I’ve been looking forward to this since I started this journey. If you ask a fan to rank the games of this series, it will end up near the top more often than not. Every Final Fantasy fan has a favorite. I think may have just found mine.

I somehow remained spoiler free going into this one. I have perfected the art of pulling my mind’s emergency brake, stopping my reading process mid-sentence at the slightest whiff of spoilers. I’ve yanked out earbuds, gotten killed in PvP while tabbing out to stop youtube videos, and kept my distance from podcasts that I very much wanted to listen to. All in the name of experiencing this story unspoiled. I’m very glad I did, because this game hit me hard.

I’ve learned, as I play through all these old Square Enix games, that I am a huge fan of Yoshinori Kitase. He directed Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII and X, as well as Chrono Trigger. He’s also the producer for the FFXIII and FFVII Remake trilogies. He’s been hugely influential on a lot of games I love. Looking at the differences between the games he directed and the others in the series, his particular style becomes clear—and I think I’m in love with the way this guy thinks.

From what I’ve heard, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original series director, had a bit of a friendly rivalry with Yoshinori Kitase. This seems to have started in Final Fantasy V, in which Sakaguchi and Kitase would try to one-up each other with scenes they directed. I may not have loved the overall story of FFV, but it’s clear that a ton of work went into scene direction.

There is a clear divide in the style of Final Fantasy beginning with Final Fantasy VI. That’s when Kitase started co-directing. He was then the exclusive director on VII, VIII, and X. That’s his era.

One thing I love about Kitase’s style is his choice of prioritizing the emotional and thematic elements of fiction over the detailed and logical elements. It’s a very similar approach to Yoko Taro, whose work I also love for the same reason. It’s similar to the spectrum of hard and soft magic. I’ll choose soft magic any day, and it seems Kitase would too. There are many details in his games that don’t quite line up. Characters make choices that aren’t quite logical. I don’t really care about all that. What’s important to me is how each scene fits into what the story is trying to say, and how it makes me feel.

Kitase’s games are deeply emotional, and full of contrast. They are introspective, but also have a lot to say about bonds between people—the small, subtle moments, and the big emotional peaks. His games are about life: what it means, what’s important, and why the ugliness of living is worth bearing. The games are absolutely flooded with thickly layered themes and symbolism. It feels like every work he created was a rich, earnest painting of his soul. I love it.

In the year I write this, a new turn-based game has taken the gaming world by storm—Expedition 33: Clair Obscur (which I will abbreviate as E33). It’s popular for good reason. I played Final Fantasy X in the wake of my reflection on E33. It took a huge amount of inspiration from the JRPGs of the PS1 and PS2 eras. In particular, FFVIII and FFX have been name-dropped as strong inspirations. That makes a lot of sense to me, as E33 feels like a Kitase game. While researching Final Fantasy X, I learned that the original concept was strikingly similar to the elevator pitch of E33: A mysterious epidemic kills everyone as soon as they reach the age of 17, and a party who are about to reach this age depart on a journey to uncover the mystery behind this phenomenon. These artists are absolutely on the same wavelength.

I talked about this in my FFIX review, but I’ll mention it here again, briefly. Sakaguchi (at least partially) created IX as a response to the new direction Kitase was taking. Sakaguchi wanted to return to the direction the series started with. This really hammered in my preference for Kitase’s work, because I wasn’t a huge fan of FFIX.

If Sakaguchi’s style is theatrical, Kitase’s style is cinematic. He was a natural fit for the new, 3d era. He was able to start this with VII, expand on it with VIII, and finally go all out with X.

Final Fantasy X is Yoshinori Kitase’s last, and greatest work as a director. I’m excited to see the later games in the series, but I’m sad that Kitase stopped directing after this. He got a promotion to producer and kept climbing. Now, a whole paragraph could be filled up with all of his job titles. I’m happy for his success, but I can’t help but hope for him to return as a director one day. In the meantime, I’ll have to make due with heaping praise upon his previous work and enjoying the work of modern artists inspired by his style.

The Review#↑

I fell in love with this game pretty much instantly.

I love fantasy—but when I say that, I don’t mean dwarves delving too greedily and too deep, or wood-elves who lingered in the twilight of our sun and moon, but loved best the stars. Don’t get me wrong, that stuff is cool too. I just love how fantasy opens the doors to many other kinds of influence. It can incorporate cultures from across the globe. It can introduce you to new concepts and styles. It can be downright weird, in the best way. I love fantasy for its ability to be unique and varied.

This is the most unique fantasy in the series yet.

Visuals#↑

I’ll start this section with a small disclaimer: I played the HD Remaster version of this game, with some small mods. The HD Remaster was, in general, a solid improvement over the base game. The aspect ratio was widened. Textures were far shaper and more detailed. It’s an overall great looking game. Unfortunately, it had one big flaw. Final Fantasy X characters have two models. One is used for distant shots, and is lower detail to make it easier to render wide scenes with multiple characters. The other model is much more detailed, and is used for close-ups. The HD Remaster based the new, high resolution close-up models on the low-resolution models of the original game. This made the HD Remaster models look extremely different from the originals during cutscenes. More importantly, a huge amount of subtle facial-expression detail was lost in process. Those expressions were a huge part of the storytelling of the original game, so it was a massive downside.

That’s where the mod comes in. I used Restore PS2 Tidus but Fully Refined by vyacharin. It’s a fairly new mod that attempts to maintain the resolution improvements of the new models, while staying faithful to the original designs and expressions. A huge amount of work went into this, and I’m very thankful that I played this game for the first time after this mod released.

I love how this game looks. So much care was put into the design of everything. It’s very dense and rich design. You could write another post, longer than this one, just analyzing all of the intricate character design details and symbolism. If you want that kind of analysis, I recommend the Resonant Arc play-along podcast series. They cover all that stuff (and story analysis) way better than I ever could. I watched each episode as I passed each relevant checkpoint in the game, and it greatly enhanced my enjoyment.

The character designs were done by Tetsuya Nomura, who has a legendary reputation these days. He has always had a very distinct, iconic style, which basically defined Final Fantasy during this era. I think this is some of his best work. There’s an absurd amount of thought and detail put into the designs of the party members. Not a single detail is included that isn’t an intentional thematic choice. This is especially true of Tidus and Yuna, who have so many interesting parallels and contrasting elements in their designs. The most obvious is that Tidus represents the sun, an Yuna represents the moon. If you want a deep dive into the details, I once again recommend the Resonant Arc podcast linked above.

