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#10: FINAL FANTASY X-2


You guys are going to kill me. Final Fantasy X-2 is a much maligned sequel to one of the most beloved entries in the series. It is dumb, it is campy, and it craps all over Final Fantasy X… and I love every second of it. I love this game much, much more than its predecessor in every way.

The gameplay is fast-paced and exciting, and not just in battle. The missions offer plenty of variety and Spira feels much more like an actual world in this game, with people being the annoying bastards they are and asking you to do all their dirty work. Not once was I bored in this game, which is not something I can say about X. The battle system is the most action-packed version of ATB yet, with multiple attacks being pulled off at once (another similarity to Grandia II), and jobs being changed on the fly. You heard that right – jobs are back in this game, taking the form of dresspheres. While again you can’t customize the abilities, just like in FFIII, each dressphere gets to learn a huge amount of unique skills, and you get to change them in battle, which is awesome. To top it all off, each costume change comes with a magical girl-esque transformation sequence. For a Sailor Moon fan such as myself, this was a nice nostalgic touch.

The story of Final Fantasy X-2 is pretty stupid, with shallow characters and ridiculous plot twists, but you know what else it is? Fun. Gone are the joyless words of self-proclaimed wisdom of X – FFX-2 is all about the goofy adventures of our Charlie’s Angels expies. The game lacks the frustrating delusions of grandeur X was so guilty of. It really doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it is completely stupid. While not quite as wittily self-aware as, say Final Fantasy V, it nevertheless feels like a breath of fresh air after the teen drama of X. And if a game that is stupid by its very premise can make me feel way more emotion for a couple through a three-minute long music video than a game that is supposed to be so deep and meaningful with its sublime love story can do over twenty hours of gameplay, then I’m sorry, but your sublime love story is really in dire need of better writing.

It may look like I love X-2 only because of its relationship to X – and that’s totally the case. I probably wouldn’t like this game so much if I did like the story of X, but I don’t. Instead, here I got the fun gameplay and sense of adventure I lacked in the previous entry. X-2, for me, delivered where X failed, and I really think it deserves way more credit than it gets. It’s stupid, but it’s fun and happy, so just sit back, and enjoy the ride as we tarnish everything everybody loved about Final Fantasy X.