The linear level design and gameplay never really bugged me bc I always figured it was a pilgrimage, so they sorta baked the narrative of the linear journey into the plot
Whats crazy is that every FF is linear and just gives thr illusion of choice. Traveling to a village before your main destination doesnt make the game better, you go to the village then move on cause nothing of significance happens. What makes me go reeeeeeeee is when people say ffx is so linear. Show me any other FF, its just as linear with an illusion of choice. Ff at least has great world building and keeps drip feeding you info on Spira. Your first playthrough is always the most important one, and FFX excels at that. I never wanted to put it down even though i played every ff before and had my own biases, the story and world gripped me until the end.
1:28:30 Most people move Kimarhi down Rikku's path to be an early game/second thief. It's generally what I always do with him too since stealing items is really important for customization. Also, you want the steal ability on him before go to Gagazet anyway so he can steal level 3 keyspheres from Yenke and Biran.
Level 3 keyspheres are harder to get than level4 by that time lol Also white mage kimahri is optimal because yuna needs to go down Auron's path to cheese the late game with bahamut. With more attack than magic, the overdrives are worthless and you can just impulse or attack.
I take a multilayered Classic Grid strategy. Yuna nips into Rikku's chain to learn Steal, she's a surprisingly good thief (must be the Al Bhed blood!), Rikku _ignores practically all of her own chain,_ goes UP into Kimahri's, across to Lulu's, then becomes the party's 2nd Black Mage, claimed fear of lightning notwithstanding. She comes back towards endgame to pick up COPYCAT. Her endgame role is "copy-mage", when Lulu or Yuna DOUBLECAST ULTIMA, she copies it for about 3/4 yield and 28MP, LOL. Reserve a yellow Magic and Special sphere the game gives you to make this happen. Kimahri, after finishing his little figure-8, drops down into Rikku's (thru the path she opened) to get USE & STEAL, then across into Yuna's (via the path she opened) to become the party's 2nd White. Useful as such in the Bikanel Desert, IYKYK.
FFX was basically my first ever Final Fantasy game. I fell in love with it right away. I spent over 300 hours on my first file and I have a lot of memories from it. When I first started I relied upon my aeons so much that any boss that didn't let me use them gave me a hard time. I actually had a strategy guide to help me...but it missing EVERYTHING in Zanarkand and beyond in terms of maps, items available, etc... So I had a BRUTAL time fighting Yunalesca. But to this day, no boss gives me more anxiety than EVRAE! I was so underprepared when I first fought him. Between his stone gaze and poison breath I was in for a world of hurt. At this time I only had level 2 black magic spells so Lulu was basically useless and I hadn't really used Kimahri all that much so he didn't really have any useful overdrives. Now Rikku could use Al Bhed potions to heal poison status...but Evrae ALWAYS targeted her with either his regular attack or his stone gaze! After over a DOZEN tries, I managed to beat him. I was so happy! I had spent weeks trying to beat him and I had done it! THEN THE GAME DECIDED TO CRASH DURING THE CUTSCENE FOLLOWING THE BOSS FIGHT SO I HAD TO DO THE WHOLE THING ALL OVER AGAIN!
Your first one is always your best lol. Just like the elder scrolls. Yeah that thing is a massive pain in the ass. I think he killed me twice or three times on this run and had to take a minute to bitch about it in this video. I've likewise have games die between the boss and the save point and am a staunch advocate of autosaves these days.
@@arkham666 I was obsessed with this game back in the day. There was a gaming forum site I used to frequent back in the day and they had forum about this game. I would post daily tips, facts, etc... about this game. To this day I still have the layouts of the first four temples memorized, and Bevelle's to a lesser extent. when I discovered the anime Bleach I came up with Zanpakutos based on the aeons (if you're not familiar with the Bleach universe, those are the swords everyone carries and each has two forms). This game, Kingdom Hearts 1, and Kingdom Hearts 2 are still three of my favorite games of all time!
@@arkham666 You know, if I had armor with HP break I might actually try to fight them. Yuna, Rikku, Wakka, and Auron are the only members I'd use because their celestial weapons are the only ones I managed to fully upgrade. I am NOT dodging lightning bolts for 20+ minutes! I hate the choccobo minigame in the calm lands and I don't much care for Kimahri as a fighter. Yeah, some of his overdrives are really useful (looking at you Might Guard) but that butterfly minigame is a bitch
I had no idea what to expect when starting my first FF game back in 2001. It’s hard to express how much this game’s story, music, and overall design has meant to me since then. This game is an absolute masterpiece.
Replaying it on the ps2 and CRT tv. Really loved the game 20 years ago and I love it even more now, as i was too young to understand the underlying themes and references in the game back then. The line about blitzballs biggest crime being how it was introduced made me chuckle.
The best tip for the Chocobo race is… that it’s RNG. It’s really all about the balloon placements at the beginning. You need them to favor you instead of her. If you get them all, and obviously avoid being hit, it’s relatively easy.
@@arkham666 lmao probably. I unfortunately went for the platinum recently so had to do it. I think going wide left and right worked for me once you hit the field. You can take a few hits as long as you grab enough balloons.
@@DashingDavid mad respect for going after penance. I've wanted to myself but I just don't have the stamina for it, though that Tonberry hack helps with maxing the grid.
I love Final Fantasy X, it's my most favorite game of all time and my most favorite Final Fantasy game in the series. You can cheese all the super bosses. There's a trick you can do with Yojimbo, if you grand summon him with Yuna's overdrive, pay him exactly 10,000 Gil, he will always cast Zanmato ..... Super boss dead on first turn. Also, the first blitzball game against the Luca Goers is WINNABLE!!! I'll be showing you how on my channel. I'll be remaking my Final Fantasy X guide soon. I'm sad you chose to not ever blitz, but IMHO you missed out a super cool and sooooo fun mini game! If you win the first game, you get a hidden buff that makes your team more effective by getting higher number rolls and levelling up 1.5× faster. You then don't touch blitzball till after the events in Zanarkand and you will do nothing but dominate. The highest scoring game I ever won was 17-0! And that game was against the Goers, soooo I won the first game against them and just crashed their party time and time and time again, felt so good to knock them down several pegs.
1:32:00 Blitzball was awesome and one of my favorite parts of this game and I liked it WAAAYYY better than either of the card games from the previous 2 games. My only complaint with Blitzball is that it's too easy, once you learned game's mechanics, you'll never lose a match, at which point the main "challenge" of Blitzball is trying to maximize the top scorer prizes by have 6-8 characters all tying with the high score so you can get 6-8x the prizes. I've literally played hundreds of hours of Blitzball on my multiple play-throughs of this game. Greatest mini-game in an RPG, ever. Also, if you win the first match you will get a strength sphere and the following scenes will have a few differences and some NPCs will have different dialogue.
Hard disagree. But you win because you had fun and I didn't. Oddly I remember playing it a lot back on the PS2 but had no incentive to play it this time.
FFX takes me back to simpler and easier times. I had previously played 7, 8, 9 and played 10 when it came out at 14, and it grabbed me like few other games did and sucked me into Spira. It's not only my favourite FF game (which I feel declined after 12) but likely my all time favourite game. Now I closer to 40 than 30, and despite work and family I often come back to it. The story, music, the world of Spira and it's incredible characters have been with me the majority of my life, it invokes emotions and feelings in me unlike any other game or form of media. Feelings echoed be even minor characters throughout this incredible world. Happiness, sadness, fear and anger, joy and love. The dread of the inevitable end and the spark of hope. While I often like to ponder the deeper themes of the game: life and death, sacrifice, purpose, faith, repentance I also enjoy just going along for the ride and experiencing the incredible world Square Enix, at their peak, created for us.
Couldn't have said it better always brings me back to being in my room on a school night staying up til midnight playing just me and ffX a time where everything was so simple.
I absolutely agree that FFX isn't just the last best Final Fantasy game, but if there is a list of 100 greatest games in the world, it would be among top five.
This was great presentation. I absolutely loved it. I gotta say, as someone who has 100% this game on multible platforms over the years, I completely gut laughed when you got to the chocobo race section. Lol I've gotten that legit every time and you're right. That mini-game is pure evil. 😂
This is a great review. Especially the criticisms. I think you nailed everything i didnt like and explained why the game is still great despite its flaws. Awesome job here.
@@arkham666 we wanted a name that started with “A” and she was all for it. She didn’t know what it was from until we had already agreed. She wanted a “V” name for a middle name, so we wound up with Auron Vincent for his name. A true final fantasy nerds dream 😂 ❤️
Well it's one interpretation for sure. While memories are beautiful things I don't think we should live in the past and that's the vibe I get from Riku and the Al Behd
Your complaint about the Calm Lands and how the world doesn't FEEL as big as it should is something that I've always been bothered by as well. When I first heard they were remaking FFX I was hoping it was going to be an ACTUAL remake, not just a remaster. I wanted to explore the world some more! Especially Zanarkand! We see that Tidus's house was on the water, yet so many of the walkways we see in the beginning are high above the ground. Did the people of Zanarkand have vehicles? I'm not going to lie, of all the worlds I've explored in my gaming history, Spira is the one I want to explore more of. ESPECIALLY in the early days of Sin.
I figured when Auron said summoners lost their way at calm lands, it was more of their metaphorical way, not physical. That they'd lose there resolve and abandon their pilgrimage
1:39:45 The dark aeons don't exist in the original version of the game, so you never had to worry about them getting in your way. The reason they are "too easy to find" is because they were just kind of tacked on there to add some extra content for the "international version" which was only released in Japan and the EU. I bought the original USA version when it first came out but eventually imported the international version as well so I could experience the extra content. For people who don't like the dark aeons, I just recommend they play the original version, though you wont have the expert sphere grid and some abilities such as Ribbon. Though I'm pretty sure you can just summon Yojimbo to Zanmoto your way through them if they get in your way.
You know it had been so long since I played but I swore I remembered being able to go anywhere late game without getting obliterated by super bosses. This time I played and casually went down mushroom rock road only to get hit by 100 thousand damage abilities lol.
@MistyKathrine I left yunalescas room and didn't want to fight her again. Came back to get the chest. I'm like OK dark bahamut, that's cool maybe it's not that bad. He punches my party once and they die. Lol. Extra content is always good. I just wish the difficulty spike in the endgame wasn't a vertical line and that getting prepped for it wasn't such a grind.
@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725the differences between the dark aeons was insane. I remember the first 3 dark aeons being relativly easy. But from Shiva/Bahamut on it was pain. You had to rework your sphere grid completely which was such a big waste of time
55:36 sorry this part of the video really had me thinking about the beautiful subtlety of this games story telling. I think it’s a better mirror for real life than a lot of stories that try to tell the same story but use overly characterized and cliche tropes. our current reality mimics these satiric and over the top tellings more and more each day (flag waving starts most conversations these days) because the myth of organized institutions all has the same inevitable outcome we’re all experiencing: the conditions worsening (problem not being fixed) and instead of opting for empathy, digging in to fear and wanting to eliminate those that are seemingly standing in the way of your doctrines goals. Ffx tells the story of a society of my childhood. Everyone seems happy and polite but you get older and look at it from an outsiders perspective like tidus and the dialogue is all so concerning. His concern for a young girl makes him a heathen? He’s often silence and called rude for asking simple questions we’re all asking? Currently replaying and talking to every npc, the subtlety of fear and control in the every day dialogue of the people of spira is incredible
Final Fantasy 10 was the first final fantasy game I had ever played and coming off of the heels of games like Zelda OoT and Majora's Mask, the way that FFX did the over world didn't take away from the experience for me. The long spans interrupted by brief encounters I think only didn't feel as long because there was no day and night cycle. Though I would argue that the encounters kind of work to help build time passing in your mind. That was the whole idea in my mind while I was playing which was probably helped by the fact that I was a big fan of pokemon. The way random encounters would happen just had me nodding along and made me feel like there was a sense of natural pacing to the story. Actually I find the way they built bosses and placed treasure chests in the world to be brilliant in terms of giving the player to the tools to win but letting them choose to use it or find a new way around it. A minor example is how all the enemies in the thunder plains are mostly weak to water and just before you go in, Tidus gets and upgrade brotherhood that adds water strike. Npc's will also give items to help in the current area. It makes the whole thing both interesting and kind of brutal in a way I never understood when I was younger.
1:16:14 bosses may have been made immune to status effects after 4, when every boss was susceptible to slow. Once i had spells unlocked, i would slow the boss, haste and buff the party, then cast bio for chip damage as my physical hitters did main damage
@@seankuchenbecker5436 reminds me of that old 2nd edition dnd tactic where you light up enemies with fairy fire and then drop a globe of darkness on them. They can't see you but they stand out a mile to you.
Feel like you have missed a beat with Khimari, they can pick up some basic stuff from multiple characters and end up with a back up character. Having a second black mage who can also tank is super helpful
I appreciate the offer but I've had a lot of trouble in the past collaborating with people on various projects. I don't really want to have to wait on someone else to finish their end of a project so I can move forward with mine. In the end this is just a hobby and something I do for fun so it's better if it's something I take care of myself.
Strangest thing is I replayed this on steam in 2021 on my laptop. I don’t remember the side content / chocobo races being nearly as bad as they were on the PS2 original. I wonder if the RNG was modded for the steam release?
Yeah it's weird. It's a long time ago but I don't think it was nearly as bad. There is the fact that I'm older and busier now and just don't have the time to grind out one side quest like that so maybe it's just me?
So blitzball was never a bother for me, knowing that its actually possible to win the game against luca was a challenge i couldn't refuse at the age i was when this came out. But as for the side content, the chocobo race was mundane compared to those fkn lightning bolts. I would have slain armys with my ire from that bs
@@arkham666 same same, ff9 came out when i was in grade school and was my first love. Ps2 ushered in ace combat 4, amd ffx and inwas hooked on both franchises for life. Thank you for all your hard work.
Thanks for covering this. I'm enjoying your retrospectives a whole lot. The lack of a world map to explore broke my little heart back when. The characters and story never grabbed me the way FF7 and 9 did when I was a kid. I do remember loving the gameplay but by the time I made it to the end of the game I felt like my time invested wasn't worth the pay off and fell off the series after 10. I feel like the absence of an explorable world map really made the game feel smaller and less like a living world the player happened upon and more like an amusement park ride that's there just for the player. FF7, 8 and 9 are pretty linear games but the ability to explore the world maps early on and on your own terms makes for a more grounding experience into the fantasy world. The Illusion of non-linearity was stronger in those games. Also, fuck those sphere temple puzzles. 0/10 To Zanarkand always hits me when I hear it though. Instant goosebumps. I enjoyed how much you used To Besaid throughout this video as that's one of my fav tracks in FF. Otherworld still makes me cringe when I hear it though. Great video, looking forward to the Divinity series.
Lol yeah I realised when I was recording the audio I'd forgotten those sphere temple puzzles. Must have wiped them from my mind. The world map really does add a sense of scale and wonder. I always felt like there was probably a lot more to those worlds than just the places we were visiting. I know those games have been hard data mined by speed runners etc but you have to wonder if maybe there's still a few secrets in those old games still waiting to be stumbled upon. I definitely enjoyed this game more in retrospect than the first time though. The world of modern games has made me appreciate this a lot lol.
Got this game in fifth grade and was my first Final Fantasy. My first play through was rough, but I did it without a guide. To this day this is the only game that made me cry. 😭😭😭 Blitzball is awesome! I've started a run just to play blitzball. As soon as I'm able to play I only progress the story when an Al bhed leaves the team. 😂😂
small correction (and I'm sorry for flooding the comment section), but not ALL the aeons get stronger when Yuna gets stronger. Certain aeons are tied to certain party members I believe. Or at the very least, their damage limit is tied to certain celestial weapons
I believe that each celestial weapon breaks the damage limit for a different aeon. And you're good. It's nice to have got someone so excited about the game. Enjoy the replay.
@@arkham666 I don't believe every weapon has a corresponding aeon. I know Valefor is connected to Nirvana, Yojimbo to Auron's weapon, and I believe Ifrit is connected to World Champion. I know Bahamut, Anima, and the Magus Sisters already have BDL. I think shiva is connected to Onion Knight and Ixion to Spirit Lance. And if I'm right about this than I'm amazed because I haven't had to think about this info for a long time
@@arkham666 I would actually divide the game into four acts. You have the prologue which starts in Zanarkand and ends with Sin attacking the Al Bhed ship you're on. Act 1 is Besaid and Killika. Act 2 is Luca all the way through the events of Macalania. Act 3 is Bikanel Island all the way until you get the airship for the second time. Act 4 is everything else.
1:13:13 ctb is the best rpg system I’ve experienced. As much as I love ffx id love to see the system used more in other titles. The things you can do with this system, the classes you can create who’s entire motivation is extra turns. So much potential complexity wasted on massive pools of hp and predictable battle rhythms. I’m being harsh, there are some battles that use the system well and are a lot of fun, but alas
I tried to get a friend to give FF a chance, specifically 10, because it was readily available for them, and apparently, they had some kind of bizarre glitch or something and ran into something they could only do like a single point of damage to that didn’t even look like it was being effected in the health bar. I wasn't there to see what it was they were trying to fight, but they accurately described Penance. They ran into this thing in the first half hour or so. If we're right about what they were glitched into fighting it's a terrifying glitch.
@arkham666 true, but I don't think either of us could recreate this thing. Pluss the glitch and seemingly impossible fight with no idea how to retreat turned them off the game hard
Hey bro you're not alone you're not alone I go through the same bulshit every single f****** day all we can do is hope for the one to actually appear like Yuna😊
oooo the very first final fantasy game I’ve ever played and that prelude version of X is just a bop I love this game so much I have it on the ps2,ps3,ps4,and my Japanese port of my ps-vita so in a short meaning it’s my favorite game ever
I literally spent more time playing blitzball than the actual game for many hours, lol. I thought it was a cool idea and loved the special moves. It was fun to unlock new sets and adding members from around the world to see how kick ass they were, cuz the starting team sucked.. and then once I realized I could go undefeated, I ran a Besaid only game, also undefeated.. then it was a challenge to throw matches for a more valuable 2nd place prize, as no one could really score on me... and in top of all that, I could stack up teleport spheres, doing crazy shit with all my characters abilities, jumping all over the sphere grid . It was a blast.
Nah, I understand not liking it. I also think most people don't realize you can control the character with the ball either, so they definitely could have done it better. Once you realize that, and that you only really should look at the mini map when controlling that character, it's actually playable enough to find out if you can enjoy it. My friends hated that part in the story and challenged me to try when I said I thought it looked cool, and it was.. pretty damn hard.. that was without jecht shot too, I believe.. so it was just cross your fingers for one to slip past the goalie and then juggle the ball until time runs out, hoping they don't take it back.. yeah it was a bad way to introduce it.. but it was pretty rewarding to finally learn the tricks.
@@macjess723 All jokes aside I actually enjoy hearing the views of people who like parts of games I didn't like. We all have our own story and experiences with these. I'm pretty sure I went hard on blitzball back when I had a ps2 and remember having all of Wakka's overdrives but I just didn't want to sink any time into it this time. It's probably just an age and free time thing more than anything now.
@@emilyl.1745 you used science to win the pronunciation argument lol. Though looking at the japanese name it's Tea-dus but it'll always be T-eye-dus in my mind.
I need a FFX game avout the war, Zanarkand vs Bevelle.. with Yu Yevon and the Faith of the other Eons as the main characters. With Yunelesca, Zaon and maybe Auron's encestor. Then a part about Auron, Jecht and Braska's Pilgrimige. To let it all come full circle you know❤
42:29 it's not the act of summoning the final aeon which kills the summoner, it's yu evon consuming the Final Aeon and breaking it's link with the summoner! (if not Seymour would be dead ) but of course the game doesnt tell u until yunalesca XD
Great review, I do disagree with you about Seymour being the standard type of villain though. He's what Yuna could have become without the support of her friends. If you had to sacrifice your mother as a child all in the name of saving a world that see's you as a half breed monstrosity and after you couldn't go through with it find out that the pilgrimage is a con then it's not suprising that he became a nihilist that just wanted the world to end. He was broken from his experiences and that makes him very relatable in my opinion.
FFX is my favorite FF and one of my top games of all time. It really had the right balance between impressive presentation, am ambitious story with a believable (within the confines of a piece of media) romance that was just tons of fun. The game was firing on every cylinder hence why it continues to sit at/near the top of most popular FF titles. It's always fun to come back and hear what newer players (or people returning to it with an adult's perspective) have to say. Overall I think you got it though I disagree on a few points (Seymour) and there are a few points about the lore that aren't quite right. Re:Seymour: There's so much to say about this guy but it always makes me a bit sad when people write him off. I think he has a few things that work against him that keep him from being remembered as a great villain: First FFX is a narrative that covers A LOT of topics, themes and conflicts. Tidus vs Jecht/Sin is va very clear conflict - Jecht (who is also Sin) is who Tidus has to overcome to complete his arc/growth while also saving the world. Yuna is in conflict with just the Sin aspect of this which brings them together. However, this means Yuna lacks a personal antagonist, hence Seymour. However the game also wants to tackle the more abstract themes and so Seymour becomes a stand in for all of those concepts, hence his plan to manipulate Yuna into making him her Fayth so he can become Sin and end all life so that suffering ends (very anti-natalist/nihilist, but not for no reason, it's harm reduction taken to the extreme). He personally gets a bit lost in the sauce since the game isn't really about *him*, but what he represents. Contrast that with Sephiroth or Kefka who are the major movers of the plots in their games. Secondly, Seymour is rather subtle. Like sure, he openly admits to patricide, but stuff like him helping you in Luca or at the Djose Shore fight and especially the marrige proposal are all done with a second meaning that isn't clear until you get to the end of the game and the game doesn't really call it out - to become the Final Aeon, the Summoner and Fayth need a bond, so the whole game he's been secretly manipulating Yuna to build that bond and it only really falls apart because Jyscal drops that sphere. He isn't running around mind controlling people or whatever and so he mostly comes off as "Creepy" and without some of the mystery that propped up Sephiroth and without the flair/charisma that someone like Kuja had or the fun of just being a simple insane clown like Kefka. He just isn't excessively theatrical like those characters. Thirdly, I think from a narrative and thematic persepective, Seymour is one of the most integrated but that doesn't necessarily translate to good "theatre." For example, his childhood parallels Yuna's - both are mixed race (and suffer from that), both lose a parental figure to Sin, etc. Seymour is what happens when things go very very wrong (tell me you'd be ok if you were literally exiled to a backwater temple for years with your dying mother simply for being born only to be carted to the city of the dead where your dying mom gets turned into a monster slaying Aeon for you to attempt to prove the value of your own existence to everyone when you're 10 years old) and so ends up as essentially an anti-Yuna. Like he's perfectly written to be that. It kind of surprised me that you went into this level of depth about the religious theme but gave Seymour just a few lines when he isn't really aligned with them - he doesn't want the status quo, he wants to end all life, but they are useful tools for his goals. Again, like Yuna, he wants a revolution, he just wants a drastically different outcome of that conflict :P Some of the lore stuff: Jecht gets to Spira just like Tidus does. He went out into the ocean to train, happened to get too close to Sin and got dragged away. What is not super well explained is that Dream Zanarkand is a real place that is floating out in the ocean (relativelyi close to Baaj Temple). Sin is usually nearby, guarding it to keep Spirans away, but theoretically it is possible to get there by boat/airship. Given that Sin keeps Spiran tech suppressed and the people have to deal with just living day to day, no one's really had the opportunity to find it themselves (and I think I may have even read on an Ultimania translation that Dream Zanarkand is mobile making it even harder to find but dont quote me on that part). All that said, some of this stuff is not really well explained or is locked away in side content or requires piecing together lots of little tidbits so I don't blame anyone for not quite understanding some of the finer plot points and overall a fun vid!
