After initially seeing the next three titles in the Final Fantasy series announced at Square Millennium, I was only seriously looking into getting the ninth. I mean, just look at the game; nearly everything that we wanted to see put back into our favorite series was slipped right back in where it belonged, as if it had never left to begin with. All of the juicy stuff that made the series great returned in Final Fantasy IX: four-character parties, medieval fantasy landscapes, fantastical creatures, a renewed sense of difficulty, the character-specific job classes, even the rip-roaring battle themes of old found their way back in. So you can probably understand why my first impressions of Square's Final Fantasy X were naturally a real downer. As far as I was concerned, Final Fantasy X would end up as yet another Final Fantasy VIII, the one Final Fantasy title that I least enjoyed and quite possibly the lowest point in the series to date. Of course, the eighth installment wasn't quite as horrid as people made it out to be, but it did lack the classic feel that Final Fantasy IX seemed to exemplified so well and that most people had come to expect. It also strayed a little too far from familiar territory. Early bootleg footage of Final Fantasy X, brought back by fellow intrepid gaming journalists, looked as though it was simply another graphical benchmark, this time for Sony's then unproven PlayStation 2 gaming platform. Oddly enough, this is exactly how the gaming press looked at early footage of Final Fantasy VII when it was shown in detail for the first time in 1996...

  However, I later found that my prior reaction to Final Fantasy X had been a bit premature. Now, I know just as well as anyone that it can be downright impossible to "one-up" your own greatest efforts in any given field, and if Square's internal development teams feel as much pressure as I do when improving on their past efforts, then I truly feel for them. I remember being just as unforgivingly harsh with the team assigned to develop Final Fantasy X as everybody else was when it was first announced, Final Fantasy IX's unveiling was accepted well, since it was being touted as the last truly medieval title in the series, but when it came to Final Fantasy X's turn in the spotlight, massive waves of speculation shot right through the assembly. Would Final Fantasy X's development team repeat the questionable alteration of the series' inner workings, just as they had done with Final Fantasy VIII barely eleven months prior. How could Squaresoft, the same company responsible for building the Final Fantasy heritage to where it currently stood, defile their best area of expertise and, most of all, their defining series? It turns out that Final Fantasy X, released on July 19th, 2001 in Japan, was actually Square's latest attempt at making the series' move from the 32-bit PlayStation to the 128-bit PlayStation 2 just as profoundly noticeable, if not more so, as their industry-altering move from the 16-bit Super Nintendo to the 32-bit PlayStation, which was perfectly illustrated in the seventh installment in the series. And, let's be honest, how many of you can say that, despite your opinion on that particular installment, the story didn't hit home for each and every one of you in a certain, unforgettable way?

  This level of newness expressed throughout the production of Final Fantasy X, not unlike the notable generational gap between playing Final Fantasy VI and its eventual successor on PlayStation, Final Fantasy VII, is exactly what Square was going for. The project, which had been in the works since the mid-2000, almost immediately called for several changes to both creative and programming staff. This time around, series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi chose to be but an executive producer this time around. Handling his usual role of director is Kitase Yoshinori, the director behind Seiken Densetsu, an original Game Boy title known in the States as "Final Fantasy Adventure" and the prequel to the bestselling Secret of Mana, as well as Final Fantasy V - VIII. Nobuo Uematsu would also be joined by two "creative assistants", Junya Nakano and Masashi Hamauzu, who would aid him in both the creation and composition of the Final Fantasy X Original Game Soundtrack. However, perhaps the most important change came when the newly-placed director, Kitase Yoshinori, and executive producer Hironobu Sakaguchi unanimously decided to assign Square veteran Toshirou Tsuchida to the duty of "battle director", with the task of recreating the Final Fantasy battle engine into an incredibly fast, streamlined and much more strategic affair, and virtually doing away with Active Timer Battles altogether. If you don't recognize Tsuchida's name off-hand, don't feel bad; he's the same guy who's best known for his work directing the strategy-based mechanical combat series known abroad as "Front Mission".