Many Final Fantasy games take their stylistic inspirations from a combination of Japanese and European influences. Some of the PS1 era games started to shift to more modern areas, but the regional influences stayed mostly the same. Final Fantasy X takes most of its inspiration from the Pacific Islands. It’s a breath of fresh air for the series, which I very much appreciated. Apparently, Kitase heard fan requests for a “fantasy story” after VII and VIII, and chose this setting instead of the standard medieval European inspired setting. This is what I’m talking about when I say I love how this man thinks. This expansion of the definition of fantasy beyond the norms is exactly what I’m looking for.

The region designs are varied, beautiful, and full of that wonderful strangeness you only really get from good fantasy. My favorite was the Thunder Plains, a region of never-ending storms, where lightning strikes constantly and infrastructure of lightning rods along roads is necessary. Every other area was cool in its own way, too. Even the more “basic” zones, just long stretches of plains, were at least gorgeous to look at and had interesting histories.

This was the first game to be rendered fully in 3d. There are still a few zones that had pre-rendered backgrounds, but they are relatively uncommon and cleverly placed such that it’s hard to notice them if you aren’t looking for them. The 3d environments allowed the camera to be shifted around to different angles during cutscenes—something that was previously reserved for the rare FMVs. This was especially appreciated for all of the character closeups this made possible. I hadn’t really thought about the lack of them while playing the earlier games, but now that this game has them, I’m finally realizing what I subconsciously thought was missing.

Interestingly, this game did not yet give the player control of the camera. Instead, the fixed-camera of the pre-rendered background days is upgraded with a bit of movement. As the player walks through a map, the camera flies with them and shifts its angle along predefined routes. Some paths have side views, some stay over your shoulder. It constantly felt like the camera movements were very intentional and artistically directed.

I really liked this. I wish it was a more common style today. The camera was constantly being directed to frame the current shot in a beautiful way. One of the best examples happens about halfway through the game, as you approach a temple while crossing a bridge. You start with a narrow view of the bottom of the distant temple. The camera continues to zoom out and pan up as you get closer, showing you the scale of the building. There were a few spots where this technique was awkward. Primarily the Calm Lands, which have a wide open area instead of the usual linear paths. The camera remains pointed in one direction, meaning you can’t see where you are going if you turn around. Fortunately, such issues were rare, and the camera style was brilliant pretty much everywhere else.

These are by far the best looking character models so far. I say that, having looked up a lot of footage of the original PS2 version, and comparing that with even the Remastered versions of earlier games. The leap from the PS1 to the PS2 was always going to have this kind of potential, but it’s impressive that they managed to get this much out of the PS2 so early.

As I mentioned before, the characters’ animations and facial expressions did a lot to help sell every emotional scene. It’s one thing to read a determined statement. It’s another to see a face full of determination. When you also throw in voice acting, the story fully comes to life.

Audio#↑

This game just sounds good. I never had an issue with audio balance. No sound effect ever got annoying. No song ever felt too repetitive. The voice acting brought the storytelling to a whole new level. I would be very happy if the rest of the series stayed at exactly this level of audio quality.

Voice Acting#↑

This was the first Final Fantasy game to feature voice acting, and they went all-out. I haven’t quantified this, but it feels like there are more voiced lines than unvoiced lines. It adds so much emotional depth to every scene, and since this is a very emotional game, the addition of voice acting had a massive impact on my overall enjoyment.

It’s clear that this was their first attempt at this. There are a few noticeable oddities. For example, you are still able to rename the main character, so you never get to hear his name spoken out loud for the entire game. Dialogue is warped in awkward ways to avoid ever using the name Tidus. The same is true of the Aeons, but that’s a little less noticeable. Line delivery was also frequently strangely paced due to a struggle to fit English lines in the same amount of time the Japanese lines took.

Some lines are slightly drawn-out and slow, but the fast lines are much more noticeable. For example, the word “yes”, when alone in a line, was unnaturally sharp and curt. I assume this happened because that’s how “はい” (hai) would be naturally spoken in-context. Despite also being a single syllable, our natural delivery of “yes” is much softer. That’s one end of the scale. The other end is Barthello-we’re-leaving.

There are some out of context clips that people love to bring up as examples of the low quality of the voice acting in this game. Now that I’ve experienced them, I can say with absolute certainty that each and every one of those moments are actually excellent in context. I’m not going to spend a bunch of time breaking down those examples. That “debate” has been done to death.

The voice actors were fighting an uphill battle. They had the above constraints, as well as trying to match their performances to pre-existing performances and animations, as well as dealing with a studio who was brand new at voice direction and barely more experienced with localization.

Even through all of that, these actors delivered performances I loved. It’s one thing to read some lines on screen, and another thing entirely for those lines to be brought to life with good acting. There were some scenes in this game that I don’t think would have worked at all without the subtle emotional details that were added by the actors. Final Fantasy X expanded to a new storytelling medium and immediately hit it out of the park. This was another step in the cinematic direction for the series, closer and closer to the modern Final Fantasy experience that I am a huge fan of.

Music#↑

Nobuo Uematsu is, as always, a genius. This game is absolutely loaded with fantastic tracks.

The opening cinematic is backed by this kick-ass heavy metal track, Otherworld. It’s blasted at max volume while a sports game plays until the city is destroyed. It’s extremely fitting. The lyrics are quite interesting in the context of the story, seeming to be a song Jecht is singing to Tidus. It also comes back at the end as the theme for Jecht’s boss fight. This tone is very new for the series, and I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Every Final Fantasy has a Battle Theme that’s used as a fallback whenever there isn’t a more specific, relevant track. You’ll hear it a lot, because it’s used for every random battle. So it has to be good. Fortunately, it is! I really like this one. I never got tired of it. If I had to rank all the Battle Themes (should I?), I have a feeling this would be near the top. Nobuo Uematsu tends to include a groovy bassline in every battle theme, and this one’s no different. It’s very dynamic, switching up the pace constantly. So much of the soundtrack for this game is very serious in tone or is designed to fit a particular part of the story. I’ve linked many of those songs below, because they’re excellent—but I love that this one is here to remind you this is a game. It’s time for the fun part.

Speaking of serious tones, Zanarkand is not a tune I’m likely to forget for a long time. I’m a real sucker for these emotional piano pieces. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the main menu plays this song along with a somber scene from late in the game out of context. The song then becomes even more powerful in context. Plus, it’s just so pretty. The slower, orchestrated version, The Truth, becomes a double gut-punch of emotion.

I adore how this series loves to give themes to characters and then re-use those themes in interesting ways, to tie those characters into other moments thematically. There are a ton of examples of this (as in every Final Fantasy game), but I’ll focus on just a few here.

Tidus’s Theme is a calm, touching song. It’s warm and sunny, full of hope, but also sensitive. A perfect fit for Tidus. It’s also used in The Blitzers, a much more upbeat rendition played in the few times Blitzball comes up on Spira. This is still the sensitive and joyful Tidus, but now passionate about chasing victory and having fun.

