I would say Final Fantasy X has to be the most overrated game I have ever played.
Everytime I look at the game objectively, it seems more and more like a piece of crap.
The first problem with it is its linear structure. All you do outside the combat is walk to arrows indicated on your radar in strangely confined areas and activate cutscenes. That's all. You don't even get to fly the ship. The whole thing feels so darn limited. There's nothing in the way of puzzles besides those lame sphere trial things. There's absolutely no incentive to explore, and even if there was, the strangely confined linear paths don't feel suited to that purpose. Compare the environments to the wide-open stretches of Oblivion and you'll see what I mean.
Admittedly, the graphics were awesome in their day. Gorgeous art design. I have no argument there, but graphics can't carry a game and graphics seems to be the one leg FFX has to stand on (The music was pretty gorgeous too). The one gripe I have with the graphics is that with the tiny, pre-rendered areas, the characters seem oddly big in proportion to them. It's really weird, not to mention tacky.
The story had some beautiful cutscenes to speak for it, but the plot itself seemed pulled out of Square's ass. It had no real internal consistencies, it just seemed all over the place and the events that took place didn't seem to have any real reason behind them. It seemed like the developers were purposely trying to go over everybody's head with the story for the purpose of tricking people into thinking its good. After all, you do have your people who think something is sophisticated and deep if they can't grasp it. I challenge anybody to summarize its story in a few paragraphs. I bet it can't be done.
And then there's the characters. This is just personal opinion, but I found them annoying. Tidas was immature, Yuna was moronic and robotic (and hot), Rikku was like a little girl trying to get into an adult conversation, Khumari was a wuss, Wakka was a crybaby. That being said, I liked Lulu (and thought she was smokin') and Auron. Seymor was strangely effeminate. I couldn't bring myself to hate or fear him. He wasn't mean enough, he wasn't intimidating enough. All around lame bad guy (although his aeon freaked the sh1t out of me).
Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast had a far better story (and was a far better game, I thought that game was excellent--areas weren't linear, you got to explore, combat was more balanced, more things to do, etc.). Now I know it wasn't as mature or sophisticated, but it made more sense, it was alot funner and the characters were more vibrant. It was like a kid's movie done right: just plain fun. Compare that to FFX and FFX will start to look like the gaming equivalent of a dirge. Admittedly, FFX has voices which makes it much more immersive in that sense, but Skies of Arcadia was a considerably older game and FFX's voice acting is awkward and forced anyway (Yuna's voice acting was terrible).
As for the combat, I found most of the attacks save the aeons pretty borring. Some of the attacks were absurd. Wakka throwing a blitzball? Lulu's doll? Maybe these methods are clever from an artistic standpoint, but hardly awesome. They seem gimmicky more than anything.
Then there's the matter of the bosses having millions of health points, turning the battles into tedious affairs. The ungodly amounts of health points seems like the developers adding aritificial difficulty. And then there's the random encounters. Sometimes they were just painful. If there weren't so many random encounters and the bosses weren't loaded with hit points, the game would be extremely short. I think FFX did more than any other game to convince me that turned-based systems blow and real-time combat (i.e. Oblivion) is the way to go.
The sphere grid is a good idea, but the execution of it was inane. My characters all ended up sharing the same attacks. Something about that really bothered me: it robbed the characters of their indivuality.
Blitzball has to be the most horrible minigame every designed by mankind. Painful controls. Also, the side quests (which served as a way to get new weapons) were moronic. The only way for an average player to figure out how to unlock some of these things are to go onto GameFAQS. Such unaccesable side quests just really defeat the purpose.
The game was drowned in cutscenes and had very little playtime, making me wonder how the developers in good consience could call it a role-playing game. Oblivion is a role-playing game, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is a role-playing game. In those games, you make choices and are free to play your own way. Final Fantasy is a slightly ineractive movie. The playtime you get is tantamount to a mini-game on a DVD (yes, I'm exaggerating, but you get my point).
With all these core gameplay flaws, it mystifies me why this game got such great reviews. When I read the reviews, I still don't get it, because they don't give very convincing reasons. I would think objective reviewers would atleast point out the lack of playime.
I'm starting to believe that if Squaresoft created a pretty game of Go-Fish and slapped Final Fantasy XIII on the cover, everyone would rave. It's madness.
Log in to comment