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I HATE FINAL FANTASY X
Final Fantasy X -- The story of how Tidus and his friends walked in a straight line for 40 hours.
Remember how annoyed you were at how much people just loved Final Fantasy VII? Oh, sure, it was a decent game, if you like games about schizophrenic losers with radiation sickness, games that are really easy, or games with lots of XTREME swearing, but it led to just a bit too many people pledging their devout fixation to it, as well as leading to all new levels of animated blocks running around on pre-rendered backdrops and being called "revolutionary".
Insults to such classic greats as Final Fantasy VI abounded in those terrible days, and some freak somewhere or other actually named their newborn baby Sephiroth (the baby was pretty ugly, too), which is just sad, really, sadder than naming your kid Cloud, which just makes you sound like a hippy, or Aeris, which just makes you sound like someone who picked the weirdest name out of the "A" list in their baby names booklet. I can only wonder what will happen when little baby Sephiroth grows up and has Sephiroth Jr., who will in turn have Sephiroth III and--let's not follow that anymore, it's way too depressing, if hilarious.
However, I have recently found a new generation of eager fanboys pledging heartfelt devotion to a new generation of virtual refuse, refuse that makes Final Fantasy VII look like a literary work on the level of William Faulkner: Final Fantasy X.
Now, most people praise the Sphere Grid as a deeply in-depth character customization effort, utterly destroying the old Neolithic and Autocratic form of character enhancement known as "leveling". However, they fail to realize that the White Mage still learns Cure, and then Cura, and then Curaga, and then Holy there at the end, just with the difference that in between these spheres are spheres that raise your HP and defense such. And hey, look, you fight battles to gain points to move from one sphere to the next! How revolutionary! Also, in the last two hours of the game, you may manage to get a Key Sphere and be able to follow say the Black Mage's legendary path with the White Mage character, where you learn Fire, and then Fira, and then Firaga, and then Flare there at the end. Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy Tactics may have had you earn skills by earning ability points, but you got to choose what ability list you were working on at any time for any character in Final Fantasy V, and in Final Fantasy Tactics you even go to save up the JP and buy specific abilities in the job's list! It's far superior to hoping you can get a Key Sphere in a random enemy drop. Eventually the game just gives them to you in treasure chests and boss battles, but it's in the last five to ten hours of the game, which means if you are a chronic leveler like me you've probably been stuck at the end of everyone's ability path for the last five hours of play time, or even longer.
I also have a large complaint about the overall game design's flow and progress: you start the game. After some ludicrously long cutscenes, some involving inane voice acting with some Reggae reject (he's named Wakka, yes, Wakka), you begin the game proper with your party, all ready to start out on an epic quest. And you walk north, and walk north, and walk north some more, on a three-feet-wide path. The amount of exploration in this game is non-existent: you walk north and fight enemies and listen to bad voice acting and watch far fewer neato FMV scenes than were in the last fanboy favorite, Final Fantasy VII, and that is it, until you get to the end of the path after forty hours and acquire an airship and can go and revisit all those three foot wide and twenty mile long areas you walked through. That is all you do. This game rivals some NES ones for linearity and lack of freedom. Here I was, having played Final Fantasy IX, which allowed so much freedom in exploration that you could visit most of the gaming world about twenty hours before you were supposed to, even permanently screw the game up by getting a flying chocobo too early and going to the western continent and glitching the game ahead something like ten hours, and I’m back to something that predates the first Final Fantasy, walking in a straight line from one area to the next to the next to the next. The first Final Fantasy, you could beat Lich and then you could basically go and beat Tiamat if you put enough work into it, and every Final Fantasy since has had at least a large bit of exploration involved, even if only in finding the next town, with large expansive dungeons that were often mazelike. It's pretty bad when some of the worst RPGs ever made have more freedom than your brand-new revolutionary PS2 million-copy-selling mega game, like say, the original Dragon Warrior game on the NES, one of the most revolting experiences in the history of gaming, where you could go pretty much go anywhere but the final dungeon from the start. It is more linear than Final Fantasy IV, a first-generation SNES game, which is the most linear of the all the games in the series thus far; it is a shackling, depressing experience that I hope is never repeated.
