Finally, the Final Fantasy has come back to the Playstation 2. This is the first game designed for Playstation 2. It was released way back in December. “But this is September! What have you been doing since?” I was being patient. I got my Playstation 2 in July and got it along with. After little less than two months and 62 hours of playing time, I did what only 500,000 people have done: beat Final Fantasy X. Now as Final Fantasy editorialist, I feel obligated to write a review so here it is!

            Most people tend to observe the graphics before making a decision that is really shallow in my opinion. Some games are great if you look past the graphics. This is not a problem as Final Fantasy sports one of the best graphics on Playstation 2. The people are very real. They are considered life size. They have facial expressions that respond. The environments look very real as you don't travel in an overhead world as you travel in paths. The FMVs every once in a while, but most of them are short and they just improve the graphics a notch. There are many different environments. There is a huge plain that is bigger than Kansas and Nebraska together “Come on people, use your imaginations!” There is an desert about the size of the Gobi. There is an ice land. These lands are very real.

            The game play is totally different not only with the battle system but also with leveling up and the weapon and armor system. Using what they call a sphere grid does the leveling up. This huge grid is the place to increase your stats. After battle, you will receive AP along with gil. When your AP reaches to a certain point, you get one sphere level. Each person has a location on the grid. Using sphere levels, you can move along the grid. Then there are nodes. Each node is different. Some has strength +1, some has agility +2, and some has magic defense +4 depending on where you are. Some have empty so you can fill it in with a different sphere. After battle you will usually receive spheres not levels. Spheres are required for you to “learn” the different nodes. So when you are adjacent to a strength +1 node, you will need to use a power sphere to “learn” it. Same thing with abilities, magic, and so forth. There are also spheres that create node to a specific attribute, others allow you to move around the sphere grid like teleport or move to where a friend is, other allows you to learn something that another person has learned no matter where they are on the grid. That is the essence of leveling up. I have seen guides for people who don’t use the sphere grid so some people go through without using the grid. Now the weapons, they have a less value now. In Final Fantasy, generally weapons are very important mainly because they increase your power along with armor. In different final fantasies, they had different values. A good weapon in Final Fantasy 7 would have a lot of material slots. A good weapon in Final Fantasy 9 would have an unusual ability or a good ability. Now in Final Fantasy 10, the weapons are not that important. They don’t change any attribute. The difference between weapons is the ability they have. Some weapons have like firestrike, strength 10%, Mp 20%, and Piercing. Fire strike along with water, lightening, and ice are attributes equipped with the weapon that gives the weapon attribute of that element to do more damage to an opposite element. The strength increases by a number of percent along with MP and so many others. So many times you will have various of weapons to keep to switch during battle and stuff. You can also customize adding attribute to a weapon by using items. That is the same with armor with armoristic characteristics such as fire-eater, which absorbs fire damage, and blind ward.

The battle system is the changing point in the game that differs that most people will recognize from the other games in the series. Again as I explain it in previous editorial, the system if TB, turn based. Everyone take turns based on his or her agility. There is a list to the right of the battle that tells you the order so you can plan ahead and anticipate the moves. All party members are allowed to be in battle at anytime. They limit three characters at a time but it is easily swapped on a character’s turn and can act that turn. For more information on the battle system, look at my previous editorial, Battle of Battles.

The story is one of the main elements involved into a game. One of the greatest Final Fantasy of all time was Final Fantasy 6 and it captivate the audience with a great cast, well developed characters, a great storyline, and one heck of a villain. It is possible that no game might be able to match what Final Fantasy did. Well at least they could try. Final Fantasy X would have no chance. The story is that Tidus was playing blitzball, water polo underwater, in Zanarkand, his town when Sin began to attack it. He was sucked up and sent 1000 years into the future. There he met Yuna, a summoner that is out to defeat sin, and her guardians, Wakka, Lulu, and Kimahri. Tidus oblige to help her on her journey in the hope of going back to his own home thousand years in the past. So he meets Auron and Rikku later in the journey. The story covers many facets of life including racism, political corruption, and conflict of beliefs. You wouldn’t know about racism but it applies, as people tend to hate the Al Bhed, which is a group of people that doesn't believe in Yevon, the supreme god and father of the religion that the people of Spira believe in. You travel to different cities and visit their temples to gain aeons to help beat sin. Your goal is to get the final aeon and defeat sin with it. So that is the basic story line.

The voices for the characters are one of the biggest changes as no final fantasy has done that before. About 75% of the time, they use voices. That includes with subtitles too luckily for us. One of the bad things about voices is that you are not really able to speed up the plot a lot. Most of the time you could just skim through the lines but now you have to stop and listen to every voice. That can get irritating. The only time they tend not to use voices is when they talk to NPC, Non-Playable Characters, and there is little NPC interaction. Most NPC tend to give you items, which makes the game too easy. The voice was not garbled and very clear. The lips were not in sync with the voice as they didn’t redo the facials. So sometimes you will see the lips moving even after they are done speaking. The voice was quite good in some scenes as some of this is a flash back. Sometimes Tidus tend to speak from a narrative point of view. He sounds more older and mature when he flashes back, and I can hear and see that. The subtitles italicize when that happens so people know that he is flashing back. The music for the game is quite good, especially Auron’s theme and certain selections. The whole score is great and there are four discs with about 60 songs so you don’t tend to hear the same thing over and over. It is not one of my favorite soundtracks, but it is definitely not the worst!

The replay value is kind of low. It takes around 50-70 hours depending on how long you tend to fight and how many different side quests you do. There are quite a few sidequests and some you will have to do in order to max your ultimate weapon. Not many of them are fun, but they are worth it in the long run. The difficulty level is very easy. I bought the guide, and I wish I haven’t now. I made it up to myself by beating the last couple bosses without the guide so I “redeemed” myself. It depends on how much you level up and how much strategy you use in applying every character in a situation. So my rating is 4 out of 5 stars. It is no Final Fantasy six but at least it is a Final Fantasy!

Hobbes Lionheart

Grab Bag
 

Hate Mail on the agenda during this time as we take a look into the emails we have received.