Yuna’s Theme has a bunch of versions. If Tidus’s theme is the sun, this is the moon. Again, fitting for their characters. It’s got a lullaby-like quality to it. It’s delicate, but determined. A Fleeting Dream is a remix played later on in the game, near the end of the journey. It’s full of more determination than ever, but it feels like time is slowing down. There’s a hesitation to get to the end—but determination eventually wins, and the song picks up the pace. All versions of Yuna’s Theme are based on Isn’t It Wonderful?, one of the two main themes of the game, representing the romance between Tidus and Yuna. Final Fantasy had recently started a tradition of having a single voiced track representing the main romance of the story, and this game would be no different. However, it’s really cool that this theme got remixed into so many others throughout the game. It creates a solid line of thematic links that crossed the game from beginning to end.

I also really loved Seymour’s Ambition. It’s such an unsettling track. It’s extremely evil and menacing, but in a confident, creepy way.

One of the most important songs in the story is the Hymn of the Fayth, and its many versions. I can’t write this section without talking about it. Each temple has a slightly different version, representing each Fayth singing it with different voices. Fun fact, these lyrics appear to be gibberish, even in-universe—but there’s a hidden message if you write out the Japanese script and read it top-to-bottom. It reads Pray! Yu Yevon. Dream! Fayth. Without end. Please grant prosperity

This was the first Final Fantasy game in which Nobuo Uematsu worked with other composers. These additional composers brought some great variation to the musical styles presented throughout the game. I was especially impressed with the work of Masashi Hamauzu. After this, he would compose the music for the Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogies. Very excited to get to those and hear more of his work.

Besaid is where I first noticed music that didn’t sound like Uematsu’s style. I’m sure there were other tracks before this one, but I absolutely love this sound. It stuck out. It remains one of my favorite tracks from the game. There was something really special about listening to this while running along sunny, beach-side forest paths.

I may not love Blitzball, but I can at least admit that Blitz Off ! is an absolute jam.

Another iconic theme is Thunder Plains. That area is so unique, and this theme fits it perfectly. There’s an urgency to it, but it’s also beautiful. The constant staccato notes remind me of the rain that constantly pours in that place, and it’s interrupted by occasional bursts like the lightning strikes.

Challenge is the theme for all of the really hard boss fights. It’s very dangerous sounding, almost like there’s an alarm blaring in the background. It builds in tension, and then explodes into some absolutely filthy drums and bass. Another of my favorite tracks for sure.

Overall, huge fan of this soundtrack. I think some of the earlier games had tracks that hit higher highs than the best of this game, but this one was consistently extremely good throughout. I also appreciated the addition of new styles from new composers.

Gameplay#↑

The gameplay of Final Fantasy X is as significant of a departure from the rest of the series as its world design is. The games that came before it had been using the Active Time Battle system for a decade. Even though the games that preceded the ATB system were turn based, they shared very little DNA with the combat system of Final Fantasy X. I’ll talk about these systems in more depth below. Here, I want to focus on the major differences from the rest of the series, and the development history behind those choices.

The combat for this game was originally going to be quite different. Toshiro Tsuchida, the game’s Battle Director, originally had a vision for a combat system that sounds a lot like the modern direction of Final Fantasy games. In the planned system, characters would be able to move around in combat to engage in different tactics. Combat would also take place directly in the explorable world, with enemies wandering and engaging the player character by proximity, rather than random encounters that loaded a battle arena. He would later go on to make that system in FFXIII. It also seems likely to me that the battle system of FFXII was at least partially inspired by this idea.

This open combat system was not able to be completed on time, so they pivoted to the turn-based system that the game ended up with. It’s impressive to me that one of the most beloved combat systems in the entire series (and has inspired many turn-based games ever since) was the backup choice of its creators, pulled together late in development.

Another significant departure from the series was the lack of a traversable world map. Instead, the spaces between each major landmark were represented by strings of gameplay areas that had the same amount of visual fidelity as the major landmarks. These traversal zones were really landmarks of their own. The distance between points was still abstracted, but by compressing the space instead of zooming out. I have mixed feelings about this. It made the world feel a lot smaller, and I never got a good feel for the geography of the world like I did with older titles. On the other hand, the increased detail during travel was very nice. Even if I think there were downsides, I think this linear path that focuses on smelling the roses along the way is a better fit for the story than a world map would have been.

Speaking of linearity, this was the most linear game so far. Not only are the individual maps just long hallways (maybe with some bends if you’re lucky), the story just takes you from location to location in a long line. There’s never really a reason to return to anywhere you’ve previously been, or to take detours of any kind. There’s no sense of exploration. You’re not even given the tools to travel backwards until the very end of the game. The story essentially locks you on rails the entire time.

…And you know what? That’s fine. I think this style worked very well for this game. I know that this is a criticism leveled against some future games in the series, but it’s hard to imagine a game being more linear than this, and I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I think I preferred this. The difficulty curve stayed perfectly tuned, as the developers knew what content I’ve completed. The story didn’t need to take breaks, and I didn’t need to come up with head-canon reasons for why the characters weren’t immediately following their top priority every time I took a detour for a side quest. I think it is easily possible for a game to be too open, and I very much appreciated this one being on rails.

The combat system took a while to click, but I really liked it once it did. There were a lot of fights early on during which all I could really do was mash the attack button. The game loved to throw strings of these combats out, with cinematic transitions between them. So the “doing nothing but mashing attack” could go on for 5-10 minutes at a time. I think those segments could have been a little shorter, but it’s not a big deal. It’s more than worth it to get to the much more interesting combat later on.

This game also took by far the simplest approach to equipment in the series so far. Every piece of gear has no stats, only a small set of passives. You equip a single weapon and a single accessory to each character, and every piece of equipment is only compatible with a particular character. The passives weren’t super impactful most of the time, outside of very specific strategies. This made gear upgrades feel pretty much worthless. I like that this puts more focus on the characters themselves and their individual abilities, but I do miss that feeling of getting a gear upgrade.

The Bad#↑

I will get the bad stuff out of the way. You can skip ahead to The Good, if you prefer to avoid the salt.

This game would be better if both of these things were entirely deleted. I’m not even suggesting they be replaced with anything. Literally just delete this content as if you’re removing dead air from a video clip. Nothing of value would be lost, and the surrounding elements would be plenty well connected without them.

The Blitzball section could just be a series of cutscenes, and it would be more emotionally impactful. Entering each temple’s Trial entrance could just bring you directly to the waiting room outside each Fayth, and it would fit better in the world.

Blitzball#↑

“When I grow up, I want to be a blitzball!”

Shocking nobody: Blitzball is bad.

You’d think that a game played in a sphere would have some interesting 3d movement techniques, right? No. This game is played entirely within a single 2d slice of that sphere. That alone would be enough for me to consider this a failure of its own premise, but it’s worse than that.

There are multiple layers of RNG hell at work. Your strategies can be good on a fundamental level, and the game can simply decide to not reward you. The camera angles are awful and the way they cut to different views at arbitrary points makes it a nightmare to attempt to play using the 3d view. So instead, you really have to rely on the minimap. There’s a whole meta-game of sports management (a genre I’ve never been fond of) on the side, which you must engage with in order to win. That side meta-game has poor quality of life too.

If this were an easily avoidable minigame, I’d just ignore it. Unfortunately, you are forced to play one match of Blitzball as part of the story. Not only that, you are given a barely-functioning team and are pitted against the world champions. You are supposed to lose, but not in one of those cheeky RPG “it’s over in 10 seconds” ways. This goes on for a full 5 minutes. This happens during an emotionally rich part of the plot. It actively hampered my enjoyment of those story moments.

I tried to salvage what I could from the experience by turning the gameplay into an interesting story moment. I was down 0-1. Tidus was on the field. He had a special move that held some story significance. It would cost all of my resources, but at least it would bring us to a tie. I managed to get Tidus into perfect position for the shot, barely a few meters away from the goalie with zero other defenders. Even RNG could not save this goalie from a shot this powerful. After a long animation of Tidus performing the special move, the ball is sent through the water, past the goalie, milliseconds from scoring the goal. The clock hit 3 minutes. This triggers a cutscene, cancelling the shot. I’m left with all of my resources spent, and nothing to show for it. I don’t think Blitzball could have possibly left a worse impression on me than that.

Cloister of Trials#↑

I’ll start this section by saying that I love puzzles. My favorite game of all time, Outer Wilds, is essentially one big puzzle with a ton of smaller, interconnected puzzles—each containing further, smaller puzzles. It’s a fractal puzzle box.

Final Fantasy X has “puzzles”, and it’s (mistakenly) extremely proud of them. I think the designers of these puzzles had two big misunderstandings: what makes a satisfying puzzle, and why puzzles are included in games. Their answers seemed to be “trial and error” and “to sell guides”, respectively. I found this annoying at best and insulting at worst.

Even if the puzzles themselves were good, the controls would hold them back. Unfortunately, the puzzles were very much not good, so the controls made them hell. The movement controls are not precise enough for pushing small pillars around or stepping on specific floor tiles. The textures were not good enough to show indents in the walls, even in the HD remaster. The button presses are not responsive enough for tight timing games. So many times, I’d know how to solve a puzzle almost immediately, and then spend 10-15 minutes fumbling the execution.

I dreaded getting to these sections. Not because they were particularly hard, but because I knew I was going to get frustrated.

The music for these sections only made them worse. Maybe it’s just because I already felt insulted by the Trials, but this track has a “prankster” vibe that makes me feel like I am the subject of the developers’ cruel joke.

These puzzles feel extremely contrived. What is their purpose in the world? These are not long-lost ruins or places that can only be traversed by someone blessed by a special power or bearing specific artifacts. They can be solved by anyone who walks in. The game even shows you this when Tidus enters one for the first time: he has to solve it by himself. The Trials don’t serve as a way to lock anyone out, as the temples are already guarded, and anyone who gets past the guards can surely solve these puzzles given 10 minutes or so. So if the puzzles serve no protective purpose, maybe they held some other purpose long ago when the temples were created? If so, I can’t figure it out. The setup of each room feels contrived for the purpose of a puzzle, exclusively. These Trials feel extremely out of place and immersion-breaking.

They were trying really hard to be The Legend of Zelda. Every temple had a set of thematic puzzles that had to be completed in order to traverse through it. Only, these felt pointless, contrived, and forced. They copied Eiji Aonuma’s homework without understanding the how or why. It didn’t work.

The Good#↑

One of the main reasons I love this game is that the gameplay is extremely solid. This is one of the best turn-based games I’ve ever played. Each character felt very different in combat. The progression system is pretty fantastic. Boss fights are difficult, varied, and dynamic. Let’s tackle those points in order.

The Conditional Turn-Based Battle (CTB) system is genius. It adds a huge amount of depth to turn-based battles with one extremely simple principle: some turns take more time than others. This means that the turn order can change significantly based on what is actually happening on those turns. Some actions are very fast, like using items. Some actions are very slow, like casting spells. Optimal strategies will take these properties into account.

The turn order is always displayed on screen, and you can see how your selected action will affect the turn order before committing to it. This does a lot to help avoid the repetition that is common in turn-based games. On a turn, you may get ready to attack, but one of your other party members is a little low on health. So, you go to feed them a potion, and notice that your character is fast enough that they could sneak in that potion action before the next enemy’s turn, and still be able to attack. On the defensive, you might notice that a boss has a two hit combo that kills one of your party members instantly. So, you might take actions that place one of your characters directly between the two hits of the combo, so that you can heal up before the second hit.

Under the hood, the game is simulating something similar to an Active Time Battle system, except it immediately skips the waiting time and snaps to the next turn. Skipping that waiting time would already be a really nice quality of life change for the ATB system, but CTB allows each ATB bar to be a different length depending on the previous action taken. This allows character speed and smart action selection to have a major impact on how battles play out.

The next layer of delicious, elegant complexity is character switching. This game has a party of 7 characters, but only 3 can be active at once. In earlier entries, a setup like this easily led to players leaving some characters on the bench. FFX mitigates this issue by giving each character specific strengths and weaknesses, and allowing you to freely swap characters every turn to leverage those strengths. There’s a lot of subtlety to that feature. Swapping is free, but because of the variable rate at which you take turns, each character entering the field will have a dramatic impact on the upcoming turn order. It’s not just a matter of swapping someone in because you need them for a particular action, you also need to be mindful of how that will impact the strategy of your other characters. If you swap a fast character for a slow one, you might go from getting multiple turns per boss turn to letting the boss take multiple turns between each of yours. That swap might mean you no longer have the healing output to keep up.

Of course, the swap feature on its own wouldn’t do much if the characters were all the same, or if it was optimal to leave some of them on the bench. Fortunately, each character plays extremely differently, and each are strong in particular circumstances. Lulu easy handles fights with elemental weaknesses, Wakka takes care of aerial enemies, Tidus has enough accuracy to hit evasive foes, and so on. I’ve spoken at length in my previous reviews of this series about how I don’t like any progression system in which any character’s “build” can be trivially translated onto another character. So it’s no surprise that I am a huge fan of FFX’s approach.

