I've already sort of finished FFX. I say sort of because I did go ahead and complete the story, but I have a save file right before the point of no return that I'm using to build a rediculous save. All ultimate weapons (**** you, chocobo race), stat maxing, killing Nemesis, all that jazz. I'll be doing all of that slowly over time though instead of holding up the rest of my playing. Brief thoughts on FFX follow.
All in all, it's one of my favorite games in the series. The story isn't bad, but the gameplay is fantastic. I'd say my biggest complaint about the game is the voice acting. It's pretty uneven. Some characters are solid, others not so much. The two in particular the bother me are Yuna and Tidus, which is unfortunate as they're the two main characters. Yuna just has too many pauses in places that don't make much sense to have pauses. It's like listening to Shatner. Tidus is somewhat different though. He's not always bad. Some scenes he's completely fine, but then others he's among the most whiny, annoying sounding characters you'll find.
Overall, I do enjoy the story in this installment. It's a somewhat emo thing to say, but I like that the ending isn't entirely happy. I remember finishing VIII for the first time and thinking I would have actually preferred that the very last shot at the end of the credits had not been there because more tragic ending seemed a better fit. So FFX delivers on that for me. Really, what kept me interested in the story was the characters more than the events. I wasn't all that compelled by the giant flying squid as an enemy, so it was all about the growth of the relationships between the characters for me here.
Really, it was the battle and leveling system that made the game for me. While the way it's contructed means the sphere grid sort of nudges you in a particular direction with each character, you really can ignore that and do whatever you please with each character, really giving you a lot of control over how you want to construct your team. There are a couples minor flaws with it, but those are mostly related to the navigation of it so not really worth mentioning. The battle system is what makes it for me though. Just because it allows you to slow things down and think of your strategy, I like it more than any other system the series has used. Not going to talk any more in depth about it because I'm writing this at 1 in the morning and have another game to cover tonight.
Overall: A-
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