WK Plays FFX

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll be starting this soon. This is going to be interesting because I think the last time I played this game was before 2010, so let's see if time and the existence of the XIII trilogy is going to help me appreciate this fan darling of an entry. I do plan on playing the International version, so I will have some new things to surprise myself with.

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[Karifean]

Over 15 years huh, let's see if it'll hit you any differently now.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm planning on starting it tonight. Oddly, I'm reading the wiki a bit and while I picked up a few tidbits of the themes I'll take with me as I play through, I was a thrown off there is a huge section about the game having Gnostic themes and yet no mention of the Tale of Orochi of which I'm pretty sure FFX is almost a direct retelling of and fits with the idea of Kitase wanting this game to be Asian inspired. I'm mostly annoyed here because I find it a bit of a western bias to say that anytime we're dealing with a false god/religion, the influence is obviously Gnostic in nature. But Buddhism itself has a long history of dealing with false teaching, divine truth, and the true essence of the One Being. You could easily interpret the scenario of Buddhism vs. Hinduism if you wanted. Now the Aeons derive their name from Gnostic teaching, but the issue here is that's not what they are called in Japanese (召喚獣, Shōkanjū, lit. Summoned Beasts), so even that connection is kind of false. This game is far more Buddhist/Shinto to me than any western theology.

Now I have to debate on whether to add to the wiki to explain the Tale of Orochi connection and/or bring up my misgivings about the whole Gnosticism connection. But on the other hand, interpretation is subjective, so who am I to argue?

[Wolf Kanno]

So we've begun. Narratively, the opening to FFX starts really strong. We get the pensive opening with the party reaching Zanarkand and the beginning of our narration. Past Zanarkand looks a bit like the Jetsons, and I find it weird we have highways but no seems to drive cars. It was weird watching Tidus have to hoof it to the stadium by foot while listening to some Baseball announcer reminisce about bonding with his father over Jecht disappearing. It was weird as I said, but a nice touch. I also always forget how much I like Bahamut just randomly showing up to either use subliminal suggestions to coerce Tidus to do what he wants or to basically tell us the player about his hidden thoughts like Tidus crying on the anniversary of his dad's disappearance. He's being a real bastard and I'm here for it. The cool CGI scene of the Blitzball game and Sin absorbing the city while Auron appears like a badass is always a pleasure and probably my favorite cutscene in the game besides Anima's appearance at the Luca Game. I ultimately played up until I reached Besaid village. Gameplay was a mix bag and I'm debating about whether I'm going to just mess with character roles or just keep it familiar. I technically reached the cloister of trials but sort of screwed up and want get Yuna's upgraded weapon in the trial the first time. I usually make it a point to acquire the Cloister Treasure the first time around so I don't have to backtrack to get Anima.

Pros:

• Story-wise, the game hits the right balance of action, mystery, and intrigue to get you hooked. I've always found FFX to be sort of a bookends type game where the beginning and ending are the best parts and so far, I still find that assessment correct.
• It is nice to be back to a more traditional turn based combat system. While XII and XIII are certainly still part of the ATB system, it's just nice not to feel rushed in combat anymore because we need to appeal to the ADHD generations.
• Bahamut is a hoot.
• Auron is still the best character in this game.
• I will say this, the new arranged OST is okay, I was never a huge fan of X's OST, but they at least fixed the battle theme, it sounds so much better now that I don't have to listen to those awful MIDI Horn sections.
• The HD graphical upgrade has certainly helped the monster designs. A lot more detail can be seen now and I'm for it because Nomura usually has good monster designs. The backgrounds and water effects also look great.
• This game makes me always want to go to the pool since I don't live somewhere with a beach.

Cons:

• I can't say the same for the human characters. XII's art direction looks just damn crisper with the HD upgrade, but here, it looks like botched plastic surgery. First, I never realized how big and pouty Tidus' in-game model lips look Dude looks like he had a lip job done. The second thing is the eyes. They are way too vibrant on all the characters and it makes it more noticeable how much the models fall into some uncanny valley territory when you see their eye movements. Not helped here is that the white part of the eyes, especially on Tidus kind of look pinkish on my TV, so the guy looks like he's stoned as hell. Beyond that, the NPCs get it worse, including a few names ones who all look like head shaped objects with faces painted on them with little definition. It's very noticeable when the party members are next to an NPC.
• While XIII usually gets hell for having a ten hour tutorial, FFX is the OG of this phenomena. Battles are incredibly scripted and while I've had the option to heal, it's rarely necessary. The first two "bosses" if you want to call them that have gravity based percentile damage, meaning they can't actually kill you. All the scripted battles have some slow dripped tutorials going on as well and I know I have more to come.
• Not helping this issue is the save points. I was never a fan of the save points heal the party idea SE introduced with this game, but I find the issue here is that coming off of FFXII is that save points are just too plentiful in this game. There is a save point after the first two scripted battles, another before you fight the second "boss" a third in the room after that before Rikku joins, one on the AL Bhed ship and then another in the first room when you enter the submerged base with only a short path between them. The encounter rate so far has also been low, so it feels like I can do two battles before I actually reach a point that restores all my health. Like I get this was meant to be an intro title for people who don;t play the genre, but I can't be the only person here who thinks this isn't a little excessive and a bit patronizing?
• I always forget how whiny and insufferable Tidus is in the beginning of the game. Like his situation sucks but I'm getting tired of listening to him whine about being hungry all the time.

