Originally Posted by
Mirage
I think FFX-2s battle graphics had to be toned down because you could potentially have to render two spell effects at once, due to the very liberal ATB system. At worst, you could get like three black skies spells going off at once, and that is a *lot* of work for a poor little PS2. While the PS3 version has touched up textures and stuff, I am sure there are certain aspects of the graphics that they did not boost back up even there.
In FFX, everything is strictly turn based, and there is never any chance at all for anything more than one single character doing something at any given time. I am sure that this makes it easier to push the graphics to the limit at all times.