Since Final Fantasy X wrapped up perfectly, many fans think that a sequel was pointless. The dramatic tone shift didn’t do any favors for its reception either. However, I think this is exactly what a sequel should be.

A sequel was not in the original plans for Final Fantasy X. So, no narrative openings were left for one. However, the setting was plenty rich enough for more ideas to be explored. There were plenty of threats that could surface from the lore. The whole world had gone through a massive change, representing a massive amount of narrative potential. How would such a monumental shift in society play out over the next few years? What problems would arise, and who would solve them? Also, how are all of the characters from the first game doing?

The origins of Final Fantasy X-2 can be traced to an extended epilogue. It started with a brief in-game-rendered cutscene that takes place after the game, included in re-releases. The developers did this because they loved the world and characters, and wanted to spend more time making art about them. Fans loved this short scene, and it was clear that the developers had more ideas and a passion to create in this world. So, fans were asked if they would, for the first time in the series, like a sequel to a mainline game. Fans showed enough enthusiasm that Square pulled the trigger.

I’ve seen people describe this game as “the sequel nobody asked for”, but it was literally asked for. Though, I don’t think those fans got quite what they expected.

Sequels are hard—especially in the case of a story like that of FFX. Its tone is very dark. Yet, all the plot threads get very well wrapped up in the end. What could a sequel do? It would be hard to bring back the dark tone without undoing some of the threads that were tied up, and making it feel like the outcome of the first story didn’t matter. In FFX’s particular case, the whole point of the success at the end was that it would be eternal. It might be possible to come up with a satisfying, dark story that wouldn’t have those problems, but I think it would be quite difficult and it would end up feeling cheap anyways.

It’s easy to think that a sequel should be similar to its predecessor. If you’re a huge fan of something, and you hear that it is getting a continuation, it’s natural to hope for more of the same. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s okay for the sequel to be different. Sometimes, that’s for the best.

I definitely think it was the best option for this game. In fact, I think FFX-2 was at its best when it was trying to be different from FFX, as a complementary piece. The weakest parts of the game are wherever it tried to be something other than that. Those parts are what keep me from giving this a higher score. The unique qualities of FFX-2 are what I loved about it.

The tone of FFX-2 couldn’t be more different than that of X. It’s bouncy and animated. Every character is in constant motion, as if everyone is subconsciously nodding along to a beat. It’s goofy and fun. Line delivery and cutscene direction is campy and pulpy. The main party lies somewhere between The Powerpuff Girls and KPop Demon Hunters (but in the 2000s). There’s a karaoke scene. There’s a bumbling group of villains similar to the Team Rocket Trio. The girls are simultaneously magical girls, treasure hunters, pop idols, and heroes. It’s full of wonderfully sincere absurdity. All of this is on full display within the first 5 minutes. The game is not shy about its tone. It’s a wild and chaotic time, and I loved every second of it.

While it has its own plot, FFX-2 also continued to expand on the extended epilogue that kicked off its existence. There’s a ton that can be learned about Spira by digging into the details of this game. It provides additional character development for the whole party, especially Yuna. It responds to the themes of the first game, complementing them and showing them from another perspective.

The Review#↑

This game slaps. It’s an à la carte menu of bonus FFX content. You get to choose what you engage with, and how deeply you dig into all of its offerings.

Want to blitz through the story as fast as possible? Easy. The game marks all of the critical content. It becomes a bite-sized, fun JRPG experience.

Want to additionally catch up with familiar characters after the story of the original game? Also easy. You’ve got an airship from the start, and can instantly fast travel all over the place. Everyone is where you expect them to be, with satisfying new character epilogues to experience.

Want to dig deep into the world of Spira? You’re in the right place. Not only can you fast travel across the world whenever you want, and talk to a silly number of NPCs—every chapter has a whole new world state. If you wanted to, you could take a world tour every single chapter, and there would be completely new things to explore each time.

Just want the gameplay to keep you busy for a long time with want boatloads of unique minigames? This game is full to the brim with them. There’s a much-improved version of Blitzball. There’s a card-game like the PS1 FF entries. There are rhythm games and riddles and collectathons. There’s a whole in-game casino. Hell, they gave Yuna a couple guns and let you use them in both first and third person shooter minigames that play completely differently.

Of course, there’s also a huge amount of potential content in the main JRPG mechanics and progression systems.

What makes the game truly special is that it takes gives you the opportunity to create your own path through this world, and then gives you a fitting ending based on your attachment to the world. More on that in the Story section.

Gameplay#↑

The ATB system and Job system are easily the best in the whole series. Before this, I would have considered Final Fantasy V to be the winner in those categories. While the other Final Fantasy titles since then have taken the ATB and progression systems in all sorts of unique directions, none of them have hit quite as well for me as FFV did. Instead of creating an entirely new system of its own, like mainline titles do, FFX-2 took the beloved FFV system and evolved it. It’s wild that a spinoff game is so incredibly fun to play.

The FFV system is pretty straightforward: You gain access to jobs, which each have significantly different playstyles. Each character learns abilities for each job by using that job. Later on in the game, you’ll be able to cross abilities over between jobs. I love this system. Progression is tied to each character individually, so they all end up feeling distinct in combat. Jobs can have extremely different playstyles, because they don’t need to be all-rounders for you to be able to finish the game—you can just switch jobs if needed to cover a weakness or play style mismatch.

FFX-2 evolves this in a few of really clever ways.

First, different jobs can have different ATB bar lengths. This has sort of always been true, but it’s never been displayed this clearly. In older games, all characters would have the same length ATB bar, but it might fill at different speeds. This made it hard to compare how much faster one character was compared to another, and hard to know who might be acting next. This new system is extremely clear at a glance, which is extra important because of the other changes.

Second, different actions can take different amounts of time to execute, represented by a secondary ATB bar. For example, casting a spell might take some additional time after consuming the ATB bar, but a basic attack will be pretty much instant. This essentially merges the Conditional Turn-based Battle system of FFX with the classic ATB system, allowing you to strategically alter the turn order depending on your chosen actions. It’s genius.

Third, consecutive hits on the same target within a short amount of time gain an increasing combo multiplier, shared by the whole team. This is an easy concept to grasp, but it has deep implications for the battle system. No longer is this a purely turn based game with a few timer bars to keep you on your toes. Now it’s a real-time game. If you can time your attacks so that they land in a chain with your slowest, heaviest hitting attack at the end, you’ll be rewarded with massive damage and a hit of dopamine like this series has never produced before.

Finally, you can spend a turn to change jobs in-combat. Not only does that open up a huge number of new strategies, and make it viable to play without a “perfect” team comp, there is also a layer of meta-strategy on top. To equip multiple jobs to a character, they must be slotted into a Garment Grid. On this grid, each slot is connected to a few others, but never all of the others. So, you might need to switch jobs a few times to get across the board, but this can be mitigated with thoughtful placement of jobs on the board. Additionally, Garment Grids have bonuses along the edges that connect the nodes, so you might want to start as one job and switch to another just to get a stat bonus for the rest of the combat. Additionally, switching to every job on a Garment Grid in a single combat unlocks a powered-up super-job unique to each character, which functions as this game’s summon system.

All of this comes together to create the perfect little combat system. Some actions have little quicktime minigames that go along with them, like mashing the trigger to see how many times you can shoot your gun during a time window, and you can perform these minigames while inputting other commands. So, for example, you could start casting a black mage spell, swap a character back to warrior, start shooting your gun as fast as you can, and then trigger the warrior’s attack just before the black mage’s spell finishes casting—resulting in the warrior’s big hit being boosted by the gunner and the black mage’s even bigger hit being boosted by both other characters. And oh look, that warrior change was the last one you needed to enter her super-mode. If the boss isn’t dead yet, this ought to do it.

It’s a hectic, never-ending cycle of spinning plates. It feels extremely rewarding to get good at. There’s a ton of skill expression in execution, strategy, and progression choices, but it’s all presented in such elegant, bite-sized pieces that I never found it difficult to digest.

You can also choose to engage with all of this very little, if you want. Don’t care about job switching, and want to reduce the complexity? You can have each character focus on a single job, making them as strong as possible in that particular role. That’s a completely valid strategy. You can also choose to go deeper. There’s a whole monster collecting-and-training system in here, which can produce even more powerful parties if you’re willing to engage with the more complicated systems.

The combat also leans into the tone of the game extremely well. Everyone has stylish, dancy idle animations. Attacks are over-the-top and cartoonish. The job transition animations are magical girl transformations. All layered on top of a hectic hybrid-action combat system. If there’s ever been a pop-rock combat system, it’s this one.

Visuals#↑

It’s clear that this game didn’t get quite as much love as FFX in the remaster. There are far more assets left at lower resolutions, and, this being a spinoff, it was lower-budget to begin with. However, I think there are a few things this game did better than FFX. The animations are all much more expressive. You can tell that they had years more practice working with these character models than they did working on FFX. That extra expressiveness really helps sell the louder tone this game has.

It’s a fine looking game. Most assets are re-used from FFX, but it was nice to revisit those areas and see how things have changed in small ways. If you liked how FFX looked, you’ll like how this looks.

The really impressive part of this game is the Dress Sphere system. There are tons of Dress Spheres, and each has:

• a custom appearance for each girl
• a custom set of animations for each girl
• a transition-in animation
• a transition-out animation

I think a large contributing factor to how much a player will like this game is how they feel about this system. I love it. The outfits are all so expressive, stylish, and fun. Each girl shows her personality through each outfit in a different way.

Audio#↑

Voice acting quality is basically the same as it was in FFX, shining and falling behind in all the same places. The actors are all still extremely talented, but the voice direction doesn’t seem to have improved much since the first game. I doubt they had changed their localization process too much at the time this was being developed. However, this game takes a much different tone. It’s much campier and more cartoony. I think that could come across lower-quality, but it feels intentional, so I don’t think it actually is lower-quality. Plus, there are some great moments where more tender emotions break through, and when that intentional tone is dropped, it feels just like FFX.

This soundtrack was unlike anything else in the series. It was fun. Not as many tracks stood out to me as previous games, but I enjoyed listening to it all (and re-listening while writing this).

I kept feeling like this soundtrack seemed like it came from a Sega game while listening to it. I don’t know why, it just has a certain vibe I associate with them. It turns out, this soundtrack was composed by Takahito Eguchi, who would move to Sega after completing this game. His co-composer, Noriko Matsueda, also left Square Enix after this game, and she writes jazz. So, combine a Sega soundtrack with an extra helping of jazz, and you’ll get the FFX-2 soundtrack. In some ways, it often feels like a Persona soundtrack to me.

Lets start with the Battle Theme. There are actually a few more, but this is the most common one. This sets the pace of combat perfectly. It’s going to be wild and messy. You’re going to mash a lot of buttons trying to input your commands with proper timing. It’s a jam. It’s fun.

Another great track to show off the tone of the game is Sphere Hunters. This plays whenever the girls are deploying on a mission—going out and doing some over-the-top pop-spy-action things. It’s a great vibe.

And of course, the tone can get pretty silly too. The Gullwings March is a great example. This is the theme for your cast of supporting characters, the Gullwings, who are a bit goofy and bumbling, but have their hearts in the right place.

Yuna’s Theme could fit right in with a Persona soundtrack. It’s also got a slow, emotional rendition, Yuna’s Ballad. This shows the dual nature of this game very well. It’s not all fun and silliness. There’s a serious emotional core here too. But, there’s a line connecting both. This pattern is repeated with the pop song, 1000 Words, and its piano version.

I can’t not mention Memory of Lightwaves. I think it might be the best song on the soundtrack. Certainly one of the most iconic. As always, I’m a sucker for emotional piano-centric pieces. This one in particular hits me really hard. It’s a touching song of loss and moving on. In the context of the story, it couldn’t be more beautiful.

Story#↑

The way I saw it, this story had several goals:

• It continues threads from the first game.
• It tells an all-new narrative in a beloved world.
• It serves as a mirror for the original’s themes.
• It’s about moving on.

I liked some of these angles more than others. I think sometimes it felt like the story was being pulled in too many directions at once. If they discarded some things, I think the other, better parts would shine more brightly. Though, maybe I just think that because I clearly liked some parts more than others. This story was already pretty short. It probably sounds crazy to suggest it should have been even shorter, but I think it actually would have made a better overall product. I’ll take a shorter, higher quality game any day.

Regardless of the parts I wasn’t a fan of, the good parts of this story are strong, and are an excellent complement to the original game.

I’ll break down those goals individually.

Obviously, heavy spoilers to follow for both FFX and FFX-2, but they’ll be marked.

Continued Threads#↑

I think FFX had a perfect ending, but I don’t think it necessarily wrapped up all of its threads. Some characters were left less developed than others. Plenty of the world’s history was hand-waved away as ancient war, nothing more to explain. Several events had great shock value, but no follow-through. With how open and explorable this game is, and how many world variations you can experience, it really feels like the developers wanted to wrap up every loose end. Though I didn’t explore nearly all of it, I appreciated the content that I did stumble across. Every corner I looked into was full of detail, and it made the world feel alive.

One of the best examples is Wakka. In FFX, he has a pretty severe character flaw of his racism towards the Al Bhed. He is exposed to new ideas, and grows as a character. However, at a certain point, all of that gets unceremoniously shoved to the side. There were more important things going on in the story at that point, but it still felt kinda bad that an otherwise good character arc never got a satisfying conclusion. This game gives him that conclusion:

Wakka settles in. He marries Lulu, and they have a child together. He becomes a protective dad, fighting fiends to defend Besaid. He even defends the old temple, knowing that it represented a lie. He just has a sentimental attachment to it. He’s no longer fighting for faith, or revenge. He fights to protect what he loves. All of that would be a nice epilogue for him, but there’s something more important. We can see through their interactions that Wakka has significantly patched things up with Rikku. Not even once does he seem conflicted about contradictions between his beliefs and the evidence in front of his eyes. That old character flaw of his is entirely a thing of the past. Even better, during a quest, it is revealed that Wakka has learned the Al Bhed language. It’s not a casual reveal either. It’s done pretty much perfectly: Wakka gives Rikku a heartfelt “thank you” in her own language. It’s a really touching moment.

There are similar moments for the rest of the original party and the side-characters you meet along the pilgrimage. However, I’d be here all day if I tried to list them out. If you enjoyed the characters of FFX, and you want more of their arcs, you’ll be pleased by this game.

Beyond characters, this game digs into the history of the world. We learn quite a bit about Zanarkand during FFX, but not much about Bevelle. We don’t learn nothing, of course, but Zanarkand is clearly the focus. That’s flipped here. One of the biggest details FFX brought up but never elaborated on was how Bevelle had machina that rivaled Sin. Now we actually get to see that.

A New Tale#↑

This was one of the bits I liked a bit less. There was plenty of interesting content to explore already. Instead of focusing on the good stuff, I suppose it was determined that this game also needed a standalone story with new characters we’ve never heard of before? There are these three dudes who lead the new major factions of Spira, and apparently all have a shared past.

This just felt like a distraction. The characters aren’t particularly interesting. Their story isn’t particularly good, and none of it fits with the other themes of the game. It’s also strange that in the game about the trio of girls, there’s this trio of guys that get ham-fisted into ill-fitting pseudo-protagonist roles. It’s like they thought a game about girls wouldn’t sell, so they just picked a couple shonen tropes out of a hat and threw them at the wall.

Fortunately, these guys don’t take up too much time. You just occasionally check in on them. The worst narrative sins they caused were basing Paine’s backstory entirely on them, when she had so much more potential than that, and needlessly taking the focus for the big final scene.

This all sounds pretty negative. I don’t think there’s anything truly awful about this part of the story. It’s just forgettable fluff that should never have made it in. The game would have been better without it.

A Mirror#↑

I think this was the most clever part of this writing, and I think this is how it justifies itself as a sequel. It’s very much not more of the same. It’s a continuation of the themes of FFX as a conversation. It responds to the themes of its predecessor, showing a different perspective.

Spoilers for both FFX and FFX-2:

FFX was a tale of sacrifice. If you want a deeper dive into that topic, I talked a lot about it in my FFX review, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s clearly the central theme of the game. It was also about the voices of the dead, like traditions and social structures set in motion generations ago. It was also about how organized religion can be extremely harmful due to cycles of guilt and abuse. FFX-2 didn’t respond to these themes by inverting them, but by showing a more hopeful vision of the future. It showed, not how those themes were incorrect about how things were, but how things could be.

Starting with the religion element, FFX-2 shows a new church being created. It is not perfect. It is not free from conflict or questionable power structures. It ends up in fear-driven conflict with other factions, similar to the original church’s treatment of the Al Bhed. However, it is built on hope and support for others as a foundation, instead of originally being created as a means of control and guilt. In the end, the church finds unity with the other factions of Spira, and this unity and community is shown as a very bright future. FFX-2 responds to FFX’s critique of religion and tradition by showing how there can be a middle ground in which these things provide comfort and unity.

On the voices of the dead: one of the core plot elements is a message that must be delivered from one long dead soul to another, so that they both might find peace. Literally the voices of the dead, even more clearly than FFX’s. However, instead of showing how the voices of the dead can be dangerous for the living, FFX-2 shows how similar the lives of the people who came before us are to our modern lives. The voices of the dead are still the voices of people. It shows how there are similarities between the stories of Yuna and Tidus, and that of Lenne and Shuyin—especially in Yuna’s current position. The world is saved because of Yuna’s empathy for the lives that came before her.

The most clear and direct response to the first game happens when Yuna drops the “this is my story” line, just like Tidus. However, she’s taking over the story from the others, not to sacrifice herself to fate, but to defy fate. When Nooj reveals his plan to sacrifice himself for the world, Yuna drops this iconic line, and then (thankfully) goes on a long, heartfelt rant about how she’s sick of sacrifices and compromises and giving up to fate instead of succeeding completely and totally. She say “I don’t want this anymore”, and that’s powerful. FFX-2 says that fate is what we make it, not something that has to be surrendered to, and to never give up.

Moving On#↑

For good reason, the most popular part of FFX is the relationship between Tidus and Yuna. Not only is it a touching story throughout the game, it ends tragically, which of course makes it even more memorable and emotionally impactful. It’s the perfect ending for that game.

If it ended perfectly, then how could a sequel follow up on it? I think this was the best, and only realistic option: an exploration of the grieving process, and moving on.

It’s also, in a different way, Yuna moving on from her old life. She had dedicated her life to one goal, and gave up everything else. She was restricted by the church, and never really got to just be herself. Now that she has the opportunity to do so, we get to see a lot of great character growth. It’s extremely endearing to watch Yuna’s journey of self discovery.

Her character design is awesome. She’s got some elements of her original character design, and some from Tidus. She’s got hair similar to his, a symbol similar the one Tidus and Jecht wear, and a much more asymmetric style. Importantly, she’s cut loose. She’s remembering where she came from, but she’s looking to the future and trying to have fun instead of being stuck in the past. She’s moving on. She’s trying to be happy.

The rest of this section contains spoilers for both FFX and FFX-2.

This story kicks off because a sphere was discovered that appeared to have a recording of Tidus on it. This prompts Yuna to dig into the mystery, and the plot follows from there. Over the course of the story, she learns that it was not actually Tidus, but Shuyin, a man from the distant past. It turns out, Shuyin is a lot like Tidus, and Yuna is a lot like Lenne, his love. The climax of that story arc is when Yuna delivers Lenne’s feelings to Shuyin—all the things she wished she could have said before they were out of time—allowing both of them to be at peace. At the same time, Yuna was letting go of Tidus, letting out all of the feeling she wished she had time to express, and finally finding peace.

Yuna goes through the full grieving process, starting with denial and ending with acceptance. The game’s story mirrors this perfectly, even pulling the player into these feelings along with Yuna. That, right there, is this game’s most clever and devious trick:

You may have heard that this game has several endings. You may have even heard of one being considered the “true ending”. I actually disagree with the popular consensus on that. Here’s how the endings work: the more of the game you complete, the less you’ve accepted that it’s over. If you do only the main story and nothing else, Tidus barely comes up at all. If you do some side content, Tidus might appear to comfort Yuna wordlessly as a ghost, but it’s just one last touching scene as Yuna moves on. If you reasonably complete all the side content, you get the option of Tidus being brought back to life by the Fayth. If you obsess over the game, talking to literally every NPC in the entire world every single chapter, Tidus becomes so “real” that he becomes self aware, wondering if he’s just another Fayth dream like before. Which of these is “true”? You’d have to be obsessed to truly 100% this game, but if you’re extremely dedicated to bringing Tidus back, you can. But is he really back? Or have you obsessed over him so much that you’ve believed a dream? I think the real “true ending”—the one that is most emotionally impactful and fits the best with the story—is Yuna completing the grieving process and accepting Tidus is gone. You, the player, must also accept this to get the “true ending”. If you are still chasing the other endings, you’re still in bargaining or denial. This is some genius-level game and interactive-narrative design.

Final Thoughts#↑

Rating: 9/10
Playtime: 17 hours

I am a huge fan of this game. It’s everything I hoped it would be, and more. It’s easy to look at just the surface level it presents. Many people will either love that surface level or hate it. I’m glad I fell on the side that loves it, but I think it’s also a lot deeper and more cleverly designed than it gets credit for. Beyond that surface girly-pop layer is a deep reflection on community, trauma, and hope. It’s also got the best gameplay in the series so far, and is very cleverly and thoughtfully designed. It deserves a lot more respect than it gets.

That said, I can see why some people can’t get past that surface level. An aesthetic layer you don’t enjoy can be a really difficult barrier to overcome for the enjoyment of a piece of media. That’s one of the big reasons nothing in FFIX landed strongly for me. So, I get it. However, if there’s even a small chance you’ll enjoy a “girls just wanna have fun” romp, I highly recommend it.

The director, Motomu Toriyama, also directed the FFXIII trilogy, and is co-directing the FFVIIR series. At the time of writing, I’ve already started FFXIII, and I’m enjoying it. I’m also looking forward to returning to the FFVIIR series in the future. It’s really interesting to see the first game he directed with the context I have about the future games. I can see the DNA this shares with those titles, and it’s all stuff I like. It almost seems like FFXIII is a refinement of the ideas in this game, and then FFVIIR is a further refinement of FFXIII. I think I might be a Motomu Toriyama fan. Time will tell!