95%PC

Recently, I found myself craving a good JRPG adventure. I have been familiar with the Final Fantasy series for some time - I used to play the 2D GBA ports on the way to school - but I could never truly get into them and often gave up after the initial attempt. (Yes, even for FF6. I know, crazy).

I did play a fair amount of FFXIV ARR, but failed to get into the meat of the adventure. The same thing happened with FF7 on the PSX. So with that being said, I must give this game high praise for totally sucking me in and ensuring I completed it thoroughly despite my previous blockages in the other FF titles. The journey and experience just finally clicked for me, and it's largely due to how excellent of a game FFX is. This is the perfect way to get introduced to Final Fantasy as a whole, and some of the best of the JRPG genre in general. I am now a FF superfan.

Now, as for this game: I'm pleased to report this game aged wonderfully, especially in the remaster. Combat is fun and fluid, and there are plenty of enemy types. The story is intriguing, interesting, and deals with heavy themes that are a step removed from the typical candid JRPG adventure. The character development is solid across the board, and while there are some typical JRPG tropes, the game doesn't suffer because of it. The game bolsters an amazing setting with varied setpieces that keep you excited to see what awaits you in the next zone. On top of this, there's a (very grindy) endgame that will add plenty of more action after you finish the main story.

For the asking price, it's a crazy deal and a must play. My only critique was that the endgame boss totally stomped me out until I grinded for four hours to curate a build to one-shot him. This is just another annoying JRPG trope - It's not a real big deal to grind it out. It did make the difficulty feel purely artificial.

100%PlayStation Vita

Continues to be my favourite FF game, and one of my favourite games of all time

100%PlayStation 4

Final fantasy X is really good game. It's one of the best games jrpgs you can play. In the Final Fantasy series, it's the first game to have voice acting. This and the more cinematic presentation make this game an important game to the series. For being the first game in the series with voice acting they did a good job. It helps that the main characters are likable, and you stay with them for the whole story. The games story has an exciting start. The story does wind down a bit after a certain section. This part wasn't as engaging because it feels the story takes a back seat to the random battles and fighting enemies. I feel like the pacing is not as good in this part of the game. The story does ramp up again after that. The sphere leveling system is an interesting system. It seems simple starting out, but it opens up later in the game and allows for customization in how you raise the stats of each character. One of the best jrpgs ever made. It is a challenging game. You will come to a point where you will get game over from a challenging boss or difficult enemies. It is challenging, but it's not unfair. It is a rewarding feeling when you can overcome that challenging boss after taking time to level up the sphere grid. Theres no world map like older final fantasies, but that's okay. The game gives you plenty of area to grind enemies and get sphere levels to level up the party characters. There is side content in the game, but you can beat the game without doing any of it. I like being given the option to skip the side content if I just want to stay on the main story. This is one of the best jrpgs ever made. Its classic game from the ps2 console era. It stands the test of time and is still as fun to play today as it was when it was released.

90%PlayStation 4

Classic video game. It is still good.

100%Emulated

Moriré por Tidus el capso.

90%PlayStation 3

8.5/10

80%PC

Review in progress...

95%PlayStation 2

I hated the characters at first, but at the end of the story I found myself surprised how attached I got. Good story, good characters, personally love the sphere grid.

90%Nintendo Switch

Story: 5
Gameplay: 5
Art/Audio: 4
Challenge: 4

100%PlayStation 4

Best

100%PlayStation 2

Best fucking game ever i can't wait to come back to grind this after I play every final fantasy

70%PC

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ1dlpo148U9OfqFMc4iSQFcX6fNuBVYC

80%PlayStation 2

Final Fantasy X is the definition of a flawed masterpiece, it wants to be great, but the game mechanics actively get in its way. FFX has one of the best stories I've experienced in gaming and made me cry multiple times throughout my playthrough. Honestly, the story at the beginning of the game is horrifically slow but helps to set up the rest of the story beautifully. At first, the characters are annoying and feel very one-dimensional, but as the story moves and the party goes through the story they become more likable and honestly some of my favorite characters in gaming. This is contrasted by FFX's slog of getting through the actual gameplay. I thought about dropping the game multiple times throughout my playthrough because of how bad the combat balancing is. There are two extremes with no in-between, Either every fight is ridiculously easy where you just use the thing that counters the monster and it dies instantly, or spamming heals and potions and maybe attacking once every 5 turns to barely make it through the fight. Add on top of this the ridiculously high random encounter rate that throws you into fights every 5-10 steps you take. You MUST fight every random encounter you come across or else you find yourself under-leveled for the upcoming boss fight. The one point I will give to the combat that I enjoyed was figuring out how to give my entire party a turn so they could all get EXP. This led to some interesting battles where you are trying to manage your resources to repeatedly stop the enemy from attacking and you can bring in your other party members without taking excessive damage. I also really liked the "Sphere Grid" system for leveling characters. Being able to plan and choose paths to make subtle changes to your character made every level-up an exciting experience. Final Fantasy X has the shell of great gameplay that ended up never really coming together to make it amazing, but the story made up for the gameplay and drove me to keep going. I want to say the game would have been better as a movie, but playing and grinding through the battles made getting more of the story even sweeter. I would recommend a playthrough for the story, but be warned that the combat will try to drive you away at times, if you stick it out though you will find one of the best stories in gaming

