
Originally Posted by
LunarWeaver
This is kind of hard to answer...
Personally, I love Spira, Yuna, and Rikku enough that I took the time to get 100% completion and the secret ending and all that. So to me it was worth it.
The battle system is totally reinvented as always and super fast paced... I love the battle system actually, and I got lost for hooours just learning new abilities for all the dress spheres (which are basically jobs). You set dress spheres into a Garment Grid and can change into any you have set during battle with rather spiffy transformations. There are only three characters, so any character can be a Black Mage, White Mage, Gunner, or the like once you find that Dress Sphere. You set an ability to learn and when you have enough AP (1 AP for each enemy killed and 1 AP for each skill used in that dress sphere, such as using Fire in the Black Mage) you learn it. The game returns to the ATB bars so the CTB from FFX is gone. On Active the whole thing is fast and makes you think on your feet, which is always fun. Getting hits close together forms Chains that ups your damage, so there's enough to keep you busy even when you're just mashing attack over and over. The game is mission based, and counts a % completion, and % carries over so there's room to mess up. If you blow over the game only hitting the spots with story missions it will take you only about 20 hours to beat, but doing everything will take a nice amount of length. There's also a nifty New Game + for once that carries over all Gil, Items, Dress Spheres and Garment Grids earned, Abilities, and Accessories (but you restart at level 1). Oh, and the girls all earn levels as normal so no Sphere Grid like progression.
The story isn't very good though. If you're already invested in FFX it will be good to you on a personal level often, such as seeing what has become of many areas in a year's time, but overall it's nothing special. The whole idea here is "Yuna is coming out of her shell", so expect to hear lines like "Oh, poopie!" and "This isn't fun at all! Let's have Yuna sing for us!" It DOES get serious at many parts, but Yuna is trying to be more care-free then before so it's mostly girl-pop-power situation.
Its texture is fluffy and the flavor here is all pink bubblegum. If you can swallow that you will have no problem with the game... If you're mad the serious storyline of other FF's isn't present then you won't make it past the first few hours.
I like the game and don't regret buying it. I would not have spent 50$ dollars on it, but I got mine on Amazon for 15 used and I've sunk over 100 hours into the sucker getting that godforsaken ending. It's cheap now, and it will entertain you. But if you go in with huge expectations you will be let down...
It's mostly just a huge romp through Spira and not much else. If you like Spira as your amusement park and just want an excuse to play in it this game will serve its purpose, but no this will not be anywhere close to your favorite of the series.