Perhaps you don't walk north the entire time, I will say that you walk forward, on your three-feet-wide path, and watch the pretty scenery that you can't interact with, and fight redundant battles that are a glorified version of "rock, paper, scissors". Seriously, the biggest strategy in the game is simply to pick the correct person to hit a specific enemy, due to the fact that you can cycle in any character at any time. There's no level grinding required by this game, so if you meet a flying enemy, you cycle in Wakka and hit it and it dies with one hit, if you meet an agile enemy you cycle in Tidus and hit it and it dies in one hit, if you meet an armored enemy you cycle in Auron and hit it and it dies in one hit. The same thing goes for all the other characters except Kimahri, who is worthless, so you won't ever be using him.
The boss battles usually require some strategy, which usually involves cycling in the right characters at the right time until about the last three boss battles when they manage to actually get good and involve crazy stuff like moving your characters around from platform to platform and are actually interesting, OR you can have Yuna summon a monster and just wail on the boss until he dies. It's your choice. I usually picked the second, since Bahamut and Yojimbo and Anima and The Magus Sister usually cause 56793 damage or thereabouts when you summon them, as if breaking the 9999 damage barrier was a paramount achievement.
I will admit that when you get to the last ten hours of the game, there are a few sidequests to participate in, such as dodging 200 lightning strikes in a row to get Lulu's final weapon or guiding a drunken chocobo north on a ten foot wide path between balloons, not to mention the game-long sport of Blitzball, which is like soccer except even more boring, running on RPG mechanics and menu choices instead of being an action segment. If these activities appeal to you, I appeal to you to commit suicide, and then get on with your life.
I mean, what's next, a Final Fantasy game that's an MMORPG, one of the most redundant and pointless exercises known to man? Oh, wait...
I will also defy all those elitists who say that whether or not a story is good is a matter of opinion, and say this: the story is terrible. A cast of worthless, static characters go on a quest that involves, literally, elemental temples. I kid you not. And bad voice acting, as I've said many a time before. They go in a straight line with one or two derivations when the princess gets kidnapped and needs some saving (okay, okay, she's the High Summoner's daughter, but it's basically the same concept), although technically it's still a straight line since you don’t backtrack or anything, and then they find out that *gasp* the people you thought were good guys are actually evil and corrupt and autocratic and etc. The enemy in this game ends up being the Church and the main villain Seymour, one of the clergymen, a guy with a funny blue hair-cut and a god complex, a concept that got staid about the time of Dragon Quest V, or maybe it was Breath of Fire II, or III. Hmm, maybe Final Fantasy Tactics or Xenogears, no wait...
Most people deride Final Fantasy X-2 simply because of the girly fanservice, but this game's sequel has a lot more revolutionary qualities than this attempt at making a video mess, since the character customization is completely open and the game is non-linear with multiple endings. Sure, it has an even more idiotic story and voice acting that is just as bad, and you still pretty much walk in a straight line, but as a game it is far superior, since you choose to walk a straight line in several different directions. Even if it brought back the dreaded experience points and apparently evil ATB bar of the older games, it's still a far superior piece of work, which isn't saying much, of course.
The only joy I received from playing this game was seeing the Final Fantasy VII fanboys finally experiencing the same thing I was subject to: a slew of new ten year olds playing their first Final Fantasy and deriding all past efforts at the RPG genre as sub-par. Oh, the joy I feel when a Final Fantasy X fan sets a Final Fantasy VII fan's teeth grinding with callous remarks about how "the graphics are so much better", as they were wont to say so long ago, asserting that therefore it is a superior work. A taste of their own medicine, proof there is actually some justice in the world. And the hope that a few years down the line some annoying ten year olds will be playing Final Fantasy XIV and forcing the Final Fantasy X fanboys to grind THEIR teeth. It's poetry in motion, my friends. Enjoy it, as I will.
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