Each character also had a unique minigame and/or mechanic associated with their overdrive abilities (the “Limit Breaks” of this game). I liked most of these. They are just a sprinkle of timed, precision-focused gameplay in a game otherwise completely free from both timers and precise inputs. This made them satisfying to pull off as well as making them stand out from the rest of the gameplay. Some were more about collection and knowledge, like Kimahri and Rikku. I liked these as well. Once I learned a few abilities that I liked from each of them, they opened up tons of new strategies for me. The only character whose overdrive I never figured out was Lulu. I’m not sure if I was supposed to basically break my controller or my hand every time, or if there was some trick to it. Eventually, I gave up, and ignored her full overdrive meter for the rest of the game. Still, that’s 6/7 overdrives that I enjoyed. I can’t complain much!

Yuna was the most unique of all. I have been a huge fan of summoners across the series, and Yuna’s implementation is my current favorite. Aeons, the summons of FFX, are not just powerful attacks with a large MP cost and long, flashy animation. No, they are unique, temporary party members, replacing the whole party. They are a larger-than-life version of FFX’s own combat. Overdrive abilities faster than normal. They do massive amounts of damage, and have much larger HP pools than any of your other characters. They can choose to amp themselves up at the cost of taking more damage, cranking that “amplified combat” feeling even further. Throwing them out against bosses instantly made the boss fights feel larger in scope. Wildly cool.

The only character I used less and less over the course of the game was Kimahri. He is a bit of a jack of all trades. He carried me in the early game, but once the rest of the party got more specialized, he fell behind a bit. I think I could have avoided this with better planning, but this was the natural outcome of a first playthrough.

The reason Kimahri can be a little weak without good planning is due to his location on the Sphere Grid, Final Fantasy X’s progression system. Instead of traditional levels, in which a character gets stronger by stat increases and new abilities in a linear fashion, FFX has a non-linear skill tree. While each character starts at a different place on this big tree, all the trees are connected. It’s a bit similar to Path of Exile. Kimahri starts right in the middle, and is essentially a “build your own class” character. I didn’t realize this at the start, and even if I had—I knew not nearly enough about the game to be able to build an effective custom class.

I played with the “Standard” Sphere Grid. There’s also an “Expert” version. I think I may have enjoyed the Expert grid more, as it offers more flexibility and choice. I was a little disappointed that, for the most part, large sections of these trees were linear. So a lot of the time it felt like leveling up with extra steps: a character got enough xp, and then got +1 agility, except I had to spend 30 seconds in menus to make that happen instead of it just being shown to me in the battle-end screen. This is because you cannot simply place points anywhere adjacent to points you’ve already claimed. Each character has a “marker” on the grid, representing their current position, and it costs resources to move and acquire nodes near them.

However, these rules are made to be broken, and that’s where the Sphere Grid shines. As you progress, you are given more and more resources that let you jump your characters around the grid, or take a node that another character has taken even if it is far from any other node this character has taken before. The Sphere Grid even allows you to customize some of its nodes. When I was struggling on some late-game fights, I jumped all my characters into the same cluster of customizable nodes and dumped resources into making those nodes as strong as I could. That way, I could invest in everyone at once. I could always jump back to more relevant areas later.

Some bosses were so tough that I had to back up and rethink my strategy a few times before finally cracking them. I really appreciated that. I love a difficulty curve that is tough enough to force me to work around it, but still feels achievable. FFX hit a perfect level of satisfaction. A couple of the final fights were incredibly tough, but I eventually got through. I felt extremely accomplished when I did.

Boss design was good across the board, even beyond difficulty. Many fights had interesting gimmicks or environmental effects. Tons played with the mechanics of the game in neat ways, such as inflicting the Zombie status (healing is damage) on your party, and then would try to cast raise spells on them to instantly kill them, or use other spells to kill anyone who isn’t a Zombie. Some fights had weak points, shifting resistances, and so on. There was even a fight in which you could power up nearby machinery using lightning magic, and then use that machinery to your advantage. Some fights had unique commands, like talking to the boss to grant yourself a stat buff and experience some extra, dramatic, in-fight dialogue, or moving yourself closer or further from the boss. All of this was done while making perfect sense with the lore of the world and fitting thematically with the boss being fought. This game is full of top tier boss design. I loved each of them.

This was Toshiro Tsuchida’s first work in the Final Fantasy series. He did an absolutely excellent job, and this system was his second choice! His first choice was an idea that would go on to influence the series for many years. I think he might be a somewhat lesser-known series visionary. Looking ahead, I see that he was also Battle Director for FFXIII. I’m now even more excited to get there.

Story#↑

I am writing this part last, because I don’t even know where to begin. I’m listening to the soundtrack as I write this, and I think I’m going to cry again. The story of Final Fantasy X impacted me deeply.

This story touched on some personal things that have been on my mind for a long time. It also made me reflect on life, death, and what’s important. Is this something that will change my life? I wouldn’t go that far. However, it certainly stirred up something powerful in my heart.

World#↑

“Spira is no playhouse. A moment’s diversion may amuse an audience, but it changes nothing.”

Spira is an inspiring setting.

I mentioned it before, but the main reason I love a fantasy setting is how it can transport me to a whole new world full of wonderful new things for me to experience. The more different this world is from what I’ve already experienced, the better. For me, that sense of wonder is fragile. Common tropes can be powerful tools to concisely communicate the story setup to the audience (or to be subverted), but if the tropes are too common or there are too many of them, my sense of wonder is shattered. So, I loved how unique Spira felt.

The magic system of the world is never fully explained, and that’s exactly how I like it. It’s very much a soft magic system. The magic of the world fits the themes of the story, not a list of hard rules. However, it’s not completely arbitrary and plot-contrivance driven. The magic is consistent, and specific kinds of magic are linked to specific story elements. For example, as I mentioned in the gameplay section, there are some bosses that manipulate the flow of life and death, and it makes a ton of sense based on who they are.

I especially enjoyed the magic of the Fayth—summoning, pyreflies, and so on. I always love a magic system that explores souls, memories, and conviction. That’s far more interesting to me than a system of rules that get used in clever ways. A magic system like this is full of emotional potential, because it has deeply emotional concepts at its core.

I loved the pace at which information was revealed. This is an isekai (of sorts), so Tidus is kept in the dark just as much as the player. This made it very easy for worldbuilding to be rationed out to the player with very precise control. This served several purposes.

First, the world becomes very easy to learn about. The story does not assume that either you or Tidus knows anything about it. So, you can learn little-by-little without getting overwhelmed by information overload and without being worried that you are going to miss something critical by not having studied ahead of time. You can trust that the game will give you exactly the information you should have before you’ll need it, and that trust is deepened by the fact that the slow pace of information will make it hard for you to miss the critical information when it does come up.

