Final Fantasy X (2001)

This is where Final Fantasy died.

Final Fantasy X centers around the exploits of seventeen year old Tidus. A popular young man and the best Blitzball (an underwater cross between football and soccer) player in his home city of Zanarkand. All is well until the city is attacked by a colossal monster known as Sin. This terrible creature ravages Zanarkand reducing the entire city to rubble in minutes. Fighting alongside his mentor Auron, Tidus does his best to fight off the monsters Sin unleashed but to no avail. After getting too close to the beast, Tidus finds that he has been transported one-thousand years into the future and the land he inhabits is not Zanarkand, but the land of Spira. The scars of battle fresh on his body, and baffling questions fresh in his mind. What is Sin? What is it’s purpose?  How has Tidus traversed time and why?  Alone and confused, Tidus begins his journey to find a way back home. But will he have a home to return to?

Tidus and Yuna

At its core we have what could have been a great adventure and coming of age story. However, the presentation suffers due to three major factors: a poor plot, bad pacing, and a cast of characters that can best be described as cringe-worthy. These three missteps create scenarios so fantastical that at times it is difficult to give the game the kind of seriousness the drama is so desperate to command. There are a few examples of what I mean. When Tidus meets Yuna, he barges into the Cloister of Trials because according to the onlookers Yuna has been in there for days and they fear she might have died. Since no one sees any need to check on her - not even her guardians - Tidus exercises his heroism and runs off to save her. Yuna is fine but this doesn't stop the characters from criticizing Tidus for disturbing their ritual, casually ignoring the fact that not only did he have good intentions but he had their best interests in mind.

Not long after that we see Sin wipe an island off the map but because there is a Blitzball championship in Luca, that somehow takes precedence. The fact that one of your teammates wants to delay Yuna's pilgrimage i.e. that thing that will save the world, to play sports removes all sense of urgency the game is trying so desperately to convey. In addition to amateur writing that makes the tenth outing of the Final Fantasy series seem like an experiment gone awry, the game also has numerous issues with pacing that stem from this same brand of amateur writing and more than a few plot contrivances to boot.

When the cast gets to the Mi'hen Highroad they stumble upon a military operation where the Crusaders are gearing up for an assault against Sin under the supervision of Maester Kinoc, one of the most powerful officials in the world. Being a maester, Kinoc has the power to stop the operation at any-time but not only does he not stop the operation, he openly admits to our heroes that he knows the operation will be a disaster. One could argue that these developments are being used to show that Kinoc can't be trusted, but one must wonder how does this matter to the overall narrative and why. This further falls apart when we look at the fact that Maester Kinoc is a minor character while Maester Seymour is one of the primary antagonists. Yet this event is used to portray Kinoc's villainous nature when he only has a small handful of scenes in the game and outside of this operation he's mostly window dressing in those. What this all means is that an entire three-to-four hour section of the game wasn't even needed. The game is filled with occurrences like this where events and even elements of the narrative drag simply to make the game longer than it needs to be.

Seymour Guado, President of the East Spira Kefka Fanclub

True, there is nothing wrong with a long RPG but the crux of the matter is that the narrative structure has to warrant the gameplay which is being used to carry it and that isn't the case here. A prime example is when Seymour asks Yuna to marry him. Rather than give Seymour her answer right away, she agrees to meet with him at Macalania temple and tell him there. From here we have five to six hours of fighting monsters, level grinding, and characters not talking about much of anything just so the game can give you a reason to travel to Macalania so Yuna can give Seymour a yes or no answer, when the two of them were just in Guadosalam together. RPGs are known to have contrived reasons to go from point A to point B just as they are known to have good reasons to get you to go from point A to point B. Then you have RPGs like Final Fantasy X where most of the events that occur are just padding.

Off to rescue Yuna a third time.

The many issues with Final Fantasy X's plot is due in part to the fact that the creators couldn't decide if it wants to be story driven or character driven and so abandons commitment to just one, opting to try and do both and failing in the attempt. The plot is largely seen from the standpoint of a main character who spends the majority of the game working out his daddy issues. Even when the stakes are raised and Tidus becomes aware of Spira's fate, the danger of Sin, and Yuna's unfortunate predicament, one never gets the sense that Tidus really understands just how dire their situation is especially when 30+ hours in the game he's still talking about how much he hates his father Jecht.