[Wolf Kanno]

Oy, didn't get a chance to update this morning so we get two days worth of gameplay to catch up with. I have worked up to Auron joining the team. I managed to acquire Jecht Shot on my first try and even won the damn tournament with a true Cinderella story. It was looking rough as the Luca Goers got a score in the first half and I couldn't score a point because the game won't let you set up the party in the first half, because Toriyama most likely because he pulled that trout all the time in XIII. Second half was tense, but I finally managed to get off Jecht Shot and score a point, but after that point I couldn't really do much because Tidus couldn't regenerate his HP fast enough to pull it off a second time, and then the story twist came in where he's replaced with Wakka. I figured I was doomed and was going to have to reset when I noticed Wakka wasn't a bad shooter and even starts with a special shoot move that game me a shot, and literally in the last fifteen seconds of the game, I get the ball to Wakka and he managed to score a goal, winning the game for the Aurochs. So some nice gameplay closure for the man. Anyway, onto the pros and cons list.

Pros:

• As much as I don't care for Yuna, she is involved in some of the coolest scenes in this game. I've always loved the Sending scene in Kilika and I've always been disappointed we never get another scene like that.
• While most of the optional content in the game is debatable in quality, I do enjoy the Cloister of Trials, the one in Besaid is a bit simple, but the one in Kilika was nice.
• I always forget about the Ochu fight, but it's a nice test to see how well you know the gameplay and proof you can cheese a lot of the bosses with Aeons.
• With everyone so close to Kimhari's part of the Grid, I've had the majority of the party spend some time trying to acquire Lancet before moving on from their paths. Useful for Yuna and Lulu, incredible beneficial for Wakka who has low MP.
• Yay, Tidus learned Warrior for Limit Breaks.
• FFX does have one of my favorite incarnations of Ifrit, so nice to get him on my team.
• I also managed to acquire Blast Ray for Valefor before leaving Besaid, so now I won't have to worry about fighting the Dark version to get it.
• Been slowly filling Oaka's coffers to get a discount later, though in hindsight, I'm not sure why I'm bothering since I rarely buy equipment in the game.
• Got Jecht Shot first try!
• Managed to win the Luca Tournament without resetting, and give Wakka his Cinderella story. Even more amusing is that the Aurochs largely did it by themselves without much literal help from Tidus.
• I made sure to recruit Biggs and Wedge for my team, partly because they are good, but mainly to keep them from being recruited by other teams. I just need to grab that goalie from the Al Bhed and we're gold.
• FFX has always had some mixed design for me. I'm not really a fan of the Besaid look that Wakka and his team use or even the Kilika one. But Yuna, Auron, and Lulu have fantastic designs in this game. It's always a bit weird how mismatched it feels sometimes.
• I will say, I am enjoying my time in Spira a bit better this time around. Though I would hold one's optimism off for a bit, because we are reaching the point where FFX begins to slowly lose me.
• In a game filled with crazy plot twists, I feel the twist about Jecht being Sin is the most impactful. It sets up a cool mystery, adds more intrigue to Auron's character, and finally gives Tidus a more personal stake in what's going on in the story. It works on a lot of levels.
• I've never been really bothered by the Laughing scene. I know a lot of people see cringe, but I find it to be a real nice bonding scene between Tidus and Yuna that doesn't involve Tidus' daddy issues.

Cons:

• While I have a lot of gripes with the game's CTB system, I think the one aspect that annoys me the most is oddly enough the fact the party only gets XP by participating. It just drags combat down so much and it also kind of shows off the weakness of having party members designed to fight specific enemies because then you get stuff like Yuna and Kimarhi who really don't bring as much to the battle system (Aeons excluded) to regular combat. My party is usually close to save point and status effects go away after combat ends, so Yuna as a white mage isn't really needed. Kimarhi has Pierce before Auron, but none of those enemies start appearing before he joins and in comparison to Auron, he hits a bit like a wet noodle. So now I have to actively find things for them to do in battle and it just drags every encounter out longer than necessary.
• FFXII:TZA has spoiled me, and I really wish there was a speed up button and the ability to skip cutscenes.
• I think one of the things that bothers me about FFX is the direction they took with Yuna. Like I get they are trying to be true to the Japanese version while also dealing with the annoyance of dubbing, but I feel like FFX might have been a victim of the otaku revolt about subpar dubs that stray too far from the original or try to Westernize it too much. But I just don't feel like Yuna works in this game with the English VA. Nothing wrong with Hedy Burress, like I feel someone in the localization process messed up here, and I don't know if it's the western side trying to stay faithful or the Japanese side being inflexible about changes. I get the feeling she would work better in Japanese for me. She just comes across very awkward, and not like she's just socially awkward, like more a foreigner trying to keep up with local customs.
• I wonder why so many people are just jerks for no reason here. Like Donna is such a bitch, and it's like sweetie, you should hoping someone else gets to be a High Summoner. Glory doesn't mean trout when you're dead. I can understand the Luca Goers being asses, but like it was such a mood whiplash coming after the Kilika destruction. Not helped that Donna and her partner are from Kilika, which is never directly stated but their clothing is coded as Kilika. The whole sequence just feels weird.
• For the life of me, I will never understand how people didn't pick up on the fact Yuna was marching to her death. Like that farewell from Besaid felt a bit too weird to be just a simple goodbye. This is another point where I don't envy the localization team because I bet this scene was even more on the nose because Yuna likely said Sayonara on the boat. Which translates as goodbye, but generally means goodbye forever.
• While not a major con, the fact Yuna lived on Besaid for a decade and didn't get the accent is a bit weird to me. Like I could see Lulu dropping it, especially since she's a bit more world traveled than Wakka, but I feel like it was a missed opportunity to give Yuna some adorkable points by having her slip into the Besaid accent when she gets excited. Like the accents are a nice touch, but very inconsistent. Sadly, this is pretty noticeable coming off XII where even NPCs tend to stick to their designated accents.

[Wolf Kanno]

Been meaning to update.

I've reached Djose Temple and managed to get through the awful Mi'hen Highroad, the boring Mushroom Rock, cool Operation Mi'hen, and even a Blitzball Tournament. I decided to save Jassu this time because I always keep Gotta alive since it felt thematically more appropriate, and hey I managed to see this guy actually raise his voice for once. I also got a lot of levels, probably more than I should have... I also gave Oaka his 10,000 gil to get his discount, but we'll see if that's worth it. I didn't get the Moon Ring from the Crusaders, mainly because I didnt feel like grinding that kind of cash, and because I looked up what it did and that felt a bit like highway robbery, especially since I got the more useful Echo Ring by beating the undead summoner girl. We were also introduced to a lot of new characters in this segment.

Now that I've had some time with the Expert Grid, I would say it's more weird than anything. Like it is super easy to fall into someone else's "path" which is nice, but it still has an obvious path for each character, though it does sometimes feel like a randomizer. I think the issue I see here is that while the freedom to add a more personal customization touch is much appreciated, FFX is also a game designed around specific roles for the team, so it's hard to really take advantage of it because yeah, it sounds neat to teach Tidus some low level Black Magic spells early, but it also sucks when he gets one-shotted because he spent too much time down a squishy mage path and now you don't have your speedy Warrior anymore. The character who potentially can get a boon from this new system is like Kimarhi since he always wound up being just a second string version of another character, but now he has an easier time being the master of none Red Mage he was sort of envisioned as.

Pros:

• Auron is a fun powerhouse and he adds some much needed intrigue, snark, and a voice of reason to the party that was really needed.
• Oh hey, you can Scan party members and get fun info about them, just like In FFVIII.
• As much as I complain about Yuna and Tidus, I will say their relationship is pretty solid. Game does a good job of giving them some nice small moments to help sell the fact they have feelings for each other. It will be interesting to compare this one to Squall and Rinoa later.
• Oh hey, I unlocked the 9999hp attack trophy thanks to Valefor and the Blast Ray Overdrive.
• While I don't care for Seymour as a character, I do always enjoy being able to use the villain as a party member for a bit. Though it was a bit of a slog to see his Overdrive.
• I'm going to be honest. I am failry ambivalent with the characters of Shelinda and Clasko. As characters, I'm not exactly in love with them, but what saves them is the fact they are both voiced by Tenchi Muyo! alumni Sherry Lynn (Sasami Jurai) and Matt K Miller (Tenchi Masaki) and that adds just enough nostalgia to make them actually charming to me. Have I mentioned that I'm excited to watch Legend of the Crystals again because both of them as well as Washu's VA are in it?
• I managed to beat the Chocobo Eater, though I didn't get the extra reward for knocking it off the cliff because it died too soon.
• While the build up is excruciatingly annoying, the actual cutscene of Operation Mi'hen holds up pretty well.
• I really missed having cool animations for different level spells. While FFX has never had the best ones, the fact it's more noticeable has me excited for the entries to come.

