FINAL FANTASY X

Final Fantasy X

Genre: Japanese Role Playing Game

Degree of Finality: Ten Fantasies

Wistfulness of Main Character: Rather so

The man-boy pictured above is not what he seems.  No, in fact, he is a curse most foul.  Not too long ago, I had found myself longing, nay, yearning to replay Final Fantasy X, for reasons completely unknown to me.  But I was a different person the first time 'round, a different man altogether, a being with substantially more Backstreet Boys CDs and a penchant for ending sentences in prepositions.  But no longer!  With a new perspective comes new enjoyment, possibly, and it is sad that the game rewards my newfound replay efforts with a Gypsy curse.

It was like this except no it wasn't.

I came into this game knowing exactly what the story was and what happens, yet in nearly every new area I was met with total unfamiliarity.  If I had any outside contact with anyone while playing this game, and if they had asked what was going on, I could say, with absolute clarity, what was about to happen, but damn if I couldn't remember how I got there in the first place, or what anything was called.  The game had changed itself over the years, twisting my memory around its spiky haired finger, changing instances from what once was to what now is.

There are spikes n' shit

It's not a great game.  It can be argued that it's not even a good game.  It certainly IS a game, though, I can assure you that.  As I played, an intense emotion that I can only describe as "Extreme Indifference" rose to the top of my feelings bucket, amongst the slops of disappointment directly beneath it.  After 80 hours of playtime I can't for the life of me pin down anything I thought was great, but the flipside is that I can't think of anything terrible, either.  And this is the very crux of the Gypsy curse this game has so evilly inflicted upon me.

Eighty. Hours.  I could have beaten the game in half that time, and I'm certain that with a certain Razamataz you could beat it in half THAT time.  But I couldn't stop.  Near the conclusion of the game, the beautiful zenith that would release me from my mental bindings, I decided that I had to do other stuff.  Like oh, say, leveling up.  I leveled up three characters to have all the moves.  Going through the game will probably get each character their full set of moves, and maybe even the first moves of another character, but I got ALL OF THEM.  Three identical characters with every single ability and with high enough stats to make them all super hulk magicians.  You think this came easy?  Well it did, but it took for-goddamn-ever.

See this thing?  I killed it in one hit.  It... it cried so much as it died

It gripped me.  I had literally no reason to do this.  You could functionally beat the game within each characters own boundaries, and it wouldn't even be that hard.  The game was paced well enough so that I never really had to grind, and each character was approximately equal in ability by the end, but that wasn't good enough and I don't know why.  It was so easy, it was so boring.  But I just kept going, on and on, while my spirit whithered away.  I had to take the game system around with me, playing as I learned in school, turn basing as I drove to the store, grinding as I sang the theme song in the shower.  One time, I woke up and I was playing the game already.  

 

The withered creature on the sofa represents me, and the DS represents fuck you FFX.

I finally beat it.  I didn't finish all the sidequests, because there is no more reason to.  The final boss was felled with a mere two hits, since I could do as much damage as the game would ever allow.  There are plenty of optional bosses, that are several levels above anything you'll find on a strictly story based playthrough, but even they are conquered with the smallest iota of persistance.  True enough I haven't fought the toughest enemy, but the game has worn me out.  

Stay away from this game.  Not because it's bad, or because it's too good, but because it is like a sickness, or an infection.  If you're even the slightest bit interested in it, it will take your soul for no good reason, so just stay away.  

I give this game 0 "aaaaaaaaaaaaargh" out of 1.