85%PlayStation 2

The best level up system in any game, ever. It is unmatched.

90%PlayStation Vita

FF X is a shining example of a JRPG - beautiful story, fantastic characters, wonderful music, visuals and a deeply addictive levelling system.

For a game released 23 years ago, WOW. Square Enix had no equal back in the day, truly.

I really loved FFX story and characters. I can see where FFXIII got all it's inspiration from.

Even 2 decades later, this is a must play for Final Fantasy and RPG fans. Anyone who loves to journey through a beautiful story will love this.

60%PlayStation 2

I've given this game at least 3 honest attempts but never quite make it to the end. I don't know what it is about it, it has its moments but on the whole I don't find very engaging. Maybe some day....

100%Nintendo Switch

This game has so much going for it. Great story, great characters, great gameplay. The gameplay is some of the most fun I’ve had with an RPG ever. The sphere grid is a little weird at first, but once you get used to it it’s not that much different from traditional level ups, but with more customization. I loved the party members in this game too, the characters were a strong point of the story.

That being said I do think it fumbles a bit at the end. The difficulty of some of the end game bosses are ridiculous even if you spend hours grinding. And the story also slows a bit at the end too, which can be the worst time for a story to slow down. However, I do think despite the final few hours of the game feeling a bit slow, the actual end itself is very strong, and the un-lose able fights after the final boss were super cool.

Overall this is one of the best RPGs and best games I have ever played, despite a few flaws. I think this is a game everyone should give a shot to.

100%PC

Played on PS2 and PC million times

80%PC

Well, this was an experience for both the good and the bad. To be honest, I expected more in many things both in terms of story and gameplay. In terms of story, while the worldbuilding is incredible, as it progresses, certain revelations feel super convoluted. The whole thing about dreams and their relationship with the protagonist, I honestly don't like it, and I feel that if you analyze it, it detracts from a lot of the drama related to Zanarkand since well... Technically it's not real.

In terms of gameplay, there are so many things to say. The sphere grinding system that seemed to be an advantage at first, ended up becoming incredibly demanding and counter-intuitive to the point where I really doubt that someone who hasn't read guides or studied the game thoroughly beforehand can hit many of the requirements to develop the characters for the final part of the game. And speaking of the final part, I've never seen a game that put such a deliberate barrier in the main quest just to force the player to grind more levels to beat the rest of the game. Not only did it kill the momentum of the game, but it completely disconnected me from what the game was about.

I ended up with an experience that I really liked at times, but that I also hated at times. I can understand why it's popular, but I think it's a game that lives more on nostalgia than on what it really is today.

90%PlayStation 2

One of best Final Fantasy, love the Eon's mechanics, great story!

90%PlayStation 2

Far superior to the ridiculously overrated VII. Really neat leveling system, instead of xp it's a complex sphere grid that you can choose where to go. Animations are significantly faster than VII, it's bearable now. Much less grinding than VII other than for the final boss. The healer being able to summon insanely powerful bosses was awesome and hilarious. Much more character specialization than VII where it was just different flavors of damage. Story was good. Best part was the bosses, instead of the classic enemy with high HP, every single one had some sort of gimmick which made it interesting. Now for the bad: LONG UNSKIPABLE CUTSCENES, EVEN BEFORE BOSSES. It also looks like the 100%ing is insanely grindy and some really shitty minigames like VII, fuck that. Rating: 9/10. Definitely one of the better RPGs I've played, really only held back by the unskipable cutscenes destroying replayability and ridiculous 100%.