Second, the world is full of mystery, and this pace of information delivery allows you to sit with that mystery. You can soak in that feeling of wonder that comes with not knowing all the details, having a boatload of questions, and excitedly considering all the possibilities. The game gives you plenty of time to make guesses and fill in the blanks yourself. It teases you with new hints that make you second guess yourself, and then finally delivers the true answers in the exact moment they will be most impactful.

Third, the story can lie. The tight control over the flow of information means the story can misdirect you like a magician performing a trick. Both the player and Tidus are misled several times throughout the story, and this leads to some excellent, emotional twists.

Spira is full of fear and joy, in contrast with each other. The world itself is stunningly beautiful, but the people in it live in constant fear of an unstoppable force slaughtering them without warning. Yet, they persevere, and find joy wherever they can. They have celebrations. They have kept Blitzball alive for a thousand years. They have hope for the future, even if right now doom is around every corner. The entire world is one big reminder that death is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean life isn’t worth living.

Characters#↑

“I’ve decided to be Yuna’s Guardian now, and that’s all I want.”

I love this whole party. They all have their own personal demons, but they overcome them together. Each character’s arc was a joy to experience. Their personalities are strong and varied, and I never felt annoyed by any of them. All of their words and actions felt consistent with their character.

Something I found interesting about this group was that, while not really being a group of misfits, they each had a unique perspective on the cultures of Spira, and all united with a counter-cultural spirit by the end. They’ve also each had their spirit broken, but found new strength to cary on.

Wakka#↑

“The only way to go is forward!”

Wakka starts out deeply rooted in his culture. He’s devoted to both the sport of Blitzball and the religion of Yevon—which have a lot of crossover with each other. He believes everything the church tells him, including being hateful to others.

He departs on this journey, and even gives up his beloved sport, to more closely follow the teachings. To him, the ultimate ideal is to follow the teachings. Defeating sin is just a part of that, not the main goal.

As the story progresses, Wakka’s worldview takes blow after blow. It’s revealed that the leaders of the church are manipulative hypocrites. The teachings are lies. Those he has been taught to hate are just people like him. What he was fighting for all along turned out to be what was truly causing suffering.

Wakka needed to change, and he did. When forced to make a choice between his ideals and his friends, he chooses his friends. He learned to befriend those he hated. He helps dismantle the culture that had previously given him his life’s purpose.

Eventually, in X-2, he learns the Al Bhed language, and thanks Rikku in her native tongue. It’s a really touching moment and an excellent bit of closure on Wakka’s story.

Lulu#↑

“No matter how dark the night, morning always comes, and our journey begins anew.”

Lulu is an interesting contrast with Wakka. She’s gone through a lot of loss, and dedicated her life to destroying that which took everything from her. She has not devoted herself to the teachings of Yevon, she merely knows them as a means to an end: defeating Sin.

Most obviously, her appearance is very counter-cultural. She looks goth. Not only is that literally a counter-culture, I can’t recall anyone else in the game having an appearance remotely similar to hers. She sees no value in adhering to the cultural standards of those around her. She feels no need to be devout. Instead, she doesn’t hold back on expressing herself.

Lulu knows how to deal with the church, as that’s the only way she could be linked up with summoners as a guardian. However, she only really cares about the specific teachings that have to do with defeating Sin. She doesn’t hate the Al Bhed, or machina. She doesn’t care about prayer or any other rituals of the church, except for those involved in a summoner’s journey. Those teachings are precious to her.

When Yunalesca reveals that Sin can never be destroyed, and the teachings were simply a false hope, Lulu has one of her largest emotional outbursts in the game. She denies this revelation, rejecting her final cultural belief. She goes on to prove that even the most legendary figure of the church, one of the few people she still believed in, was wrong—by defeating Sin once and for all.

Kimahri#↑

“Only those who try will become.”

Kimahri is the most misfit of the bunch. I love him dearly.

He’s from a culture that prizes strength, but he is comparatively small. This puts him at severe disadvantage in his culture. Thus, his culture failed him. He dares to defy the culture that wronged him, he is punished with the removal of his horn—a clearly visible mark of shame that will stay with him for his whole life—and cast out from the community.

Kimahri chooses not to let anything hold him back. He is fiercely focused, and rejects anything that does not aid him in his task. He will never give up once he has set his mind to something. This places him in opposition with his culture right from the start.

I loved Kimahri’s arc bringing him back to his home, to prove to his culture that he was strong after all. He did it on his own terms, not by submitting to their expectations. He redeemed himself without compromising on his ideals. He showed his culture that there was a different way to measure one’s value.

In X-2, he becomes the leader of the Ronso. I love how that shows how far he has come, and how thoroughly he proved himself.

This story of challenging the culture, being rejected from it, and ultimately achieving what was not possible within the confines of cultural norms is a mirror of the whole party’s collective story.

Rikku#↑

“Then I’ll just have to be the merriest!”

Rikku’s unique perspective is that she is an Al Bhed. She is hated by most of the culture of Spira, simply for who she is. However, this is never her greatest concern. The problem that’s always on her mind is how Yevon sacrifices summoners.

I find the presentation of the Al Bhed extremely interesting. The first group of them that you are ever shown includes Rikku. They are helpful, saving Tidus’s life. Then, they are presented as the enemy for a bit, as they repeatedly attempt to kidnap summoners. However, they are misunderstood, and their intentions are pure. Their entire civilization is built around a hope that they can save more lives if they reject the false premises of the teachings of Yevon. It is only after your group rejects those same false premises that they become allies with the Al Bhed, and they prove to be a massive asset.

Rikku throws herself into her ideals. Though she is deathly afraid of thunder, she pushes herself to cross the Thunder Plains with the party. She never stops hoping that she’ll be able to save Yuna’s life. She never stops being energetic and playful, even when things are tough.

However, the absolute best outcome could only happen when she gives up on her ideal and go against her culture just as much as the rest of the party. She has to allow Yuna to finish her pilgrimage, hoping that things will turn out okay, for Sin to finally be truly defeated forever.

Auron#↑

“Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain, or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!”

Auron is the most mysterious character in the game, right from the moment he is introduced. He keeps many secrets, and is very particular about how and when he will reveal his knowledge. At the same time, he is a confident, and reliable ally—if a bit prickly.

His design is very interesting. It’s very clearly strongly influenced by samurai tropes. I’ve heard many debates about whether or not the one-hand-resting-over-the-chest thing he does is a symbol of him losing his master or not. From what I can tell, it’s not a real thing that relates to real samurai. However, it seems to be a pop-culture idea about samurai. With how intentional the design of every other character is, I think this element has to be intentional as well. I think it references that pop-culture idea, and does in fact represent him losing his master. It seems to me that suggesting this can’t be right because real samurai didn’t do that is about as relevant as pointing out that cowboys didn’t actually have duels at high noon.

