HATERS GONNA HATE, FFX style

[Jiro]

I'm going to have to go and get Pete and we'll have to educate you all on why you're wrong.

I tried to play FFX recently (maybe I'm still playing it, I dunno) and it just seems to suck. The menu sucks and the voice acting sucks and the character design sucks (Lulu, whachoo doin' wearing that fur dress in Besaid? Girl.), the weapons suck.

Her dress is made out of belts. It's a Nomura thing, just run with it.

Most importantly, the beginning sucks something fierce. It's so slow, and it's just a bunch of swimming around random ruins

Final Fantasy VII's beginning sucks. It's just a bunch of running around Mako Reactors. Final Fantasy VIII's beginning sucks. It's just a bunch of running around Balamb Garden. Final Fantasy IX's beginning sucks. It's just a bunch of running around the Prima Vista and then Alexandria. Please note that all the while there are tutorial battles and character introductions.

Say you were transported to a foreign world after coming into contact with a demonic whale. Would you wake up and immediately start fighting something? Or would you bust out your phone and have a rock concert right there on your own? It's slow because that's how pacing works. Final Fantasy X is not simply a game, it is a story telling experience.

with the worst controls and camera control. Even the HUD seems way too proportionally large, making rooms look bigger than they really are by making every little fallen pillar visible on the HUD.

The HUD is pretty bollocks and sometimes the controls aren't quite what I'd expect. Oh well. There's a million other games that do it worse. Kingdom Hearts has atrocious camera control.

Let me rant about the camera some more: When you are in that little Besaid village, there are THREE smurfing screens before you enter the temple, which just seems so unnecessary and disorienting. First, there's the camera on the village itself. Then, as you approach the temple, the camera moves and the screen changes. Then, as you near the door, the camera and screen change again to zoom more in on the steps/hallway before you enter the temple. What the hell is the point of that?! When you walk quickly into the temple it's like FLASH FLASH FLASH. I probably explained that horribly, but maybe someone will know what I mean. And they do this everywhere!

I know what you mean. Hey, next time you watch a movie, tell me if they use one camera angle. Final Fantasy X wanted to create absolutely breathtaking environments, and it did. Could you imagine if it was just 2D and you didn't get to see the intricacies of the environment? While, yes, three screens is Besaid seems a bit excessive, you have to remember that previously these three areas might have had actual loading transitions. When you walk through Narshe, the screen pans up. When you walk through Corneria, the camera pans too. Other locations like, say, parts of Midgar, have entirely separate screens for different parts of the same Slum area.

Once again I reiterate that FFX is not simply trying to be a game. It was trying to infuse a rich storyline with detailed environments to create an experience. I mean at least you're only fresh to the game. You can't possibly be wrong forever, unlike the rest of these haters.

Hey, dude, me too! I started playing again recently as well! Let me share my hate with a small little story.

Crew Member: Holy trout, Sin's attacking our ship! What do we do?!
Wakka: Let me take a crack at him!
Crew Member: With what?
Wakka: My Blitzball!
Crew Member: ... We're so smurfing boned.

Just so many stupid things about this game now that I go back and play through it all again. How did I fall in love with... THIS? I'll never really know... Hopefully, like you said, I'll remember later on.

So the mechanic of Wakka's physical attack is a bit iffy. Have you ever been smashed in the face by a basketball before? Because I imagine it to be similar to that. But, let's take a look at some of the other strange weapon types before we start calling this one out.

Final Fantasy IX's rackets. What do they even do? Flings light balls at people. Sure. Next time I'm playing tennis I'll be sure to give that a go. Eiko also uses flutes. Yeah, way to beat something with an instrument, I'm sure that's going to help. Let's not forget that Quina uses forks as a weapon either.

Several games make use of books as a weapon. I know Jason Bourne can kill a man with a magazine and a hardcover but I think you'll find the true lethality is in the fact that it is magic. What happened last time you tried to play Blitzball? It's pretty hard to get it to work considering the game relies on physics and technology not present in our world. Who's to say that Blitzballs themselves don't have strange qualities.

I'm not even done with examples yet. Gunblades. Rinoa's Blaster Edges. The smurfing recurring boomerang which, despite the actual function, still manages to return after every throw. Barret's Gunarm which is fired...how? Where does the ammunition enter it? Nanaki's hair clips? What the smurf? Megaphones? There are numerous more examples of stupid weapons. You seem to have more complaints though, so lay 'em on me and I can tell you why you're wrong

Yes. YES. It's about time people realize just how insipidly stupid this game's plot is. It's filled with cliched, gimmicky, unlikable characters, an incredibly pretentious theme in a convoluted plot that ceases to make sense if you think about it after like 5 minutes of thinking about it, and some of the worst character designs ever.

Let's deal with the characters first. Clichéd? Perhaps. They do fit into some archetypes. But then, they're meant to. The point is to have a group of people working together who complement and clash with each other. But they're not 2D carbon copies of archetypes either. Tidus is a whiny douchebag? Okay, but he's also got severe childhood issues with his father and mother. Plus, he stands up to everything when he decides that the woman he loves isn't going to die. What about Tidus being the egomaniac sports star? Again, he's got a bunch of insecurities because he's always living in his father's shadow. Then he gets transported to a completely different world and is still living in his father's shadow, only this time his father is a giant smurfing whale monster who is hell bent on destroying everything. Then he has to come to terms with his own mortality, a complete existential crisis because he's not even real and does it all while still maintaining his flaws; that is, he's still a fish out of water and completely clueless on how to act in Spira.

Should I write essays on all of the characters or will that suffice for now?

Tidus and Wakka in particular.

Ugh Tidus and Wakka are two of the better characters.

Oh, and the Sphere Grid is the worst character advancement mechanic ever. At least with the Crystarium you had multiple roles to advance.

At least with the Crystarium you had no options. Oh wait, that's not a positive. You can do whatever the smurf you want with the Sphere Grid. You can nerf yourself for crying out loud. The Crystarium is just like FFXIII itself in that it pretends to give you options but it is really a lengthy corridor.

The voice acting, location design, and battle system are good though.

Well we're in agreement on this then.

I'll be back to respond to the inevitable wrongness that this thread breeds soon

EDIT:

I was loving on the FFX hate until Laddy said the voice acting was good.

OH GOD NO I COMPLETELY MESSED UP THERE. I meant the music. The music is some of the best in the series.

The voice acting, with the exception of Rikku, Auron, and Jecht, was either flat (Yuna, Seymour, Kimahri, Lulu) or obnoxious (Tidus, Wakka). So yeah, the voice acting was embarrassingly bad.

The music is good. The voice acting is not amazing, I'll give you that. Keep in mind that it was the first outing for SE on voice acting. Yuna is probably my least favourite voice because she just makes me tired but I would say the rest are still passable. Well I mean Kimahri doesn't really even count as being voiced.