Was looking for this comment! The Seymour part especially. I think his backstory was mostly implied in small chunks and that hurt his character a lot. Things like the writing on the floor in baaj temple made me look up the full story and I learn how sad his life was. Sure if the game couldn't express all of that clearly it does fail to make him a compelling villain. I think they had all the right stuff they just were too subtle with it.
You are woefully incorrect about khimari sir 38:47 he comes from a tribe that prides itself on the strength of the individual. His arc upon returning to gagazet is that of someone who was forced onto someone else’s sphere grid as he had none of his own (a ronso without a tribe) who found a new tribe, by learning from his comrades and beating his bullies with the skills he learned along the way. To the point he even earns the respect of his other ronso and teach them, along with yuna, that although small in size, they can move mountains.
You probably shouldn't have paused the video immediately after hearing that to try and gotcha me. This is literally what I talk about in the 5 minutes following that line.
@@arkham666 I hear you. When I first played XII back on the PS2 I was a bit mesmerized especially for a title that looked that good on the Gen 6 console. (And not just because it released on Halloween 2006 here in the states.) When I got the zodiac age when it came out for PlayStation 4 and platinum'd it, it took me 280+ hours. It's a big game, not as massive as 7 rebirth, but bigger than X. I just love your perspective on things. Though you pronounced tidus wrong lol 😋
@@arkham666 Latin languages pronounce the vowel "i" with a long e like evening....English isn't a Latin language like Spanish, Portuguese, and other eastern languages. English is an amalgamation of German, swiss, French, and some minor Latin....the i is pronounced like a long i like in ice and island.
1:44:24 I don’t think it goes to hard on the religion bad science good thing. I think what drew me to it like many other pieces of media from my youth I still enjoy is that it takes everything for the sum of it’s parts. While the church if flipped on it’s head it’s the faith that give yuna the power to defeat sin. I think with the right reading it says more about finding spiritual fulfillment through yourself rather than through institutions and demagogues. Much like what your whole video is about haha
Something I only realized recently: Jecht = Je Ch t Or Jesus Christ and the T is the cross. Everyone knows the biblical references but that’s one I never thought of.
To me, while i never got to play FFX properly "as to say have a proper run of the game" it bringed me memories of my childhood when my stepbrother lived with me and used to play it on PS2 and while at the time i didn't knew what Final Fantasy was at all but the overall tropical scenery and combat left a everlasting impression in me after more than 20 years since i saw this game for the first time. The music still is to this day one of my top 5 favorites "though some of the remaster songs sounds either meh or some of the instruments feel out of place or pretty much kills the vibes that the OG has, but that's my opinion" the cast of characters are quite interesting and has what i consider to this day the most badass character in the series in terms of personality,that being Auron.
Unpopular opinion i enjoyed blitzball quite alot it was hard at first but once i got going it was always fun picking who I would make the mvp lol. Gets super easy around lvl 20
no no no NO NO Sin is not the "armor around Dream Zanarkand", not directly, anyway. That was a stupid answer by whatever "official" source cooked it up. Sin is the armor YEVON wears, the only shell big enough to hold the hermit crab of His untethered ambition, and the power battery to hold the energies of the sacrificed Summoners (AND their Aeons!), which Yevon then digests and reuses to keep His Dream -- Zanarkand -- alive. If anything, I'd say Yevon's twin Pagodas are the actual armor.
@@xheralt I'm literally quoting Maester Mika. You aren't doing a good job of endearing yourself to me or making me want to take anything you say seriously.
How is the daughter of the summoner who defeated sin and the guardian who helped that summoner unlikely characters? In your intro, you say a band of unlikely characters join up to defeat sin and I'm trying to figure out why. Not to mention the son of the other guardian who helped braska as well. In no way, shape or form were you even hinted as not being suitable in the game. As a matter of fact, the ronso think that yuna's will is greater than their mountain. I dont know any ronso that would build a statue of yuna with a great horn that doesn't believe in her.
57:46 haha I get it, as someone who was a stand in for tidus when this game came out (what 14 year old boy isn’t?) you see auron and go, wish I was that fucking guy instead haha but that’s the lesson right? The boys like tidus can become better men than auron with his help
The problem with the religion narrative about 50 minutes into this is while one can make arguments that this is appliciable to the real world certainly, in this fantasy world Sin isnt a natural creature but a construct driven to demolish this world and the fayth and aeons and magic is quite real. Even the Farplane are more than memories since Lord Jyscal is able to communicate and reach out to Yuna, who hes never met. Don't get me wrong, this is a great retrospective that really explores these themes. I just wanted to clarify between religion in the real world and the con of Yevon which is manipulating real magic to maintain control.
I really, really want to play this game despite of my blindness. Also, it's good that there arn't many people that just say oh I hate the story because...
just finished your FF9 vid, did some RL stuff, came back to check the channel, and you got FF10. might as we*vomiting nostalgia within 30 seconds* look.... yes.... PS1 sound has always and will always be the best one.... but that PS2 loading sound is like a gut punch of nostalgia for me and many people due to the sheer amount of times we heard it..... i say that the PS2 era was the last of the "fully experimental" stage era of gaming. PS3 onwards kinda became locked in a way, to the point when something truely unique comes around, we are more easily shocked and awed by it just being different, and not for the substance of it itself. more realism due to hardware being able to manage it now and learning that creating assests of such quality for fantastical stuff was WAY harder than for realistic stuff as scanning stuff in became easier for PS3 era consoles. due to the graphics being, as you say, in a sweet spot of "kinda realistic but enough give to not worry too much about it" not too many games got hit with the time stick as they mostly had their own appeal or style. it's also the last era to have straight up demo discs, granted in far more limited scope. it's also the last main console era with Xploder cheat CD (those still exist with handhelds but not so much home console's themselves) .... fck i feel old. i live in the UK, so when FF10 released for me it was the international version will all the extra goodies that entailed. and the version i got specifically was the one with two discs. the game itself and an extra's disc. with music, concept art, dev footage etc on it you could "play" which was very cool. "20 years since it's release" FFFFFFFFFFFFCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK that makes me feel ancient. lack of world map hurt too. people ragged on FF13 for being linear when my immediate responce is always ".... FF10 is a literal hallway with no deviations as well. granted you could go backwards all the way back to besaid as long as it's before macalania temple, after which good luck on the backtracking...." officially he's "Teedus" in pronounciation. but i go "Tide-us" cause tide. water. yeah. "otherworld" is such a banger of a song. is "you're not alone" is the ultimate emotional 'pick yourself up and get to it' song. "otherworld" is the ultimate 'GET BACK IN THERE AND FCK EM UP!' song. also, special mention for 'to Zanarkand' specifically 'skies above' version by black mages. that song is IMMENSELY GOOD. feels like a fusion of the two and i am HERE FOR IT. sound track in general for this game, like all FF's, is top tier. got nothing to add about the characters section... yeah nailed it on all of them really. except Mika. slightly. the dude did seem to care about Spira, to an extent. he dipped the fck out the moment he knew the hope of the world couldnt be restored through the final summoning and didnt want to see spira die in dispair as he truely thought the only way to deal with Sin, even if for a moment, was the final summoning. everything else bout him is spot on though. and Seymour. yes he's an entitled little prick that needs a thousand boots up his arse, but he does have a through line beyond just wanting ultimate power. he truly believes that in death is the only way people will have true peace. even when he wanted to become Sin, it was so he could end the worlds suffering by destroying it. it's a VERY basic bitch "evil person doesnt understand reality" concept that most insane evil people do in stories. but there is stuff there. he is bland and forgettable to be fair though. for the calm lands, i always interpreted the "lose their way here" as "start to rethink and then bottle it, ending their pilgramage" but going the more literal sense.... sadly it's a game thing. if you look past the open space along the top you see a HUUUUGE field. going on till the horizon. and the calm lands you do walk along are pretty large, but still. though i guess they didnt want two bikanel sized "open" area's one after the other. i guess. the main issue i have with the weapon system is sometimes the first or second weapon you get for a character is their best weapon till you get the celestial weapon for that character unless you doing something slightly gimmicky or capturing enemies. example: Yuna. in besaid temple you get rod of wisdom. it has +8% magic and sensor if i remember correctly. this is, by FAR, the most useful rod for her in the game until either A, you create one with better +magic or B, you get Nirvana and upgrade it to max. with Tidus Brotherhood after getting it's upgrade in the farplane is his best weapon till his celestial weapon (unless you're fighting something that absorbs water) aeon stats go up by number of battles fought+Yuna's stats. so even if you never pushed her along her grid even once, they still become stronger as the game goes one. a lot LESS powerful, but still. Bahamut and above automatically have break damage limit. shiva and down require celestial weapons to unlock break limit. ie, Valefor requires Yuna's nirvana. yeah Kimahri is a bit of a wet blanket when it comes to combat and his sphere grid. he is meant to be a bluemage and a weaker version of Auron. his weapons generally, not always but quite often, has piercing and his strength stat (if you count his grid as being where he can reach wtihout a keysphere) is pretty decent, being below Auron but higher than Tidus. but yes he is meant to "copy" someone else. two major issues with this though: unless you're going Rikku's route for steal, he just becomes a worse version of that character. and 2, the only time in the ENTIRE game he is mandatory to use, it's best he is as weak as possible. the Biran and Yenke fight is based off of Kimahri's stats. so it's always possible to do even if you never used him. so him being "level 1" means they will be too. and so if you use items (like you should if you sent him to Rikku's route) you can easily blast them apart with grandes and such. personally i used him as a "grab steal, return to own 'grid' do that and by the time he's done i should have enough lvl4's for unlocking ultima, he unlocks it then i use two black magic sphere's for Yuna and Lulu to get it. done" and barely ever touched him. the main issue the game has is at endgame, the MOST effective strategy boils down to: Zidane and Wakka use their overdrives with max individual hits (Wakka has one where he hits like 16 times) Rikku uses mix for invulnerability and max damage per hit" and thats if you dont play the Zanmoto game >.> Aeon's become redundant really fast outside of certain uses, magic cannot be group casted which means it's automatically worse than quickhit if you can whack hard enough to murder the enemy with the sole exception of Ultima which is the only spell the party can cast that hits every enemy. kinda... meh.... god blitzeball harms me emotionally and physically.... it's super easy. i made a "hook, line, sinker" strat with Brother (recruitable from the Al-bhed airship) and Tidus. Brother is stupidly fast, so i got the ball, gave it to him and then used him to grab the attention of all the opposing team (hook). drag them as far from Tidus as possible, and pass it to him (line) and then use jecht shot to almost 100% certainty get a goal (sinker) rinse and repeat. forever. REALLY boring. but needed if you want the best stuff as this is the only way to get Wakka stuff and some insanely rare things without fighting enemies that will end you as easily as look at you. you CAN win the game against the Goers at the start. it's just insanely hard due to them being BUFFED as fck (like they get straight up cheats) and you having the WORST team. your reward? a strength +4 sphere. which to be fair, give that to Auron he'll be hitting thousands A LOT earlier. but certainly not worth the headache. yeah no that chocobo race is BULLSHIT. if it didnt have the birds, then it would be fine. but with them.... IT SUCKS THE MOST. the Al-bhed primers are mainly there so you can read hints hidden in the game for gear and things. guides cover it so meh. dark Aeons and Penance are added with international version and were meant to be insane. i beat them all legit ONCE. after that, i just Auron with Masamune upfront, switch to Yuna, and then gamble with Yojimbo in hopes of Zanmoto. it instantly kills everything in the game. no exceptions. just an addition to the overdrives and side content you didnt mention. Auron. Auron gets his overdrives from watching sphere's Jecht left behind in the world. go find em, watch them, then every few Auron gets a new overdrive. something people miss or dont know entirely, is that upon watching the first after fighting the goo in macalania woods, you can back track ALL the way to besaid to pick em up. you'll have to walk the entire fcking way there and back again, but it's doable. and doing it at this exact point in time gives 3 advantages. 1, you dont have to worry about the dark Aeon's as they dont spawn until after you fight Seymour the first time. 2, you can get Auron's final overdrive by the time you hit Yunalesca. and it's pretty damn useful, but his third is the most useful as it causes full break. and 3, there is convo's to be had at this time you wont get any other. for example, on the boat between besaid and kilika, you can talk to clasco (if you convinced him to leave the knights) tending to the chocobo's onboard. and he'll give you some rare sphere's. just something cool. yeah i platted 16 and it REALLY feels like "FF of thrones" and while i do enjoy the game..... not as good as the light hearted fantasy of wonder like 12 and below, with dark undertones if you pay attention. .............. HOLY SHIT THIS WAS AN ESSAY! sorry for that. nice vid man. great work!
