Back in 2005 I got a PS2. This was my first Playstation console so I had missed out on the PS1 era. I was also a loyal devout insert credit reader filled with postmodernism, pongism, and new games journalism. So I played FFX and about 3 hours in could not take that they never said Tidus’s name. He was flung off a boat and Wakka rushes to the side and clenches his teeth. I just passed that scene in 2019 or maybe there is an identical scene later on.
I…sure did pick a small reason to stop a bad game. It has maybe been a common theme recently to complain and thrust my hands out and say look video games suck compared to movies and books. These big stupid interactive entertainment products are devoid of even the basest social commentary or examination of life that would qualify most art. Monopoly as twisted as it is is more art than a lot of video games. I’m just saying that because A. I believe it, B. Cause y’all will get mad at that belief, C. So when I start complaining about how bad FFX is in the next paragraph you can pass me off as a blowhard aimming to high.
Bonglord, Final Fantasy X is bad. I would want to compare the Japanese dub but that game is 4000-5000 yen for the modern ports and these first 3 hours are horrible. The voice over is horrendous. Narration is almost always a bad sign because you can’t somehow fit those emotions responses and story telling in the actual performance. And in X it is frequently “Everything changed that day.” Tidus you got flung through time. Then you were in an underwater castle and then in a Samoan village who had the same sport as you and you look like this guy’s dead brother and also there is a giant evil whale that destroys a village but not that village and no one is acting like a human more like a bizarre AI of emotion responses gleamed from thousands of movies and oh hey give us more narration.
The dialog is horrendous. Then you have PS2 era every line of dialog has to be stand-alone and loaded so it is horribly timed. Tidus sure is an airheaded goofball outsider and Wakka sure did immediately become his best friend and then they fall off a boat and I guess fight a jellyfish?
I am flailing for what I am trying to say outside of I am shocked how awful the story delivery is. I keep imagining a 16-22 year old yelling at their parents/SO to see this great art and the parents/SO trying to take interest in this dreck. Then the story stops and the player goes into the Sphere Grid and somehow that’s what loses their interest.
Comparing this directly to FF7-8-9 and I would foolishly want to say “The primitive 3D and text only allows those games to be removed from the comparison of film and more comfortably allow the player to engage the game on it’s own terms.” I am however much smarter and FFX is incoherent nonsense with bad characters and worse introduction to them. 7 and 9’s intros are great in 2019 that do a lot of character establishing while having reveals and twists. 8’s first mission is all spectacle but I can’t speak to the 45 minutes before it starts.
The battle system is fine, but I could also play Lord of the Rings The Third Age which is just the FFX battle system and I get to walk around Peter Jackson’s Moria while fighting orcs.
