My favorite RPG to date.
"Set in the fantasy world of Spira, the game's story centers around a group of adventurers and their quest to defeat a rampaging monster known as Sin. The player character is Tidus, a blitzball star who finds himself in Spira after his home city of Zanarkand is destroyed by Sin. During the game, Tidus, along with several others, aids the summoner Yuna on her pilgrimage to destroy Sin." (Wikipedia)
The games story is very emotional and intriguing. It didn't take long before I really felt for Yuna as if I had a real attachment to her situation. It definitely made me want to keep playing the game to see what happened next. In fact after a few of the cut scenes in the game I actually had to pause and wait a little to process what occurred before I could pick up the controller to resume, I had to continuously remind myself that this was a game and not really happening.
If it wasn't for the occasional cheesy scene and the general annoying nature of the character Tidus (who you play as) this would be a perfect story.
Bottom line: Top notch story.
Score: 9.5/10
Weighted Score: 47.5/50
Graphics
For its time as a near launch title for the PS2 Final Fantasy X had breath taking graphics, and still stands as one of the best looking games to ever grace the Playstation 2. In comparison to this generations graphics (PS3/ Xbox360) it doesn't run with the best of them anymore, but anyone who could expect it to needs to look up the definitions of the words "Logic" and "Reason". With that said I think any current generation gamer could still pick this game up and tolerate its graphics, just don't come in to it expecting PS3 graphics and you'll be fine. Even if you did come in expecting PS3 graphics out of this game the cut scenes in it should satisfy you which is where most of the story is told anyway as in most games.
Final Fantasy X is supposed to be re-released on the PS3 sometime this year or next year with touched up visuals and maybe some other enhancements so if you for some reason can't stand how it looks as is you could wait for that.
Bottom line: Great for its time, still good today.
Score: 9.75/10
Weighted Score: 14.63/15
Game play
The game uses a traditional turn based battle system generally (which I love). It also uses the Final Fantasy staple of random battles, which can be irritating at times, but I like to level so its not much of an issue to me and the enemies aren't really that hard or time consuming to beat. The only issue I find with the battle system is that it can be difficult to figure out how to choose the enemy to attack due to a somewhat poor directional system, and if you're not paying attention you could mistakenly attack one of your characters (though that can be funny when you're screwing around or they have a bad status ailment). The controls outside of battle are good as well, no clunky functions or poor control configurations to mention. The camera is fixed so no 360 degree views of the world, but that wasn't something that was expected of a console game in 2001.
Bottom line: Smooth good controls. Turn based battle.
Score: 9.25/10
Weighted Score: 23.13/25
Sound
Final Fantasy X was the first in the series to include voice acting, and I think they did very good at it. The voice actors convey their roles and emotions well and are believable enough to help immerse you in the story. The songs are nice background music to set the mood like they should, but at times they're more than that, they occasionally made me say "Wow this is an awesome song". One of the songs I liked the most that I can talk about without having to spoil any part of the games details is the Blitzball theme that plays near the start of the game as well as a few other times throughout the game, so badass (cut the vocals), not my favorite from the game though.
Bottom line: Really good voice acting and music
Score: 9.5/10
Weighted Score: 9.5/10
WEIGHTED FINAL SCORE: 94.76/100 (94.76% A)
*Weighted Score refers to the amount of weight that each section has on the overall possible score of 100 for the game.
Instead of letting sound be exactly as important to the overall score as the story or graphics for example they all have
a different amount of importance based on how important I believe they actually are to the game as a whole.