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By Coach

Story and Characters - 10

The game revolves around the lives of two main characters. Tidus is a young blitzball star for the Zanarkand Abes. Sin destroys his hometown and he wakes up to find himself in another time and place 1000 years into the future. Yuna is a resident of this new world that shuns technology and is the daughter of High Summoner Lord Braska. Braska defeated the demon Sin 10 years ago, and is on a pilgrimage to follow in her father's footsteps to defeat the resurrected Sin.

The game also has the strongest supporting cast seen since Final Fantasy VI and may even surpass that masterpiece in character development. Auron, Kimahri, Wakka, Lulu and Rikku all play vital roles that push along the story and add plenty of surprises along the way.

Yuna's pilgrimage involves passing the Cloister of Trials to acquire aeons to defeat Sin. The Fayth bless summoners with these powerful allies and it is only through acquiring the Final Aeon. This is a religious and time-honored tradition that has been followed for 1000 years since Sin destroyed Zanarkand. People believe that Sin is their punishment and it is only through atonement that they will ever receive true peace and Sin will not return. Each time Sin is defeated a period called "The Calm" reigns, however the demon always returns.

Summoners are the only ones able to defeat Sin and bring "The Calm", so when a person chooses the path to become a summoner, they must take on a pilgrimage to Accra the aeons with the help of "guardians" who are the protectors of the summoner and would give their lives for him or her.

Gameplay and Graphics - 10

Most previous Final Fantasy titles allowed players to battle their way through the game without having to worry much about how their characters developed their skills. One could simply hack and slash most enemies to death, summon them into oblivion, etc. If you fit that mode, then don't be surprised if you find yourself seeing the "Game Over" screen after monsters that you pulverized in previous titles. Square has finally produced to the world a console RPG that truly takes account of character's attributes and measures them against the enemy and surroundings. Sure, maybe in FFIX you were able to take a physically weak character like Vivi and make level him up enough to cause a couple thousand points of damage with his staff. However be assured that you will probably never see more than 50 points damage dealt by the rods of Yuna or the doll attacks of Lulu. Tidus's Firaga attack will likely not see anymore that a few hundred points damage.

Square introduces a newly designed battle system for FFX and has completely scrapped the Experience Points method of leveling up characters. Now characters develop their skills on what is called the "Sphere Grid" After a battle you acquire Ability Points. A certain amount of AP allows your to move a certain amount of spaces on the grid and spheres acquired in battle allow you to learn new abilities. Such abilities include magic, status attacks, healing spells, skills and also "level up" spheres which raise HP, MP, defense, etc. Weapons and armor do not raise or lower character's stats by themselves. Each have slots that allow the character to add attributes to the weapon or armor that can help him or her. Also gone is the ATB system that counts down until your party can attack, now your attack time depends solely on your speed attributes. You can also switch your party in the middle of battle for a completely balanced attack on your foes and to acquire AP for all members of your group. And finally, the last major change in battle is allowing you to actually control your summon during battle. Each summon can cast magic, attack, use special skills or, like the other characters, perform an "Overdrive" when the limit break gauge fills. Aeon's overdrives are reminders of the summon attacks of old and deal massive damage. Shiva's overdrive is spectacular.

There are 50 Full Motion Video's throughout the game that are visual masterpieces and probably taken from the same machines that created Final Fantasy: The Spirit's Within. No company had, until this point, done anything with the PS2 quite like what Square achieved in FFX and you won't see anything like it again until Square releases their next title in the series. In-game graphics are nearly flawless and the 3D environments that are shown throughout the game exceed even the beauty of the pre-rendered backgrounds of the days of the PSX. Load times are almost nonexistent in the game and FMV and in-game sequences usually seem together flawlessly. What is scary is that this is the first Final Fantasy title published for the PS2. If one were to compare FFVII (Square's first PSX effort) to FFVIII and FFIX graphically and the improvements made and think about what Square could do in the future with the 128 bit PS2... We'll just leave that one for the eye candy fans to drool over for the next little bit.

Music and Sound - 9

Nobuo Uematsu has around 70 songs throughout the game. Many of the songs are good, none are bad. It was very difficult to pick one song out that really stands out from the rest because many were so good. Uematsu was also finally able to pen a boss fight them that was actually not a headache to listen to in my humble opinion. Songs such as "Isn't It Wonderful?", "Auron's Theme" "Seymour's Theme" and a few others stand out. And, a nice touch is that you can listen to all 70 songs by going to the Luca Theater (as well as watch all 50 of the FMV's). Of course there is a hefty fee involved and you can only listen to or see what you have passed through or heard so far in the game. So don't think you are going to be able to go buy your way into seeing the end of the game at the very beginning.

Square introduced voice acting for the first time into the Final Fantasy series. I loathe voice acting and think it ruins otherwise decent games. The only exception to this I had ever played was Devil May Cry which finally did it right. Square has used voice acting on the PS2 before with The Bouncer, but outside of the character Volt, it seemed out of place most of the time. The problem with the voice acting in FFX is that the localization team tried to make the the characters speak English in time with the lip movements of the characters on screen. The problem here is that the characters were programmed speaking Japanese, so the localization team attempted what was done so well in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. However, all it accomplished was making the characters lines sound unnatural and strained. The notable exception to this was the strength of the voice of Auron during the game because you couldn't ever see his lips, so he didn't have to worry about forcing his words into Japanese mouth movements and when Tidus is narrating the story.

Replay Value - 10

No doubt about it, Final Fantasy X is exhausting and you probably won't want to pick it up immediately to go see what you missed the first time around, but this game will definitely be one that you will find yourself picking up and playing again, if only in certain areas and saved points, over and over.

Summary - 39/40

There simply is not an RPG on the market that comes close to accomplishing what Squaresoft has done with Final Fantasy X.