Final Fantasy X | HD Remaster | REVIEW

“If you're OK watching hours and hours of cutscenes and don't mind really clunky controls then there may be a game hidden in for you."

HOW I PLAYED: Nintendo Switch

STORY — 15/20 

INTRO 

The pacing for the opening hours is on point. The cinematics are gorgeous and you get to try out combat before long. 

CUTSCENES 

The fully CGI cinematics in FFX are maybe the best in the entire franchise. Despite not truly being in love with the game overall, I was enamoured with them. There's so much drama and action and life here. I got chills watching Yuna dancing on the water. Titus, Yuna and the whole gang actually look like people with real emotions as opposed to computer animated characters.

The game is actually super duper heavy on the cutscenes. Luckily they're fun to watch and well directed. The characters in the game are very likeable and the story does a decent job of creating a sense of camaraderie amongst them. Be prepared to "watch" this game (haha). Kind of reminds me of Metal Gear Solid in that way.

WORLD BUILDING

This is where I felt the game really fell short of my expectations. The whole thing feels very sterile and fabricated. The lack of towns to visit and just the sheer linearity of the game made me feel like I was a spectator as opposed to a participant. Sure there are NPCs to talk to and yes the game does have "towns" (albeit very few) but there's just an immense lack of depth and immersion that I felt from other FF games or great RPGs. Heck, even replaying FF 1-6 pixel remasters recently gave me a fuller and deeper sense of atmosphere.

OVERALL STORY 

I played this game for the first time as a 15-year-old on my PS2. It didn't grip me then and it didn't grip me now in my late 30s. The story relies heavily on playing with your emotions and is clearly targeted at the romantic angsty teenager. FF VIII had a love story too but it handled its dialogue and twists with so much more finesse.

This one gimmick is used far too often where Tidus will lose consciousness and you find yourself in a totally different area with no explanation of how you got there. I can see them using this once - maybe twice. But it felt like this was how the whole game progressed. I got so tired of this and was actually yelling at my Switch! "What's going on!?! Wait...WHAT!!"

"We're on a pilgrimage with the chosen one to save the world." Tales of Symphonia handled this narrative so much better than FFX. That game felt epic. The scale was massive. The plot wasn't repetitive or predictable. It didn't rely on cheap tactics to play with my emotions every chance it got. I honestly don't understand why people like FFX as much as they do. 

GRAPHICS — 18/20 

CHARACTER MODELS 

Playing this on my handheld Switch Lite was a treat. I'd regularly bring the display right up to my face to admire the graphics. The game looked great in 2001 and the HD remaster has done it so many favours. It's colourful, vibrant and detailed. The remaster definitely changed some textures and lighting and fans of the game will probably say they prefer the original. Hope you kept your PS2.

ENVIRONMENTS

I had completely forgotten that X made use of pre-rendered backgrounds! Man, they look awesome.

SPECIAL FX

Combat is a spectacle. Spells are flashy. Summons feel powerful. 

ANIMATIONS

I'm going to be picky here but opening treasure chests in the overworld is awkward and goofy. Titus basically has one animation where he crouches down and lifts the lid but the problem is you can open a chest from any side or angle so it often looks very unnatural and clunky. This bugged me a lot. Like, why spend so much time making the game look this good and then fail miserably with something basic like this? Trying to move your way around in the puzzle sections of the game is just as bad. There's a desperate lack of accuracy and sophistication in controlling anything in this game.

The animation in combat is another story. Attacks and overall movement are convincing. I really liked how each character has their own "victory dance" I guess you could call it. If they're the one to land the finishing blow in battle the camera will zoom in on them and they'll do a unique routine. Nice job.

AUDIO — 16/20 

AMBIENCE 

The game's soundtrack is handled by the legend Nobuo Uematsu with help from Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano. The HD remaster lets you toggle between the original soundtrack and a newly orchestrated one. Overall the soundtrack is awesome and I found myself whistling or humming many of the tunes after I'd shut the game off.

BOSS MUSIC 

Not the best in the series but great overall. The main boss theme does a really good job of creating tension. That made those fights feel much more crucial.

SOUND DESIGN

The localization isn't the best. Especially when they have to speed up dialogue to fit it within a certain shot. This happens dozens of times throughout the game and it is laughable and immersion-breaking. It's like when that person lists off all the side effects of a drug at the end of a commercial and they talk super duper fast. Tidus is especially guilty. Can somebody explain this to me?

When the dialogue is on point it really delivers. Most of the English voice actors are actually fantastic. I grew to like the characters because of the sound of their voices. Tidus and Yuna were my least favourite by far, however. I think they were going for Yuna as being naive and vulnerable but she ends up sounding like she was just woken up from a nap every time she opens her mouth. Helpless. And Tidus is a dork. 

VARIETY

Each area in the game has its own theme and they match the environments well.