While it is true that previous protagonists (Cloud, Final Fantasy VII, Squall, Final Fantasy VIII) were dark and brooding, they also had hidden depths and a number of complex issues that they were dealing with which justified their emotional and mental condition and the decisions which stemmed from them. Tidus on the other hand is truly a one note character who is defined entirely by how much he hates his dad. This comparison is not made to allege one character is better than another, but to illustrate the importance of character depth which Tidus does not have. If Tidus had a perfectly rational excuse to hate his father and if we as gamers are fellow-recipients of whatever trauma Tidus claims to have endured then he would be more authentic as a character. However, from what we've seen of Jecht it's clear that while he was by no means the best father, he certainly wasn't the monster Tidus makes him out to be. The game even shows this when our heroes find video diaries of Jecht and in most of them he's thinking about Tidus and how he wants to return home to his family. Even when other characters like Yuna talk about how kind Jecht is, Tidus refuses to believe it - not because Jecht was somehow not kind - but because Tidus needs to hate his father. This becomes even more incredulous when a plot-unraveling secret is revealed after the halfway point. Of course the other issue with Final Fantasy X is our heroine Yuna.

Setting women back since 2001.

Despite the fact that the game came out in 2001, Yuna is a throwback to the antiquated idea of what makes an ideal woman: she's docile, she does what other people tell her to do, she is complacent, in essence she plays into Japan's obsession with the nadeshiko woman. In addition to the numerous levels on which this is offensive to women, Yuna's character detracts from the integrity of the plot due in large part to how these traits lead her to make decisions that betray the most basic common sense.

Yuna gets kidnapped. A lot - despite the fact that her Aeons make her quite possibly your most powerful party member. From the standpoint of the plot, Yuna is canonically the strongest character in the game because only a summoner can defeat Sin. Yet Yuna gets kidnapped by the Al Bhed not even an hour after the gang gets to Luca and she literally waited on her guardians to come to her rescue because despite the fact she had two powerful Aeons the thought to use either of them to escape on her own never even came to her. Yuna apologists might say "Well she didn't want to hurt anyone because she's a pacifist." Well that argument doesn't hold water because given the fact that Yuna's guardians had no problems killing Al Bhed left and right in order to save her, Yuna's refusal to save herself actually put more people in danger. And for arguments sake, suppose the gang never found out about Yuna's kidnapping until after the perpetrators have fled Luca. In essence Yuna wouldn't be able to complete her pilgrimage, therefore she wouldn't be able to defeat Sin, thus Spira would fall into further destruction so you see, any argument that anyone can make in defense of Yuna's character actually ends up compromising either the plot or Yuna herself, because the character is illogical by design.

This is how Yuna saves the world.

When Yuna finds out that Seymour murdered his own father to usurp his position she tries to convince him to turn himself in and face the justice of the high court. She does this by agreeing to his marriage proposal. Bear in mind Seymour never agrees to turn himself in just because Yuna marries him. However, she believes she can convince him to expose his darkest secret, surrender his political and religious power, and face a very likely execution, despite the fact that Seymour has not given any indication that he'd go through with it. The only thing that can be said in Yuna's defense is that she isn't even the worst part of the game. That's what the rest of the cast is here for.

Our heroes. God help us.

Apart from Tidus and Yuna, Final Fantasy X's motley crew consists of Kimahri our resident wookie. Lulu whose most memorable trait is the size of her bust, and also later marrying Wakka our lovable racist.

Not going anywhere for awhile? Grab a Blitzball.

While Final Fantasy is no stranger to exploiting ethnic and religious stereotypes, and racial and gender inequality, to Final Fantasy X's credit it does aim to keep racism within its own universe as the target of Wakka's prejudice is the Al Bhed. However, the type of mindset Wakka has isn't any less offensive nor does the fact that he's a fictional character in any way, shape, or form lessen the ugliness of his character traits. I'm not sure if Squaresoft was trying to be progressive with this character but it only served to make the cast even more unbearable than they already were. Wakka hates the Al Bhed because his brother Chappu used a gun which is an Al Bhed weapon at the time he was killed by Sin. Keep in mind that if Chappu used a sword his corpse wouldn't have been anymore recognizable anyway, but Wakka also seems to think that the Al Bhed are evil because they don't follow the teachings of Yu Yevon.

There could be a moral lesson here i.e. don't hate people just because they're different from you but the game continually makes the Al Bhed the punching bags of Final Fantasy X. While the game could have used this as a way to promote a message of peace and understanding among all people and all religions, it almost goes out of its way to show that if a minority group doesn't run with the pack they get eaten. Being a Japanese RPG this may have actually been what the creators were trying to argue, but even that does not excuse the type of character Wakka is. Wakka actually makes a joke when the Al Bhed lose their city and comments that the explosions look like fireworks. Never mind the fact that the few surviving Al Bhed helped him and his friends escape, and the Al Bhed were also doing a better job of protecting Yuna than her guardians, but when the Al Bhed are on the receiving end of a veritable genocide, Wakka still has time to joke about it. This joke was made right in front of the teams token Al Bhed Rikku, who mostly serves up an unsettling amount of the games fanservice.