While I agree with your overall assessment of the Church of Yevon, you are _religiously_ following certain precepts of "official game canon" cooked up after the fact of the game, that really aren't the best explanation. For example, perpetuating the notion of Time Travel. Tidus isn't from 1000 years ago, he was seventeen years old, as he was spawned within the _ongoing realtime simulation_ that is Dream Zanarkand, which _models_ the Zanarkand of 1000 years ago, but _isn't_ Zanarkand any more than GTA's Vice City is Miami Beach!
@@xheralt I am well aware of how old Tidus is and where he's from thank you. I explain it in depth in the spoiler section of the game. I don't go into it outside of that section because... It's a spoiler. I am not religiously following anything thank you very much.
I fully agree that blitzball sucks! Maybe it’s just me though because I hate all mini games in RPGs. I’ve never enjoyed triple triad or tetra master because like why? Blitzball is the reason I never use Wakka. I can’t stomach playing the game enough to unlock his best weapons and overdrives. It’s unbearable!
This game is such a mixed bag of sentiment for me. I like the story a lot, but it's marred by cutscenes and voice acting that just aren't very well executed, in some cases even by the standards of when it released. I like the battle mechanics, but many of the game's battles straight up tell you the correct answer before you meet any new challenge, making those challenges meaningless. I like that there's a lot of late/post-game enemies to fight, but so many of them amount to a basic stat check (unless you use a super niche strategy the devs didn't even intend.) I like that there's plenty of other things to do than just run forward and fight, but many of those things wear out their welcome well before you get their ultimate rewards. I should like this game, but everything I try to like about it kind of ruins itself. It's such a shame. VII didn't need a remake. This did.
Your videos are pretty good and greatly paced. Just try not to rely on that "RP-like" pronunciation attempt, because it simply doesn't fit the overall content or tone of the channel at all. (Unless of course you're willingly aiming to sound as pretentious as the rest of people doing FF retrospectives). Have my upvote.
Lol I teach English for a living and haven't lived in my home town or even country for more or less a decade. I'm so used to making my speech clear and easy to understand that actually have to try and have an accent at this point.
Yu Yevon is not the final boss, but a scripted battle with too high of an HP pool. Final Aeon is the true final boss. But at least Yu Yevon was hinted at, unlike Necron in IX
That's kinda playing with the cheats on though. I've cheesed a few bosses in my time (demon of hate in Sekiro can be cheesed in the most hilarious way) but I think the point of them is spend many hours playing the game and grinding up to that big victory. Don't get me wrong if you just want the win that's fine but I think a lot of people who go after super bosses are more into the journey than the destination.
rip to you but i'm built different (loves blitzball and won the initial tournament and all others after (i am the strawman who enjoys sinking hours into blitzball (i know i'm like one out of like six people who do this)))
@@arkham666 lol i did notice right after hitting post that the comment at the top basically said the same, mere discussions of blitzball summons us i fear. i *did* absolutely hate it as a kid though, and was shocked to realize i do really like it now when i settled in for my first replay as an adult last year
ok i admit that seymor the third is a bit bs, but you 100% can get anti zombie moves and you can also be more tactical by either killing your party member first or swapping them out. edit: also the dragon is a bit weird and can be bs when you dont make good use of a chronomancer, quick hit and delay attack edit2: yeah ok i now notice this review is based on a first-time kinda perspective now i see you call the best black mage in the game - kimari useless. and from a first playthrough id agree that its kinda bs and that the endgame is really awful all in all i would say that while these things suck for a frist run, ffx in its hd form has the most developed post-game out of any non-mmo final fantasy game i would say and surely the best combat to go with it
![Approaching Rage Let's Play: Final Fantasy X HD Remaster Part 6 [Full Playthrough]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/arCrjI_YKgA/mqdefault.jpg)
![Approaching Rage Let's Play: Final Fantasy X HD Remaster Part 6 [Full Playthrough]](/img/tr.png)
Blitzball is awesome, I will fight you on this.
So you have chosen death!
@@arkham666 I know Jecht Shot 2, you can't touch me!
It's better than it gets credit for. That's for sure.
Still the best mini game in the series...of any game really.
Next to chao garden, it was a huge side game time sinker
The linear level design and gameplay never really bugged me bc I always figured it was a pilgrimage, so they sorta baked the narrative of the linear journey into the plot
Whats crazy is that every FF is linear and just gives thr illusion of choice. Traveling to a village before your main destination doesnt make the game better, you go to the village then move on cause nothing of significance happens. What makes me go reeeeeeeee is when people say ffx is so linear. Show me any other FF, its just as linear with an illusion of choice. Ff at least has great world building and keeps drip feeding you info on Spira. Your first playthrough is always the most important one, and FFX excels at that. I never wanted to put it down even though i played every ff before and had my own biases, the story and world gripped me until the end.
It's great when people make videos on old games and I always manage to learn something new about it.
Thanks, I know exactly where you're coming from there.
1:28:30 Most people move Kimarhi down Rikku's path to be an early game/second thief. It's generally what I always do with him too since stealing items is really important for customization. Also, you want the steal ability on him before go to Gagazet anyway so he can steal level 3 keyspheres from Yenke and Biran.
Nice Strat. I'll probably use that route next time.
Put Yuna down Auron and Lulu’s path: she makes a better black mage AND the aeons become ridiculously overpowered
I used to do all that. Then, I just decided..... Let's make him the White Magic User/Warrior. Paladin Kimahri.
Level 3 keyspheres are harder to get than level4 by that time lol
Also white mage kimahri is optimal because yuna needs to go down Auron's path to cheese the late game with bahamut. With more attack than magic, the overdrives are worthless and you can just impulse or attack.
I take a multilayered Classic Grid strategy. Yuna nips into Rikku's chain to learn Steal, she's a surprisingly good thief (must be the Al Bhed blood!), Rikku _ignores practically all of her own chain,_ goes UP into Kimahri's, across to Lulu's, then becomes the party's 2nd Black Mage, claimed fear of lightning notwithstanding. She comes back towards endgame to pick up COPYCAT. Her endgame role is "copy-mage", when Lulu or Yuna DOUBLECAST ULTIMA, she copies it for about 3/4 yield and 28MP, LOL. Reserve a yellow Magic and Special sphere the game gives you to make this happen. Kimahri, after finishing his little figure-8, drops down into Rikku's (thru the path she opened) to get USE & STEAL, then across into Yuna's (via the path she opened) to become the party's 2nd White. Useful as such in the Bikanel Desert, IYKYK.
FFX was basically my first ever Final Fantasy game. I fell in love with it right away. I spent over 300 hours on my first file and I have a lot of memories from it. When I first started I relied upon my aeons so much that any boss that didn't let me use them gave me a hard time. I actually had a strategy guide to help me...but it missing EVERYTHING in Zanarkand and beyond in terms of maps, items available, etc... So I had a BRUTAL time fighting Yunalesca. But to this day, no boss gives me more anxiety than EVRAE! I was so underprepared when I first fought him. Between his stone gaze and poison breath I was in for a world of hurt. At this time I only had level 2 black magic spells so Lulu was basically useless and I hadn't really used Kimahri all that much so he didn't really have any useful overdrives. Now Rikku could use Al Bhed potions to heal poison status...but Evrae ALWAYS targeted her with either his regular attack or his stone gaze! After over a DOZEN tries, I managed to beat him. I was so happy! I had spent weeks trying to beat him and I had done it! THEN THE GAME DECIDED TO CRASH DURING THE CUTSCENE FOLLOWING THE BOSS FIGHT SO I HAD TO DO THE WHOLE THING ALL OVER AGAIN!
Your first one is always your best lol. Just like the elder scrolls.
Yeah that thing is a massive pain in the ass. I think he killed me twice or three times on this run and had to take a minute to bitch about it in this video. I've likewise have games die between the boss and the save point and am a staunch advocate of autosaves these days.