Cons:

• The Mi'hen Highroad is generally the point where my opinion about FFX begins to change. While there are certainly some questionable issues with the plot, gameplay, and pacing from the beginning up to the end of Luca, it mostly feels nitpicky since we're still working on the setup. But once we finish the climax of the tournament, moving onto Operation Mi'hen is a bit of drag. The road is boring, mainly serves to dump seven new characters on your lap, who all quickly keep popping up throughout the road so we can have some minor character development to make you allegedly attached to them before the trout goes down, and said interactions are not always great. The road is visually dull and boring, the encounter rate finally gets normal making walking down this boring straight line more annoying, and the music theme for it is awful. It might be the worst track Uematsu composed for the game, and I daresay the arranged version might be more annoying. This section of the game is pace killer with the only highlights being the summoner duel and the random Chocobo Eater boss fight. Not helping is that Mushroom Rock is right after, and it is also bland and boring as well. It's times like this I miss having a world map, because the Mi'hen Highroad could have just been that, and maybe we could have put a bit more effort into Mushroom Rock or just have us skip to the Operation Base.
• My other gripe with the combat system is that is has the same problem as a lot of 3D games with pre-rendered backgrounds, but oddly enough, I've been noticing that the controls for toggling between opponents/allies changes depending on where the camera is positioned. It's kind of annoying, and I don;t remember if this was an issue in the other PS1 entries but now that's I've noticed it, I'm going to have to pay attention more.
• Kimarhi is the worst Blue Mage in the series. In fact, I'm going to be honest, he's the most superfluous element of the game so far. I feel like the team was trying to make him into another Red XIII character and he is so flat as both a character and party member. I would not bother using him if it wasn't for the fact he has a mandatory solo boss fight towards the end of the game and I will not experience that annoyance again. Great thinking Nojima and Kitase, you made this funky cool looking non-human character and made him the one who barely talks. That worked so well for Amarant. Also Blue Magic as a Limit Break is an awful idea. and diminishes the whole concept. You wouldn't tolerate your black mage or white mage having their spells locked behind a limit break.
• I kind of forget how much of an ass Oaka is.
• I think the thing that kind of bothers me about Operation Mi'hen is a lot of the hindsight issues of the game itself. Sin, is not a difficult boss mechanically. Now, that's true of a lot of FF story bosses, they are not terribly tough by design some of the time and this instance is no different. I think my issue is that narratively, Sin has a weaksause weakness, of which if the Crusaders and Al Bhed had simply known at the time, this operation may have partially succeeded. And that knowledge sort of diminishes the fact this whole sequence is designed around showing off how overwhelmingly powerful Sin is and driving home the false idea that the Final Summon is the only means of beating Sin to the player.
• We've reached the point where combat is a bit of a chore now. Part of the reason I don't like the "Character A can fight Monster A" design is that it makes combat feel incredibly formulaic but in an annoying way where I still have to partially use some brain power to get through fights despite the fight being incredibly easy regardless. Like I can't wait until I get closer to the end of the game and can just steam roll everything with anyone, but even there, I'm still stuck with the annoying rule that only participating characters get XP, so combat is just artificially drawn out and boring to me.
• Can we discuss the fact Valefor is just plain broken? Like it might be the most physically frail Aeon with the lowest physical abilities, but the fact it's a flying Aeon in a game where enemy monsters have no options for dealing with it besides magic (which Valfor is strong against) is just kind of messed up. I was trying to charge up it's Overdirve for future use, and kept running into issues where enemies just couldn't do anything against her, and so I could only get Overdive gauge by killing them because it kept skipping the monsters turns.
• Blitzball is a chore. I get the feeling that a lot of the people who like it probably play actual sport games but this game is sssllllloooowwwwww. It's annoying I have to spend ten minutes every time I have to do a game of it. There should be a rule that makes it so the match ends automatically if a team reaches a certain score.
• My other issue with Blitzball is how unbalanced it is. The Luca Goers are probably the only team that doesn't have some issue. The Kilika Beasts are purposely made weak so you can practice against them, the Ronso and Guado have opposing weakness that are easy to exploit, and the Al Bhed Psyches are just bulltrout with unnaturally high stats at ridiculously low levels. Like I curb stomped every team except for them because despite being similar levels, they have like five extra point in almost every stat. I only began to start winning against them, because they dropped a member and replaced them with a non-Al Bhed player who was low level and has bad stats early on. So I just kept exploiting this team member to get around the rest of the team's bulltrout but it's still annoying I can only score goals if Tidus or Wedge are literally on top of the goal and use a special move. Once their goalie get cut lose, I'm hiring him just so no other team can use him.