  The enemy encounters in Final Fantasy X, shown in fully playable form at the Tokyo Game Show in Spring 2001, still occur randomly, as has become almost a predictable flaw in the series, but are now resolved much faster than ever before. Unlike recent titles in the series, the character animation within most battles is actually quite minimal, almost of no consequence at all, really. Don't take that the wrong way though, as the game still looks very spectacular; it just doesn't flaunt it like its predecessors have in the past. The Active Timer Battle system of past titles has indeed been changed to a more strategy-oriented system, in which every turn is regulated by time, but turns no longer require you to wait until each character's Active Timer bar fills, which means that it has considerably more in common with the "Active Turn" system in Yasumi Matsuno's Final Fantasy Tactics than the cumbersome, tedious battle engines found in Final Fantasy IV - IX. Final Fantasy VII and VIII's critical retaliation systems, where a gauge keeps track of how much overall damage your character is willing to put up with before going berserk, have also returned in full force; these powerful moves are now known as Overdrives instead of "Limit Breaks", yet essentially fulfill the exact same role in your overall combat strategy as they did in the last three installments. This time around, however, nearly every character now requires some form of exact controller sequence or input to execute their different Overdrives successfully, and to their full effectiveness. Every character can now participate in every battle as well, thanks to Tsuchida's idea to allow Final Fantasy X's players to swap out any of their current combatants with either one of the four inactive reserves.

  The enemy encounter engine utilized in Final Fantasy X allows the player to see the immediate effects of status changes to both their own playable characters and their enemies. Casting a simple status spell such as Haste on Tidus will not only quicken his movements in the battlefield, but will also bestow him with more attacks per "round" on the Active Turn Meter, which is located in the upper-right hand corner of the encounter screen and can be scrolled to see the future course of events in battle with a simple tap of either R1 or R2. This traditional encounter system with a twist is simply referred to by Square's programmers as CTBs, or Conditional Turn-based Battles. Experience points have also been done away with to some extent, since your sole reward for completing an enemy encounter is AP, or Ability Points, which eventually earn you Sphere Levels, which, in turn, can then be used to unlock both common and unique abilities on each character's respective Sphere Board. Another big change is the overall scenario design. This time, Kazunari Nojima, who has been with Square Co. Ltd. since the suspiciously import-only Super Famicom strategy RPG, "Bahamut Lagoon", is in charge of all the ways in which the game's storyline plays out to its conclusion. And because Final Fantasy X is the tenth title in the series, as well as the first one to debut on Sony's PlayStation 2, Square Co. Ltd. hired two motion actors, ironically the same two who previously did the motion capture for Rinoa and Zell from Final Fantasy VIII, and they fully incorporated spoken English dialog and Emotion Engine-enhanced facial expressions into the overall game design, a feat made all the more feasible by the incredibly vast storage capability of DVD.

  Visually, Squaresoft's Final Fantasy X has set a new precedent for Sony's PlayStation 2 hardware, a somewhat greater standard than anyone ever thought the "developer-unfriendly" system could handle. Environments found in the game are breathtaking, with little details being much more noticeable this go around, due to the switch from near-static prerendered backdrops to fully polygonal landscapes. No longer are you forced to look at the action from one angle until you reach the end of the screen, and you needn't worry about any more of those awkward "Hey, where's Cloud?" moments either, as your lead character is always the center of the camera's attention. You see, after many attempts at cinematics, the developers finally chose to implement a simple roving camera that switches to the best predetermined angles, and all in real-time to boot. This provides the player with all of the lush, three-dimensional environments they would expect to see from the PlayStation 2 hardware without the inconvenience of having to work with an in-game camera. Now, I know, you're probably thinking right about now. "Just cut to the chase already! Did the game turn out good or not?" Please bear with me, as this is a most difficult title to evaluate. First of all, let me just say that Final Fantasy X's visual presentation is a living benchmark for the untapped processing power that Sony claimed the PlayStation 2 would undoubtedly have less than two years ago. You can literally name just about any cinematic effect and Final Fantasy X will have it.