X Rating: 0/5 - Nothing that really stands out other than Yunalesca barely wearing clothes. Was expecting Sin to be a vore dungeon, turns out it wasn't (good)

90%Nintendo Switch

My first FF I totally get into, I tried FF6 many times but never got used to the gameplay.
This game made me fall in love with the series.
Overall great gameplay, hard to master but easy to understand.
The Characters are all endearing and complex.
The Chara design and the World building is tremendous, you're really trapped into Spira after 20mins and you never want to get away.
The random fights can be a pain by the really end of the story and some of them aren't even good for grinding but for most of it they're still enjoyable and you feel enjoyment by mastering your opponents with no difficulty.
A lot of people had and will talk about that game better than me but it's a real masterpiece, the Remaster, even though it changes some face models a bit, is beautiful and makes you forget it's a 20yo game.
A great starter to Turn based JRPG.

100%PlayStation 4

Excellent!

40%Nintendo Switch

This is my first Final Fantasy game. If not for the cultural relevance of this game, I would have dropped it almost immediately. Initially it felt like a chore to play, and though I came to appreciate some aspects of the combat and leveling systems, it never stopped feeling excessively grindy. On the positive side, I did enjoy Auron and Lulu as characters, and I'm happy I finally know what a Cactuar is. I'm also happy to have seen and ridden Chocobos in a game and to know what the ability Ultima is. As far as story goes, it was almost entirely nonsensical to me and I never felt invested in it, with very little payoff at the end. One's sense of space and direction are not strong in this game and it affects immersion negatively. I can't recall distinctly any locations other than Thunder Plains, Mt. Gagazet, and Home. The rest did not leave a lasting impression on me. The combat music was grating every time I had to listen to it, but I was determined to complete my first Final Fantasy game. Seymour has to be one of the worst villains of all time. He would just not let it go. He never felt like a threat, and I was just embarrassed for him and disappointed in him every time he showed up to fight and lose again. I was largely indifferent to Tidus as the main character and his insistence that this was "his story." It was clearly Yuna's. I was also not convinced by Yuna/Tidus's romance and the water scene completely took me by surprise because there was so little lead-up to it. I never felt that their relationship developed meaningfully. I was also surprised to learn that Lulu and Wakka end up together, but that's after a 2 year time skip so I'm accepting of it and I'm just happy to see the the adults of the game (Lulu, Wakka, Kimahri) have a good ending to their story before Yuna and Rikku leave on their journey of X-2. I'm actually relieved that my physical copy of X-2 isn't working because I don't have the code to download it from the Nintendo Switch store. I don't want to get caught up in more of this. I'm looking forward to watching a fan-compiled "movie" of X-2 so I can feel at peace with knowing the full story grind-free. The last comment I'll make is that there was simply too much left unexplained and that never made sense in the first place. How did Tidus end up teleported from home? Why can they all play sports underwater without coming up for air? Who was Yu-Yevon? Why can unsent people die again in combat and get revived with Phoenix Down? What was up with all the different symbols all over Spira (used in temples, etc)? Why were machina banned? I was hoping the outcome would be that machina was banned because it was necessary to combine summoning powers with machina to defeat sin or Yu Yevon permanently, and so Yu Yevon tried to erase all machina. But that ended up not being the ending. It turned out you just had to defeat Sin from the inside (duh, I guess...?). Also why did Sin have architecture on top and inside of it, including staircases? Why was Tidus able to be manifested into existence by the Fayth? Too much just still doesn't make any sense. In conclusion, unfortunately, FFX is not a X/10. It is a 4/10. After watching a video of the plot synopsis of FFX-2 I want to lower this game's score to 3/10, but I won't. I'll let it stand on its own with no consequence from its successor.

55%Nintendo Switch

Once I dont like the sphere grid system...no indicator to measure your parties's level...suck Blitzball

60%PC

I’m gonna be completely honest here: I don’t get the hype behind this game.

I must’ve been doing something really wrong because I did not, and I repeat, DID NOT understand for a single moment why this game has the huge appeal it has. Sure, the story is nice and the character development is well done, but there are much better plots and much better developed characters in other story driven RPGs, let alone the in FF franchise.

Actually, there’s something about the way this story is told and how characters interact with one another that really threw me off here. For some reason I could’ve totally missed, Rikku and Yuna become best friends after literally 2 on-screen conversations. That was weird. And besides all the powerful, pretty cutscenes that are supposed to tug at your heartstrings and make you fall in love with these characters, there’s something of actual substance missing here. I really don’t like how the human relationships were handled in this game. Out of absolutely nowhere, characters just love each other and trust each other like they’ve been best friends their whole lives. It makes way for a lot of strange conversations that didn’t feel natural to me at all.

