Overall its good, but it's one of those games your afraid to admit you like.

User Rating: 8.3 | Final Fantasy X-2 PS2
The first direct sequel of the Final Fantasy series, a risky move made by Square Enix, especially to one of the best games in the series, Final Fantasy X.

Final Fantasy X-2 is one of those games your afraid to admit you like. You fix yourself on the bad things about it and eventually end up hating it and then fail to see the good that you once had. Though this game did have it's bad moments it is not all bad. Where as the most annoying moments may have been spawned by the LeBlanc Syndicate, their moaning weeping and your wishing to skip scenes they are present in, they are however important to the storyline and fulfill their presence in the final battle of the game.
The opening concert was somewhat near cringe worthy, as were the following introduction CG scene showing a side of Yuna that had appeared to come from nowhere, and a somewhat skimpy dressed Rikku as well as new character, Paine. But you had to admire the lip movement in the CG which there is a lot more of compared with the very little in X's, as well as the improvements in it the design of the character both in game play and in CG.

The game play took a slight downfall from previous games. The mission based system seemed to take away what the feel of an RPG is meant to be, most of the side missions seemed to be pointless but it was fun to catch up with things happening around Spira and there is definetly no shortage in mini-games. The chapter system had its good and bad points, if you missed something on a previous chapter you couldn't go back and do it, but with each new chapter the treasure chests filled so you weren't short on items.

The dresspheres and garment grids, though their names somewhat idiotic are gladly not and brought back happy memories of the job system in V. It was upsetting to learn that summoning aeons was not an option, this probably was the biggest disappointment of the game. But their power had been replaced by the Special Dressspheres, which once mastered were useful. Especially that of Yuna's, which when fully powered was almost invincible. However this also made for easy gameplay, having the ability to nul all physical and magical spells took away the challenge, but without them defeating the Magus Sisters is hard.

The storyline was not a let down, but did not live up to its predecessors. I was however, delighted to learn as has been speculated by square enix's own words that X and X-2 may infact be a prequel to VII. Connected by the Al Bhed whizz kid Shinra, a member of the gullwings, who may in fact be a far off descendant of VIIs Shinra Corporation.

The gamplay was easy in some stages, but the battle system brought back the ATB system with a twist, the ability to interrupt attacks, even if the battles whether boss or otherwise proved too easy to be a challenge on many occassions. The graphics are better in this game them they were in X, even though the story line took more away from X then it gave to it. As can be realised by anyone who has seen the good ending.

Overall this is a good game and should not be slatted by other merely because it is a sequel. X-2 and X are in separate leagues and should be treated as so. That way you can get as much enjoyment out of X-2 as any other game. It may not have ranked high on many die hard Final Fantasy favorites, but it had to so something right to be ranked 32 best game ever in 2005.