Game 15 - Final Fantasy X-2 (PS4) - 29 HoursWoo boy, another long-ass review coming from yours truly. Seems like every game I have a lot of thoughts about these days.
Preface: I had always just brushed this game off by my first impressions of it’s opening cutscene. I love FFX, and my kneejerk reaction had always been that this game sucks only based off the changes they made to Yuna. I felt like that wasn’t really a fair assessment, so I decided to give this game a shot. I think my love of FFX certainly influenced how much I have to say about this game though.
Probably the most interesting aspect of this game, aside from the gameplay, is the open ended “mission based” design, which is a huge departure from the first FFX. You can do as many side missions in whatever order you please before jumping into the main missions, which is kind of nice. You get the freedom to play the game at your own pace. However, the problems with structuring the game like this is it completely fractures and kills any pacing and momentum in the main story. For example, in chapter 3 there are all these fiends pouring out of the temples and it’s touted as this big important crisis. But you don’t have to take care of the fiends, you can take 3-4 hours doing side content… and I guess the people in the temples are screwed…? They’ll just have to wait until you’re ready…? Really sucks out all the gravity of those story bits. Furthermore, the mission-based design means that everything has to be structured in this quick “open and shut” storyline, so none of the missions really go anywhere. Most of them are extremely basic and rudimentary, and they feel like padding. Some of them, like the mission with Issaru in Zanarkand, literally made me open my mouth in disbelief at how stupid it was.
As far as the story goes, I wasn’t really a big fan. The beginning of the game is INCREDIBLY rough with the pacing, it almost feels as if you’re being dumped into a game already in progress. You really need to watch the Eternal Calm short first to really know what the hell’s going on. The rest of the story is bland, cliché and uninteresting. Not to mention far more confusing and not as profound as FFX. The sphere hunting gig only made sense for Yuna to me, didn’t make any sense why the rest of the Gullwings would care about spheres. I only did about 65% of the story content, so I’m sure there was stuff I missed, but I wasn’t invested in the story enough to really care. I did like the addition of the new game plus though. Nicely fits the mission-based game structure.
Now let’s talk about the characters. The one character I was pleasantly surprised at was Yuna. I honestly like the direction that they took with her in giving her an independent free-spirited personality. I also like the idea of an all-female cast, but unfortunately Rikku and Paine don’t deliver as much as Yuna. Rikku was annoying as always, but I never liked her in the first game, so I guess no change there. Paine is basically a piece of cardboard. Boring, no personality, no backstory, nothing. She feels like she was just thrown in the game so they could have three females of a similar age, and they made her stoic like that so they didn’t have to do any character development. Most of the other characters are passable, with the exception of Brother. Holy shit, he acts like he did a line of cocaine before recording each line in this game. He’s loud, obnoxious, extremely creepy, and just downright insufferable.
I will say, that the one redeeming factor with this game is the combat, which is excellent. Other than the character outfits which look ridiculous, the combat flows nicely, has a lot of strategy, and decent challenge. Couldn’t ask for more. Was really the only thing keeping me playing to be honest.
I want to touch on how lazy this game felt to me. The devs basically ripped out every asset and enemy they could from the first game and plopped them in the sequel without any contextual changes. The veteran FFX player can really see how bad it is. My favorite was how they made Shelinda a reporter in Luca who’s denounced Yevon, yet she’s still wearing Yevonite regalia! Or how Lulu was supposed to be pregnant, but they couldn’t bother putting in an updated model. Or how Shuyin’s battle is just all Tidus’s attacks and overdrives. That was ridiculous. Other than Kilika, Bevelle, and the Farplane, everything is just copy pasted, or uninspiring bland corridors and caves which make up most of the game’s dungeons. I think I counted only 9 unique enemies created for this game, which is unacceptable. Most bosses are just recycled from FFX with some minor AI changes.
There are a lot of mini-games in this game, and some are okay, but most are pretty bad or uninteresting. My favorite was the gunner’s gauntlet. Least favorite by far was Blitzball. They completely ruined it. I tried and tried to get even a single win but every one was a 0-5 blowout. All your opponents have 3-4 times greater stats than you in the first game! Not to mention they took away all control from the player so once you start a match you can just go off to amuse yourself and let the game play itself.
The music overall is okay, but not up to the same standard as previous games. There are some funky/fun and memorable tracks though. It grew on me more and more over time. The pop songs were never my favorite though.
Ultimately, I think what really turned me off to this game was I was expecting something like FFX, which this game is not. This is just a cash grab that doesn’t take itself too seriously more than anything. Once I started to view the game on it’s own merits and stopped expecting the same experience as FFX, I started to enjoy it a lot more.