Alysa Scobee

Professor McKeever
12/01/14
101H English
Word Count: 1937
Review Final Fantasy X
Video games now-a-days are getting more and more popular, ranging from first-person shooters
to 3D plat forming games. But are these new games really all that good? I prefer older games, dating
back to the 2000s, one game franchise in particular, the Final Fantasy series. Now, this series dates back
to 1987, starting first on the NES, but now has ranged too many different gaming platforms. The game
Im talking about in the tenth installment in the series, Final Fantasy X. It was originally released in 2001
for the PlayStation 2, but now has been re-released for the PlayStation 3 in HD. Final Fantast X brought a
whole lot of changes from the original games before it. It was the first game in the series to have 3D
backgrounds instead of pre-rendered ones. It also switched up the Active time battle to the
Conditional turn-based battle as well as a new way to level up your characters via the sphere grid. This
game is also the last in the series that you are able to name your controllable character.
Final Fantasy X starts out with the introduction of the main character, Tidus, in a land you dont
access until the end of the game. With the music swelling up in the background, and new, unfamiliar
faces, you are very unsure of what is going on, until Tidus starts to speak. Listen to my story This, may
be our last chance. And the game starts from there. Exciting, isnt it? From there, you travel 1,000 years
back to Tidus living in his home of Zanarkand, where he is a well-known blitzball star, just like his father
Jecht, and the father-son bond between them isnt too well. The backstory is that after Tidus mother
meets Jecht, she starts paying less and less attention to Tidus and that bothers him. Jecht, a drunkard
and a man who thinks hes the best blitzball player around, wants to teach his son the ways of being a
blitzball player, show him the view from the top, but Tidus is a major crybaby and cant learn, which

makes Jecht upset. Before Jecht can try anything else, he disappears when he was training out at sea
and they never find him again. Well, when the game starts out, Tidus is just leaving to go to the big
blitzball game, which is the first time you get to explore and move around the city. I use quotations
because you dont really get to explore the world, its more of a one-way street the whole game, and
even when you get the airship, you still dont get to explore outside the boundaries they give you.
Anyway During the blitzball game, Tidus is about to do his big shot to win the game when a giant
monster, Sin, attacks the stadium. Perfect timing, right? Well, Zanarkand is in disarray, many hurt or
dead, Tidus wakes up to see a familiar face standing, and waiting for him. Auron, probably one of the
best characters in the game, has known Tidus for ten years ever since his father disappeared. Auron is a
legendary guardian who had once defeated Sin before with Tidus father and the Summoner Braska.
Now he is around to help Tidus on his quest to find his father and to protect the world 1,000 years in the
future from Sin. When you meet Auron, you run after him and right into a boss battle. The boss battle
introduces many aspects of fighting in the game. Conditional turn-based battling involves each character
in your party getting one turned, based on speed. Then the boss gets to go, and so on. Its very easy to
use, and preferable to the old methods. With Conditional turn-based battling you can plan out your
moves according to the boss. After the boss battle, more cut scenes and a major plot point ensues. On a
bridge, Sin is about to absorb Auron and Tidus, and Auron asks if hes sure. When Sin answers him,
Auron lifts Tidus up and releases him into Sin, and there starts Tidus adventure.
Tidus wakes up in the water on an unfamiliar place that wont be important until later in the
game, and you start to swim around. Making your way to an abandoned temple, you run into another
boss fight, but this one you cannot beat. Just attack the boss until another cut scene ensues, where the
boss chases and encloses you into the temple. There, Tidus must build a fire to survive, and thats where
you learn you can interact with the environment around you. You just have to look. Tidus builds the fire
and lays down, complaining about how hungry he is (he does this a lot), and falls asleep, waking up later

to find the fire going out. Yelling at inanimate objects, Tidus stands to get more wood and bam! Another
boss battle. You fight this boss for a while before a stranger bursts their way through the doors of the
temple and helps you out. This girl is another race not common to the Final Fantasy series. The Al-Bhed
have long been hated by the world and have been shunned to a small island with their forbidden
machines that cant be used by anyone. Anyway, this girls name is Rikku and she helps you fight the
boss, and takes you onto their ship where they are excavating something under the sea. Tidus, being a
blitzball star, agrees to help, diving into the ocean with Rikku to get an airship, which isnt used until the
end of the game. After getting the airship, more cut scenes and Tidus learns hes a thousand years in the
future, in a world called Spira, and he cant believe it. After that, Sin attacks the ship again and Tidus
goes overboard.
Tidus winds up in another town called Besaid, still one thousand years in the future and meets
more characters that go into your party. Wakka allows Tidus to go to his home town, and after many
trials, meets Yuna, a Summoner whos on a pilgrimage to obtain the final aeon and defeat sin. Tidus
joins Wakkas blitzball team, meets the sassy and independent Lulu, and the strong, quiet Kimarhi and
travels with them to Luca, where Tidus hopes he can find a way home. The party travels across Spira to
gather aeons from different temples and defend against attacks by sin and its Sin spawn. After the
tournament, the party is joined by Auron, who convinces Tidus to become Yunas guardian, someone
who protects the summoner even at the cost of his own life. Auron tells Tidus that Yunas father,
summoner Braska, Jecht, and himself made the same pilgrimage to defeat sin ten years ago. Tidus had
thought that his father died at sea ten years ago. Following another attack from sin, the party is joined
by Rikku, which is later revealed to be Yunas cousin.
The party arrives in the city of Guadosalam, the leader of their people, Seymour Guado,
proposes to Yuna, saying that it will ease Spiras sorrow. At Macalania Temple, the party sees a message
from Seymours father Jyscal, who declares that he was killed by his son, and now aims to destroy Spira.

The group reunites with Yuna to engage Seymour in battle and ultimately killing him. Soon, Sin attacks
and separates Yuna from the others. While searching for her on Bikanel Island, where the Al-Bhed were
banished too, Tidus has an emotional breakdown when he learns that summoners die after summoning
the Final Aeon, leading to his desire to find a way to defeat Sin while keeping Yuna alive. The party finds
Yuna in Bevelle, where she is being forced to marry the unsent Seymour. The party crashes the wedding
and escape with her and is soon captured at Bevelle temple, and ordered to stand trial. After escaping,
the party heads towards the ruin of Zanarkand as seen in the introduction of the game.
On the way to Zanarkand, Tidus learns that he, Jecht, and Zanarkand they come from are from
summoned entities akin to aeons that are based on the original city and people. A long time ago, the
original Zanarkand battled Bevelle in a machina war, and was defeated. The survivors became the fayth
so that they could use their memories of Zanarkand to create a new city, removed from the reality of
Spira. 1,000 years after its creation, the fayth became exhausted from dreaming their Zanarkand, but
they are unable to stop Sins influence.
Once the party reaches Zanarkand, Yunalesca, the first summoner to defeat sin and has been
unsent ever since, tells the group that the Final Aeon is created from the fayth of one close to the
summoner. After defeating sin, the Final Aeon kills the summoner and transforms into a new sin, which
causes the cycle of rebirth to continue. Yuna then decides against using the Final Aeon, due to the futile
sacrifices it carries and that sin would be reborn. Disappointed, Yunalesca tries to kill the party, but is
defeated and vanishes, ending the hope of attaining the final aeon. After the fight, the party learns that
Yu Yevon, a summoner who lost his humanity and mind, is behind sins cycle of rebirth. This leads the
party to infiltrate sins body to battle Seymour and Jechts imprisoned spirits. With these defeated, the
party battles and defeated Yu Yevon. Sins cycle of rebirth ends, and the spirits of Spiras fayth are freed
from their imprisonment. Auron, now revealed to be unsent, goes to the Farplane, having died years ago
after confronting Yunalesca. After, Dream Zanarkand and Tidus disappear, now that the Fayth stopped

summoning. At the end of the game, Yuna gives a speech to the citizens of Spira, Yuna resolves to
rebuild Spira now that its free of sin. In post-credits, Tidus awakens under water, swimming toward the
ocean surface, and the screen then fades white.

I could rave all day about Final Fantasy X. But, it does have its down points. The fact that the
ultimate weapons in the game are very hard to obtain, and even if you get them, they're even harder to
power up even for you to use them. There are a lot of cut scenes that could be cut shorter or even taken
out of the game because they serve nothing to the plot. The voice acting of certain characters can be
bad at sometimes to the point its cringe worthy to listen to it, especially if you've played the game
multiple times and know its coming. The game is very linear and can be very slow at points, and there
isn't very much room to explore in depth the cooler areas in the game. But, there are also good points of
the game as well. The music is beautiful and fun, leaving you humming along as you head through each
area. The bosses are challenging, levelling up is actually fun in the game. The worlds are beautiful and
inviting. Even the main antagonist, Sin, makes the game interesting because of how he's introduced, the
backstory behind him, and the concept make the game.

All in all, because of the music, the battle system, the beautiful worlds, the main antagonist, Sin,
the backstories of each characters, make the game interesting and challenging. Final Fantasy X is a great
game from a great series and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys roleplaying games with good
backstories that leave you wanting more.

Works Cited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X