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.
i played final fantasy x when i was 13 and thought it was the dumbest shit ever. the characters are all boring (people think auron is cool but it’s just that everybody else is so goddamn dumb), the story is super goofy, the hero is just the fucking worst, the sphere grid just means i have to spend more time playing it, i don’t even want to talk about fuckin’ blitzball. pros: the besaid island theme is pretty wicked especially when you’re high, the battle system feels a lot speedier than prior battle systems.
does tidus ever shut the fuck up about his goddamn dad?
i had a chip on my shoulder re: final fantasy x for years. it just felt like nothing cool ever happened except seymour’s totally wicked, creepy summon. the world didn’t feel that big. the voices were kind of hard to take, i still prefer silent protagonists, i don’t need to hear the bullshit opinions of the person i’m playing as, i don’t a give a fuck, he’s not going to have anything interesting to say.
eta: this guy who was big into parasite eve had no interest in ffx so he connected me with his other friend who was also playing ffx so we would bother each other instead of talk to him about stuff that wasn’t parasite eve or the alien movies. i guess that was something cool that came from ffx, which was an otherwise pretty underwhelming experience.
also, because this fucking thing was a christmas gift (it came out like, a week before christmas, i want to say) i could never sell or trade it. i almost traded it for ico in 2002!
it’s so crazy to me that ffx seems to be increasing in status as a fan favorite
idk what there is to like about it.
the battle system I guess?
to zanarkand is a nice piece of music.
the storytelling overall is slightly more coherent than your average final fantasy but idk if that’s a “positive” exactly especially because the story is so boring.
people have always liked ffx. i remember posting about how i didn’t like it on, i think it was the playstation underground forum c. 2002 or 2003, and people hated me and went through the list of (i think it was just playstation 1/2) games i owned so they could talk shit about them, as if i liked every game i owned.
The story telling in 4-9 is pretty great and this is Nomura at his most incoherent (note: I love Kingdom Hearts and especially KH3 and this has his stink and timing all over it.)
it would be sinister to connect the flat narration to the fact that a teenager(?!?) from a hightech-world ending up in a magical kingdom narrates what has happened up to the point where FFX switches from “lookin’ back in anger disappointment” to a first take on a romantic novel, and… yeah, that’s basically a frightingly good explanation that fits too good to be true, or that’s at least what i think… hope… desire…
he clicked on “Reply”… wondering whether his thoughts… belonging to a piece of media… would ever be heard… in a void… of time and space… words… lost… forever…
i knew a lot of people at the time who were obsessed with it. it wasn’t even the first rpg most of them had played, so they didn’t even have that excuse!
same with kingdom hearts actually. i couldn’t afford a ps2 until some time after my rpg phase had ended, so i was immune
i used to hate ff x but as time went on i ended up really liking it. not sure of nostalgia comes into play of if it’s just because i’m an ff shill but here we are. i think the characters are neat and i’m pretty sure the whole point of x was ’ zealotry is bad, don’t trust the church ’ so i thought that was sick and that the soundtrack made up for tidus and the voice acting that has NOT aged well since i started playing the hd version.
I was in High School when FFX released. Probably a Sophmore.
I wanted to be real excited about that game. And I mean, I was excited, pre-release. If only being overly optmistic that it would not be bad. But I hate that game.
I don’t really remember. But I’m pretty sure FFX knocked me off the JRPG track. Because I do remember that I didn’t really dig into any again, until Persona 4 and FF12. Both of which are pretty great.
I think this was the first game along with Shadow of the Collossus that I bought for the PS2. I reckon I got around three quarters through it and then just kinda gave up. I remember almost nothing of the story except the overall vapid feeling of it all.
I don’t think the pin had quite dropped yet, but I think this game set it to wobbling at the idea that maybe JRPGs were no longer really my thing (at least for the PS2 era).
I loved FF6, Chrono Trigger etc but from FFX onwards everything started to feel overwrought, over-long, over-dramatic and so on.