I'm not even going there.

Rikku, much like Lulu is one of our sexualized female party members. That's par for the course with most JRPGs but the thing is Rikku is only 15. And actually, even sexualizing a 15-year-old is not off limits for some JRPGs and clearly Final Fantasy X doesn't have any hang-ups about it either. When she's not wearing skin tight costumes that show off her, personality, she doesn't really do much else but serve as a connection to Yuna's half-Al Bhed heritage. Yuna and Rikku are cousins as Yuna's Al Bhed mother was Rikku's aunt. This could have provided some interesting narrative elements because Yuna's father was a follower of Yu Yevon, and Yu Yevon forbids marriage to Al Bhed. However, the game doesn't do anything with the familial relationship between Rikku and Yuna because it's too busy placing Yuna in scenarios to get kidnapped while Rikku dishes out her best valley girl impression.

Auron and his jug of Whoop Ass

The only bright spot in Final Fantasy X's cast is Auron who seems to be the only member of the team who has his priorities in order. Sin poses a global threat so Auron feels destroying it should be the primary objective. It's a shame that despite how cool Auron is I have to give him points simply for exercising the common sense the rest of the team doesn't seem to have. Auron's seriousness and even his intellect almost makes him feel completely out of place with the rest of the cast. There is a plot specific reason why Auron is an outsider true, but even without that narrative element Auron seems so different because he's the only one who seems to know how to react to what's going on around him.

The music is acceptable for the type of game that it is but this is far from Nobuo Uematsu's best work. To its credit the boss themes do provide a sense of tension and urgency while Seymour's themes do a good job at driving home the fact that he can't be trusted, although that's something the average gamer would be able to see immediately.

You'll need most of the team for this one.

Final Fantasy X abandons the ATB system and returns to turn based battles with the added benefit of being able to swap your characters on the fly. While this is fairly common today, back in 2001 you wouldn't see this feature outside of the Tales of... series. Certain characters are skilled against certain monster types and recognizing that is the key to winning most battles in the early going. For example, Tidus is the best character to use against monsters that have high agility and speed stats, but he's not good against monsters that have heavy armor. For those types you'd need Auron, but while he can deal heavy damage to those enemies, he isn't the best party member to use against flans that must instead be killed via Lulu's black magic. So there's a little bit of strategy that goes into random encounters and boss fights. Of course you can also negate that depending on how you traverse the sphere grid. For example, by the last ten or so hours of the game I had leveled Tidus and Auron to the point where they bodied enemies and even most bosses in one-hit, regardless of type.

Sphere Grid

Leveling is done via the sphere grid system whereby characters use points acquired through battle to move about the grid. Said character will come across nodes that have various skills and status upgrades which can be unlocked if you have the appropriate sphere. While spheres are hard to come by early on, about twenty hours in you'll typically have more than enough. The game does lose just a few points here though, because with the exception of Yuna's summons, every character can learn every technique in the game, thus eliminating any need to switch characters in battles which would normally require strategy. In my playthrough, not only did I unlock the appropriate spheres to have Tidus use Lulu's black magic, but he was every bit as competent in using them as she was.

Bahamut

The summons (Aeons) in Final Fantasy X were truly at their peak because to the games credit, no other title in the series has driven home how effective these powerhouses are. Unlike in earlier titles where summons just showed up and used an attack, or in later titles where they were more or less useless, in Final Fantasy X the Aeons are party members in their own right. Sure in Final Fantasy VIII they learned support skills, but here they actually acquire attack spells, status buffs, support spells, and new attacks. When Yuna summons an Aeon all the party members clear out and the Aeon in question takes over. If the Aeon dies it can always be revived and over the course of the game Yuna acquires a wide variety thereof from classics such as Shiva and Ifrit to new faces like Yojimbo and Anima. While the Aeons aren't impressive early on, you can make them stronger over-time. The Aeons are game changers and once you unlock the means to remove the damage cap it'll be bad news for your enemies when they hit the field.

The sun sets on what Final Fantasy once was.

Final Fantasy X is a game encased in hype and fanfare. Having played every game in the series I'm more than convinced that the only reason this game has been so well-received is because many gamers today just got started with the series during the PS2 era. Add on the fact that casual market believes graphics make a game good and it's easy to see why some think this is a good game. The gameplay makes Final Fantasy X a passable RPG true, but the characters, story, and one particular plot twist which actually makes the games own narrative structure fall apart proves that this game is an absolute disgrace to the Final Fantasy series. Some blame Squaresoft's merger with Enix or Final Fantasy XIII for the downturn of the series but I can assure you that it was Final Fantasy X that put a bullet in this franchise a long time ago. And the reality is that an HD remake doesn't turn a crime scene into a work of art.