Jinx]

There's a difference between kicking back, and turning into a total fucking idiot.

[Cloudane]

That's because she (and Rikku) had a bump on the head and ended up back at level 1 :p

[Formalhaut]

That's because she (and Rikku) had a bump on the head and ended up back at level 1 :p

Yeah I never quite got that either. She went from beating Sin and Yu Yevon, to consistently being the LATEST to level up to 99.

Still, she looks smoking with those gunkata skills though.

[Cloudane]

Yeah the lady who defeated Sin, getting her arse handed to her by a coyote. You've got to laugh. :greenie:

[Elly]

well if Samus can lose her powerups at the beginning of every Metroid game ever for the sake of gameplay i don't see why Yuna should be exempt... the game would have been dreadfully dull had she started the game at lvl.99, not to mention way too easy, its easy enough as is...

[Cloudane]

Yeah I understand the reasoning. It's just an amusing scenario. If it was explained like "she lost her skills and power when the Aeons left" or "ever since Sin fell its pyrefly energy got everywhere and now the fiends are much stronger" and you can level up to 199 or something, maybe that would've made sense.

[Nebulance]

There's a difference between kicking back, and turning into a total smurfing idiot.

I agree. It just seems highly unlikely that someone would change so drastically. I know it's Final Fantasy, but still -- the level-headed, quiet girl (who underneath all the stress seemed pretty happy anyway), is suddenly a carefree, happy-go-lucky girl? It seems ridiculous.

X-2 was a nice way to restart and finish the story of X (I don't think X-2 was necessary by any means story-wise), but it's things like this annoyed me -- but none more so than the convoluted story when they tried to connect the Lenne-Shuyn story to the Yuna-Tidus story. I still don't think I fully understand how they are related.

[Quindiana Jones]

FFX: Burdened by an incredibly daunting task. Owning of considerable cares, such as the fate of the entire world.
FFX-2: No longer carrying the lives of all humankind on her shoulders.

I'd say she's pretty justifiably carefree. In fact, this is the only scenario in which a character is allowed to rapidly transition from driven to relaxed. xD

[Jinx]

There's a difference between kicking back, and turning into a total smurfing idiot.

I agree. It just seems highly unlikely that someone would change so drastically. I know it's Final Fantasy, but still -- the level-headed, quiet girl (who underneath all the stress seemed pretty happy anyway), is suddenly a carefree, happy-go-lucky girl? It seems ridiculous.

X-2 was a nice way to restart and finish the story of X (I don't think X-2 was necessary by any means story-wise), but it's things like this annoyed me -- but none more so than the convoluted story when they tried to connect the Lenne-Shuyn story to the Yuna-Tidus story. I still don't think I fully understand how they are related.


FFX: Burdened by an incredibly daunting task. Owning of considerable cares, such as the fate of the entire world.
FFX-2: No longer carrying the lives of all humankind on her shoulders.

I'd say she's pretty justifiably carefree. In fact, this is the only scenario in which a character is allowed to rapidly transition from driven to relaxed. xD


I think you guys are kind of missing the point. It's not that Yuna as a character was suddenly "happy and carefree." It's that the intelligent side of her totally disappeared when in FFX-2. It's not even the same character. And the changes she went through didn't come from just a lack of stress.

[Elly]

i say let her have her second childhood, she didn't get a chance at a first one... its fairly common for kids that had to grow up too fast to suddenly regress to acting like a teenager at some point in their adult years... after the events of FFX i'm not surprised at all that she'd wanna have a shot at having some fun very much like a teen, after all she missed her "normal teen" experience in preparing to sacrifice herself for Spira... seems like normal progression to me, and shes still in her 20's, live it up Yuna!..

[Forsaken Lover]

I don't see any noticeable decrease in intelligence from X to X-2. She wasn't a super genius in X. If anything, it could just be the fact she's less reserved and speaks more openly in this game.
Really, thinking on it, I can't recall any "massively stupid" thing she did in X-2.

Now Rikku...yeah, she totally did too much coke between games.

Paine was cool though. Makes me think of a hybrid Squall and Lulu. Her history with the Crimson Squad was also interesting.

[Christmas]

Let's just say I would never have wore a yellow bikini and trek a snow mountain if X-2 had not shown me the way. :bigsmile: