Final Fantasy X-2 Review

Developer	Square Enix
Publisher	Square Enix
Genre	Role-Playing

“Hey, that’s our sphere! Oh, poopie! So what now? Call it quits?”

That’s one of Rikku’s lines during a scene in Final Fantasy X-2, and just a sample of the many silly situations that you’ll encounter during the game. At this point, a lot of you might be saying, “Yeah Rikku, I’ll pass.” You’ve probably also seen the television advertisement for FFX-2, which has been turning off potential buyers of the game just as much (and perhaps turning on just as many).

Regardless of your affinity towards polygonal vocalists, Square’s first ever continuous Final Fantasy sequel is worth every penny (assuming you’ve played the first). While the game’s dialogue is filled with lighthearted fluff (and more than a few sexual innuendos), constantly present throughout is a much darker plot undertone combined with one of the best FF battle systems yet, both of which keep you hooked until the genuinely satisfying conclusion.

Gameplay - One of the stronger points of FFX-2’s story is how connects the original game with the newly arising problems of a world emerging from 1000 years of painful destruction. Two years after the bittersweet ending of Final Fantasy X, Yuna is peacefully residing in her small, secluded hometown of Besaid. Because of her destruction of the havoc-wrecking Sin, the world of Spira has enjoyed relative peace. Yuna, however, cannot stop thinking about that girly-man blitzball player named Tidus, who met an unexpected end in FFX. Or did he? During these two years after the destruction of Sin, many people in Spira took up a new hobby of sphere hunting. The ever energetic Rikku had formed her own sphere hunting group, called the Gullwings, and convinced Yuna to join them when she showed her a record sphere that seemed to display Tidus…alive. With a newfound motivation, Yuna, along with her cousin Rikku and the mysterious newcomer Paine, begin their search for more spheres in attempt to find out what really happened to Tidus.

Sphere hunting isn’t the only change in Spira over the past two years, however. Two rival factions have formed and throughout FFX-2 are in constant conflict with each other. After the fallacies of Yevon were uncovered by Yuna and Co. in the last game, the religion sought to repair its past wrongdoings and renamed themselves to New Yevon. Their pitch to the quickly changing world of Spira was to take things “one at a time”. Baralai, the new Maester of New Yevon, swore that the religion has put their furtive nature behind them.

Opposing New Yevon is the pugnacious Youth League, headed by a peculiar looking man named Nooj. He and his followers don’t believe one word of New Yevon’s apologies. They strongly suspect that New Yevon is still up to their same old tricks, and have been hiding many dark secrets about the true history of Spira, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to get them to fess up.

Yuna, Rikku and Paine (YRP) inevitably get caught up in the middle of this political warring in their search for spheres (in addition to being constantly challenged by a rival sphere hunting group, the Leblanc Syndicate). A few hours into the game, you’ll have to decide which faction you want to pledge allegiance to, and your choice will affect events for the remainder of the story. In fact, FFX-2 throws more dialogue choices at you than any RPG in recent memory. This aspect alludes to the overall non-linearity of the entire game. From the outset, you’ll be able to visit any location you want in Spira, via The Gullwings’ swank airship, The Celsius (piloted by none other than Rikku’s mentally deranged and perverted brother, Brother).

This is obviously a radical departure from every Final Fantasy game past, which have been linear as a ruler. Because of this new open-ended gameplay, FFX-2’s story progresses upon completing key missions dubbed “Hotspots” on your map. After completing all the Hotspots you’ll move onto the next “chapter” in the game, of which there are five. Each chapter brings forth a new set of required missions in order to advance.

Notice we said “required” missions, meaning that you must successfully complete these if you want to beat the game. If you simply do that, you’ll most likely finish the game in under 30 hours, compared to the 80 hours you’ll get out of it if you take the time out to do the optional missions. The casual RPG fan will probably complete a few optional missions in addition to the Hotspots, and get their money’s worth. For those of you who love to squeeze every last bit of content out of their RPGs, Final Fantasy X-2 will be your squeezing heaven. Besides having three different endings, (a first for a Final Fantasy game) the amount of side quests and minigames in X-2 is almost uncountable, and that’s a good thing. We’d bet safely on the assumption that Final Fantasy X-2 has as much secret quests, items, and special cut scenes as the past three Final Fantasy games combined. There's digging for treasure in the desert, using clues to find Cactuars scattered throughout Spira, a modified version of Blitzball, a brand new coin game called Sphere Break, and even the return of Chocobo breeding. That's just naming a few of the optional quests that FFX-2 is brimming with. Most importantly, the player is rewarded appropriately for going out of their way to complete them.

So, what exactly does a typical “mission” constitute in Final Fantasy X-2? Since YRP are out on the hunt for spheres, the goal of many missions is to find that sphere in whichever location it was detected. Along the way, you’ll encounter old friends…and old fiends as well. Somewhat of a blow to the game’s originality, you’ll fight the same monsters that you saw in Final Fantasy X. A similar disappointment occurs with the majority of the game’s recycled environments, as well (more on that later). However, that’s not to say there isn’t a warm feeling of nostalgia as you retrace Yuna’s steps as High Summoner, only this time she’s not in a dress down to the floor but a skirt tightly hugging her ass. Hey, you’re going to look at it whether you want to or not; it’s facing you 99% of the game.

Seriously though, Square did a great job at creating a believably changing world two years after the previous game: You’ll see Wakka and Lulu again, this time married and Lulu expecting a child. Upon arriving at Mt. Gagazet you’ll find Kimahri as the new Elder of the Ronso tribe. Stop by the Zanarkand Ruins and see how the sacred summoning ground and personal remembrance site for Yuna has been turned into a tourist spot. And this time when you visit Kilika Port, it’ll actually be there! During the two years since Sin’s destruction, the people of Kilika have rebuilt their town that the terrible monster demolished. Remember when Yevon forbade the use of machina (machines)? Well, once you step inside some of the Yevon temples you’ll be in for quiet a shocker. This also hints to something of a more grander scale, but we won’t spoil anything more here.
On the subject of secrets, the darker aspect of the FFX-2 story largely revolves around cover-ups, mysterious events, and a still uncertain future for the world of Spira. Throughout the game, Yuna’s search for Tidus inexplicably leads her to discover all sorts of shocking twists about Spira’s true history. As she finds new spheres, she gains more insight into the origins of Yevon, the role of the Aeons and the Fayth, and ultimately, what really happened to Tidus. When FFX-2’s storyline wants to be serious, it does so just as well as Final Fantasy X.

For much of the game though, a lighthearted mood flows smoothly along with the actual control of the more foreboding plot undercurrents. Yuna has definitely changed since the days of her concentrated attitude as High Summoner, and along with her cousin and a new friend, she’s not afraid to show it, in more ways than one. To be honest, most of the so-called “girly” scenes in the story aren’t even annoying – in fact, they’re quite entertaining. It seems that a lot of the weird Japanese humor got translated over as well, as exemplified in the Hot Springs scene (is Rikku…bisexual?!) and the Leblanc Backrub “minigame”.

You can really appreciate Yuna’s newly enthusiastic disposition compared with her Yevon-driven seriousness of her High Summoner days. Rikku is more hyperactive than ever, while Paine is the quiet one who tends to keep the other two focused on the mission when they start goofing around. Paine also refuses to talk about her own past, which incidentally is filled with as many surprises as New Yevon itself.

Final Fantasy X-2’s battle system is as unique as it is addicting. Following the game’s sphere motif, Yuna and the other gals equip dress spheres that are attached to a “Garment Grid” in order to fight and gain experience in battle. There are a total of 14 different dress spheres to find in the game, and some you’ll have to look harder for than others. Each dress sphere gives the user abilities specific to that dress. For example, Yuna, Rikku, and Paine’s start out with the default dress spheres of Gunner, Thief, and Warrior, respectively. As Gunner, Yuna can attack fiends with her pistols’ long-range and R1 button “trigger” abilities, similar to Squall’s gunblade from Final Fantasy VIII. Rikku as Thief has the advantage of stealing items from her enemies as well as an increased speed stat, which enables her to attack quicker, albeit at the price of lower strength. Paine’s Warrior dress sphere makes her a powerful physical attacker replete with a number of stat altering abilities.

