Characters:
I don't really have much of an introduction for this. Final Fantasy X is a very character driven story, and I liked every character in the main cast. There are a lot of people who disagree with me (especially when it comes to Tidus) but over all I think it's a solid cast of characters.
Tidus: First and foremost, I want to point out a very important point that people seem to miss about Tidus (especially people who find Tidus to whiny) Tidus.. is only 17 years old! I can't think of a single teenager I've EVER met who would be able to handle being thrown 1000 years into the future even remotely close to as well as Tidus handled it. Anyway, Tidus is an optimistic but naïve youth, and the main hero in the game. His main motivation throughout the story is defeating his father, Jecht, who became sin while helping Yuna's father and Auron defeat sin previously. He has great character development, and you can really track his changing personality throughout the game. Admittedly, Tidus IS a bit whiny, but as a character he's playing his age extremely well. In combat, Tidus takes a strange role... he has very high agility, making him the key to taking out fast ground enemies, and he also has the unique abilities to change the flow of battle. All of his spells effect turn orders, things such as Haste which increases a party members speed and delay attack which stalls the enemies turn. He is very useful for the games particular battle system.
Yuna: Now we move onto Yuna, arguably the main character in the story since she is the summoner on the pilgrimage to defeat sin. Her father was the last summoner to defeat sin, putting a lot of pressure on her to walk in her father's footsteps (a pressure that the and Tidus share, creating a sort of connection). She is calm and collected, along with being a quiet and kind girl. In battle she takes the role of White Mage/Summoner, there's nothing really that interesting about her in combat that we haven't seen before except for the fact that for the first time in the series, summoned creatures can be controlled directly.
Wakka: Next we have Wakka, a native to besaid that quit being a guardian to play more blitzball... before becoming a guardian again. He is a caring man who essentially plays the role of Yuna's older brother. The problem for me is I have trouble taking Wakka seriously at times because whenever he talks all I can think about is the fact that Wakka is voiced by the man who voiced Bender in Futurama, and the only ting that comes to mind is Wakka turning to the group and suddenly saying 'Bite my shiny metal blitzball'. He is the first person to really take Tidus in once he comes to Spira. Wakka may be a bit too obsessed with his sport of choice, as he actually chooses to use a blitzball as a weapon in combat, making him your only ranged, melee attacker. He also has a few status effects to put on enemies such as blind, silence and sleep.
Lulu: Lulu is your standard black mage character only this time with a gothic look. She harbors guilt over the loss of both her ex-fiance (Wakka's Brother) and a summoner she was guarding on a previous pilgrimage, both who died because of an attack by Sin. She takes the role of the rather cold-hearted/brutally honest but somehow still likable character, always serious but never ill meaning. Her choice of weapon is using dolls shaped like creatures from the series, including Cactuars, Moombas, Moogles, and even an Onion Knight.
Kihmari: Khimari is a beast like creature from a tribe called the Ronso tribe. You don't learn much about him as he's nearly a silent character. All you really learn is that he is a runt from his village and that a couple of bigger Ronso's broke his horn when he was young. His main role in the game was taking care of Yuna as a child, but he remained with her as she grew up. Kihmari is an interesting case when it comes to combat, and he is generally labeled as a useless character in game, which on the surface is kind of true. He is this games blue mage, but the problem is, in this game blue magic can only be cast as his overdrive, meaning it is rare that you can use his spells, and only a couple of the abilities that he learns are actually useful, while the rest really aren't. This is doubly irritating because Kihmari has the best way of learning blue mage spells in the entires series. He has an ability called lancet, and when used on any enemy that has a blue magic spell you instantly learn it, nice and simple like. Anyway, his basic skills aren't very useful, but his section of the sphere grid is rather small and RIGHT in the middle of the grid, making it so that you can make khimari into whatever kind of fighter you want, so if you put the time in, he can be your most interesting character to play.
Auron: Universally accepted at not only the coolest character in Final Fantasy X, but one of the coolest in the entire series, Auron is the one thing about this game that there never seems to be a debate about. Auron has the most interesting back story in the entire game, having fought sin with Jecht and Braska (Yuna's Father) and dying in the process, only to continue walking the planet as a ghost. He spends about 10 years watching over Tidus before finally forcing him to take his first steps on the long journey. Throughout the entire game it is clear that Auron knows more than the rest of the party, but even with this knowledge he lets the younger party members act, learning from their own mistakes and making their own decisions. In battle he is the strongest physically of the group, but also the slowest. Any armored enemies will fall easily to his blade, and his special abilities that destroy the damage output and defenses of the enemy makes him integral to your party.
Rikku: Rikku is this games usual jailbait character who doubles as a thief and a chemist in battle. Really she's useless as a fighter, but her ability to mix items is down right abusive at times. Out of combat, you learn that she is an Al Bhed, a group of machine loving people who are looked down upon because the use of machinery is prohibited by the world religion of Yevon. It turns out later that she is Yuna's cousin, though that connection doesn't really effect the story In any meaningful way.