Of course, Auron being such a secretive character makes it hard to talk about him without spoilers. So the rest of this section will be marked as such.

We see in flashbacks and recordings that Auron used to be a much more devout, proper, and chivalrous person. He only became this prickly after he lost everything, and to be fair, willing yourself to overcome death for a decade probably takes a lot out of a person.

Auron used to be much like Wakka. He followed the teachings because it’s what he believed in. However, he’s now seen first-hand where that path leads. He was forced to abandon his ideals by being shown the lies that served as their foundation. He rejected his own ideals so hard that he attacked one of the holiest members of his church, died without being sent, and willed himself to overcome death—all of which are ultimate taboos of his religion.

Auron’s story ends when he finally finds rest. The grand plan to break the cycle was finally complete. His job was done.

Auron serves as the party’s guide, but unlike the traditional guide that keeps them on the path, Auron guides them off of it.

Yuna#↑

“…and guardians, don’t forget to smile.”

Yuna’s ultimate ideal is to bring peace to the world. She is willing to sacrifice anything for that cause. Yuna knows that she must give up her own life to save the world, but this goes beyond just death. Yuna truly offers up everything. She agreed to marry Seymour, even allowing him to kiss her, just to try and bring a small bit of joy to the world.

Yet, she challenges her culture by being absolutely resolute in her exact goal. She does not settle to simply do what the church tells her. She abandons the church the moment it is clear that their plans for her would not actually achieve her goal.

She also grows over the course of the story. Early on, she tries to take on every burden herself. She trusts her guardians, yes, but she tries to avoid inconveniencing them or even burdening them with worrying about her. She even outright admits that she always tries to wear a smile even when she’s hurting, just so that others can feel some joy. She is literally too precious for the world. As the story progresses, she learns to lean on her companions. She learns that it’s okay for her to want more from life than what she allowed herself. It’s okay for her to be happy too. This culminates in her choosing to finding determination to choose a new path and attempt to break the cycle, achieving more than her original goal and refusing the sacrifice.

In more ways than one, Yuna is the unifying force of the party. Every party member has a tie to her in one way or another, and it’s due to this that they end up forming bonds with each other as well. She’s also a person constantly in conflict, pulled between multiple worlds. She’s half Al Bhed, Rikku’s cousin, daughter of a holy man (revered by several party members) who was also Auron’s old companion. She believes Tidus about Zanarkand, even when nobody else will. She represents a new life’s purpose for Kimahri when he had lost everything. Only someone with her unique connections to every part of the world could accomplish what she did.

Tidus#↑

“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

Tidus’s unique perspective on the culture of Spira is that of a complete outsider. Often, that perspective can reveal a lot. An outsider might ask questions that nobody else would ever think of. An outsider gets to ask “Why?” a lot, and that opens the door for everyone else to rethink their own assumptions and worldviews.

Tidus is my favorite protagonist so far. He’s full of personality. He grows a ton over the course of the story. He starts out (I think understandably) responding to his situation with denial and anger. He was a superstar. He loved his home. He was used to his life and then it was torn away from him. Now he’s in a world filled with reminders that death can be around any corner.

He’s far from the first Final Fantasy protagonist to undergo significant growth during their journey, but I think he’s the best executed so far. We get to learn a lot about the way he thinks through his introspection and narration of events. It was especially interesting to see his reaction in a scene, and then get his contrasting retrospective thoughts from his narration.

Tidus is the party’s joy. He ties the party together in a very different way from Yuna. He is free from the burdens they are all trying to avoid thinking about, and so interacting with him gives them a chance to be distracted. This leads to a lot of extremely touching moments between Tidus and all of the other party members. Especially Yuna, of course. Some of those interactions were a direct hit to my heart, forcing me to smile.

Tidus goes from being a superstar who’s used to being constantly praised, to being seen as an ignorant outsider by everyone around him, and then builds all the way up to accepting his own death to save those he loves, and the world.

Themes#↑

This story is incredibly dense with themes. I’m going to talk about just a few that were the most personally impactful to me.

The Voices of the Dead, and Letting Go#↑

“Ah, the cycle of death. Summoners sacrifice themselves fighting sin. Guardians give up their lives protecting their summoners. The fayth are the souls of the dead. Even the maesters of yevon are unsent. Spira is full of death. and sin returns only to bring more death. It is a spiral of death, spiraling endlessly.”

I mean this in both the literal and metaphorical ways.

Metaphorically, the Spira is dominated by words and deeds that happened a thousand years ago. There was a massive, terrible war. Zanarkand acted in desperation, and unleashed a terrible force upon the world with a simple goal: preserve the dream of Zanarkand. If any civilization gets too big, it is in danger of discovering dream Zanarkand and endangering it. Sin would stop that from happening. If machina got too advanced, they might be used to discover and endanger dream Zanarkand. So the church banned the use of machina. Every rule, every part of the teachings, every lie—all were devised to protect dream Zanarkand. All was in service of preserving the idea of a land long dead.

Literally, Spira is controlled by the unsent, people who are no longer alive, but refuse to pass on. They have manipulated the world, lied, and cheated to get their way. They believe this is the only way. And so, by being enthralled by the voices of the dead and becoming their agents—they become voices of the dead themselves.

These ideas have long overstayed their welcome. They are causing constant harm to everyone in the world, all in the name of preserving the “right” way, the old way. The world moved on underneath the voices of the dead, but the voices were inflexible. To live is to change, but they no longer live. In fact, the voices are tired. The dead want to rest, but the living won’t let them. They are dredged up again and again to beat the status quo into the younger generations, and to enforce the old ways. It’s tragic.

To blindly adhere to these ideals simply because it’s what has always been done, is foolish. This story shows our heroes rising above these voices and defying them. They find another way. They finally let the dead rest, and move on. The world is better for it.

This story is telling us that old ideas can be harmful, and we need to be willing to let them die so that we can progress as a society.

“Memories are nice, but that’s all they are.”

I am, of course, bringing a lot of our modern political landscape into this. It seems to me that time and time again, harmful ideas are defended because “it’s how it’s been done”. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many of the old/rotting ideas shown in FFX mirror the harmful ideas that plague our society.

The Al Bhed suffer a massive amount of abuse because the old ideas paint them as “others”. They don’t talk like us. They don’t look like us. They don’t share our culture. They don’t have our religion. All of these things are excuses to treat them as the enemy, even going so far as to assault their home. Meanwhile, we’re told that the Guado used to be “against us”, but they have finally been indoctrinated, and are therefore fine. Even still, when a Guado first gains power in the church, they must be a half-Guado. Passably human. The story really isn’t subtle about this. The church is racist.

