well okay!
getting out of the way what i said in the games you played today thread, which is that i have only recently gotten out of the game’s first act (i.e. we’re like, 9-10 hoursish in). Also, i know nothing about the game’s plot that i haven’t experienced in play, and i plan to keep it that way! i have found it extremely amusing to, while watching a film or television show or playing a game alongside my girlfriend, to out-loud state my usually accurate predictions of future events, mostly because it exasperates her and being annoying is one of our favorite hobbies in this house
this game is pretty good! i’m gonna be real - i skim this necro-thread and i smell the rotten stench of hating from most involved parties. (that’s not to say, of course, that everyone has to love or even like FFX, however i think calling it a bad game is just fully unfair) like, it has good character designs and music and a solid, simple battle system where nearly everyone is not a clean archetype with the exception of lulu as the black mage. but tidus is a swordboy who also learns buffs and utility abilities like he thought this was dragon quest, wakka is a ranged attacker who’s also sturdy and focuses on statuses, kehmari is a blue mage and a tanky spear guy, yuna is a white mage and the summoner, auron is a heavy-hitter who also is the one with the debuffs (rikku has not quite joined the party at this point though also hey this game has 7 party members and you’ve played with them all at least once after just a few hours and the game handles it pretty well) and that’s without playing around with sphere grid nonsense! but if you wanna be a freak and get knee-deep in cartoon productivity software details then playing with different overdrives and overdrive modes and trying to get overkills and skillful use of character switching and doing some weird shit with the sphere grid gives you plenty to sink the teeth into on this thing. (mostly in the international version and remakes on that last point but still in the original game you can get weird)
and look. if its nice to look at and listen to and the battles are good then, i mean, that would be at bare minimum a decent rpg
but also, uh, the characters are good! yuna and tidus are two awkward teens who clearly don’t know how to be a normal person with someone their own age and have similar yet completely unalike lives and it’s good. wakka and lulu have a relationship with a lot of implied texture from knowing each other a long time, sharing a very personal piece of grief, doing a lot of raising yuna, and the game makes it clear that these two have a very particular, unclear thing that, to me, rings true. tidus’ struggle with having a shitty-then-“dead” dad who he has had to both live in the shadow of and live with everyone else idolizing and not seeing him for what he is is also some shit, man. i mean hell the game’s delivery makes the idolizing of jecht by the rest of the world quite literal - there’s billboards of him in zanarkand and then in spira folks talk about jecht the hero the guardian, but none of that is ever him. the first time we hear his voice or actually see him not in a photo is in tidus’ memories and nightmares where he’s an abusive ass! (and yeah, okay, memories and nightmares aren’t real either but you’ve gotta admit they’re a lot more real than an advertisement)
also the game’s voice acting is good i’m sorry. yuna’s actor gives a slightly funny performance sometimes but everyone else is real solid! tidus’ VA does a great job! he sounds like a beachy airheaded guyman which, uh, well he is so… he should! like. i do generally agree with the general forum line that video games shouldnt have voice acting but… i don’t think it takes away from this game and in fact they do good enough jobs to even help the script. the infamous laughing scene for example is, on paper, heartening and funny, but everyone’s performances do a lot to make it even moreso! their forced laughs are really good and a lot better than any perfectly-timed-auto-progressing “HA HA HA HA” would be in text
i will grant that the continued presence of from-the-end-retrospective narration is a bit silly and literally never necessary, however, i find it very easy to not let it ruin the experience! i can find it funny when he immediately restates an obvious fact that just happened. but if i really wanna be clever, i can say that his remarking to a third party outside of himself very plainly how the things he experienced made him feel is a good showing of the emotional growth this journey brings him, because lord knows he is a lot more emotionally mature than most 18-ish year olds. even 10-ish hours into the game fresh-new-guardian tidus is a more vulnerable and emotionally aware late teen boy than i, or indeed most of us who were once or once thought we were 18-ish year old boys, ever was, so this is at the very least a believable stretch
(it also doesn’t really bother me that noone ever says Tidus’ name, however, i do personally dislike on principle any game ever allowing me to rename a character who is clearly A Very Specific Guy and not just Some Player Avatar)
it’s a pretty solid game! and i do not find its failings particularly egregious or noteworthy, and if you ask me they certainly don’t outweigh the things it’s doing well, which i think there’s quite a number of. it’s never going to be better than [insert the first final fantasy that you, the reader, played and loved] but it is still a good game regardless