Playing dress up has never been this much fun.
Taking place exactly two years after Yuna defeated Sin, Final Fantasy X-2 has Yuna changing professions from a High Summoner to a Sphere Hunter. In essence, she is a treasure hunter, flying in an air ship to scour the land of Spira in search for spheres that will yield wealth and knowledge. Accompanying her for the ride is Rikku, a new female character named Paine and a handful of Al Bhed. This team, named the Gullwings, eventually finds a sphere that has footage of a mysterious person eerily resembling the late Tidus, and an omnious machina entitled Vegnagun.
Soon, the treasure hunting becomes more than just hunting, and turns into an investigation, which grows even more serious as more threats grip the land of Spira. To complicate matters, hostilities are brewing between two factions - the Youth League, and New Yevon. Yuna will have to align herself with one of those factions, and eventually bring the two fueding groups together so that Spira does not cave in on itself.
Final Fantasy X-2 distances itself from its predecssor in that it's not really a linear game. The game is set up into five chapters, and each chapter is composed of many different missions spread across 15 familiar areas from the first game, which can be done in just about any order. These areas are accessible from a world map, and the most important missions that progress the story are marked with hotspots. It's usually in your best interest to explore these areas last, because it's possible to end the chapter and miss out on so many things if you hit the hotspots first. You also don't have to do every mission you come across, which means you can play through the game as quickly as you like.
The missions of FFX-2 contain a great deal of variety. They're also ranked in difficulty from 1-5 stars, representing the strength of the resident fiends in that zone. Missions can be as simple as revisiting a memory, or as straight foward as trekking from point A to point B, fighting a boss at the end, to as laid back as playing a mini-game. Missions will grant you some incredible items, accessories, dressspheres and garment grids.
The game's battle system is all about dressspheres and garment grids. In FFX, you swapped out party members with different job classes in order to deal with fiends in particular ways. In FFX-2, you only have three players, but they can change into any job you need thanks to dressspheres. A dresssphere is basically a costume that performs a certain job, say a white mage, black mage or warrior. Each dresssphere has an array of abilities and actions that you can learn as you kill enemies.
In order to change dresspheres, you have to assign them to a template called a garment grid. These grids have slots that are connected by paths, and they also have special attributes and abilities for equiping them. There are also special functions called gates that bestow even more abilities and traits on your character. You activate these gates by changing dressspheres on a path that a gate is situated on. Later on in the game, you'll acquire Special Dressspheres that can be activated by changing into each dresssphere on the grid. A Special Dresssphere is pretty much FFX-2's version of a summon. They are powerful, and contain a vast assortment of devestating attacks and abilties.
When you're in battle, the Active Time Battle system featured in many Final Fantasy games governs the action within. You have a bar that fills up with green, and once full, you can select an action. Some of them are instaneous, but others like casting a spell changes the bar to purple, and when that bar fills up, the special action is executed. It may be wise to change the ATB system from Active to Wait, so that when you have a green bar full and are browsing the menu, it pauses the action in the battle. This can buy you more time to make a decision, so you don't do something out of haste.
Changing dressspheres on the fly is very easy. Just tap the L1 button, and select an adjacent dresssphere, and you'll witness a scene of them changing costumes. These scenes can be turned off in the settings if and when you grow tired of watching them. It's recommended that you experiment with combinations of dressspheres in your party to help you best defeat enemies, or just have a fun new experience in battle. To change to your Special Dresssphere, select each sphere on the grid first, and then an option for your Special Dresssphere will appear, and then access with it R1 and select any sphere.
If one thing isn't very much fun in this game, it's the mini-games. This happens to be a reoccuring problem with just about every Final Fantasy game in existence, but it's a bit more prevailent in this title. One such mini game has you encountering fiends to shoot and kill with different types of ammunition, but what complicates the game is that you aren't free to reload whenever you want. When you are reloading, Yuna's not even showing it, meaning you don't know when you're empty and reloading until you're trying to shoot and nothing is happening. Plus, since the game has a fixed camera, it means there are times where fiends sneak up on you and attack you before you know it. Most of the mini-games seem to have these annoying quirks to them that just make them more of a hassle then they need to be.
One mini game that's a lot of fun is a logic based game called Sphere Break. It involves numbered coins that you have to match up to make sums of multiples from the sphere in the center of the coins. You can even win gil and items from playing Sphere Break, and you can win a dresssphere by winning a Sphere Break tournament, but the problem with Sphere Break is that it's just a local game. It can only be played in Luca, and not even a whole lot of people there will play it with you. The game would have had more significance if you could play it throughout Spira. Also, Blitzball returns in Chapter 5, but it is completely optional this time around. Thank God!
FFX-2 uses the same graphics engine as the original, so you can expect the graphics to be exactly the same. The locales are gorgeous. The animations of the fiends and characters in battle are very smooth. The special effects are eye catching and wonderful. Of course, the CGI cutscenes are spectacular, something Square has always been excellent at since FFVII.
Audiowise, it's a different story. If you had a problem with Final Fantasy X's voice acting, you're going to have that much more of a problem here. The voice acting has gotten sillier, thanks to the game's more campy nature. Brother is a highly irritating character, almost akin to scratching naills across a chalk board. The music also isn't as great as normal Final Fantasy games. There's nothing wrong with the sound effects, but there is one major complaint, and that's the lack of the Final Fantasy level up theme. You aren't even shown that you level up in battle, only afterwards on a result screen where your experience points are tabulated.
Many people were skeptical when Square first announced FFX-2, and for good reason. It really was an experiment, but one that fortunately turned out okay. A serious Final Fantasy fan may be highly turned off just from the fact that the opening scene is a pop concert with Yuna singing and dancing, but that really shouldn't stop the person from giving the game an earnest chance. The story is worth playing through, the battle system is addictive and fun, one of the best systems in a modern FF, and there are even a couple of serious challenges to be had for the dedicated player. Just try not to focus on the fact that you're essentially playing dress up with a pop singer, and you'll find yourself having a great time with Final Fantasy X-2.