The battle system is OK, I guess. I like turn-based combat. The character progression is very unique and it took me a while to figure it out, but it feels very rewarding once you get a grip on it. Overall, the game isn’t really that challenging. As long as you’re on par stat wise with the creatures you’re fighting, you’re not gonna have much trouble.

The PC port actually allows you to speed up, which is pretty neat given that this game can be quite slow at times. I found myself speeding up most of the time because the game itself was actually too slow for my liking. Going in and out of battles, exploring huge areas and just getting from place A to place B just felt a lot better when it was at x2 speed.

The optional content in this game sucks big time. Blitzball is absolutely awful and it’s supposed to be your main side hustle when you get bored with the main story. Besides that, there’s not much else that comes to mind. I eventually got bored with this game and went through several months of not touching it at all to a few days of rushing through it because I just wanted it to be over. I used those in-game cheats for the final boss because, again, I wanted to be done with it. The grinding really wouldn’t have been worth it.

In the end, Final Fantasy X really wasn’t my cup of tea and I was quite surprised given the fact that I love this franchise so much. I guess my hopes were just too high.

90%PlayStation 2

91%

100%PlayStation 2

My favourite game ever. When I replayed in the HD remaster version I felt all the nostalgy and I realize how great this was in its context. One of the best stories in the videogames history. Memorable characters, astonishing landscapes, good plot twists and the best main character EVER (in love with Tidus). Also the gameplay was very nice and one of my favourites in the turn-based combat games.

100%PlayStation 3

An experience I won't forget. The only FF I have played completely through so far.

90%PC

Final Fantasy X is perhaps the most beloved JRPG of the PS2 era, and for good reason. Even playing the remaster 20+ years later, FFX still has its magic. The story is beautifully told, with the love story between Tidus and Yuna taking center stage as Yuna makes the pilgrimage to Zanarkand. The rest of the cast is also great (aside from poor Kimahri, who barely gets a chance to shine). The story also does a great job of examining themes such as religion, duty, death, and grief.

The Sphere Grid is one of my favorite progression systems in JRPGs. The combat itself is one of the best in the series, and it makes both random encounters and boss battles entertaining. Finally, music and character design are, as always with Final Fantasy, top notch.

A must play for any Final Fantasy fan or JRPG fan in general.

70%PlayStation Vita

The first half of the game is pretty nice but as it continues it becomes clear that the whole story is pretty much there but the characters just won't tell each other what they know for some reason. The characters are also rather weak. Tidus and Yuna get arcs as they're the main duo but nobody else really has much going on. Lulu and Kimarhi are so underdeveloped they barely even have personalities. Unfortunately the main villain is also just as empty and its obvious why he's always ranked low on FF villain tier lists.

The post-game stuff is absurd in this game too. There is a trick that lets you grind super fast that cuts the absolutely most pointless grinding but gathering the pieces for it is intensely laborious. And its mostly in service of beating ridiculous super bosses in order to get even more overpowered. Hiding the ultimate weapons behind very bad mini games like lightning dodges and chocobo racing was also an odd decision. Blitzball is also mind-nubming. Its kinda fun but its just too easy to get overpowered and then it takes so much time to end a match. And you've gotta play like 75 games to get everything unique to it.

Overall, not my favorite FF. Its not bad but its worse than I remember it. I'd put it right in the middle of the series well ahead of crap like 13 but just a hair ahead of 15.

100%PlayStation 5

Best FF love history, Amazing progress system. Must play

75%Nintendo Switch

Great game but failed to captivate me like I really wanted to. I think my expectations were set too high and the story was good but nothing amazing. Did enjoy it though!

90%PC

One of the best Final Fantasy games.

100%PC

My first ever Final Fantasy game, and man, it was amazing.

The whole game felt like one long and immersive adventure. This strong feel of a true "adventure" makes it incredibly unique and standing out from anything else I've played before.

I loved how, over time, along with the main protagonist, you get deeply invested in the characters and the world. The world-building is phenomenal, each area feels distinct, with its own vibe, creatures, story, and music. This variety adds up so much to this feeling of traveling through a living world. Overall, it felt like a breath of fresh air in its uniqueness compared to typical modern fantasy tropes.

The OST is simply beautiful. Right from the start, when you boot up the game, you are greeted with the iconic piece "To Zanarkand". You just sit there thinking: "Yep, the entire score would be a masterpiece" - and it absolutely is.