@@arkham666 I was obsessed with this game back in the day. There was a gaming forum site I used to frequent back in the day and they had forum about this game. I would post daily tips, facts, etc... about this game. To this day I still have the layouts of the first four temples memorized, and Bevelle's to a lesser extent. when I discovered the anime Bleach I came up with Zanpakutos based on the aeons (if you're not familiar with the Bleach universe, those are the swords everyone carries and each has two forms). This game, Kingdom Hearts 1, and Kingdom Hearts 2 are still three of my favorite games of all time!
@@arkham666 btw thanks to your video I decided to start of FFX HD again
@@keyblademasterclark good luck with those Dark Aeons. Don't forget to backtrack to Besaid for those jecht spheres before they show up.
@@arkham666 You know, if I had armor with HP break I might actually try to fight them. Yuna, Rikku, Wakka, and Auron are the only members I'd use because their celestial weapons are the only ones I managed to fully upgrade. I am NOT dodging lightning bolts for 20+ minutes! I hate the choccobo minigame in the calm lands and I don't much care for Kimahri as a fighter. Yeah, some of his overdrives are really useful (looking at you Might Guard) but that butterfly minigame is a bitch
I had no idea what to expect when starting my first FF game back in 2001. It’s hard to express how much this game’s story, music, and overall design has meant to me since then. This game is an absolute masterpiece.
Replaying it on the ps2 and CRT tv. Really loved the game 20 years ago and I love it even more now, as i was too young to understand the underlying themes and references in the game back then. The line about blitzballs biggest crime being how it was introduced made me chuckle.
10 is my favourite Final Fantasy game. Did notice in this video though that he mistakingly referred to Cid as Rikku's Uncle instead of father.
maybye because he is Yuna's uncle also
The best tip for the Chocobo race is… that it’s RNG. It’s really all about the balloon placements at the beginning. You need them to favor you instead of her. If you get them all, and obviously avoid being hit, it’s relatively easy.
I honestly think the best tip for the chocobo race is skip it lol.
@@arkham666 lmao probably. I unfortunately went for the platinum recently so had to do it. I think going wide left and right worked for me once you hit the field. You can take a few hits as long as you grab enough balloons.
@@DashingDavid mad respect for going after penance. I've wanted to myself but I just don't have the stamina for it, though that Tonberry hack helps with maxing the grid.
@@arkham666 yeah the endgame is awful. I love FFX but mannn it’s just boring.
I love Final Fantasy X, it's my most favorite game of all time and my most favorite Final Fantasy game in the series.
You can cheese all the super bosses. There's a trick you can do with Yojimbo, if you grand summon him with Yuna's overdrive, pay him exactly 10,000 Gil, he will always cast Zanmato ..... Super boss dead on first turn.
Also, the first blitzball game against the Luca Goers is WINNABLE!!! I'll be showing you how on my channel. I'll be remaking my Final Fantasy X guide soon. I'm sad you chose to not ever blitz, but IMHO you missed out a super cool and sooooo fun mini game! If you win the first game, you get a hidden buff that makes your team more effective by getting higher number rolls and levelling up 1.5× faster. You then don't touch blitzball till after the events in Zanarkand and you will do nothing but dominate. The highest scoring game I ever won was 17-0! And that game was against the Goers, soooo I won the first game against them and just crashed their party time and time and time again, felt so good to knock them down several pegs.
Happy birthday 🎂
1:32:00 Blitzball was awesome and one of my favorite parts of this game and I liked it WAAAYYY better than either of the card games from the previous 2 games. My only complaint with Blitzball is that it's too easy, once you learned game's mechanics, you'll never lose a match, at which point the main "challenge" of Blitzball is trying to maximize the top scorer prizes by have 6-8 characters all tying with the high score so you can get 6-8x the prizes. I've literally played hundreds of hours of Blitzball on my multiple play-throughs of this game. Greatest mini-game in an RPG, ever.
Also, if you win the first match you will get a strength sphere and the following scenes will have a few differences and some NPCs will have different dialogue.
Hard disagree. But you win because you had fun and I didn't.
Oddly I remember playing it a lot back on the PS2 but had no incentive to play it this time.
FFX takes me back to simpler and easier times. I had previously played 7, 8, 9 and played 10 when it came out at 14, and it grabbed me like few other games did and sucked me into Spira. It's not only my favourite FF game (which I feel declined after 12) but likely my all time favourite game. Now I closer to 40 than 30, and despite work and family I often come back to it. The story, music, the world of Spira and it's incredible characters have been with me the majority of my life, it invokes emotions and feelings in me unlike any other game or form of media. Feelings echoed be even minor characters throughout this incredible world. Happiness, sadness, fear and anger, joy and love. The dread of the inevitable end and the spark of hope.
While I often like to ponder the deeper themes of the game: life and death, sacrifice, purpose, faith, repentance I also enjoy just going along for the ride and experiencing the incredible world Square Enix, at their peak, created for us.
Thank you for sharing. That's a wonderful story. Sounds a lot like my relationship with 7/8 and 9.
Couldn't have said it better always brings me back to being in my room on a school night staying up til midnight playing just me and ffX a time where everything was so simple.
I absolutely agree that FFX isn't just the last best Final Fantasy game, but if there is a list of 100 greatest games in the world, it would be among top five.
@@tylerhaunted I'm not sure I'd rank it quite that high. 9 or 7 maybe. Still it would be on there somewhere.
Managerial disagreements is probably the best way I've heard that situation described lol
This was great presentation. I absolutely loved it. I gotta say, as someone who has 100% this game on multible platforms over the years, I completely gut laughed when you got to the chocobo race section. Lol I've gotten that legit every time and you're right. That mini-game is pure evil. 😂
@@Captain_Caveman1981 and the less we say about dodging lightning bolts the better. Glad you enjoyed
This is a great review. Especially the criticisms. I think you nailed everything i didnt like and explained why the game is still great despite its flaws. Awesome job here.
The ff9 review was good to, although we may have to argue about the bonfire being by the fog door. At least for every boss lol.
You deserve so many more views. I resonated with your ff9 & 10 videos. They’re not gimmicky, they’re not over dramatic.
@@Maydaymayday84 thanks I appreciate it. Yt is was yt is though.
Thank you! This was thoughtful and enjoyable.
Great video, I always love watching retrospectives of my favorite series. Auron is my favorite character as well, I named my son after him 😂
How did you convince your wife to agree to that?
@@arkham666 we wanted a name that started with “A” and she was all for it. She didn’t know what it was from until we had already agreed. She wanted a “V” name for a middle name, so we wound up with Auron Vincent for his name. A true final fantasy nerds dream 😂 ❤️
@@Hip-Gnosis1134 I'd have tried for Auron Vivi myself but maybe that would have been pushing my luck. Great story, thanks for sharing.
@20:10 damn I never thought about it like that 🤔
Well it's one interpretation for sure. While memories are beautiful things I don't think we should live in the past and that's the vibe I get from Riku and the Al Behd
Your complaint about the Calm Lands and how the world doesn't FEEL as big as it should is something that I've always been bothered by as well. When I first heard they were remaking FFX I was hoping it was going to be an ACTUAL remake, not just a remaster. I wanted to explore the world some more! Especially Zanarkand! We see that Tidus's house was on the water, yet so many of the walkways we see in the beginning are high above the ground. Did the people of Zanarkand have vehicles?
I'm not going to lie, of all the worlds I've explored in my gaming history, Spira is the one I want to explore more of. ESPECIALLY in the early days of Sin.
Happy birthday 🎂
@@AdriennevsUncleJamesWashington it's not my birthday
I figured when Auron said summoners lost their way at calm lands, it was more of their metaphorical way, not physical. That they'd lose there resolve and abandon their pilgrimage
1:39:45 The dark aeons don't exist in the original version of the game, so you never had to worry about them getting in your way. The reason they are "too easy to find" is because they were just kind of tacked on there to add some extra content for the "international version" which was only released in Japan and the EU. I bought the original USA version when it first came out but eventually imported the international version as well so I could experience the extra content. For people who don't like the dark aeons, I just recommend they play the original version, though you wont have the expert sphere grid and some abilities such as Ribbon. Though I'm pretty sure you can just summon Yojimbo to Zanmoto your way through them if they get in your way.
You know it had been so long since I played but I swore I remembered being able to go anywhere late game without getting obliterated by super bosses.
This time I played and casually went down mushroom rock road only to get hit by 100 thousand damage abilities lol.
@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725 Yeah, the addition of the dark aeon can be a bit jarring for those who are familiar with the original version of the game.
@MistyKathrine I left yunalescas room and didn't want to fight her again. Came back to get the chest.
I'm like OK dark bahamut, that's cool maybe it's not that bad. He punches my party once and they die. Lol.
Extra content is always good. I just wish the difficulty spike in the endgame wasn't a vertical line and that getting prepped for it wasn't such a grind.
@@asdfghjkllkjhgfdsa8725the differences between the dark aeons was insane. I remember the first 3 dark aeons being relativly easy. But from Shiva/Bahamut on it was pain. You had to rework your sphere grid completely which was such a big waste of time
i just wish the dark aeons had a special trigger instead of just "enter the area, now you die!"
55:36 sorry this part of the video really had me thinking about the beautiful subtlety of this games story telling. I think it’s a better mirror for real life than a lot of stories that try to tell the same story but use overly characterized and cliche tropes. our current reality mimics these satiric and over the top tellings more and more each day (flag waving starts most conversations these days) because the myth of organized institutions all has the same inevitable outcome we’re all experiencing: the conditions worsening (problem not being fixed) and instead of opting for empathy, digging in to fear and wanting to eliminate those that are seemingly standing in the way of your doctrines goals. Ffx tells the story of a society of my childhood. Everyone seems happy and polite but you get older and look at it from an outsiders perspective like tidus and the dialogue is all so concerning. His concern for a young girl makes him a heathen? He’s often silence and called rude for asking simple questions we’re all asking? Currently replaying and talking to every npc, the subtlety of fear and control in the every day dialogue of the people of spira is incredible
Final Fantasy 10 was the first final fantasy game I had ever played and coming off of the heels of games like Zelda OoT and Majora's Mask, the way that FFX did the over world didn't take away from the experience for me. The long spans interrupted by brief encounters I think only didn't feel as long because there was no day and night cycle. Though I would argue that the encounters kind of work to help build time passing in your mind. That was the whole idea in my mind while I was playing which was probably helped by the fact that I was a big fan of pokemon.
The way random encounters would happen just had me nodding along and made me feel like there was a sense of natural pacing to the story. Actually I find the way they built bosses and placed treasure chests in the world to be brilliant in terms of giving the player to the tools to win but letting them choose to use it or find a new way around it.
A minor example is how all the enemies in the thunder plains are mostly weak to water and just before you go in, Tidus gets and upgrade brotherhood that adds water strike. Npc's will also give items to help in the current area. It makes the whole thing both interesting and kind of brutal in a way I never understood when I was younger.
1:16:14 bosses may have been made immune to status effects after 4, when every boss was susceptible to slow. Once i had spells unlocked, i would slow the boss, haste and buff the party, then cast bio for chip damage as my physical hitters did main damage
@@seankuchenbecker5436 reminds me of that old 2nd edition dnd tactic where you light up enemies with fairy fire and then drop a globe of darkness on them. They can't see you but they stand out a mile to you.
