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

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By: segadcsonic

Dead for a thousand years,
A great terror arose from the deep,
It swept across the land,
A lone past still lingers,
Destiny cannot be denied,
A burden grows heavier,
To the kingdom of the sun,
Across a vast sea,
The journey home begins...

     The Final Fantasy series has gone a long way.  From the old-school classics from the NES and SNES, and on to graphic improvements on the PlayStation, now comes the first FF game for the PlayStation 2.  Final Fantasy X features a newly-designed battle system, and the characters can talk and express facial motions.  Could this possibly be one of the best FF games out there?  Read on to find out…

     Final Fantasy X takes place on the world of Spira and follows the adventures of Tidus, the son of Jecht, the legendary Blitzball player of Zanarkand. After the destructive force Sin destroys Zanarkand, Tidus finds himself in Spira 1000 years later. His adventures soon lead him to the Island of Besaid where he meets up with another Blitzball player, Wakka along with a young summoner named Yuna. Confused, Tidus is not exactly sure of his place in Spira nor what is going on exactly. His curiosity leads in him joining Yuna’s pilgrimage to defeat Sin. Tidus decides to join Yuna’s quest to defeat Sin to restore peace and stability to all of Spira once again, much like her father, Braska did when he defeated Sin. Along with the aid of Wakka, Lulu, Kimahri and Auron, they set out to various temples across Spira to gain control of the Aeons needed to defeat Sin. Along the way, they witness a few Sin attacks on Spira and manage to survive them, driving Sin away to the sea. Shortly afterwards, Maester Seymour proposes to marry Yuna to bring happiness and restoration to the land.

     Yuna thinks about this decision for a little while and eventually agrees on this proposal. Later on, Tidus and the others find out that Seymour plans to bring chaos to Spira and his ambitions far outdo his seemingly friendly and courteous nature. After showing proof to Yuna that Seymour has evil intentions inside of him, she decides to reject Seymour’s proposal. Eventually, Seymour finds a way to capture Yuna and forces her to marry him. Tidus and the others meet up with a young Al Bhed girl named Rikku and she offers to help them on their quest as her father, Cid operates an airship that will help them find Yuna. Along the way, Tidus and the others learn that Seymour and the other Maesters of Spira are all united in one coalition and they agree that Tidus and the others should be jailed and executed immediately for opposing the views of the god Yevon. Tidus and the others confront Seymour and during the wedding ceremony, Seymour foils Tidus’ plan to rescue Yuna but then Yuna tricks Seymour and uses one of her Aeons to escape from him. After reuniting with Yuna, Tidus and the others slowly learn to realize more about her pilgrimage and Auron tells Tidus more about Jecht and the fact that he is still alive in the form of Sin himself. Tidus is stunned to hear this and refuses to believe this fact until later on in the game. Seymour and the other Maesters manage to capture Tidus and the others and they jail them in an underwater prison. However, Tidus and his friends manage to escape before being executed and they later on encounter Seymour again. After defeating him, Yuna attempts to send him to the farplane as a ritual of death but later on Seymour does return again inside of Sin. It is revealed that Yuna will die after summoning the final Aeon needed to defeat Sin and understands and accepts her fate and sacrifice to temporarily bring peace to Spira. Tidus doesn’t want that to happen and he and the others eventually find a way to prevent Yuna from sacrificing herself to defeat Sin, only for him to return to life again.

     Tidus learns more about the Fayth when he returns to Zanarkand ruins in which they are the souls of the people who perished at the hands of Sin. Eventually, Tidus and the others learn that they need to defeat Sin and then quickly defeat the god Yu Yevon in order to defeat Sin for good and restore peace into Spira once and for all. Much to everyone’s surprise, they find Lady Yunalesca resurrected again and she condemns Yuna for breaking the ways of the summoner’s pilgrimage by not sacrificing herself to save Spira. Tidus and the others defeat her and later on, Yuna realizes that she can’t summon the final Aeon needed to defeat Sin. Tidus and the others decide to board the airship again to plan out their strategy to find and defeat Sin. Lulu tells Tidus that Sin seems to have a soft spot for the hymn of the Fayth song and proposes to make the people of Spira all chant the song so that Sin will be distracted. Sin gets distracted and then the airships flies into Sin’s attack range and then Tidus and the others decide to attack and break their way inside of Sin.

