Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (2013)

Well I needed to bind a button to force quit the game on the steam deck because there doesn't seem to be any other way to close the dumb little launcher, but otherwise the game seems to run pretty well on it. It also has actual cloud saves, unlike VII - IX, which is nice.

As for the game itself, the leap in visual fidelity from Final Fantasy IX is really impressive. Granted, I am of course playing the HD rerelease, but the difference is striking nonetheless. Also being the first entry to feature actual voice acting is pretty impressive.

The sphere grid looks like a very clunky and odd way to manage character growth, but I'm optimistic about it.

Getting used to the commingled actions in battles in X-2 immediately after finishing X took a while- frequently the amount of damage done by one attack was obscured by another happening at the same time, or I was distracted by choosing what to do for another character, and it seemed very chaotic compared to the careful plotting of turn order in X. I did like the dress spheres (though it would be nice if the current sphere was also reflected in the walking around 3D models but understandable that the cut scenes don't use them).

Beat the X-2 boss on the first attempt with everyone at about level 50 with Yuna as white mage mostly and switching Rikku between gunner and warrior, and Paine mostly dark knight using the darkness attack.

Skipped a huge amount of side content (story was around 50%), but maybe will try it out on the new game plus. May not play it completely through again but I'd like to get all the dress spheres.

Just finished the first one after 50 hours, didn't do anything really clever at the end except leveling up (while getting Yojimbo, the Calm monster captures, exploring the omega ruins a little but not completing them). Really liking the battles in this one (maybe better than 7, or 8 and definitely better than 9) though fighting the same enemies repeatedly gets tiresome when grinding. Used Yojimbo for the first time to finished off the end boss, paying him 20,000 two or three times and he was really good at dodging those swiping sword attacks. Other than that Auron and Wakka were leveled up enough to do 9999 damage or near it every hit, interleaved with summons to soak up overdrive attacks- but 4 or 5 failed attempts before getting strong enough to do that.

Biggest complaint is not getting an airship that goes mostly anywhere over a 3D landscape set to synth flying music midway through the game, and the unskippable cut scenes.

1. The music still holds up and is memorable as ever
2. FMV CGI cut-scenes are STILL beautiful to look at
3. Battle system is addicting
4. Most of the dialogue is pure cringy K-Pop drama good thing you can skip (not all most of them).
5. Beautiful ending
6. QOL enhancements like 4x speed/get all items make maxing out the Sphere Grid fun and less tedious

Still a great experience for this HD remaster definitely a must play for JRPG fans. Didn't bother with X-2 LOL

Solid 8.5/10

Playing X/X-2 simultaneously got me thinking: what would the leveling system of X-3 look like? I guess this would depend on whether it's a sequel or if they did a prequel game. On that note, if they did a prequel, what would it focus on? The Machina War and the beginnings of Sin, or something else we know a bit less about, maybe?

I think some kind of combination leveling system would be interesting, like bringing back the sphere grid, but it's a grid for each dress sphere (instead of the learn-abilities-by-using-abilities system of X-2), and all characters get class flexibility.

(I've read a few articles recently basically stating that X-3's overall story is written but they wouldn't work on it until after the VII remakes are done, if at all, so this isn't really like a serious thing. Just kind of wondering what other fans of the games would like to see. I also would like to pretend that the book doesn't exist but that's not really relevant to this.)

I think pretty much everyone here knows by now that the Tales games are my favorite as far as series go, but FFX is my favorite game of all time.

I've been seeing a lot of articles and memes about it lately for whatever reason, and it really made me want to play again. I have so many unplayed games, but I guess I really just needed an old comfort game this weekend, so I started it up on Saturday and sunk a good bit of time into it this weekend.

I think I might simul-play X-2, and just go back and forth between them as I feel like it. I've only played through X-2 in its entirety once (in high school, and only at like 60-something% completion because I wasn't using a guide) and have started it a few other times, but I really want to do a 100% playthrough. Last time I tried, I think something was screwy in the official guide and I got frustrated and quit in like chapter 3 because my % was off. I just really enjoy the dressphere/leveling and want to play both, haha. I think if I'm not strictly playing X-2 and worrying so much about completion, and can take a break with X whenever, I'll probably be more patient about it.

My boyfriend never had a PS2, so he's currently playing this, my all-time favorite game, for the first time. I just sit with him while he plays and he'll ask me for suggestions and such, but for the most part, I'm just enjoying watching him experience it for the first time. He just got to Luca last night, which is easily one of my least favorite parts of the game to play because of the tournament, but it's undeniably a turning point in the story.

Should I warn him about Mi'ihen Highroad? Haha...

First session with FFX HD Remaster (PS4). It took a bit of adjustment to playing an 18-year-old game after emerging from the world of The Witcher III! It's quaint to see some old-fashioned immersion-piercing elements in the environments—cartoonish treasure chests! shiny save points! Already feels strikingly like a relic of a bygone age...

The opening is not as promising or arresting as my memories of that of FFVII (the only FF game I've completed heretofore), unfortunately—the world, the story, and the characters of FFX's first one-and-a-quarter hours feel thin and unconvincing. Talk about an uninteresting protagonist, too. Perhaps this one is a grower—I'll keep playing to see if things improve.

Graphically, the human characters look curiously unsettling during in-engine cinematics: their blocky models, unsophisticated animation, glazed expressions, and inelegantly remastered textures are glaring in smooth HD. They look fine during player-controlled sections, but this game seems to feature a lot of cinematics (both in-engine and FMV). Perhaps these flaws are just consequences of age—and perhaps many of the games I remember looking great in the years around the turn of the century haven't aged well—but somehow I can imagine the simpler 3D graphics of an older game (e.g. FFVII) being more enjoyable in crisp HD, while FFX looks awkwardly 'transitional' in character.

(I like graphics from all eras of video game history, so I'm not one to write off an old work just because it looks technically inferior to modern games—I don't even think a lot of the latest games look better than games I played back in the 1990s and 2000s. Perhaps the character art of FFX just isn't to my taste.)

Also, the voice acting! Not good, so far. Not good at all.

OK, that was all pretty negative, but it's not so bad that I'm not interested in continuing, at least for a bit—the environments look pretty good, and the gameplay feels fine. I remember Edge magazine giving this 6/10 at the time of its initial release, which had previously put me off. Can't remember why I picked this up for PS4, but perhaps I wanted to see if I'd missed out on a great experience, given its otherwise positive critical reception. We'll see.