  Everything, from real-time facial expressions to dramatic camera panning, from rapid motion shots to vividly textured environments, is rendered completely in real-time; Final Fantasy X's graphics engine leaves very little by the wayside. Only a scant few visual nitpicks exist (such as rendered hair not reacting properly to water) are present, but these are but a small trifle to most average players. However, the most controversial development change this time around came not from the style of graphics, but from the presentation method of the game's dialog. You see, Final Fantasy X is the very first installment in the series to give each of its characters actual voices with which to speak. However, since every bit of the voice acting in the game was obviously recorded in Japanese in the original release, the spoken dialog had to be either subtitled (my initial choice) or rerecorded in English; a very difficult decision for Square Electronic Arts to make, I'm sure. Having never done a English dub for one of their games before, Square faced quite a monumental task--and, for the most part, succeeded. To redub all of Final Fantasy X's spoken Japanese dialog into English, Square Electronic Arts hired a multitude of both character actors and voice actors to bring the entirety of the game's dialog to life in English. Among the names behind the voices are such notables as James Arnold Taylor, Hedy Burgess, Sherry Lynn, John DiMaggio, Matt McKenzie, Alex Fernandez, Gregg Berger, Paula Tiso and Tara Strong. Altogether, Square Electronic Arts hired nearly forty professional character and voice talents to fill every last spoken role found in the game--definitely not an inexpensive undertaking...

  However, everything is far from perfect within the actual game itself. Contrary to the rest of the series, Final Fantasy X has no real "world map" to speak of. Rather than the traditional, overhead world map, which breaks from the "realistic approach", the developers decided to design a sort of continuing path of roadways between the game's various towns and locales. Navigating Final Fantasy X's world of Spira actually has more in common with a trekking across the world of Secret of Mana than traveling across the globe-spanning worlds of previous titles in the series. Those who think this might be a bit on the boring side can rest assured though, as the two most traditional methods of faster, safer travel make their triumphant return, namely everyone's favorite yellow birds of burden known as "chocobos" and the ever-popular airships. Unfortunately, controlling the latter is handled via a text-based menu and static world map; a far cry from the vibrant world maps of titles past, where you could find hidden caves and seek out non-linear quests on your way to nearly every major plot development. Final Fantasy X's developers tried to hide the sidequests via secret passwords that can be entered into the airship's computer to unveil their location, but when all is said and done, it just doesn't feel quite the same. Unfortunately, most of these "hidden" locations, with the exception of three that lead to weapons, can be found by simply clicking every geological coordinant available on the airship's chart. Not to worry though, as there are still many extremely difficult-to-find items and arcane sidequests. A perfect example would be the ultimate weapons, which only appear in their strongest form when very specific, unforgiving requirements are met.

  Storywise, Final Fantasy X has plot twists a-plenty, and doesn't let up with the smoke and mirrors until the very end. The energetic main character, Tidus, voice acted by James Arnold Taylor, is nothing like Squall, Cloud or Zidane from the last three installments. His overall demeanor could best be described as a mix between the more laid-back characters and the very excitable fighter types of previous Final Fantasy installments, such as Zell and Sabin. Yuna, voice acted by Hedy Burgess, is the prominent daughter of a highly respected High Summoner named Braska, and as such, is a summoner herself. In an interesting change from the rest of the series, Yuna is able to not only summon various creatures to the battlefield, but once she does, she can keep them there until the battle is won, they are called back or they fall. In other words, Summons, or "Aeons" as they're known in Spira, are fully-controllable, playable characters, during the time that immediately follows their summoning. And while the Summoners themselves are revered in the world of Spira, the same cannot be said for their Aeons; numerous scenes depict Aeons as wild beings that must be harnessed and leashed by both heavy manacles and chains, so that their Summoner can "keep their destructive nature at bay." Tidus and Yuna live in a world that was seemingly torn apart by a very powerful force of nature, referred to by Spira's inhabitants as "Sin". This powerful, cyclic phenomenon is the main cause of the destruction of many of Spira's advanced civilizations, and is exactly why Spira is completely covered with water. This destructive force of nature, and whoever is ultimately behind it, are the central villains of the game. The storyline revolves around Yuna's plan to travel to each of the sacred temples dedicated to Spira's Yevon religion to rescue the enslaved Aeons within. By setting the Aeons free, she hopes to ultimately acquire the Final Aeon, which allows its user to defeat Sin.