Feel like you have missed a beat with Khimari, they can pick up some basic stuff from multiple characters and end up with a back up character.
Having a second black mage who can also tank is super helpful
Great video I really enjoyed it! I'll definitely check out more videos in the channel.
Thank you. It's nice to read that at 6am on a Monday.
Great video, and fantastic editing!
Thank you. I have been inundated with wonderful comments on several videos this last couple of weeks. I wonder what's going on.
Just discovered your channel. Please keep covering Final Fantasy games! 🙏
I'd love to. I really want to replay 8 but they are a big time sink so its just a matter of when I can get to it.
@@arkham666 Perfect. Looking forward to it when the time comes. Cheers, man.
My favourite game of all time.
I just found your channel and love the long-form reviews. I'd like to help with the audio mastering in the future.
I appreciate the offer but I've had a lot of trouble in the past collaborating with people on various projects. I don't really want to have to wait on someone else to finish their end of a project so I can move forward with mine. In the end this is just a hobby and something I do for fun so it's better if it's something I take care of myself.
Strangest thing is I replayed this on steam in 2021 on my laptop. I don’t remember the side content / chocobo races being nearly as bad as they were on the PS2 original. I wonder if the RNG was modded for the steam release?
Yeah it's weird. It's a long time ago but I don't think it was nearly as bad. There is the fact that I'm older and busier now and just don't have the time to grind out one side quest like that so maybe it's just me?
1:12:28 not first to not have a straightforward linear leveling system, but second. 2 had a different leveling system as well
So blitzball was never a bother for me, knowing that its actually possible to win the game against luca was a challenge i couldn't refuse at the age i was when this came out. But as for the side content, the chocobo race was mundane compared to those fkn lightning bolts. I would have slain armys with my ire from that bs
@@garrettmastantuono8043 glad you enjoyed it man. A younger me had the patience for sure but now I'm old and cranky and don't have the time lol.
@@arkham666 same same, ff9 came out when i was in grade school and was my first love. Ps2 ushered in ace combat 4, amd ffx and inwas hooked on both franchises for life. Thank you for all your hard work.
Thanks for covering this. I'm enjoying your retrospectives a whole lot.
The lack of a world map to explore broke my little heart back when. The characters and story never grabbed me the way FF7 and 9 did when I was a kid. I do remember loving the gameplay but by the time I made it to the end of the game I felt like my time invested wasn't worth the pay off and fell off the series after 10.
I feel like the absence of an explorable world map really made the game feel smaller and less like a living world the player happened upon and more like an amusement park ride that's there just for the player.
FF7, 8 and 9 are pretty linear games but the ability to explore the world maps early on and on your own terms makes for a more grounding experience into the fantasy world.
The Illusion of non-linearity was stronger in those games.
Also, fuck those sphere temple puzzles. 0/10
To Zanarkand always hits me when I hear it though. Instant goosebumps.
I enjoyed how much you used To Besaid throughout this video as that's one of my fav tracks in FF.
Otherworld still makes me cringe when I hear it though.
Great video, looking forward to the Divinity series.
Lol yeah I realised when I was recording the audio I'd forgotten those sphere temple puzzles. Must have wiped them from my mind.
The world map really does add a sense of scale and wonder. I always felt like there was probably a lot more to those worlds than just the places we were visiting. I know those games have been hard data mined by speed runners etc but you have to wonder if maybe there's still a few secrets in those old games still waiting to be stumbled upon.
I definitely enjoyed this game more in retrospect than the first time though. The world of modern games has made me appreciate this a lot lol.
Got this game in fifth grade and was my first Final Fantasy. My first play through was rough, but I did it without a guide.
To this day this is the only game that made me cry. 😭😭😭
Blitzball is awesome! I've started a run just to play blitzball. As soon as I'm able to play I only progress the story when an Al bhed leaves the team. 😂😂
small correction (and I'm sorry for flooding the comment section), but not ALL the aeons get stronger when Yuna gets stronger. Certain aeons are tied to certain party members I believe. Or at the very least, their damage limit is tied to certain celestial weapons
I believe that each celestial weapon breaks the damage limit for a different aeon.
And you're good. It's nice to have got someone so excited about the game. Enjoy the replay.
@@arkham666 I don't believe every weapon has a corresponding aeon. I know Valefor is connected to Nirvana, Yojimbo to Auron's weapon, and I believe Ifrit is connected to World Champion. I know Bahamut, Anima, and the Magus Sisters already have BDL. I think shiva is connected to Onion Knight and Ixion to Spirit Lance. And if I'm right about this than I'm amazed because I haven't had to think about this info for a long time
@@arkham666 I would actually divide the game into four acts. You have the prologue which starts in Zanarkand and ends with Sin attacking the Al Bhed ship you're on. Act 1 is Besaid and Killika. Act 2 is Luca all the way through the events of Macalania. Act 3 is Bikanel Island all the way until you get the airship for the second time. Act 4 is everything else.
1:13:13 ctb is the best rpg system I’ve experienced. As much as I love ffx id love to see the system used more in other titles. The things you can do with this system, the classes you can create who’s entire motivation is extra turns. So much potential complexity wasted on massive pools of hp and predictable battle rhythms. I’m being harsh, there are some battles that use the system well and are a lot of fun, but alas
I tried to get a friend to give FF a chance, specifically 10, because it was readily available for them, and apparently, they had some kind of bizarre glitch or something and ran into something they could only do like a single point of damage to that didn’t even look like it was being effected in the health bar. I wasn't there to see what it was they were trying to fight, but they accurately described Penance. They ran into this thing in the first half hour or so. If we're right about what they were glitched into fighting it's a terrifying glitch.
I've never heard of that but if it's true I bet the speed runners would have a field day.
@arkham666 true, but I don't think either of us could recreate this thing. Pluss the glitch and seemingly impossible fight with no idea how to retreat turned them off the game hard
@@hannahevertson8306 in the horror movie the game is impossible to turn off.
1:33:40 I’m glad I’m not the only one who was cofused as to why I wasn’t put into a blitzball match right after the tutorial 🤦♂️
1:06:19 what have i to do for gaben, to get the high quality port of this game on steam?
Hey bro you're not alone you're not alone I go through the same bulshit every single f****** day all we can do is hope for the one to actually appear like Yuna😊
oooo the very first final fantasy game I’ve ever played and that prelude version of X is just a bop I love this game so much I have it on the ps2,ps3,ps4,and my Japanese port of my ps-vita so in a short meaning it’s my favorite game ever
I'd love to play this game again but damn is it so depressing.
I literally spent more time playing blitzball than the actual game for many hours, lol. I thought it was a cool idea and loved the special moves. It was fun to unlock new sets and adding members from around the world to see how kick ass they were, cuz the starting team sucked.. and then once I realized I could go undefeated, I ran a Besaid only game, also undefeated.. then it was a challenge to throw matches for a more valuable 2nd place prize, as no one could really score on me... and in top of all that, I could stack up teleport spheres, doing crazy shit with all my characters abilities, jumping all over the sphere grid . It was a blast.
My commenters are rising up against me!
Nah, I understand not liking it. I also think most people don't realize you can control the character with the ball either, so they definitely could have done it better. Once you realize that, and that you only really should look at the mini map when controlling that character, it's actually playable enough to find out if you can enjoy it. My friends hated that part in the story and challenged me to try when I said I thought it looked cool, and it was.. pretty damn hard.. that was without jecht shot too, I believe.. so it was just cross your fingers for one to slip past the goalie and then juggle the ball until time runs out, hoping they don't take it back.. yeah it was a bad way to introduce it.. but it was pretty rewarding to finally learn the tricks.
@@macjess723 All jokes aside I actually enjoy hearing the views of people who like parts of games I didn't like. We all have our own story and experiences with these.
I'm pretty sure I went hard on blitzball back when I had a ps2 and remember having all of Wakka's overdrives but I just didn't want to sink any time into it this time. It's probably just an age and free time thing more than anything now.
Tidus, as in tide, because water is such a huge theme, has always been how I pronounce it
We have a winner!
@@arkham666 _oh no what did i do im not done with the video_
@@emilyl.1745 you used science to win the pronunciation argument lol. Though looking at the japanese name it's Tea-dus but it'll always be T-eye-dus in my mind.
Great video.
@@KiteRebell greater comment.
I need a FFX game avout the war, Zanarkand vs Bevelle.. with Yu Yevon and the Faith of the other Eons as the main characters.
With Yunelesca, Zaon and maybe Auron's encestor.
Then a part about Auron, Jecht and Braska's Pilgrimige.
To let it all come full circle you know❤
42:29 it's not the act of summoning the final aeon which kills the summoner, it's yu evon consuming the Final Aeon and breaking it's link with the summoner! (if not Seymour would be dead ) but of course the game doesnt tell u until yunalesca XD
Great review, I do disagree with you about Seymour being the standard type of villain though. He's what Yuna could have become without the support of her friends. If you had to sacrifice your mother as a child all in the name of saving a world that see's you as a half breed monstrosity and after you couldn't go through with it find out that the pilgrimage is a con then it's not suprising that he became a nihilist that just wanted the world to end. He was broken from his experiences and that makes him very relatable in my opinion.
FFX is my favorite FF and one of my top games of all time. It really had the right balance between impressive presentation, am ambitious story with a believable (within the confines of a piece of media) romance that was just tons of fun. The game was firing on every cylinder hence why it continues to sit at/near the top of most popular FF titles. It's always fun to come back and hear what newer players (or people returning to it with an adult's perspective) have to say. Overall I think you got it though I disagree on a few points (Seymour) and there are a few points about the lore that aren't quite right.