I am not a fan of random encounters, but here, while they were occasionally tedious, they felt okay because the combat system is great. Each character has a ton of abilities, and being able to swap them mid-fight keeps the gameplay engaging. Every enemy has its strengths and weaknesses, which means you are constantly coming up with some kind of strategies. I find the process of figuring out the best approach to each enemy and boss very satisfying.

The leveling system is also great. The massive grid might seem scary, but once you figure it out, it becomes a lot of fun. Each character starts in a different position on the grid, but generally you can build them as you like, similar to Path of Exile. This made leveling up and random encounters feel rewarding.

I was recommended FFX as a starting point for the Final Fantasy series, and I absolutely loved it. So I am passing this recommendation on to others as well!

100%PlayStation 2

Bestes Spiel aller Zeiten!

80%PlayStation 4

I played this game as a kid and dropped it after not being able to beat Evrae on the airship. I came back as an adult to tie up the loose string.

Overall great aesthetic and the opening story gave me nostalgic feels from my childhood. The music is great and I still listen to some of the tracks (Besaid, Wandering Flame). The combat system is arguably the best in the series, and being able to switch out characters was sick. There's a lot of strategy involved and some of the enemies and boss fights were really tough. However in this play through I resolved to grind a lot preemptively to reduce the difficulty of boss fights. I don't like grinding but I did it. I wasn't a fan of the sphere grid as a kid but was okay with it this time around. Just get Hastaga for Tidus and it will save you a lot of turmoil.

Story:
I believe the revealed story for FFX is better than what is learned about the story later in the game. The opening hours of the game and winding up in Besaid were really engaging, and I liked the way the love story is handled. The game tackles heavy themes like family complications, tragedy and loss, prejudice, corruption, and religion. The themes are all there but sometimes the execution didn't land for me, namely due to the convolution towards the end of the game.

Overall I enjoyed my time playing this (both as a kid and adult), but the story fumbled for me towards the end of the game.

70%Nintendo Switch

I didn't love FFX.

I grew up with FF VIII and FF XIV. I skipped FFX when it came out though, which has always been a wrong in my head that needed to be remedied at some point, which I tackled this year.

I don't know if it's the lack of nostalgia or just the game itself that didn't gel with me is unclear. There are elements that I liked though. A 7 is still a very high grade :-)

What I liked:
* I loved the fact that you can switch characters freely in combat. This allows them to level up, but it also allows you to tackle the battles cleverly.
* The story is good and I like Tidus' temperament.
* The music. Nobuo.
* Some of the fights are fun, the fighting system in itself is enjoyable. All characters have very unique and fun skills.

What I didn't like:
* No speed up on Switch. Tedious grinding, and slow running.
* The voices. Grated on me. I know it's one of the first games that has been narrated but it put me off the characters and the story because I feel there is no natural flow to the conversations.
* The expectation of a game released in the early 00's where grinding is kind of required was painful too. I prefer to run through the regions and fight every enemy I see but that slaughtered me in the end which means I had to grind in the Omega Ruins.
* The side quests are hard to find and tedious to do without speed-up.
* I missed one item in the first temple, and I was locked out of Yuna celestial weapon and another summon or I would have to fight a spawned enemy.
* Levelling up system through the skill tree wasn't for me, until I started to grind and fill a lot of the skill tree. It doesn't feel like you're getting more powerful when you level up.

I'm happy I experienced the story. I enjoyed my time with it, but I was also happy when it was done. I should've maybe played it on a different system to get more QoL things like skipping cutscenes and speeding up combat and traversal.

90%PlayStation 4

Some of the best world-building I've seen in this franchise. The story was great and I enjoyed each of the party members. The Sphere Grid was an excellent progression system. Music was great, even by this series standard.

55%PlayStation 2

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIINGGGGGGGG
(The game's okay, a bit too linear though)

75%PC

Many aspects of the game take a long time to really start rolling. The narrative, the combat, and some characters including the protagonist took many hours for me to start getting invested. While there's a slow start and some narrative bumps along the way, the game tells a really good story filled with an interesting cast.

I don't have nostalgic bias towards this game but I completely understand why it's so popular in the franchise.

80%PC

Overall fun game with an amazing story.
Uninteresting and too grindy post game including side content.

60%PC

Very pretty game with great music, but the linearity does make the whole experience feel a bit disappointing. Story has its moments and ends strong, but was hampered by focusing a lot on what I find to be a kinda annoying protagonist.

