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Game Title: Final Fantasy X-2
Platform: PlayStation 2
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix, Electronic Arts (Europe)
Genre: Role Playing Game
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+ (Europe), CERO: B (Japan), ESRB: T for Teen (America)
Release Date: March 13th 2003 (Japan), November 18th 2003 (America), February 19th 2004 (Australia), February 20th 2004 (Europe),
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Game Score: 5.3/10
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Summery:
Sadly Final Fantasy X-2 only provides minor fan service and several changes that don't make the game a sequel that fans find worth appreciating then the original.
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For many years, Square's Final Fantasy series had become a proper standard in Japanese Role Playing games. Challenging bosses, great characters, amazing CGI style cut scenes and also the Active Time Battles where outstanding for the series. Most importantly the later sequels have always had their own stories to follow. All of that simply changes with the release of Final Fantasy X-2 in which from my experience begun the series downfall and aside from the countless remakes on future game consoles, things really got out of hand for the series.
Get this, Final Fantasy X-2 is a sequel to 2001's Final Fantasy X which had it's mixed opinions between the Sphere Grid and Characters. To me I thought that Final Fantasy X was great and that I think some refinements to the grid could make it better. Because of the game's popularity the developers said to themselves that they need to make a sequel to a sequel and that is their final result. For this game the first thing to note is that this game has only a playable all girl casts which can seem a bit upsetting. My brother and I once called this game Final Fantasy X: Barbie Edition, we really thought this game was a joke to the fans. However after some research it's supposed to resemble Charles Angels of sorts.
Final Fantasy X-2 follows after 2 years from the events from Final Fantasy X where the heroes successfully defeated the evil tyrant Sin. Yuna becomes a sphere hunter because she finds a sphere where she believes an old familiar face may still be alive. Yuna is accompanied by Rikku (another returning character) and also a new character named Paine. Together they call themselves the Gullwings Y.R.B and their goal is to find the spheres before their rivals do, settle a rivalry between the Youth League and New Yevon, and solve the mystery of whatever if that was really that familiar face or someone else who's suffering in torment.
The writing is solid and all the characters do retain their voices from the original X and each of them deliver their lines excellently including many new faces.
One major important aspect of Final Fantasy X-2 is the gameplay design. Unlike other instalments where you have the main story path to follow with a sidequest available X-2 changes all that by giving you a Air Ship called the Celsius in which you can travel to any of the locations on the World Map. To those who are familiar with the original all of these areas haven't changed in design but the people living there have changed a bit. However the gist of the game is that places will gives you a sidequests that you can do for them, they range from minor tasks, quests, to optional boss fights and dungeons. The objectives range from delivering balloons to people as Yuna is dressed as a Moogle, having to dig for treasure and rare items in the dessert, helping NPC's out with their problems, or to participate in several minigames.
These minigames include Gunner's Gauntlet where you Third Person shooting as Yuna, Sphere Break which is a a mathematical coin game involving addition and multiplication, a Cactuar Shooting minigame that requires a well timed button press and finally one of the returning minigames from FFX, Blitzball.
The sidequests are very simple for the most part, they mostly take a short while to figure out by mostly talking to NPC's and solving their issues, however one note to consider is the way that how the game progresses. First up you have quests that advance the storyline called Hot Spots while sidequests are starting by visiting other areas that are not highlighted which can be confusing at times, especially when I didn't know about some of the sidequests when I first played through it. Also some sidequests become a little complicated and require you to travel to multiple locations and sadly you won't know the right locations sometimes unless you've have walkthrough guide with you. Completing sidequests will give you minor rewards such as Dresspheres (which I'll come back to.), accessories or different items. Another thing about doing these sidequests is that if you beat a chapter of the games story all of that chapters sidequests that you missed disappear and you can't play them in the next chapter. You'll have different sidequests to do instead of the ones you might have never started in the previous chapter.
Then you have the minigames which sadly are very lacking. Gunner's Gauntlet is a simple shooting game where you pushing forward to the end shooting monsters with 4 types of ammo along the way to get a Highscore. Disappointingly the game is very simplistic and becomes too frustrating when you're constantly stop firing randomly after 6 bullets when you still have ammo left and also becomes a pain to get a high score. Sphere Breaker is an extremely annoying math game where you need to use additions and multiplications to be able to remove all the sphere coins on the board. The biggest problem is that even you'll get rid of some pieces, some pieces will just come back and also it's easy to screw yourself at it. The Cactuar shooting game as Yuna having to shoot a Cactuar to deplete it's health to zero with well timed button presses. It's frustratingly difficult to get the timing down and most of the time the Cactuar will instantly jump when you shoot at it or worse fire it's needles at you and you have to dodge it and that's nearly impossible to do.
The worst of the entire minigame package on here is Blitzball which is the fictional underwater sport which was impressively featured in the original FFX. I'm not joking on what they have done to Blitzball in this game, all you can do in this minigame is organize team members by recruiting members, editing team formations, join in either Exhibitions, League games or tournaments. Afterwards you then start the game and then simply watch the game and hope that your team can win the game before their opponents can. Unlike in the original FFX where you can control your team members by movement and issuing commands to pass and shoot, this one removes all the control completely. Seriously I pressed every button and they do nothing aside from triangle button which brings the team menu where I can change team formations and members around, other then that I'm stumped at this garbage, I can't believe Square Enix would take a pretty good minigame from Final Fantasy X and just butcher it completely.
