The first Final Fantasy game I completed was the Playstation version of the first game in 2012. I hated it. I've written about the insanely high encounter rate in that version of the game before, but it bears repeating because I never see anyone else mentioning it. Last year I played the PSP version of Final Fantasy IV on one of my Vitas and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I knew the series deserved a second chance and I'm glad I gave it one. With those two completed, I've been thinking for a long time about which game in the series would be next for me. All of the games seem interesting to me, and each title (except for IV and VI maybe) has its fans as well as its major haters. Although I thought I might skip to the Playstation era of the franchise, I decided to go to the Playstation 2. I remember the time I was a guest on the Collectorcast, Chris spoke highly of Final Fantasy XII but Bil was very persuasive making his case for the tenth game in the series. So a few weeks ago I decided once again to play through a Final Fantasy title, once again on the Playstation Vita. This is not a review, as I am not finished with the game, and I don't think I'd want to review this game even if I was. Rather, I feel a desire to share some thoughts on this very strange game.



I love playing games with an old-school strategy guide if I have one. I knew I had a guide for X-2 but I had to dig through the pile to find my copy of the guide for the first game. I didn't know when I started the game but this holy document would prove indispensable for my playthrough. I'm using the Bradygames Official Strategy Guide published in 2002. It is in good shape and even has the poster as well as a one piece of copy paper with someone's notes on it. This game is extremely linear. That's not a problem for me, but wait a minute, I thought FFXIII was "Final Fantasy Hallway." For the most part, the maps in FFX are all straight or slightly curved lines. There is almost no room for exploration. I was really taken aback by this. So, you may be wondering why I need a strategy guide. It turns out FFX is the kind of game where if you take two steps in the wrong direction, you may trigger an hour's worth of cutscenes with three boss battles in the middle. It's also the kind of game where you can miss out on huge items if you don't talk to a specific person or open a chest that you cannot see on screen. Combine these two things with the fact that there is pretty much no backtracking, and a guide is the way to go.


So here I am, playing FFX on my Vita with a strategy guide. It's weird though, sometimes I just don't feel like lugging around that guide with me. What happens then? I grind. I listen to podcasts and grind. I listen to music and grind. I watch YouTube videos and grind. I grind on my lunch break at work. I may get in two to three hours of grind in one day. This is stupid, and I know that. Once the game is done, all that time I dumped into it will be for nothing except hopefully an easy endgame. The guide eggs me on to grind in certain spots by literally telling me "hey, this is a great place to level up." The game has a very unique leveling system that fuels my addictive grinding. Instead of earning experience and increasing character levels, you earn AP from battles to increase sphere levels. Each sphere level can be used for one move on the Sphere Grid, which is akin to a skill tree from a more modern game, except that all of your skills and stat increases are on it. Each character has his or her own section of the grid but there are ways to move into other characters' sections and double dip on their skills and attributes. 


The combat has its own quirks as well. There is no active time battle that I quite enjoyed in FFIV. On the surface, this is a standard turn-based affair. However, there is one very important part of the battles which you must take advantage of if you want your party to level up evenly. AP is only earned in battle if the character does something, and it can be anything. A character can block, use an item, or even attack and miss and he or she will still earn AP. If the character is not used in a battle, he will not earn AP at all. When you're grinding as much as I am, each battle becomes a merry-go-round of available party members so each can share in the AP haul. The swapping of characters is useful during multi-stage boss battles where specialization is required, so in that respect I really appreciate it.

When it comes to the story and characters, I feel like this is a "you had to be there" situation. I'm trying to put myself in the mind frame of the early 2000s. I really can't stand the main character, Tidus. He is a truly unlikable, impulsive moron of a character. His voice acting is very annoying, and his costume looks terrible. The rest of the other characters fare a little better, but the only ones I really like are Lulu and Rikku. The cutscenes are horrible and there are so many of them. What makes them bad is voice acting that sounds like every sentence was recorded separately and then put together after the fact. None of the conversations sound like a natural conversation people would have in real life. It's like a bad dream.

I've put over forty hours into the game at this point and I'm ready for it to end. According to my guide I'm almost there. I didn't even get into the main mini-game, Blitzball, because I only did it once and didn't enjoy it in the slightest. I'm praying that I won't be required to win at Blitzball to finish the game. The generally positive reception of this game has me a bit confused. It is nowhere near as good as FFIV. Is it because the graphics were revolutionary at the time and those who played it at launch have forgotten about its flaws? It is the first game in the series to contain voice acting. Did that help players bond closer to the characters at the time? I really don't know. I don't hate this game at all, but I don't think it's that great. The Sphere Grid and the fact that it is on the Vita keeps me coming back and pushing to the end. I'll be happy when it ends and I can move on to another game in the series, perhaps around this time next year. Have you ever played this game? Was it back in the day or more recently? What are your thoughts on it?

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