  Final Fantasy X's extended cast includes the likes of Lulu, voiced by the witty Paula Tiso, a dry, sarcastic, black-clad female black mage who uses animate dolls in combat; Wakka, a spikey-haired fighter and fellow Blitzball player, voice acted by John DiMaggio; Kimarhi, an enormous Ronzo (panther-man) and one of Yuna's Guardians, also voiced by John DiMaggio; Rikku, voiced by Tara Strong, a young, yet dagger-sharp female Al-Bhed skilled in thievery, and finally Auron, a large, intimidating man with a past shrouded in enigma who wears a red trenchcoat and wields a hefty broadsword in battle, confidently portrayed by the raspy-voiced Matt McKenzie. Artist Tetsuya Nomura, whose previous works for Square include Final Fantasy VII and VIII, as well as PS2 brawler "The Bouncer", is once again handling the character design, which has a very distinct southern Asian vibe this go around. Final Fantasy X's soundtrack, produced by veteran Final Fantasy music man and professional composer Nobuo Uematsu, also leans more toward the Okinawan feel of the title's lush, tropical environments and character designs. Final Fantasy X also marks a return for individual character themes and continues the recent trend set by both Final Fantasy VIII and IX, by featuring yet another story-centric vocal theme, this one entitled "Suteki da ne" (or "Isn't this wonderful?"), sung by Okinawan folk singer, Rikki. Thankfully, unlike the game's newly recorded English dialog, "Suteki da ne" was left completely unaltered for the game's North American release, which was an excellent decision on Square's part, since it's rather doubtful that any English recording artists could reproduce the soft-spoken, emotionally-charged vocals of this distinctly Japanese song easily.

  Unfortunately, since I played the original Japanese version before I played the North American version, I noticed a few mistranslations and downright poetic license taken with the plot, especially during the ending. Without giving too much away, one of Yuna's lines in the Japanese ending was "Arigato!" which means "Thank you!" Yuna's English voice actress, Hedy Burgess, was told to read this line as "I love you..." I'm sorry, folks, but that's not a translation, that's a rewrite. Of course, there are a couple of sidequests that will definitely make you stray from your duties of saving Spira. These clever diversions include "Blitzball", which the game's development team refers to as the "contact watersport of the future"; you can also help Tidus and all of his friends, with the exception of Rikku, learn to speak "Al Bhed", an ancient, yet entirely fictional language used throughout Spira. The former is a sporting event played with teams submerged in a sphere of levitating water. Playing like an estranged lovechild of soccer and water polo, Blitzball is an extremely difficult, yet realistic mini-game that is almost a full game in and of itself, and can be both irritating and addictive at the same time, especially when you reach the finals. "Al Bhed" is easy enough, both to learn and decipher; simply find the Al Bhed Primers scattered throughout the towns and lands of Spira. However, finding them all by the end of the game can be a trick, as some areas of the game, namely any destroyed locales and one of the Yevon temples, become inaccessible when you've already been through them once. In fact, I missed not only a primer, but one of the items required to get the hidden summons in that particular temple, since I thought I could simply come back and retrieve them later. Heed my warning; don't rush through this installment, as it's brevity and linear game structure make it almost impossible to backtrack. Square's Final Fantasy X will definitely go down in history as the first role-playing title to truly showcase what Sony and Toshiba originally designed the PlayStation 2 hardware to do. Every graphical, musical and emotional touch, both artistic and technical is present. Square's Final Fantasy X Project team, established in mid-1999, set out with the intent of bringing the Final Fantasy series into its tenth iteration with both innovation and heart--and, for the most part, they delivered.
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