QuickNavigation - FF Odyssey Final Fantasy X Preview (Archive) (Last updated on 11/25/2008)

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By: TogaAssasin

PREVIEW

     Final Fantasy X marks Final Fantasy’s maiden journey onto Sony’s Playstation 2, and what a journey it is. For this first time in years, the hardware is finally powerful enough to fully realize the vision of the story. FFX Uses a mix of real time cinematics, and beautiful FMV cinemas to help advance it’s complicated plot. FFX is also the first Final Fantasy to utilize voice-overs for all of the main characters, and many of the NPC's as well, this greatly enhances the drama of the game. Square also planned to incorporate online segments (interactive chat rooms, strategy guides) into FFX, but these segments never made it to the final product (mainly because Sony’s online network wasn’t ready in time).

                For the first time in the series Final Fantasy uses a totally new battle system. The battle system is now completely turn based, and requires much more strategy than the previous FF games have. One of the main features of this new system is the ability to swap characters in the middle of battle. Any time you press the L1 trigger a menu appears and you can choose to swap out the current party member for another one. No more having to choose favorites now everyone gets used. Every character also has distinct role in battle for example, Wakka can use his blitz ball to hit flying creatures that Tidus could not hit with his sword, this makes for a much more strategic battle system. Gone are the Trances of FF IX, they’re replaced with a new ability called “Over Drive”, this ability is very similar to a limit break, you use it once to deal massive damage to you r opponents.  Summons are back again too, but they can only be used by one character (Yuna) and they’re a big part of the story as well. This time when you summon, the summon actually stays and you get to control it until it is defeated. The summons behave much like normal characters. They can cast magic, attack, or use a special ability unique to each particular summon, the summons can also use overdrives just like the characters. The summons overdrives look incredible, and are incredibly powerful. The new battle system is definitely a welcome addition to the series.

                Square has also done away with Final Fantasy’s old level based advancement and replaced with a new advancement system called “the sphere board”. The sphere board is basically a huge board of connected circles. On this board are slots to place spheres in, certain slots increase your stats, and some give new abilities. Now to move on this sphere board you need S levels, S levels are gained by getting AP from defeating monsters. For every S level you can move one space forward on the board, or 4 spaces backwards. It sounds quite complicated, but believe me it really isn’t, after an hour with the sphere system you’ll love it.

Another Area that has gone under some major changes is the music. Unlike game music of the past, FFX uses a lot choral pieces and chanting, as well as the trademark upbeat battle themes. Even though the style of music has changed a little, the quality is still the same, FFX’s music sounds great.

The new minigame in FF X is Blitzball an underwater sport that resembles a cross between water polo and hockey. Blitz ball really heavy on stats and is mainly menu based. The computer does most of the moving for you, so all you need to worry about doing is choosing when to pass shoot, or break through defenders. Although it sounds very basic, it’s actually very complicated, especially when you consider the fact that there are tons of blitzball skills to learn and an entire league to play through. There are other mini games scattered throughout the game, but blitzball is the most prevalent (you can play it at every save point). And I am happy to say FFX has no card game.

                FFX was released on July 19^th in Japan, and has sold over 2 million copies. Square has targeted spring 2002 for the games US release. For the US release Square is redoing all the lip synching as well as recording English voices for the whole game.

With a main quest that takes 40-50 hours to complete, and enough side quests to keep you busy for twice that long FFX is definitely worth the money. Make sure this one is on your to get list for early 2002.