FFX-2 Review

[Guest chirs3]

The long anticipated direct sequel to FFX has arrived. Approximately 1.2 million Japanese players are flocking back to the world of Spira. What awaits them? A few minor issues aside, a very solid and fun game.

 

Sure, it's well known that FFX-2 reuses FFX's world, characters, and graphics engine. However, FFX-2's gameplay systems are totally changed from it's predecessor. FFX's field maps have been supplemented in FFX-2 with a jumping and climbing system. The turn-based battle system has been replaced with a more 'traditional' Final Fantasy Active Time Battle (ATB) one. The sphere grid-based skill acquisition of FFX has been replaced by a job system. FFX's linear storyline (which has garnered mixed reviews since it's release) has been swapped for a discrete mission-based game structure.

 

The jumping and climbing on the field maps (called the 'Yuna Raider' system in Weekly Famitsu) isn't annoying but isn't particularly innovative either. It's simple to use (just hold down the 'X' button, and any appropriate surface will cause Yuna to jump or climb), but it comes off feeling simply adequate. It's either used in new areas that were designed with this system in mind, or to augment familiar territory from FFX. You quickly notice that jumping feels much more integrated and natural in the new areas - the old areas seem to feature jumping only in awkward places that feel subtly 'tacked-on', like a bad case of feature creep. It seems that the old areas have been updated to feature jumping only so that the jumping system doesn't cause the new areas to feel more 'interactive' and divorced from the old.

 

The Active Time Battle system is not really new either - the Final Fantasy series used variants on this approach from the third installment on the Famicom until the ninth closed the series' run on the original Sony Playstation. Battles are fast and furious in their execution. Enemies attack in real time as you wait for your character's ATB gauge to fill up so you can enter commands. You can choose either 'active' or 'wait' in the customization menu- the difference being that wait temporarily pauses battles while you navigate menus (making things a bit easier on those with slower reflexes). You can also choose from three speeds - slow, normal, and fast - to suit your preferences. Timing your attacks is actually important in FFX-2; following the tempo of the battle and choosing advantageous instances to strike can interrupt enemy's actions and create combos. Skillful use of combos can increase the damage dealt by your characters. The combo system is well thought out and enhances battles.

 

Standard battle roles in every Final Fantasy game include melee combatants, mages, thiefs, and summoners - FFX filled these niches with 7 unique characters, each with their own skills. FFX-2 replaces this with three characters and a Job system, allowing any character to focus in any area they like. This bears the unfortunate moniker of the 'Dress-up' system. You start off with a few basic 'Dress Spheres', each of which allows the characters to take on the skills and abilities of a different job class. The jobs are varied and fun. Players of other games in the series will immediately recognize many old standbys such as Knight, Thief, White and Black Mages, and Samurai. The game spices up the system with lots of new and interesting jobs such as Gambler and Gunner. There are a total of 14 standard dress spheres and 3 'Special Dress' spheres. These three special spheres combine the functionality of an overdrive and a summon, replacing your party with a single character in a huge, battle-hungry form.

 

The Final Fantasy series has always been known for its beautiful summon sequences - however, with no summoned monsters this time around (courtesy of the storyline of FFX) - the Job Change animations have picked up the slack here. Each time a new dress is chosen in battle, you get a stunning 20 second transformation animation (which, for sanity's sake, can be shortened or turned off entirely in the options; also, the battle gauges are paused during this scene, so there's no penalty for shifting jobs in battle).

 

Learning all of the abilities, skills, and spells of a job marks it as "Mastered". Mastering a class is its own reward; skills are learned in a set order within a class, meaning that you can't learn some abilities until their prerequisites are satisfied. In almost every class, the final ability or two of a job are so overpoweringly good that a master of that job is guaranteed to be a valuable and increased asset in battle. Players are allowed to choose the order in which each job's available abilities are learned and change their active jobs via the status menu.

 

Various jobs are placed and arranged on "Result Plates." Result Plates are the links that tie the different jobs together with a single, interesting gameplay dynamic. Each plate contains a number of 'Pits' that the player fills with dress spheres of their choice. Pits are connected to other pits on the result plate by lines. Each character equips a Result Plate with a number of placed jobs during battle, and a character can switch from her currently active job to any "adjacent" job on the Result Plate that is connected by a line at any time. Many plates come with special nodes on the lines between the pits - adroit switching between the jobs in a battle on a well-set result plate will cause the node to be activated and give the player some special benefit for the remainder of the fight. Examples are increased statistics, the ability to use skills from other job classes, and immunities to elemental attacks. Several of the plates also impart bonuses just for having them equipped - including granting access to the subset of the abilities and skills you've earned under a different job.

 

Each job also contains special abilities to ensure that skills are best used by their original job, however. For example, as a black mage, Yuna has access not only to the cadre of elemental spells, but also to the innate abilities 'Black Magic Level 2' and 'Black Magic Level 3', which cut the casting time of all black magic down by 50%. Neither of these abilities are available as any other job, not even through the use of result plates and accessories. This ensures that when Yuna becomes a white mage and equips a result plate that allows use of learnt black mage spells, she still won't cast them as quickly as she would if she were a using the black mage job. The great depth of the battles and gameplay systems is the game's greatest strength, but for those who were wondering: yes, there is a story.