Re:Seymour: There's so much to say about this guy but it always makes me a bit sad when people write him off. I think he has a few things that work against him that keep him from being remembered as a great villain: First FFX is a narrative that covers A LOT of topics, themes and conflicts. Tidus vs Jecht/Sin is va very clear conflict - Jecht (who is also Sin) is who Tidus has to overcome to complete his arc/growth while also saving the world. Yuna is in conflict with just the Sin aspect of this which brings them together. However, this means Yuna lacks a personal antagonist, hence Seymour. However the game also wants to tackle the more abstract themes and so Seymour becomes a stand in for all of those concepts, hence his plan to manipulate Yuna into making him her Fayth so he can become Sin and end all life so that suffering ends (very anti-natalist/nihilist, but not for no reason, it's harm reduction taken to the extreme). He personally gets a bit lost in the sauce since the game isn't really about *him*, but what he represents. Contrast that with Sephiroth or Kefka who are the major movers of the plots in their games. Secondly, Seymour is rather subtle. Like sure, he openly admits to patricide, but stuff like him helping you in Luca or at the Djose Shore fight and especially the marrige proposal are all done with a second meaning that isn't clear until you get to the end of the game and the game doesn't really call it out - to become the Final Aeon, the Summoner and Fayth need a bond, so the whole game he's been secretly manipulating Yuna to build that bond and it only really falls apart because Jyscal drops that sphere. He isn't running around mind controlling people or whatever and so he mostly comes off as "Creepy" and without some of the mystery that propped up Sephiroth and without the flair/charisma that someone like Kuja had or the fun of just being a simple insane clown like Kefka. He just isn't excessively theatrical like those characters. Thirdly, I think from a narrative and thematic persepective, Seymour is one of the most integrated but that doesn't necessarily translate to good "theatre." For example, his childhood parallels Yuna's - both are mixed race (and suffer from that), both lose a parental figure to Sin, etc. Seymour is what happens when things go very very wrong (tell me you'd be ok if you were literally exiled to a backwater temple for years with your dying mother simply for being born only to be carted to the city of the dead where your dying mom gets turned into a monster slaying Aeon for you to attempt to prove the value of your own existence to everyone when you're 10 years old) and so ends up as essentially an anti-Yuna. Like he's perfectly written to be that. It kind of surprised me that you went into this level of depth about the religious theme but gave Seymour just a few lines when he isn't really aligned with them - he doesn't want the status quo, he wants to end all life, but they are useful tools for his goals. Again, like Yuna, he wants a revolution, he just wants a drastically different outcome of that conflict :P
Some of the lore stuff: Jecht gets to Spira just like Tidus does. He went out into the ocean to train, happened to get too close to Sin and got dragged away. What is not super well explained is that Dream Zanarkand is a real place that is floating out in the ocean (relativelyi close to Baaj Temple). Sin is usually nearby, guarding it to keep Spirans away, but theoretically it is possible to get there by boat/airship. Given that Sin keeps Spiran tech suppressed and the people have to deal with just living day to day, no one's really had the opportunity to find it themselves (and I think I may have even read on an Ultimania translation that Dream Zanarkand is mobile making it even harder to find but dont quote me on that part).
All that said, some of this stuff is not really well explained or is locked away in side content or requires piecing together lots of little tidbits so I don't blame anyone for not quite understanding some of the finer plot points and overall a fun vid!
Was looking for this comment! The Seymour part especially. I think his backstory was mostly implied in small chunks and that hurt his character a lot. Things like the writing on the floor in baaj temple made me look up the full story and I learn how sad his life was. Sure if the game couldn't express all of that clearly it does fail to make him a compelling villain. I think they had all the right stuff they just were too subtle with it.
@5:50 WELL SAID 💯
You are woefully incorrect about khimari sir 38:47 he comes from a tribe that prides itself on the strength of the individual. His arc upon returning to gagazet is that of someone who was forced onto someone else’s sphere grid as he had none of his own (a ronso without a tribe) who found a new tribe, by learning from his comrades and beating his bullies with the skills he learned along the way. To the point he even earns the respect of his other ronso and teach them, along with yuna, that although small in size, they can move mountains.
You probably shouldn't have paused the video immediately after hearing that to try and gotcha me. This is literally what I talk about in the 5 minutes following that line.
@@arkham666 I’m a reactionary! That’s why I time stamp my comments haha
Would you ever do one of these retrospective and analyses of Final Fantasy XII?
I'd love to. Just gotta find the time for a full playthrough.
@@arkham666 I hear you. When I first played XII back on the PS2 I was a bit mesmerized especially for a title that looked that good on the Gen 6 console. (And not just because it released on Halloween 2006 here in the states.) When I got the zodiac age when it came out for PlayStation 4 and platinum'd it, it took me 280+ hours. It's a big game, not as massive as 7 rebirth, but bigger than X. I just love your perspective on things. Though you pronounced tidus wrong lol 😋
@@TheDragonhawkKnights Cup of Tea-dus.
@@arkham666 island adventurer Teye-dus
@@arkham666 Latin languages pronounce the vowel "i" with a long e like evening....English isn't a Latin language like Spanish, Portuguese, and other eastern languages. English is an amalgamation of German, swiss, French, and some minor Latin....the i is pronounced like a long i like in ice and island.
I just want you to know that your a great youtuber
Thank you so much
1:44:24 I don’t think it goes to hard on the religion bad science good thing. I think what drew me to it like many other pieces of media from my youth I still enjoy is that it takes everything for the sum of it’s parts. While the church if flipped on it’s head it’s the faith that give yuna the power to defeat sin. I think with the right reading it says more about finding spiritual fulfillment through yourself rather than through institutions and demagogues. Much like what your whole video is about haha
Just dodged 200 lightning bolts for fun after watching this thanks m8
Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?
Something I only realized recently:
Jecht = Je Ch t
Or Jesus Christ and the T is the cross. Everyone knows the biblical references but that’s one I never thought of.
To me, while i never got to play FFX properly "as to say have a proper run of the game" it bringed me memories of my childhood when my stepbrother lived with me and used to play it on PS2 and while at the time i didn't knew what Final Fantasy was at all but the overall tropical scenery and combat left a everlasting impression in me after more than 20 years since i saw this game for the first time. The music still is to this day one of my top 5 favorites "though some of the remaster songs sounds either meh or some of the instruments feel out of place or pretty much kills the vibes that the OG has, but that's my opinion" the cast of characters are quite interesting and has what i consider to this day the most badass character in the series in terms of personality,that being Auron.
@@pablodelgado7919 thank you for sharing m I love these kinds of comments.
I loved Blitzball. I agree it takes a bit of practice, but I loved it. Absolutely loved kicking the asses of some of the more arrogant teams!!!
Well I'm glad one of us enjoyed it lol.
Yeah I like blitzball, but only because I always get the jecht shot and then waffle stomp the Goers. God it feels good to win that first tournament.
Im trying to 100% and it took me like 20 times resetting to beat the first blitzball game. The cutscene with the trophy is worth.
@@LydiaTaylorMusic that's fucking wild mate. Well done. I don't have that kind of patience but I'm glad you do.
1:20:18 You can buy some zombie protection from the merchant on the way up the mountain trail
Hey only sells zombie ward items for Yuna and Auron. Zombie ward works less than 50% of the time and is as good as useless against Seymour.
Watching him bitch about those damn birds in the chocobo race, patiently waiting for the thunder plains to come up 🤣🤣🤣
LoL I left that one unsaid. I think we all have PTSD from that.
@@arkham666 no joke, brother! Pretty sure the only reason I didn't have a stroke whilst doing that the first time was because I was in my teens 🤣🤣
Holy shit this is so well done
Shadow of Memories!!! I never see anyone even mention that game
@@Badgerwatching I have a video about it. I love it.
@@arkham666 I watched it last night!! Very cool!
Crystal Chronicals was a fantastic game.
I wish they do a remake of it
21:02 "and one of the few cultural holdovers from the time tidus came from"
(there is no time travel, Tidus is 17)
you should've said "supposedly"
I bet you're just wonderful to meet at parties.
Unpopular opinion i enjoyed blitzball quite alot it was hard at first but once i got going it was always fun picking who I would make the mvp lol. Gets super easy around lvl 20
Dude awesome vid ngl i kinda want to play ff10 lol
It's a damn good game. I still keep dipping in every now and then to grind up a little more AP to take on those Dark Aeons.
no no no NO NO Sin is not the "armor around Dream Zanarkand", not directly, anyway. That was a stupid answer by whatever "official" source cooked it up. Sin is the armor YEVON wears, the only shell big enough to hold the hermit crab of His untethered ambition, and the power battery to hold the energies of the sacrificed Summoners (AND their Aeons!), which Yevon then digests and reuses to keep His Dream -- Zanarkand -- alive. If anything, I'd say Yevon's twin Pagodas are the actual armor.
@@xheralt I'm literally quoting Maester Mika. You aren't doing a good job of endearing yourself to me or making me want to take anything you say seriously.
Btw I NEED the campfire video as my computer screen saver 🤤🤤
how old are you?
In my 40s.
42:55 lmao amen brother, the empires of the west love to laud revolutionaries after the cia kills them
Dead heroes are much easier to control than living ones.
I just had to look up the reason why Wakka is so popular in Japan.. I regret this decision
Great video
Many thanks.
How is the daughter of the summoner who defeated sin and the guardian who helped that summoner unlikely characters? In your intro, you say a band of unlikely characters join up to defeat sin and I'm trying to figure out why. Not to mention the son of the other guardian who helped braska as well. In no way, shape or form were you even hinted as not being suitable in the game. As a matter of fact, the ronso think that yuna's will is greater than their mountain. I dont know any ronso that would build a statue of yuna with a great horn that doesn't believe in her.
Kay
My mind sees 7-10 as the golden age. 10 obviously being the departure of square and uematsu
57:46 haha I get it, as someone who was a stand in for tidus when this game came out (what 14 year old boy isn’t?) you see auron and go, wish I was that fucking guy instead haha but that’s the lesson right? The boys like tidus can become better men than auron with his help
Have u played xenosaga yet? Beeg recommend. The games are fucking wild.
I haven't but it's high on my to do list. You're not the first to recommend it.
Great video yadayada but FFX wasn't the first to abandon linear levelling, that was actually Final Fantasy 2
@@danielupton3734 kay
The problem with the religion narrative about 50 minutes into this is while one can make arguments that this is appliciable to the real world certainly, in this fantasy world Sin isnt a natural creature but a construct driven to demolish this world and the fayth and aeons and magic is quite real. Even the Farplane are more than memories since Lord Jyscal is able to communicate and reach out to Yuna, who hes never met.
Don't get me wrong, this is a great retrospective that really explores these themes. I just wanted to clarify between religion in the real world and the con of Yevon which is manipulating real magic to maintain control.
Kumari early game can be absolutely broken on the sphere grid
I really, really want to play this game despite of my blindness. Also, it's good that there arn't many people that just say oh I hate the story because...
just finished your FF9 vid, did some RL stuff, came back to check the channel, and you got FF10. might as we*vomiting nostalgia within 30 seconds* look.... yes.... PS1 sound has always and will always be the best one.... but that PS2 loading sound is like a gut punch of nostalgia for me and many people due to the sheer amount of times we heard it.....
i say that the PS2 era was the last of the "fully experimental" stage era of gaming. PS3 onwards kinda became locked in a way, to the point when something truely unique comes around, we are more easily shocked and awed by it just being different, and not for the substance of it itself. more realism due to hardware being able to manage it now and learning that creating assests of such quality for fantastical stuff was WAY harder than for realistic stuff as scanning stuff in became easier for PS3 era consoles. due to the graphics being, as you say, in a sweet spot of "kinda realistic but enough give to not worry too much about it" not too many games got hit with the time stick as they mostly had their own appeal or style. it's also the last era to have straight up demo discs, granted in far more limited scope. it's also the last main console era with Xploder cheat CD (those still exist with handhelds but not so much home console's themselves) .... fck i feel old.
i live in the UK, so when FF10 released for me it was the international version will all the extra goodies that entailed. and the version i got specifically was the one with two discs. the game itself and an extra's disc. with music, concept art, dev footage etc on it you could "play" which was very cool.
"20 years since it's release" FFFFFFFFFFFFCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK that makes me feel ancient.
lack of world map hurt too. people ragged on FF13 for being linear when my immediate responce is always ".... FF10 is a literal hallway with no deviations as well. granted you could go backwards all the way back to besaid as long as it's before macalania temple, after which good luck on the backtracking...."
officially he's "Teedus" in pronounciation. but i go "Tide-us" cause tide. water. yeah.