     After entering Sin, Tidus and the others eventually meet up with Seymour again. However, Seymour proposes that Sin has chosen him to bring eternal death and darkness and suffering to the people of Spira. Tidus and the others defeat him and Yuna finally gets the chance to send him off to the farplane for good. Tidus finally encounters his father Jecht, whom he hated and despised for all these years and Jecht understands how Tidus feels about him. Of course Tidus and the others will have to defeat Jecht since he is Sin, after all. Tidus fights valiantly and eventually manages to defeat Jecht after Jecht junctions on to Braska’s final Aeon. After going through the process of defeating all of her Aeons, Yuna and the others reach Yu Yevon. Yuna believes that Yevon’s teachings are nothing but a sham and are entirely made up to deceive the people of Spira. After defeating Yevon and restoring peace to Spira, Tidus and the others return back to Cid’s airship again. Tidus tells Yuna that he isn’t real and that he is a Fayth as well. Tidus and Auron, who are both technically dead, decide to return to the farplane to see Jecht again and Tidus says goodbye to his friends. Yuna and the others accept Tidus’ fate and they return to Spira to announce that Sin has been defeated for good and Yuna makes a big speech at a large Blitzball game. She tells the people of Spira to keep having faith and hope and tells them never to forget their dreams and feelings. The game ends when Tidus swims up to the surface of the ocean and perhaps finds himself in the new Spira? It is unknown but the ending can be perceived in many different ways and views.

     Well, of course being on the PS2, the graphics are a spectacular leap over Final Fantasy IX’s.  The details are stunning, and the facial expressions are quite realistic.  The auto-camera angles in certain places are nice because they actually work well (unlike games such as Sonic Adventure 2 for the Sega Dreamcast).  The FMVs (although not too much of them) are overwhelming, it shows that Square is improving their skills in terms of 3D modelling.  The only problem about the graphics is the lip-synching, in some times, it’s a little off, but most of it is fine, actually.

 Final Fantasy X features some gameplay improvements over its predecessors such as the ability to swap characters on the fly.  The battles are turn-based (wait system) using the CTB and is done by displaying a bar at the top right of the battle screen determining the order of who attacks, and is dependent on status (haste, slow), and other instances.  The sphere grid system is a new way of levelling up your characters.  You gain AP, you then gain S. Levels, and then you use them to move places across the sphere grid to activate nodes containing bonuses/skills/attributes (for example, HP +200, Strength +4, magic spells such as Curaga, etc.)  This makes your characters customizable, as it is possible for other characters to learn different abilities (ie: Auron learning black magic).  Weapons and can be customized.  You can add abilities to open slots if available, you just need the required items (ie: you need some power spheres to get Strength +5).  These auto-abilities are not permanent, they will be gone if you use a different weapon/armor.  One noticeable change from previous FF games is that you can go over 9999 HP and 999 MP, to a maximum of 99999 HP and 9999 MP.  You need to get the character’s final ultimate weapon, or customize and make an ability called Break HP/damage limit, but it requires really rare items.  Aeons (summons) can be customized too; they can learn abilities and their attributes can rise with the use of items.

Storyline

     In this story, the overall feel of it is more like a holy, religious story.  It uses some religious influences such as the importance of temples, and on a different note, the significance of life and death.  One of the main villains is Sin, who punishes the people for their past sins.  The story is quite good, and does have some interesting plot twists.  The problem is that in general, nothing too drastic was made, meaning that the story didn’t have too much creativity compared to others.

Sound

     The overall sound in the game is pretty good; some tracks are good, and really fit the mood well.  Square tried something new by adding a metal track called Otherworld.  The theme is played during a blitzball FMV and on another occasion as well.  Suteki Da Ne is a very nice song, but isn’t better than Eyes On Me from FF VIII.  I’m glad that they kept the song in Japanese, if they translated it into English, it’ll not sound as nice.  The real downfall about the sound is the voice acting, some characters do not sound that well.  Yuna, for example, doesn’t sound like a strong-willed person willing to defeat Sin.  The Japanese voices sounded like they fit the character better than the US voiceovers.

Fun Factor

     There are literally hundreds of hours of sidequests in this game.  My personal favourite is Blitz Ball.  Blitz Ball is an underwater RPG soccer type of game, it’s very addictive, and you can play tournaments and leagues most of the time.  The other sidequests are very fun too; there are many in this game, so in general, the game can be very fun and will make you want to play over and over again, hence the high replay value.

