omoi
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| Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:08 am Final Fantasy X |
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A few people sit around a campfire. One of the people around this campfire asks you, the viewer, to listen to his story of how he got to that campfire and where he will go afterward. You are intrigued by his request and you press the start button to enter the world of Final Fantasy X.
For any and all who have played a Final Fantasy game, this part of the series does not disappoint.
First, there is the nostalgic element; many things appear in this game which are common to the series as a whole. The awkward interaction between a guy and a girl who - usually due to a social structure - can’t be together although they like each other. The classic jokester and the more serious person in the group who has some major thing to hide.
There are also the job classes. For those of you who are familiar with the job classes of Final Fantasy V or Final Fantasy Tactics, these come into play throughout the game, although the structure is different (I will talk about that later).
Chocobo quests and small mini games abound in this game. Catching butterflies, playing a ball game underwater and a chocobo race are only the tip of the iceberg for fun things to do in this game.
Of course there is the classic “Some major evil is taking over the world and the evil is forever and a day old” scenario. If that weren’t a major theme, it wouldn’t even be an RPG ^.^.
Next would be the “new” stuff.
First, there is the matter of the Sphere Grid. Sorry, no collecting Materia (FF VII) and no Junctioning system (FF VIII) nor the equipping of random items from which you must learn all abilities (FF IX). Instead, there is a large grid containing magic, abilities, HP and MP for you to move around. This allows you to very uniquely shape each and every character in the game to your liking or to make all of your characters the same (seeing Yuna, a magic character, hitting for all 9’s with a thin rod is funny). As you fight within the game (and open the classic treasure boxes scattered around the world and full of assorted goodies), you accumulate “spheres”. These spheres give you access to the power-ups (more HP, more MP, abilities, magic and the like) you need in order to make your character the lean, mean, blast-that-super-hard-boss-right-out-of-the-freakin-water machine that you dream of from the moment you start the game.
Although the game does have the classic party of 5-7 people, this game is the first in the Final Fantasy series to allow you to change part members within a battle sequence! Speaking of that…
The battle system is similar. Menus galore. The menus aren’t hard to navigate at all, and the game is wonderful about telling you where things are at the beginning of the game until you get more comfortable with the way things work. If you miss anything, there is a tutorial menu that will tell you anything you need to relarn. For those who played FF VII – IX, there are even limit breaks. Of course, they are all very creative. Many of the characters have more than one that they do.
Also new to the game is a new language known as Al Bhed. There are the usual factions of people in the game, but this is the first time I recollect having seen them divided by language. It’s an interesting feature. Play the game to find out all the goodies revolving around this language. If you learn enough Al Bhed during the course of the game, your character will even speak some!
The last new thing I will mention for this article will be the characters. Seven people charged with the destiny of the world.
- Tidus
- Lulu
- Wakka
- Auron
- Kimahri
- Yuna
- Rikku
The character classes that make cameos in this game can be found in FF X (from FF V) as the following:
- thief
- samurai
- ninja
- chemist
- white mage
- black mage
- warrior
- summoner
This isn’t a complete list; what fun would THAT be?
As to the character development in the game, it is, in this editor’s opinion, superb; the characters go through many changes and have to come to grips with the world, what the believe about it, and who they are in it. The process is amazing to watch and each character is full of surprises – some more than others. I will leave it to you to figure out what those surprises are.
All in all, the game is a great deal of fun and full of enough things to keep you going for 90 + hours of game time easily if you do it right ^.^
I would give the game a 5/5 or 10/10 or 100/100 every time without even asking.
A final note for all FF fans: yes, they do have an airship and yes you do get to ride it. |
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