"otherworld" is such a banger of a song. is "you're not alone" is the ultimate emotional 'pick yourself up and get to it' song. "otherworld" is the ultimate 'GET BACK IN THERE AND FCK EM UP!' song. also, special mention for 'to Zanarkand' specifically 'skies above' version by black mages. that song is IMMENSELY GOOD. feels like a fusion of the two and i am HERE FOR IT. sound track in general for this game, like all FF's, is top tier.
got nothing to add about the characters section... yeah nailed it on all of them really. except Mika. slightly. the dude did seem to care about Spira, to an extent. he dipped the fck out the moment he knew the hope of the world couldnt be restored through the final summoning and didnt want to see spira die in dispair as he truely thought the only way to deal with Sin, even if for a moment, was the final summoning. everything else bout him is spot on though. and Seymour. yes he's an entitled little prick that needs a thousand boots up his arse, but he does have a through line beyond just wanting ultimate power. he truly believes that in death is the only way people will have true peace. even when he wanted to become Sin, it was so he could end the worlds suffering by destroying it. it's a VERY basic bitch "evil person doesnt understand reality" concept that most insane evil people do in stories. but there is stuff there. he is bland and forgettable to be fair though.
for the calm lands, i always interpreted the "lose their way here" as "start to rethink and then bottle it, ending their pilgramage" but going the more literal sense.... sadly it's a game thing. if you look past the open space along the top you see a HUUUUGE field. going on till the horizon. and the calm lands you do walk along are pretty large, but still. though i guess they didnt want two bikanel sized "open" area's one after the other. i guess.
the main issue i have with the weapon system is sometimes the first or second weapon you get for a character is their best weapon till you get the celestial weapon for that character unless you doing something slightly gimmicky or capturing enemies. example: Yuna. in besaid temple you get rod of wisdom. it has +8% magic and sensor if i remember correctly. this is, by FAR, the most useful rod for her in the game until either A, you create one with better +magic or B, you get Nirvana and upgrade it to max. with Tidus Brotherhood after getting it's upgrade in the farplane is his best weapon till his celestial weapon (unless you're fighting something that absorbs water)
aeon stats go up by number of battles fought+Yuna's stats. so even if you never pushed her along her grid even once, they still become stronger as the game goes one. a lot LESS powerful, but still. Bahamut and above automatically have break damage limit. shiva and down require celestial weapons to unlock break limit. ie, Valefor requires Yuna's nirvana.
yeah Kimahri is a bit of a wet blanket when it comes to combat and his sphere grid. he is meant to be a bluemage and a weaker version of Auron. his weapons generally, not always but quite often, has piercing and his strength stat (if you count his grid as being where he can reach wtihout a keysphere) is pretty decent, being below Auron but higher than Tidus. but yes he is meant to "copy" someone else. two major issues with this though: unless you're going Rikku's route for steal, he just becomes a worse version of that character. and 2, the only time in the ENTIRE game he is mandatory to use, it's best he is as weak as possible. the Biran and Yenke fight is based off of Kimahri's stats. so it's always possible to do even if you never used him. so him being "level 1" means they will be too. and so if you use items (like you should if you sent him to Rikku's route) you can easily blast them apart with grandes and such. personally i used him as a "grab steal, return to own 'grid' do that and by the time he's done i should have enough lvl4's for unlocking ultima, he unlocks it then i use two black magic sphere's for Yuna and Lulu to get it. done" and barely ever touched him.
the main issue the game has is at endgame, the MOST effective strategy boils down to: Zidane and Wakka use their overdrives with max individual hits (Wakka has one where he hits like 16 times) Rikku uses mix for invulnerability and max damage per hit" and thats if you dont play the Zanmoto game >.> Aeon's become redundant really fast outside of certain uses, magic cannot be group casted which means it's automatically worse than quickhit if you can whack hard enough to murder the enemy with the sole exception of Ultima which is the only spell the party can cast that hits every enemy. kinda... meh....
god blitzeball harms me emotionally and physically.... it's super easy. i made a "hook, line, sinker" strat with Brother (recruitable from the Al-bhed airship) and Tidus. Brother is stupidly fast, so i got the ball, gave it to him and then used him to grab the attention of all the opposing team (hook). drag them as far from Tidus as possible, and pass it to him (line) and then use jecht shot to almost 100% certainty get a goal (sinker) rinse and repeat. forever. REALLY boring. but needed if you want the best stuff as this is the only way to get Wakka stuff and some insanely rare things without fighting enemies that will end you as easily as look at you.
you CAN win the game against the Goers at the start. it's just insanely hard due to them being BUFFED as fck (like they get straight up cheats) and you having the WORST team. your reward? a strength +4 sphere. which to be fair, give that to Auron he'll be hitting thousands A LOT earlier. but certainly not worth the headache.
yeah no that chocobo race is BULLSHIT. if it didnt have the birds, then it would be fine. but with them.... IT SUCKS THE MOST.
the Al-bhed primers are mainly there so you can read hints hidden in the game for gear and things. guides cover it so meh.
dark Aeons and Penance are added with international version and were meant to be insane. i beat them all legit ONCE. after that, i just Auron with Masamune upfront, switch to Yuna, and then gamble with Yojimbo in hopes of Zanmoto. it instantly kills everything in the game. no exceptions.
just an addition to the overdrives and side content you didnt mention. Auron. Auron gets his overdrives from watching sphere's Jecht left behind in the world. go find em, watch them, then every few Auron gets a new overdrive. something people miss or dont know entirely, is that upon watching the first after fighting the goo in macalania woods, you can back track ALL the way to besaid to pick em up. you'll have to walk the entire fcking way there and back again, but it's doable. and doing it at this exact point in time gives 3 advantages. 1, you dont have to worry about the dark Aeon's as they dont spawn until after you fight Seymour the first time. 2, you can get Auron's final overdrive by the time you hit Yunalesca. and it's pretty damn useful, but his third is the most useful as it causes full break. and 3, there is convo's to be had at this time you wont get any other. for example, on the boat between besaid and kilika, you can talk to clasco (if you convinced him to leave the knights) tending to the chocobo's onboard. and he'll give you some rare sphere's. just something cool.
yeah i platted 16 and it REALLY feels like "FF of thrones" and while i do enjoy the game..... not as good as the light hearted fantasy of wonder like 12 and below, with dark undertones if you pay attention.
.............. HOLY SHIT THIS WAS AN ESSAY! sorry for that. nice vid man. great work!
Just recently played the game since my dumb kid self never finished it. TH-cam be treating me good with these ffx videos
@@darenh355 thank you. I hope the replay was fun.
Oh damn, you work fast lol. But yes, I enjoyed it very much. Just finished it recently. Looking to move to x-2 after I finish metaphor
I want this ☝️ on an 80 inch ultra HD tv I think I deserve that once in life
We all do mate.
While I agree with your overall assessment of the Church of Yevon, you are _religiously_ following certain precepts of "official game canon" cooked up after the fact of the game, that really aren't the best explanation. For example, perpetuating the notion of Time Travel. Tidus isn't from 1000 years ago, he was seventeen years old, as he was spawned within the _ongoing realtime simulation_ that is Dream Zanarkand, which _models_ the Zanarkand of 1000 years ago, but _isn't_ Zanarkand any more than GTA's Vice City is Miami Beach!
@@xheralt I am well aware of how old Tidus is and where he's from thank you. I explain it in depth in the spoiler section of the game. I don't go into it outside of that section because... It's a spoiler. I am not religiously following anything thank you very much.
1:34:50 i won the luca blitzball game 1-0
@@seankuchenbecker5436 don't destroy my world view. The game is impossible and no one has ever won it! 😭
I fully agree that blitzball sucks! Maybe it’s just me though because I hate all mini games in RPGs. I’ve never enjoyed triple triad or tetra master because like why? Blitzball is the reason I never use Wakka. I can’t stomach playing the game enough to unlock his best weapons and overdrives. It’s unbearable!
This game is such a mixed bag of sentiment for me.
I like the story a lot, but it's marred by cutscenes and voice acting that just aren't very well executed, in some cases even by the standards of when it released.
I like the battle mechanics, but many of the game's battles straight up tell you the correct answer before you meet any new challenge, making those challenges meaningless.
I like that there's a lot of late/post-game enemies to fight, but so many of them amount to a basic stat check (unless you use a super niche strategy the devs didn't even intend.)
I like that there's plenty of other things to do than just run forward and fight, but many of those things wear out their welcome well before you get their ultimate rewards.
I should like this game, but everything I try to like about it kind of ruins itself. It's such a shame.
VII didn't need a remake. This did.
Your videos are pretty good and greatly paced.
Just try not to rely on that "RP-like" pronunciation attempt,
because it simply doesn't fit the overall content or tone of the channel at all.
(Unless of course you're willingly aiming to sound as pretentious as the rest of people doing FF retrospectives).
Have my upvote.
Lol I teach English for a living and haven't lived in my home town or even country for more or less a decade. I'm so used to making my speech clear and easy to understand that actually have to try and have an accent at this point.
Playing rn again in the vita, the game is simply awesome flaws and all
Yu Yevon is not the final boss, but a scripted battle with too high of an HP pool. Final Aeon is the true final boss. But at least Yu Yevon was hinted at, unlike Necron in IX
Blitzball is the best mini game, You are just not that good at it I beat Luca goers many times.
@@miketom217 your people are in the pinned comment :)
You don’t need to max out to beat Pennance just Yojimbo…. That’s how I killed him ZaNmAtO!!!
That's kinda playing with the cheats on though. I've cheesed a few bosses in my time (demon of hate in Sekiro can be cheesed in the most hilarious way) but I think the point of them is spend many hours playing the game and grinding up to that big victory.
Don't get me wrong if you just want the win that's fine but I think a lot of people who go after super bosses are more into the journey than the destination.
rip to you but i'm built different (loves blitzball and won the initial tournament and all others after (i am the strawman who enjoys sinking hours into blitzball (i know i'm like one out of like six people who do this)))
Honestly I'm glad for you. Look around, there's a whole comment thread of people rebelling against my blitzball take and I think it's wonderful.
@@arkham666 lol i did notice right after hitting post that the comment at the top basically said the same, mere discussions of blitzball summons us i fear. i *did* absolutely hate it as a kid though, and was shocked to realize i do really like it now when i settled in for my first replay as an adult last year
ok i admit that seymor the third is a bit bs, but you 100% can get anti zombie moves and you can also be more tactical by either killing your party member first or swapping them out.
edit: also the dragon is a bit weird and can be bs when you dont make good use of a chronomancer, quick hit and delay attack
edit2: yeah ok i now notice this review is based on a first-time kinda perspective now i see you call the best black mage in the game - kimari useless. and from a first playthrough id agree that its kinda bs and that the endgame is really awful
all in all i would say that while these things suck for a frist run, ffx in its hd form has the most developed post-game out of any non-mmo final fantasy game i would say and surely the best combat to go with it
Do I sense a subtle comparison to the Abrahamic religion? ;)
Of course not. I don't do political content 😜
Lol I won the blitz game 1-3