GAMEPLAY — 31/40 

CONTROLS 

OK, I'm going to sound like a snob here but I blame Dark Souls. Alright. The movement in this game is utter trash. Like unacceptable. It's become one of my biggest pet peeves in video games over the years (it's your fault, Miyazaki). Why can't developers get basic god damn movement figured out?! Controlling Tidus in this game is a mess. I get that the game has zero requirements for dexterity at any point and all you basically do is follow a narrow path 99% of the game but that's not an excuse. Make the characters move and feel natural. It's a video GAME. Not a video. Tidus frolics around. Or hops like he's on the moon. Is the whole game a trampoline? It's so dumb. I hated it.

It doesn't end here. Navigating the sphere grid, which is the game's level progression system was cumbersome as well. It's not as bad as moving Tidus around but for something you're going to spend hours and hours fiddling with I wish it was tighter.

So I could write an entire review about Blitzball, the game's main mini-game. Blitzball is actually pretty awesome. There's only one instance where you're forced to play it for story progression. Other than that you can choose to stop the main game at any save point and hop into a game. It's like underwater water polo mixed with chess. It was fun.

MECHANICS 

I really missed going to a town and finding the weapon shop, browsing through the selection and finding better stuff to buy. Seeing gear with superior stats and then having the shop owner ask if I'd like to equip it right away or add it to my inventory. That shit was so satisfying. In FFX, they got rid of this completely and instead, you will be buying and finding weapons with the exact same name the entire game. The catch is that they have different numbers of slots on them which you can use to add buffs. For example, you can equip a Piercing stat, which lets you do better damage to armoured enemies or on a piece of armour you can add a stat that might make you invulnerable to Blind or Poison. I can see what they were trying to do here (I think) and I will always applaud innovation, but they have had a formula since FF1 that was fine and they broke it this time. I wasn't a fan of this system at all. It didn't offer a satisfying sense of progression and overall felt flawed. 

I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the changes from the original PS2 version to the updated HD remaster. Besides the graphics obviously and the soundtrack, there are some quality-of-life changes and some gameplay that is a bit more fleshed out. There's an alternative Sphere Grid layout, the Expert Sphere Grid, which has fewer total nodes but gives a lot of freedom right from the start. You can choose whether you want the standard or expert grid at the start of the game, but once you've chosen you can't change it later (except by starting a new game).

PACING 

Because the game is a completely linear path the entire time you can never get lost. You're on train tracks from start to finish. The mini-map also has a flashing icon to show you which direction to go in which was hilarious. Follow the spaghetti to the end. 

UI/UE 

Looks really good. For the remaster they added a quick-heal option which was helpful. You can essentially choose between consuming items or MP while not in combat to fully heal your party instantly. This was cool, however, simply touching any save sphere does the same thing. And those things are all over the place. So that makes this a bit redundant. I definitely abused this mechanic to fully heal while I was doing a bit of grinding to level up. 

BOSS QUALITY

The frequency and pacing at which they throw bosses at you is alright. Without spoiling too much of the story, I wish there were more boss fights and a better variety too. Only a couple really stand out in my memory and for a 50+ hour game that's not great.

ENEMY VARIETY

RPGs are known to have a few reskins here and there. But for a game with this budget a pedigree, they absolutely failed. Reskin after reskin. It felt really lazy. 

So in combat,  each one of your party members will be effective against certain types of enemies. For example, Wakka who throws a ball will be able to hit flying enemies. Lulu, the mage will be effective against Flans and elementals. Auron is good against armoured. Etc. But you will literally see a reskin of that exact trio I just mentioned for about 40 hours. In different environments. It was so lame! Not until the end of the game do you get to really see unique monsters and still they threw in more of those flying cyclops bats!! Holy shit. There are six total variants of this one enemy simply reskinned.

GAMEPLAY VARIETY

So I mentioned Blitzball earlier. Then there's the main combat of the game which is superb. The other big chunk of gameplay is left to these atrocious shrine puzzles which are honestly so bad I don't know how they made it into the game. They're tedious and because Tidus is such a joke to control became frustrating and a chore. The game would have been better off without them entirely.

REPLAYABILITY

There are some optional bosses and summons you can unlock if you want to do a bit more of a thorough run. The story is so basic and forgettable that I don't know why you'd want to sit through all the cutscenes for it again. I guess Wakka was pretty awesome. I was honestly just trying to get to the end.

OVERALL — 79/100 

GOOD

Final Fantasy X HD Remaster brings a fresh coat of paint and a few tricks but ultimately does not do enough to elevate what is at best a flawed, average RPG. If you're OK watching hours and hours of cutscenes and don't mind really clunky controls then there may be a game hidden in for you. For me, it was missing so many key ingredients and left me feeling nostalgic for finer pieces of art.