 

The story picks up two years after the conclusion of Final Fantasy X (specifically, the International version.) Old friends Yuna and Rikku are joined by the newcomer Paine, bearer of the RPG's #1 cliche: the Mysterious Background . After finding a sphere that appears to show Tidus inprisoned, Yuna has chosen to become a Sphere Hunter. Together with Paine and Rikku, they form the Kamome-Dan (Seagull Team) and traverse Spira in their swanky new airship, the Celcius, swooping down to collect every sphere that the ship's systems detect. Of course, there are several other teams of Sphere Hunters responding to the calls too; Yuna and company often find themselves racing to get to the sphere first. These 'missions' as the game calls them, form the crux of the gameplay. A friend of mine jokingly referred to the game as a 'maxigame'- which deftly describes the fact that it's made up of discrete missions, many of which introduce completely new gameplay elements and/or minigames.

 

Missions are broken into two major groups- 'Active Links' and everything else. Most non-Active Link missions involve helping out someone in a jam, allowing the player to affect small changes to the world and its inhabitants by sidequesting. Active Links, indicated as such on the airship's area selection screen, activate plot points and advance the story proper - completing a set of these missions will increase your game's 'Story Level'. Completing a Story Level changes the circumstances of the whole of Spira, opening more sidequests. On the whole, the sidequests are varied and interesting and comprise most of the game's play time. Speed demons will find that the game can be completed in just shy of 20 hours by avoiding sidequesting all together - but beware.

 

Pretty much every area of Spira features multiple sidequests as the game progresses - this game is an explorer's paradise. You visit Kimahri on Mount Gagazet to help him decide the fate of the Ronso and quell his people's desire for revenge upon the Guado. You visit Wakka and his pregnant wife Lulu, and help him to find his role as a father-to-be. You help the Al Bhed dig for valuable artifacts in Bikanel Desert. Going to a seemingly sleepy town and asking around may trigger an unexpected mission. It's all terrifically interesting stuff, and the game suffers a nearly total loss of world mythology when deprived of it's sidequests. In fact, without these discretional sections of the game, the plot seems devoid of its depth and the gameplay systems robbed of their brilliance. It's quite simply the game's largest fault - not playing the sidequests is like not playing the game at all. It should never have been made wholly elective.

 

Once the player has delved a bit deeper into the game, they see that the game's 'story' is so short because it's designed to support multiple playthroughs. After completion, the game allows you to start over with all your inventory and learned abilities intact - the only things that are lost are the character levels and the story-dependent items (which are only present to advance the story as needed, so no loss). In addition, all of your previous completed story arcs and side missions are preserved in the new game. The relatively small number of the Active Link missions is revealed as a design choice that allows you to get quickly to the Story Level where your previously missed sidequests reside. The game's major shortcoming - its seemingly sparse plot and short length - could have been easily resolved by forcing the player, on their first time through the game, to complete two or three sidequests before receiving the next active link. This limitation could then have been removed for subsequent games, allowing the designer's intentions to shine through. It's a painful oversight on Square's part, as it's one that will cheat a large number of players out of the game's fun - they will simply plow through it as though it were any number of other console RPGs, and feel disappointed at the end, having missed out on several of the optional dress spheres and system-augmenting result plates. It's an unfortunate fact that the game isn't easy to enjoy without it's sidequests. I want to stress again that these sidequests don't feel 'tacked-on' or insubtantial in any way. They are as much of a part of the game as the summoner's pilgrimage was in FFX. In fact, the game provides the player with a 'Story Completed' statistic, and the Active Link missions account for less than 50% of the total available missions.

 

There are other minor sticking points in the game as well. The story, when all is said and done, is a departure from the serious tone of it's forebears - at times, FFX-2 flings around excessive amounts of fanservice. The story does have very serious points, but the girls also act like very energetic teenagers for the majority of the game. It's something that's equal parts tolerable, hilarious, and cringe-worthy. Aniki (Rikku's brother) is especially over-the-top. It's instantly evident that this tone will not sit well with some of the series' more ardent Western fans, but it hardly detracts from the solidity of the gameplay and overall strength of the title.

 

The music is an odd combination of moving themes and piano numbers mixed with J-pop and the odd 70's porno groove. It's eclectic and quite surprising, but they never make the mistake of using the wrong piece at the wrong time, so it's fairly easy to swallow. It doesn't compare with the more cohesive soundtracks of previous FFs - but then, it's different enough to defy that comparison.

 

The graphics are, of course, gorgeous for the most part. We've already seen the majority of the locations in FFX, so there's no use commenting on them here. Unfortunately, the new areas are a bizzare amalgamation of 'phenomenally beautiful' and 'built buy the summer intern'. Mostly, the environments simply serve as places for action to occur and the gameplay systems to shine, but with so much else in this game being top-notch, the lows seem woefully out of place.

 

I'll end these impressions with a note for importers. RPG gamers of middling Japanese ability and a firm grasp on basic kanji should have little problem following the plot and understanding most of the game's dialog. With the exception of a bit of military lingo and the odd name from the first game, it's quite accessable. Those with little to no Japanese ability but familiar with RPGs will probably have no problems navigating the game's menus and finding their way to the end, although I suspect that some of the minigames might be difficult to complete and the story a bit hard to follow.

 

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Got it from a link on Penny Arcade, figured I'd post it here.