Final Fantasy X-2 Review
I am fundamentally pleased that I did not pay money for this game. Sure, it was better than its advertising ploys made it sound, but it still stank on ice.
When I think 'Final Fantasy' my mind usually brings up memories of the gorgeous soundtrack of FF6, or the brilliant story of FFT (supposing you got a japanese version and played it sans crappy translation - the US translation was just plain awful), or maybe the ground-breaking visuals of FF8. I mean, almost every Final Fantasy game has something really distinct and amazing about it, right? Well, the only thing distinct amazing about X-2 is how much you want to throttle every character in it. I'm serious - Yuna makes me want to hunt down proto-feminists everywhere, Rikku makes me hate all blonde women by mere association, and Paine's name is perfectly descriptive of what she is.
So, let's talk gameplay. This is the highlight of the game. If you like inane mini-games that have nothing to do with the main plot, hoo boy will you enjoy X-2's gameplay. If you like buying an RPG to play, ya know, an RPG, save your $50. FFX-2's gameplay is a digression within a digression. Even the plain RPG side of the game was screwed up by SquareEnix. First off, they took the sphere system of FFX, easily the most interesting new system that Square's slapped into one of its FFs, and shot said system in the foot by making it dependant on equipment. The 'garment sphere' system, as it is now called, is terrible. The very name makes it a dress-up game with whacky RPG consequences. As per the old sphere system, levels gain you sphere points, blah blah blah - just that what grids are available are based upon the current 'garment.' Blow that! I don't want to waste money on inane, otherwise useless dresses for access to parts of the grid. Next, we look at combat. Combat is everything bad about Final Fantasy, and RPG combat in general, magnified ten times. It's long, boring, and largely is not worth its paltry rewards of EXP and GP, which unfortunately are intricately necessary to not lose. Sucks. Unfortunately, combat is common. They make seemingly no effort to stop the incessant pain of combat gnawing at the skull of whatever unfortunate decides to play the game.
Is it replayable? Yeah, I guess. If you liked the game in the first place, very much so - if anything, there's a ton of stuff to do, and coincidentally a ton of stuff to miss. Replaying the game appears to have been the major game design concern, which I find insulting. Replayability should not be a design criterion before the design process is started for an RPG. It is fundamentally illogical. I'd rather they'd spent time on cleaning up logical fallacies and making a decent story than putting in some incentives to play more of the dumb-ass minigames.
How about graphics? Well, yes, FFX-2 looks good. Very good. So did FFX. If you're a graphics whore, you little wastrel, than this game is well worth your money. What the game lacks in gameplay, it almost makes up for in graphics eyegasms. The attention to detail, the colors, the beauty - the game is artistically impressive. It's just all around high-quality, when we talk graphics. Pity graphics do NOT make a game. If you think they do, stop playing games. In fact, stop attempting to think. Your conclusions are clearly wrong.
The music is bad. Plain and simple. Or perhaps I should say 'mediocre.' The major problem with Squaresoft music is that it's almost ALL good. They've employed Uematsu and Matsuda - two modern day musical geniuses. When a merely ho-hum soundtrack shows up in a Squaresoft game, it seems awful, just because, relative to the Squaresoft scale of music, it is. Overall, I guess you could say it's average. Not bad, not good, not really memorable, not really interesting. Hell, some games would be proud to have FFX-2's music. But after all, this is really below par for Square.
The story is a mixture of good and bad. I actually really like the premise. Wandering through a world that you've previously un-screwed is actually pretty neat, especially given that you're seeing it mid-change, so it's all fresh and new. That part is great. The whole 'oh no, a man who never really existed might exist after all and he's in trouble let's go gallivanting about the world to save him' bit is not only hackneyed, cliche, and just plain shitty, but it's also bloody boring. What the game boiled down to, plot-wise, was three girls wandering around shouting "rah rah, we are women, hear use roar! And sing crappy pop songs!" This is done, of course, by three women in some of the world's most exploitative costumes possible. If you have not seen the screenshots, then let me inform you that Yuna wears short-shorts and has a bust size which is at least a D, Rikku parades about in a thong, and Paine's a dominatrix not-so-in-secret. Basically, there could be little more sexual exploitation in the game unless it were a porn game. This completely invalidates the entire intellectual point of the game, and ultimately makes it feel like you're playing a parody or a farce, not a bloody video game. I fundamentally don't care about the intellectual point - I'm a man, and thus cannot be a feminist in the fundamental sense. I just hate self-destructing processes. I didn't play the game to be slapped in the face for playing the damned game.
Final Scores:
Replayability - 6/10
Gameplay - 4/10
Characters and Story - 2/10
Graphics - 10/10
Sound and Music - 4/10
Overall - 3/10