Now with the sidequest and minigame talk finally out of the way I can finally talk about the battle system and the exploration. When exploring the fields you'll find where you need to go, pick up treasure along the way and also a new feature where you can jump across gaps with the Circle button as well as climbing, you do need to have good timing when jumping across most gaps
No matter what Story or Sidequest you partake in you will get random encounters as you wonder around on the map. Final Fantasy X had a Conditional Turn Based which showed the turn order which I fought was revolutionary for the series, Final Fantasy X-2 returns to the Active Time Battle system from older games. Lv's and experience also return and one of the game's new mechanics are the Dresspheres. The 3 girls use the Dresspheres they acquire as their powers to fight against their enemies as you only control the 3 girls throughout the game.
Each Dressphere has it's own unique class type alongside it's various strengths and weaknesses to consider and also there are about 11 different Dresspheres ranging from Warrior, Black Mage, White Mage, Thief, alongside new classes like Alchemist and Dark Knight. The first 6 are part of the main story while the others are rewards from completing sidequests. There are also Special Dresspheres that the 3 girls can get which one of them using it takes up the entire party space and deal insane damage, only issue that one character needs to have all Dressphere's mastered to be able to use it.
Like in the older Final Fantasy games the ATB Bar fills up before your allowed to use either regular attacks, class abilities or an item or heal, recover from status effects. An interesting feature is that you can wait for the ATB Bar on all characters to fill up together so that you can get everyone to attack together, this builds up chain combos that can allow you to deal extra damage to enemies.
Each class has it's own abilities like Mages uses offensive magic (Black Mage), or recovery and healing magic (White Mage), Gunners can use Trigger Happy in which that character brings out two guns and you use the R1 trigger to rapidly fire at enemies or a short time limit, Thief can steal items or money from enemies and so on. Another thing to note is that during battle you can change Dresspheres with a press of L1 and select which Dressphere you want one of the girls to use. Afterwards they to have to take time to change it's Dressphere in which it should be instantaneous before giving you a cutscene where the girl's outfit changes magically.
You'll also have Garment Grids that Dresspheres need to be placed in. You can also acquire different Garment Grids as you play through the game. Each of them has various slots that you place into them allowing each Dressphere to be used. Later Garment Grids have different abilities like increased defence, giving any class magic spells or decreasing any of the Mage's casting time. There are no equipment slots instead you have accessories that you can equip that give you several defences against various status effects and stat bonuses.
There is one minor issue with the combat, when using items or using magic spells it takes much longer to execute because you need to wait for another ATB Bar to fill up for a character to use that ability or item before using it and then immediately giving you the command menu. Other main abilities that are used will take longer before you can issue a command again to that character. It can make a boss fight feel much more difficult to manage or when you're in danger against regular enemies. Overall the battle system is one of the best features of the game and you'll plenty of fighting to do in it thanks to the game's frequent random encounters and thanks to the ability to utilize combos make this very fast paced and enjoyable.
Final Fantasy X-2 's graphics are more or less the same as the original and after two years of it's release it begins to show a little age, still it's impressive with solid visuals, 3D rendered environments and impressive CGI cutscenes which is what the series is known for delivering. One thing is that CGI cutscenes appear for the opening and ending and only a few appear through the game. One massive complaint I have with this game is that many of the female character outfits are very revealing and very skimpy to look at. Hopefully without me looking like a pervert examples including Yuna's Gunner outfit has a tiny but of her bottom showing off, Rikku's Thief outfit hardly covers her body and Paine's Songstress outfit has her bare back exposed alongside her top part of her bottom. Where they intentionally trying out the revealing female image in the worst way possible? If that's the case then they have well succeeded. SUCH PERVERTS!!!
As for the sound effects, they are familiar but however Nobuo Uematsu (the main music composer for the series) has been replaced with Noriko Matsueda which the soundtracks consist of J-Pop music which some of them are short looped. The songs played in the scenes like Real Emotion and 1000 Words are sweet and mostly make up for the audio package.
One of Final Fantasy X-2 brand new features is that there is a New Plus Option which allows you to transfer all your items, garment grids, dresspheres and abilities that you've acquired so far from your playthrough which allows for plenty of replay value. This is because the game actually has multiple endings depending on how much percentage of the game you completed.
Overall I'd say that Final Fantasy X-2 isn't really a bad but neither it's any better then the original X or any other of the old games in the series. It's fast paced combat and Non-linear style of progression can at least make for the frustration of the minigames but it doesn't make up for the revealing outfits that I personally find inappropriate. It disappoints me to see a Final Fantasy game get turned the wrong way, but I guess hardcore fans call this title fanservice. For those will are willing to put up this shall find a challenge to get the true ending with the aid of a walkthrough guide. The game may provide minor fanservice but for some gamers it might not be worth appreciating then the original.
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The Good Points:
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1. Non-linear progression allows you play through the story or participate in various sidequests at your own pace.
2. New Game Plus option allows for replayability
3. Fast paced turn based combat
The Bad Points:
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1. The Female character outfits are to reviling and maybe inappropriate for some audiences
2. Some puzzles and sidequests are difficult to find or complete unless you have a detailed strategyguide or walkthrough with you
3. Most Minigames are too frustrating and very disappointing
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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