Each dress sphere is interchangeable with any of the girls, and you can have the same dress equipped on all three of them at once. However, the abilities that a particular character learns with a dress sphere stays with them only – if you learned the Cure ability as White Mage Rikku, you’ll still have to teach Yuna Cure if you want her to have that ability as White Mage, as well. Each dress sphere also gives the equipper innate stat changes: If you equip the Black Mage dress sphere (specializing in offensive magic spells), you’re Magic and Magic Defense stats will increase greatly, but your Strength and Physical Defense will drop. Each character also has two accessory slots each, in which you can place a stat altering item that remains in effect no matter which dress you’re currently wearing.

You can switch dress spheres both on the field and during the heat of battle, by pressing L1. A subscreen will appear displaying the current girl’s Garment Grid with the dress sphere’s you placed on it. You can usually switch to any dress on the grid, but with some of the more complex Garment Grids it’ll take two turns to reach a dress. After selecting a new dress sphere, you’re treated to spectacular “changing” sequences, exclusive to each dress, that never fail to impress. (But just in case they do, you can shorten the animations or turn them off completely.) Strategically placing the dress spheres on each Garment Grid (of which there are over 30) is key to efficiently accessing the abilities you want, when you want them, during fights. Each successful action you take earns you one or two Ability Points (AP) for the ability you are currently learning on the dress sphere you’re currently wearing. Suppose you have just learned Cure during the middle of a battle (which you can then start immediately using, by the way). After exiting the fight you can enter the Abilities menu and check to see what the game has assigned that you learn next. Want to learn Regen before learning Curaga? Simply change your priorities and you’ll start learning that instead. It’s a simple process, but one that is incredibly addicting as you’ll always want to fight a few more battles just to see what abilities you’ll learn next.

After battle, you’ll earn Experience points as usual in a Final Fantasy game, which go towards your characters level (maxing out at 99). Each level up earns you permanent base stat increases.

Although FFX-2 marks the return of the Final Fantasy trademark Active Time Battle (ATB) setup, the fights go faster than any Final Fantasy game to date. The ATB system has actually been modified to allow two or more characters to attack at once – this goes for both YRP and their foes. Now, you can plan chain attacks that will hit for a substantially higher amount of damage than a single attack. You’ll find this modified ATB system unbelievably refreshing. Yuna, Rikku, and Paine will dynamically move around the battle area instead of just standing in a line the entire time, and the overall speed of the fights are much, much quicker. Most regular battles are over in mere seconds. Despite the high encounter rate (yes, there are still random encounters), you actually won’t mind it this time because of the relative speed of the battles. If Square wishes to insist on random battles in the future, so be it, but I hope they keep with the pace of FFX-2’s zippy fights.

There is one noticeable flaw though, but it has more to do with the actual enemies than the battle system. Most regular RPG gamers will have no trouble defeating enemies; I didn’t find any particularly tough fiends. Boss battles are even easier, sometimes requiring merely a few hits before they fizzle into pyrefiles. It would have been nice if many of the bosses were considerably more aggressive to match the speed of Yuna, Rikku, and Paine. The one exception to the relatively easy battles is the secret 100-level dungeon found late in the game, which pits you up against a seemingly endless gauntlet of increasingly tough monsters, cumulating in a boss that won’t go down until you’ve depleted all one million of his hit points.

Keep in mind, we don’t want to give the impression that Final Fantasy X-2 is a cakewalk. You’re still going to have to do some serious stat-building and ability learning, but not as much when compared to the previous game. In other words, don’t expect to see too many Game Over screens. But when was that ever a good thing?

Graphics - The events in Final Fantasy X-2 take place only two years after those of its predecessor, so I wasn’t expecting drastic changes to the game’s world. I also wasn’t expecting Square to reuse over 90% of FFX’s environments, either. Almost every area in the game has a few subtle changes, but aside from Kilika Port and one or two other locations, everything else is recycled, even the camera angles. Come on, Square, you could’ve mixed things up by offering a fully-controllable camera, or at the very least, different viewpoints from those we’ve already seen in Final Fantasy X. One area in the game that could’ve really used a change is the Calm Lands. Even in Final Fantasy X, I thought this huge grassy plain was simply too big for its own good. In FFX-2, it serves even less purpose as its wide open area is pretty much used for nothing. Luckily, the changes in Spira are still very much evident thanks to the stories told by the various people inhabiting them.