Overall

      Final Fantasy X is definitely worth the money; the graphics are simply amazing, and the FMVs are more realistic than FF 8’s or 9’s.  The debut of voice acting in the FF series is a novel concept.  The gameplay is very innovative and makes it fun to play; the gameplay system is originality combined with the superior concepts of the older FF’s.  The storyline is pretty good as well, and the sound is not too bad as well.  The fun factor is very high as this game provides sidequests that are a ton of fun and that can take many hours.

Ratings (Compare w/ other games)

GRAPHICS:	9.5/10	9.5	With jaw-dropping graphics and vivid details, plus excellent DVD-detail FMVs, proves that Square is getting a hang of the PS2 hardware and will be better in the future with the upcoming FF 11 and 12 games.  Unfortunately, Square didn’t work too much on the lip-synching, and on certain parts of the game, the voices are a little out of synch.  But overall, they did not bad of a job.
GAMEPLAY:	19/20	9.5	I like the innovation Square put in to the general gameplay for Final Fantasy X.  The new Sphere Grid system and newly-designed battle system combined with some concepts from older FF games makes the game very interesting to play.
STORYLINE:	16.5/20	8.25	The storyline is pretty decent, it’s not very good nor bad, Sakaguchi probably took the safe route when making the story up and didn’t try anything too drastic with it.  Its simplicity and simple ending made the story good but nothing special.
SOUND:	8.5/10	8.5	The sound is pretty good; most of the tracks fit the mood very well and sound great.  I especially liked Suteki Da Ne, it really fits the mood well.  As for the voice acting, its ok, but some characters don’t really fit for their voices too well…
FUN FACTOR:	10/10	10	With at least 150 hours worth of sidequests (especially Blitz Ball), this makes FF 10 very fun and gives it a lot of replay value.
OVERALL:	63.5/70	9.1	Probably one of the better FFs out there, but this is overall, a great game and really brings the FF series back up after the pretty good (but lower rated) FF games such as Final Fantasy VIII and IX.

Characters

Aeons

Lyrics

Suteki Da Ne

kaze ga yoseta kotoba ni
oyoida kokoro
kumo ga hakobu ashita ni
hazunda koe

tsuki ga yureru kagami ni
furueta kokoro
hoshi ga nagare koboreta
yawarakai namida

suteki da ne
futari te wo tori aruketa nara
ikitai yo
kimi no machi ie ude no naka

sono mune
karada azuke
yoi ni magire
yumemiru

kaze ha tomari kotoba ha
yasashii maboroshi
kumo ha yabure ashita ha
tooku no koe

tsuki ga nijimu kagami wo
nagareta kokoro
hoshi ga yurete koboreta
kakusenai namida

suteki da ne
futari te wo tori aruketa nara
ikitai yo
kimi no machi ie ude no naka

sono kao
sotto furete
asa ni tokeru
yumemiru

English (Rough translation)

(My) heart is swimming in words
formed by the wind.
(My) voice carried
by a cloudy tomorrow.

A mirror moved
by the moon, trembled my heart.
Soft tears
filled with a stream of stars.

Isn't it beautiful?
Two of us walking hand in hand.
I want to go to
your town, your home, your arms.

I dream of lying
against your chest.
My body in your clasp,
disappearing into the evening.

Words stopped by the wind
are a gentle illusion.
A cloud-torned tomorrow is
a far-away voice.

My heart has been
in a moon-blocked flowing
mirror.
Stars that swayed and flowed
can't hide my tears.

Isn't it beautiful?
Two of us walking hand in hand.
I want to go to
your town, your home, your arms.

I dream of your face
that softly melts in the
morning.

Otherworld

Go on if you want it.
An otherworld awaits you
Don't you give up on it.
You bite the hand that feeds you.

All alone cold fields you wander
Memories of it, cloud your sight
Fills your dreams, disturbs your slumber
Lost your way, a fallen knight

Hold now, aim is steady
An otherworld awaits you.
One thousand years--you ready?
The otherworld it takes you

Go into the sand and the dust in the sky
Go now, there's no better plan than to do or to die
Free me pray to the faith in the face of the light
Feed me fill me with sin now get ready to fight

You know you will
You know you will
You know you know you know you know that you will
You know you know you know you know that you will

Fight fight fight
Fight fight fight
Fight fight fight

Hope dies and you wander
The otherworld it makes you
Dreams they rip asunder
The otherworld it hates you
Free now ride up on it
Up to the heights it takes you
Go on if you want it.
An otherworld awaits you

Movies

     (coming soon)

Music

     (N/A)