Final Fantasy X full impressions

[07.22.01] » A spoiler-free report on the latest in Square's flagship series.

   The first thing that's clear upon playing the latest Final Fantasy is that the ninth installment wasn't a return to form as much as it was a wave goodbye to the medieval style. Now, with X, Square plunges even further into the convention-defying gameplay and sleek futuristic look that it began in Final Fantasy VIII. Any idea that the game would take place in a more traditional setting is shattered by the very opening shot, in which a throng of fans crowd underneath a twirling neon billboard, hoping to catch a glimpse of Blitzball megastar Tidus.

   From there it only goes on further and further into alien territory for the series, yet integrates the strange ideas into its world with beautifully rendered CG. The FMV has never been better, whether it's the opening sequence, Yuna's rod twirling, or any of the other big set pieces. The big difference is that in here, the real-time graphics can hold their own with the prerendered bits. Even when it's difficult to understand the dialogue, facial expressions such as Tidus' wry uplifted eyebrow or Kimahri's disapproving look can convey a lot of information.

   The 3D world is another big change from the prerendered backgrounds found in the PSone games. Despite their polygonal nature, the new environments are just as colorful and breathtaking as the best of the PSone backgrounds. Though the camera angles are predetermined rather than controlled by the player, they're always placed in sensible and unobtrusive positions. In fact, it was a while before we even realized we couldn't rotate the camera--we just never felt the need.

   Loading times are as much of a non-issue in general as they were in the previous games; battles take only five seconds to load even without the benefit of the PS2's HDD. The transitions from realtime cutscenes to CG are near instantaneous, allowing Square to drop small dabs of FMV into a scene in order to highlight a particular shot. Voices, too, load without any difficulty on the PS2's part, and all stream very efficiently from the disc.

   That's a good thing, because Final Fantasy X has more voice than ever before seen in an RPG. The only non-spoken segments of the game are non-story-related conversations with minor, random NPCs--every word that the main characters utter is given voice. This turns out to be something of a curse for importers: where previous storylines were possible to muddle through with extensive use of dictionaries, Final Fantasy X's dialogue passes by before you'll even have time to discern the radical in the first kanji. (For help with this, see John Townsend and Nathan Mallory's unofficial Final Fantasy X translation.)

   Presentation aside, Final Fantasy X's battle system is one of the deepest and most intriguing the series has yet seen. The previously seen Sphere Board turns out to be massive--a glimpse seen in the tutorial is still only a fraction of the full board. All party members are traveling on the same board, and all spaces on the board are eventually connected, meaning it's technically possible for any party member to learn any ability. In practical terms, this is prevented at least initially by the necessity of Sphere Locks to bypass certain areas. Characters without the requisite Sphere Lock are limited to their own portion of the board, which is all right since that "small" area is enough to keep them busy for some time.

   Moving on the board requires S-Levels, which means you'll have to choose carefully which path you want. Again, though all paths are eventually connected, you'll only be able to do one at a time unless you want to spend your S-Levels on backtracking rather than moving ahead. Some of the best abilities lie at lengthy dead ends on the board, meaning that to acquire them you'll have to expend twice as many Sphere Levels as you would if you were simply to move on to a different area.

   Only characters who fight in battle gain the AP necessary to raise their Sphere Levels, but in a new twist, more than three characters can participate per encounter. At any time during the fight, pressing L1 will allow the current party member to switch out with a character on the sidelines, and it doesn't even cost the turn. Choosing when to switch characters and who to take out of battle allows for new strategies, especially against bosses. Another new, though minor, addition is the Trigger Commands in special boss battles which allow characters to perform special actions such as executing a pincer attack or attempting to reason with the enemy.

   Battles aren't the only attraction, of course. Final Fantasy games have featured interesting minigames for some time now, and Blitzball is a sound entry in this tradition. Best described as a kind of underwater zero-gravity version of soccer, it's a complex diversion that could probably pass for a good game in its own right. Each team has five members, and the object is simply to get the ball into the other team's goal. Any and all motions executed by a player, from swimming around the sphere to passing and shooting, will drain a player's HP. The lower the player's HP gets, the more difficult it is to successfully execute manuvers without having the ball intercepted by the opposite team. Players regain HP when not in active use, so it's important to keep the ball moving between players and not let one teammate shoulder all the work. Other things to consider are the relative strength and defense statistics of each player, which give you an idea of what position he or she ought to be playing.

   Final Fantasy X is very good, but it's not perfect. Although the battle system is phenomenal, it's used rarely around the beginning; around 8 or 9 hours into the game we had probably still fought fewer than 100 battles. This is partially due to an abnormally low encounter rate, but it's also a symptom of the game's greater flaw. Ever since VII, the series' sillier detractors have been saying that the games have turned into something you watch rather than play. While this was a gross misstatement in the PSone trilogy, it's uncomfortably close to the truth in X. The game may open up later, but in at least the large chunks of the game we've played, it's the most linear Final Fantasy game ever made. Even the automap screen in the corner always contains a red triangle marking exactly where the player needs to be--good for importers, but not so good for those looking for more exploration and sidequests. This same sort of thing has happened before, most notably with Final Fantasy VII's early Midgar portions, so it's possible that the game proper is much more explorable.

   Still, the game's astonishing visuals and deep gameplay do take it a long way. With so much voice in the game, Square has quite a hurdle to overcome for the American version due in Spring 2002. No matter what, though, the underlying game is one that series fans can be proud to call their own.