Other than the déjà vu environs, Final Fantasy X-2 looks just as graphically stellar as FFX did, along with some subtle, but welcome improvements. It’s no big deal, but characters in battle now depict form-shaping shadows instead of the cheap “dot” shadows that Final Fantasy X used, adding a bit more authenticity to the action. Although the game reuses many textures from the previous one, they seem a bit sharper and more detailed, especially textures on the main characters and NPCs. Loading times between areas are also shortened somewhat, but again, this is the PS2, so don’t expect too much of an improvement here.

The most visually impressive aspect of FFX-2 has to be the elaborate designs for the ladies’ dresses and their accompanying dress-change sequences. You can tell a large amount of time was devoted to creating the dresses and the various graphical wizardry to go with them. The animation sequences actually rival Square’s Summon monster spells seen in the last few FF games in terms of showing off a number of different pyrotechnic and transparency effects. FFX-2’s environments may be old and therefore somewhat underwhelming, but the game’s battle animations and graphics work show off the best of what the PlayStation 2 can offer.

Of course, no modern Final Fantasy would be complete without the requisite FMV cut scenes. Surprisingly enough, FFX-2 has very few CG-rendered scenes, only six to be exact. We’re guessing because of the more open-ended nature of the story, it wouldn’t be feasible to construct different CG scenes considering how many different scenarios there are depending on your choices. Those few times when we are treated to a FMV, Square impresses as usual, with arguably the most impressive full-motion video sequences in any video game to date.

Sound - The majority of FFX-2’s soundtrack will be completely unrecognizable as any of Nobuo Uematsu’s work. That’s because, for the first time in the entire series, he didn’t compose the music for this game. Many Final Fantasy fans will miss his work this time around as a result. Most of the game’s music is a combination of J-Pop (Japanese pop), disco style tracks, and a couple of sedate piano melodies. If you want my personal opinion, well, I honestly like most of it. It definitely is a huge departure from the epic Final Fantasy music most of you expect, but all of it fits the mood of the game perfectly, which is important. Yuna and Rikku’s Themes are pretty upbeat, interesting pieces, but the Chocobo Theme has been destroyed. It’s not even a remix of the familiar theme; it’s a horribly repetitive, horn-instrumented track that you’ll know is bad as soon as you first hear it. The track that stood out the most for me was Zanarkand Ruins, which although is completely different from the Zanarkand song from FFX, is still a beautifully constructed piece in its own right.

Following another recent FF trend, FFX-2 does have a vocal track, and it’s as good as any other. Well, actually, there’s two vocal tracks. One of them you’ve no doubt heard a few lines of on the game’s TV commercial. The song (which is sung by a real Japanese artist and was on the Japanese pop charts), titled “real Emotion”, is sung in full by Yuna during the opening FMV. You’ll either love it or hate it, but you can’t possibly hate Yuna dancing in a short skirt and tank top. Either way, you can watch this intro sequence again in the Luca Sphere Theater (whenever you go to Luca in the game). The main vocal song, though, is titled 1000 Words. It’s an excellent piece, and far different from real Emotion, but I won’t spoil anymore since this song plays a part during a very cool scene in the game.

The voice actors from Final Fantasy X return one more time to lend their voices to the sequel. While FFX’s voice acting was good, the scene by scene dialogue suffered from awkward pauses due to the difference in length of Japanese and English words. Unfortunately, FFX-2 is still plagued with many of these weird conversation “freezes”, but thankfully the voice actors have fell into their roles more comfortably this time. Yuna’s monotonous tone is now completely gone, and Rikku speaks with an appropriate cuteness without sounding forced. Paine is also voiced equally well, and her serious mood is conveyed through it. And we're lucky the trio sounds good, because even though Paine is pretty quiet, the other two sure know how to talk a whole damn lot.

Bottom Line - Still undecided? If nothing else, take the following into consideration: If you’ve played, completed, and enjoyed Final Fantasy X, you owe it to yourself to pick up the sequel. If you haven’t even played the first one but were planning to, you’d be wise to pick up both games. With a less serious, but still meaningful storyline, one of the most playable battle systems around, and more side quests than you could keep track of, Final Fantasy X-2 is an RPG that will keep you occupied and satisfied for as long as any good game in its genre should. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear Yuna and Rikku calling…

Review by Nick Pappas