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Game Description |
Final Fantasy X is a role playing game for the PlayStation 2.
It was the first Final Fantasy entry with fully 3D environments instead of 2D or pre-rendered backgrounds and the first fully-voiced entry. Created as the next evolution of the franchise, FFX deviates from prior games in many ways.
The game's plot follows Tidus, a star player of the Zanarkand Abes blitzball team (basically underwater soccer), who is transported from his hometown of Zanarkand to Spira after a mysterious giant creature named Sin destroys it. Afterwards Tidus meets Summoner Yuna, who is tasked with destroying Sin by the Yevon Religion like her father did before her and bring in the "Calm", a temporary period of peace without Sin before it regenerates. Tidus agrees to become one of his guardians upon learning that Sin's true identity is that of his missing father, Jecht. To accomplish this goal, they embark on a pilgrimage to bring an end to the spiral of death that Sin caused while growing closer, falling in love, and discovering that the Yevon Church is not as well intentioned as it appeared to be.
Instead of featuring experience points and levels to make characters stronger, the game introduces a unique Sphere Grid system. By consuming Ability Points won in battle, characters can activate nodes within the grid which increase their stats and unlock abilities, giving the game a rather unique growth and customization system compared to most RPGs.
On the other hand, the game also doesn’t use the Active Time Battle (ATB) system used from FFIV all the way to FFIX for its gameplay, with the newly introduced unique Conditional Turn Based (CTB) system taking its place. The CTB is a strategic turn-based system where the turn order for the player and enemies is always displayed with some abilities having more cooldown time than others, additionally, characters can be swapped at any time mid-battle, placing a greater focus on strategy than prior games. Battles also feature trigger commands, special commands that appear on special battles and differ depending on which one.
The introduction of voice acting allowed greater expressive freedom in many ways during event scenes, both dramatic and lighthearted, including a commonly cited (and miscited) intentionally bad laugh scene. Due to being voiced for the first time, the game's English dub didn't feature lip sync at times due to each sentence varying in length, the Japanese voice over has no such issues, as the original version.
The plot is linked to the gameplay in some ways. Due to the game’s plot focusing on the party going on a pilgrimage, the game is significantly more linear than prior installments. However, open exploration has always been an illusion in Final Fantasy games where even if they gave players two or three different directions to go, most of those directions were blocked off or didn't provide them with much to do until more of the game is unlocked. Here while it's justified due to the aforementioned pilgrimage, it also branches out in the end like prior games, with many sidequests and superbosses being available in the endgame, each able to be played in any order, with the fully 3D environments also offering a greater level of exploration. Unlike Final Fantasy XIII (another much more linear game), it's also still possible to visit towns, talk to NPCs, enter shops, and dungeons that have various side paths.
Finally, Summons (named Aeons here) take much greater importance than in other games due to their importance in the game's plot. They are no longer glorified magic spells, they are full-fledged playable characters with their own stats, abilities, and Overdrives (Limit Breaks) that Yuna can summon in battle and replace the party members until they are defeated or dismissed. Many can be recruited through the course of the game and via sidequests.
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