Some other old and rotten ideas include:

• The sacrifice of some for the benefit of others being necessary to society
• A fear of technological progress contradicting the teachings of the church
• Everything bad that happens is your fault for not atoning hard enough
• It’s better to hide the sins of influential leaders so people don’t lose faith

I could go on, but you get the picture.

The really tragic part about this is that (for the most part) these ideas are not spread through the church maliciously. It’s a cycle. The current leaders of the church believe what they do because it’s what they were taught. They honestly believe in these terrible ideas, and think that propagating the cycle is the ultimate good. Even those who know the lies see them as necessary evils. All because of the voices of leaders long dead.

Our own society could do with letting go of some old ideas.

It’s not all bleak though. Our party learns there’s a better way. A collection of people with many different perspectives came together, understood each other, and found a path forward. We can move on. We can progress as a society. This is a story of hope.

The Influence of Organized Religion, and Breaking Free#↑

“Count me out. We have to atone, to make up for the sins we have committed.”

I grew up extremely religious. I found a lot of this all too familiar.

The blind faith. The guilt. The propagation of hateful ideas dressed in the language of peace and love. The way any idea could be twisted such that it sounds like it logically flows from the teachings. The insistence that to even consider that there could be another way was nothing more than the temptation of evil. The projection and hypocrisy. I’ve seen it all and more.

I used to be a piece of shit. Worse, I truly believed, deep down, that I was doing the right thing. I don’t know how many people I’ve hurt. There have been so many rough times in my life during which I thought I deserved to suffer. I once thought my life’s measure was how much of myself I could sacrifice to God. There’s some deep trauma there that I don’t know if I’ll ever shake.

Fortunately, after I left home, I met a lot of new people. I experienced a lot of new things. I learned more about myself. I learned more about the church. I changed. It wasn’t easy. I’m changing every day. Still isn’t easy.

I found a lot to relate to in this game.

Several party members are extremely religious at the start of the game. Mainly, Yuna, Wakka, and Lulu. As the story progresses, they leave home. They meet a lot of new people. They experience a lot of new things. They learn more about themselves. They learn more about the church. They change. It isn’t easy.

The party is forced to confront their beliefs, and they choose to leave the path to forge their own. This is shown to be the correct choice. They break free from the cycle of guilt. Together, they find a way that works for everyone and includes all of their perspectives.

“Yevon doesn’t scare me anymore.”

When I broke free, it was with the help of friends being extremely patient with me. They listened to my pain. They were with me while I confronted the deep, dark parts of my soul, and helped me let go. I’m not even sure they knew they were doing it. All they had to do was be genuine, and keep being themselves.

If you asked most people what the most beautiful moment in the game was, I have a pretty good guess at their answer. For me, it’s a little earlier: Yuna summons her Aeons, the faith entrusted to her, one by one. As Yu Yevon continued to flee into each Aeon, the party helps Yuna to let go. Combat takes up by far the largest part of this game’s playtime, so all they had to do was to keep being themselves, and keep doing what they’d been doing together from the start.

“I will live with my sorrow, I will live my own life! I will defeat sorrow, in his place. I will stand my ground and be strong. I don’t know when it will be, but someday. I will conquer it. And I will do it without… false hope.”

Story and Fate#↑

“Listen to my story. This may be our last chance.”

Something Tidus says in multiple places throughout the game is that “this is his story”. It’s all in the narration, not in the dialogue until very late in the game. Auron also says something similar, “This is it. This is your story. It all begins here.” The cinematic played on the main menu ends with Tidus beginning to tell his story.

The narration throughout the game is Tidus’s account from a future perspective. It’s the story that Tidus is telling to the party once they are in the ruins of Zanarkand. They had stopped for a break. Tidus, full of emotion from the things he has recently learned and the nearing end of the journey, begins solemnly pouring his heart out. From the player’s perspective, he doesn’t narrate anymore after that point.

Why that moment? It was right after Tidus learned that he was a dream of the Fayth, and that he would disappear if the party succeeded. He had also just seen Yuna’s final message to her companions, meant to be viewed after her death. I think that moment is when Tidus decided that this is his story after all.

What, in this world, does it mean to be the subject of a story? This story, specifically? Again and again, the only stories we are told are tragedies. The people of Spira have legends about Summoners and guardians who sacrificed themselves for a few years of global respite. They remember the Al Bhed man who set up the lightning rods in the Thunder Plains, paving the way for the pilgrimage, but dying at the end of his task. The teachings say that the Fayth were all devout followers of Yevon, offering up their souls to serve eternally.

Through most of the game, this was really Yuna’s story. Everything revolved around her, and Tidus was essentially just the player’s external perspective. Yuna knew she would die at the end. Everyone did. Tidus… didn’t. His role in the story, his fate, was making the story about him. This was true at both the beginning and end of the story, but Tidus had grown. At the end, he became the subject of the story out of love, and letting go. To accept that it was his story was to accept that his story was coming to an end.

“I know it’s selfish… but this is my story!”

It’s an interesting, and powerful subversion: to save the world, it took a fool too proud and selfish to realize that it wasn’t his story.

Final Thoughts#↑

Rating: 10/10
Playtime: 32 hours

When I first finished Final Fantasy X, my gut reaction was to give it a 9/10. The few, very short sections that frustrated me felt deserving of a one-point penalty. Over the course of writing this review, I’ve talked myself into a 10/10 rating. Those low-points were a brief distraction. When I look back on this game in the future, it’s not those parts that will immediately come to mind.

I am a huge fan of Final Fantasy X. Out of all the games I’ve played in this retrospective so far, this is by far my favorite. This game touched on a lot of things that are very personally significant to me. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.

At the time of writing, I have also completed Final Fantasy X-2. It seems that it was not popular with many fans of X, but I really enjoyed it. It’s an excellent continuation of X’s story, and a response to its themes. Expect a review on it soon!

This is the end of the Kitase era, which I have enjoyed greatly. Thank you, Kitase, for the incredible games. The next few entries look far more turbulent. The directors and most of the teams are entirely replaced for each numbered release. The ideas and styles are extremely varied. I’m expecting it to be messy, but I’m looking forward to the fun. I’m already a few hours into XII and having a blast—but even as I play these new games, I think the Kitase era will always be special to me.

Final Fantasy X is the culmination of that special era. It’s going to be extremely hard to beat. I can see now why it has so many fans. Consider me enthusiastically one of them.

“Just, one more thing… the people and the friends that we have lost, or the dreams that have faded… Never forget them.”