Seymour: Seymour is the not at all subtle repeat villian in the game. You fight him 4 times in the game and each battle is more interesting than the last. This man is the Maester of the main religion of the world, and a summoner like Yuna, wanting to destroy sin. You find out later that he is rather curropt and is an 'unsent' or, in other words, a soul of someone who has been killed but has not turned into a fiend or been sent to the farplane (essentially the after life). Though his character design is ridiculous he actually makes for a decent villian both in and out of combat. His motivations are solid and his methods effective, making him a far better villian than any of those in the PSX trilogy of games.
Jecht/Sin: Ah, now we finally reach the big baddie. Jecht Is Tidus' father, a famous blitzball player who was warped into the future spira ten years before Tidus was himself. Jecht is the stern type who isn't very good at expressing his feelings, causing him to treat his son poorly despite secretly being proud of him. He becomes sin after sacrificing himself to defeat the previous sin, in a process I don't feel like explaining here. Though Jecht doesn't appear often with the game, his inclusion still makes for a rather moving resolution to the story, as well as solidifying Tidus' place as the hero of the game.
Story:
I have to admit, my main problems with this games story doesn't come from plot holes or bad writing, they come from the serious amount of missed potential within the story. I have looked at many of the common 'plot holes' brought up with this game, and for almost every single one I have a simple answer: Pay more attention to the game and you will get your answer. On the other hand, there were many things that were not explained well, and not only could they have been explained better, but they could have used those explanations to make the world more full, the back stories of the characters' more interesting, and the game as a whole just a far better experience.
Final Fantasy X has a story that is focused almost solely on the main characters, which isn't a bad thing on the surface, in fact, Character stories are my preferred choice when it comes to this sort of thing. The problem is that the story set up for us in the opening scenes is also a world story, which the game doesn't quite do as good of a job with. Let me explain this more clearly. In the very beginning of the game Tidus is taken from his futuristic city of Zanarkand and transferred 1000 years into the future, where everything around him is completely unrecognizable. Normally when working off a script of this type, the point of having a character who is a 'fish out of water' is so that he can be informed on how things in the strange new world work, thus informing the player as well without resorting to poorly written exposition. It's kind of a cheap and lazy way of making the exposition come across, but it works well within the context of this story. Tidus is clueless (and perhaps dumb enough depending on your viewpoint) to make for a convincing and useful way of explaining things to the player. The problem with this however is that we never really learn about how this way of life is different from the one Tidus had before, thus making it so the impact of the change is not only weakened, but it is almost non-existent. We spend ten whole minutes of the game in the opening city of zanarkand where we find out that Tidus is is a famous athlete, and that Zanarkand is indeed futuristic, complete with long highways that people only walk on... (the design of zanarkand is rather poor when it comes to practicality or common sense... looks pretty though). We never get to see Tidus' connections to the world or to the people around him. Sure we know he's a celebrity but what about his friends? What about his extended family? We get a couple lines of information about Jecht from a sports caster but that's about it. From what little we see, he loses absolutely nothing in his transition to Spira, thus making it impossible to sympathize with him in that respect because he is making no sacrifices. The only thing he has to worry about is his blitz ball playing, and because it's even more popular in the future he could easily become just as famous in this new world as he's still one of (if not the) best player around. To be fair, they did a great job making you sympathize with Tidus when it comes to his daddy issues, but everytime Tidus whines about 'not being able to go home' I can't help but... not feel sorry for him in the slightest.
On a very similar note, what about Yuna? You never really get to learn about things such as her relationship with her father, or what her upbringing was like. You learn a couple small details and she is more fleshed out than Tidus, but there was a lot of missed potentional. Considering the fact that the story is just as much about Yuna as it is Tidus (perhaps even more so) they could have really dived into her past to make her more interesting.
The game also neglects to explain some of the most interesting lore of the world. For example, Yu Yevon and the church are just barely touched upon and they are very important points in the plot (or at least they should have been). The story on how the church came to be as curropt as it is could have been just as interesting as the story the main character's present to you, and Yu Yevon could have been made an actual foreboding presence and stayed god like but still have actually had motivation? Or at the very least what little was told in absently thrown out dialogues could have been presented better.
This game also suffers from multiple plot conveniences, in the same way that FFVIII did only not NEARLY as drastic or common. The biggest one I can think of is that any point where the game needs you to travel a long distance will automatically just.. sort of happen. Whether it be from Sin magically appearing and sending you somewhere else or an airship just happening to stop by to pick you up. It's easy to look past but it is rather funny and lazy in a way. Then of course there is the other sort of strange plot convenience where the characters are fighting sin, a giant beast that is capable of wiping out entire armies with a single attack, yet a group of 7 is able to somehow fight it and win at the end of the game? I know it's a common thing in video games and it's not something you aren't supposed to question... but it is an interesting thing to take note of.
All those complaints aside, the over all story is actually pretty solid, with a few plot twists here and there (most of which I've probably spoiled in this review... so... if you haven't played the game yet... oops). I feel as though most people will become involved in the characters and their journey, and if some of the plot twists haven't been spoiled for you already, they may actually take you by surprise. The plot is surprisingly emotional at times, and I don't remember ever really feeling bored while watching cutscenes (except of course in Guadosalam... what was with all the waiting in the dining room?). Once you reach a certain part of the game (after the blitzball tournament in Luca) the story finally gets rolling and you will likely be entertained for the duration of the journey.
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