Video Game Reviews

April 11th, 2014
Final Fantasy X (PS2) (8/10) This game kept me busy far longer than I anticipated. Once you get to the ass-end of the story, you can do many side-quests as well as character maximization. Unfortunately, important abilities like Break Damage Limit take hours and hours to acquire the necessary materials. Luckily, this ability is standard on all ultimate weapons. Unfortunately, the ultimate weapons are sometimes even more difficult to get. The easy ones, IMO, are Yuna's, Auron's and Rikku's. Luck and chance don't play into getting those ones that much so that was my final party, though Wakka may have been my strongest character stat-wise. I got a weapon for him with Triple Overdrive on it, then added Overdrive->AP and Double AP so he was gaining like 40 sphere levels a battle. Also unfortunate that in order to get his ultimate weapon you have to play hours upon hours of Blitzball, something I'm not willing to do at this time.
     All said and done, it was a great way to waste 90 hours of my life. Capturing each monster from each area was fun. Each time you collect them all from a certain area you get a prize of some useful items as well as unlocking a decently difficult boss monster. Collecting and battling these mini-bosses kept me busy for several days and added length to the already long play time. The battle system might be my favorite in a Final Fantasy game. You have access to your entire party, you just switch in whoever you want at pretty much any time and you're going to want to because each character has different abilities and some enemies are easier to deal with with certain characters, such as flying enemies being easier for Wakka's ranged attacks to hit as well as certain blob mobs being weak against black magic, which is Lulu's speciality. Some grounded enemies are nimble and will dodge most attacks except Tidus's attacks because he is also nimble... or something. All in all, it rewards you for being versatile and gives you a reason for using each character besides the fact that only those who participate in battle get AP (basically EXP).
     The character design is hit and miss. Tidus... I like him probably more than most but his outfit and color-scheme is kinda lame. Wakka is really lame looking but his voice actor is great (Bender from Futurama, heh heh...). Kimahri is my favorite, the least human looking of them all, he's like the Beast from X-Men, all blue and furry. As far as leveling goes, Kimahri is the one jack-of-all-trades, being able to go into anyone else's path early on. Auron is pure badass: his design, his voice and his path on the sphere grid make him a pimp. He was out-damaging my entire party for the better part of this game. Yuna is pretty much the other main character of the game and the only one able to summon aeons, this game's espers. Many fan favorites appear as aeons, such as Ifrit, Shiva and Bahamut. X's ultimate summon (only obtainable after completing a lengthy side-quest) is The Magus Sisters, making their polygonal debut after they kicked my ass in FFIV (if you've read my Legacy of FFVII review you know the Sisters ended my first ever RPG playthrough of a rented copy of IV). They are really fun to control as they obliterate all but the hardest of bosses and use something near and dear to my heart: Teamwork. Rikku's the spunky teen the team doesn't trust at first and Lulu's the no-nonsense black mage with huge t-t... talent... for... okay, tits. She's got huge tits.
     My current (as of 4/11/14) ranking of Final Fantasy games puts this one at #5. I'm surprised it beat V and IX, too! (VI-VIII-VII-IV-X-IX-V-XII-III-I-II)