85%Nintendo Switch

Notes: Great character story (amazing plot twist?), good music though varying quality, very cool idea of the characters retelling the games story from the main menu campfire, fun gameplay, the skill tree is very fun, not a big fan of the equipment system and gear not having direct stats. al behd language good. AoE RNG death attack 2x in a row into unskippable cutscenes is not a good combo.

Issues with localization. Awkwardly speeds up and slows down to match japanese audio, desync in cutscenes.

Excellent story twist, the way summoners work is really cool, great ending. Seymour is a little wasted potential and fizzles out with no real purpose.

60%PC

Pros:

+ cute story, beautiful ending
+ simple and satisfying combat

I loved the game at first, but then I started to get pissed more and more by all the cons:

- a lot of mechanics are not explained at all, you have to use guides (and the deeper you go, the more you realize how massive of an iceberg the game is – but it only ever shows you the tip)

- random encounters, ambushes, sometimes there's too much of it

- you don't control how much time you will spend in the game, checkpoints do, and sometimes it can be a whole hour before you see another checkpoint (and sometimes you see several of them almost next to each other, weird)

- almost the whole game is just a set of corridors where you simply run from entrance to exit into another area, there's not much in terms of exploration, and visiting previous locations becomes available only at the end of the game

- built-in cheats that a lot of people use and then say that the game is short and easy, bragging about how they killed a boss with only a few shots, creating a deceptive image of the game

- it is only easy in the beginning; if you run through the mentioned corridors normally, without skips and cheats (and not running back and forth for extra EXP), you end up with a party that can hardly beat late-game bosses, so you have to go back and grind

- a lot of long animations and cutscenes that cannot be skipped, which becomes a real problem towards the end of the game where you have to do a lot of reloading and retrying (e.g. watching 5 minutes of cutscenes before attempting to beat a boss - every attempt)

- ridiculous amount of grinding (for a single-player game) that you have to do to increase stats, get certain abilities, materials and items, and to charge your characters with powerful spells before attempting bosses - all that, again, in corridors with checkpoints and random encounters

- the closer you get to the end of the story - the more bosses you encounter, and after a certain point it's just boss after boss after boss, each one significantly worse then the other

- in addition, my game was skipping every other cinematic, showing a green screen instead and ruining the flow of the story (HD remastered issue, i assume)

- inventory management becomes a nightmare towards the end of the game as you get a lot of items and no way of going through them quickly

Before beating last boss, I spent about 10 hours grinding. I got used to the process and was finally able to get past the boss. After watching culminating cinematics, suddenly, I felt like I was never angry. It was that beautiful. Sad, but peaceful, I watched credits roll.

It was beautiful indeed. Story, I mean. But all the grinding and surfing internet for tips? Ugh.

65%Nintendo Switch

The beginning was a slog, but after getting roughly halfway through I got much more invested in it

70%Nintendo Switch

This game is messy. In the beginning it is so very cryptic and the dialogue doesn't really flow all that well. Now, it does stick to the turn based combat of classic FF. I was expecting this. But as one previous reviewer said there isn't much in the way of dungeons. Really more like "hallways" and a few odd fields. Occasionally there is a maze, but not really enough in my opinion. Things I do like: the color palette is bright, the summons are cool, the weapons and weapon customization are nice, and some of the cutscenes are pretty spectacular. Things I didn't like: The antagonists are kinda lackluster and don't really stir me up. They are very even keel and don't show much emotion. The sphere grid is gimmicky and I don't hate it or anything, but if given the choice between just auto-experience and stat boosts automatically and dealing with a sphere grid I will take the auto stats every day. The grid is just too time consuming. I also like the characters well enough but the story is so jumbled I found myself less attached than if the story just flowed or they showed more emotion. That's all. It's not a bad game, its just not great in my opinion. In the middle. 6/10 feels kinda insulting since some of the ideas are quite clever so I'll give it a 7/10.

90%PlayStation 2

Had a great time with the story and combat. A couple of real difficult challenges, but mostly easy to breeze through. Recommended by a coworker of mine. Lots of postgame, which I tried to tackle but lost interest after a while.

75%PlayStation 2

My relationship with this game is like a roller coaster.
It's so linear, I thought little of it for years after my first run. In 2022, I replayed it and fell in love with it. It's great.
Up until the last dungeon. The final story area expects you to have done lots of the endgame content, which is really NOT good. Especially in the remaster, because some of the ultimate weapons are gatekept behind superbosses if you didn't get them on your first time in the area. So Yuna's weapon is super helpful for the endgame but is locked behind a random asshole who's tougher than the actual final boss.

90%PlayStation 2

Steam deck