Final Fantasy X Re-master - Throwback to One of the Greats

Like most RPG fans in the 90s, I was pretty heavily into Final Fantasy. While that inner desire to like the FF games in general hasn’t changed, FFX was the last main-line, non-sequel Final Fantasy title I played before I really became an “adult”. It was back in my bachelor days, spending hours on end locked in my room pouring through RPGs like crazy.

When FFX originally came out, I took an entire week off work and didn’t do much of anything except play that game. That’s how dedicated I was back then, and how much I enjoyed the game.

Fast forward to this year, and we get a full HD re-master of both FFX and its divisive sequel, FFX-2. I’ve nearly completed a play-through of FFX at this point, so I’ll talk a little about how I feel toward this re-master.

I’ll get this out of the way first: There are always things that could have been done better, or re-worked a bit for a re-release. I’m still not a big fan of the laughing scene right before our heroes leave Luca for the first time. That is one of the corniest things I’ve ever seen in a Final Fantasy game, and I’ve played them all. So, there are things we just have to live with, and may not really affect my opinion one way or another.

This is, for all intents and purposes, the definitive version of this game. It includes the special “International” content that was never released in North America until now, which is nice for those who wish to delve deeply into their characters and min/maxing things along the way. In fact, I would have gladly jumped head first into that content had this been 14 years ago. Alas, I don’t have the time nor the gumption to be bothered with it now.

My goal was to play through the game as quickly as possible while doing as many side quests as I could and still feel that I was progressing. Sitting there playing Blitzball for hours on end – while possibly enjoyable even now – just doesn’t do it for me because I lose that sense of progression, and I have too many other games to play to bother with that. (Seriously, my backlog is ridiculous, folks.)

So, while the extra content is great, I think I’ll just stick to the base game, do a few things here and there and enjoy the story.

Yes, I'm a Yuna fan. Don't judge me.

What impressed me the most was the improvement on the textures, especially those of the environment and the main characters. Lulu and Yuna are vastly improved, and the others are noticeably enhanced. The environments look equally as awesome, especially earlier in the game (Besaid and Kilika, for example). While this is a FMV, the iconic scene where Yuna is sending the fallen after the Kilika Sin attack brings chills to my spine each time I watch it in glorious HD.

At the same time, some of the side characters – even those with major parts in the story – seem to have been left out of receiving improved textures. I can understand the “stand ins”, the one-off characters that are just seen quickly or in the background, but you have characters like Brother, Cid, the Aurochs team, Maester Micah, etc. that hardly have any improvements to them at all. Even a character such as Jecht seems relatively untouched and still has that blocky “PS2 sheen” to him. Fortunately, our great villain, Seymour, has also benefited from some texture touch-ups. It just makes him look even creepier.

Overall, though, this is the same great experience it was 14 years ago, and, if you haven’t played it since you were a “kid”, so to speak, it’s worth taking another trip through Spira to relive the sights, sounds and emotions and see how they compare to what you saw, heard and felt all those years ago. It’s sort of like a vertical tasting, the general recipe might be the same, but there is most certainly some differences between then and now. Your gaming palate may have improved since then and there may be things you didn’t pick up on then that you would be able to experience now.

It’s also a great way to get your own kids or significant others into the awesome world of Japanese RPGs, from back when the Final Fantasy franchise actually meant something great. (I still enjoy the Final Fantasy games, don’t tar and feather me. But let’s be honest with ourselves, the franchise doesn’t mean what it once meant.)