Re: Final Fantasy Megathread
Something interesting about X this go around is that while I have been enticed into doing some of the extra sidequest content for most of these games, that was not true for X. I love the story, the characters, the battle system. I even enjoy the Sphere Grid. But everything outside of that primary story experience and gameplay trail just is not fun or interesting or rewarding.
One major part of the problem is there isn't a lot of incentive to explore. Getting around the world is a pain due to the way it is designed. With no sense of overworld and everything being a straight line, more or less, from beginning to end it makes travelling backwards much more trouble than previous games. The story as well disincentivizes this by having a clear goal and the only way to get there is to constantly move forward. This works great when experiencing the main story itself, but to break off and do anything extra it feels like you have to rebel against the world a little more than in other games. And, of course, you don't get an airship (which in this game just functions as a set of warp points) until just before the final dungeon. This timing wouldn't be a problem itself as you don't an airship until near the end in most FF games, but this is really only method you have to go back to previous areas without spending hours walking down a single path fighting random battles (and then again going back).
Maybe this would be fine except all or most of the side activities are terrible and the objectives needed in order to get the legendary weapons are insane. The lightning "game" is the prime example. There's nothing to really figure out. Its not particularly a test of skill. There is no entertainment factor to it. It is a test only of your patience.
Comparatively, XII takes a much nicer approach to side activities, primarily hunts. Not only are they fun and interesting to battle these monsters, but traveling is so much easier. From nearly the beginning of the game you have access to warp points to easily get to different places. The world is also designed around a single city, Rabanastre, as kind of a central hub so even without the warp points its not too difficult to walk from place to place, particularly considering you can avoid enemies if you choose.
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On a separate point, I don't know if I ever really noticed just how big of a leap visually the series went from X to XII. I mean, I knew XII looked better as to be expected comparing an early console lifecycle game to a late lifecycle game, but still, wow. I'm playing the HD rereleases of each game and the improvement in character animations is really astounding. Facial animations particularly stands out. X was obviously trying to animate the 3D face models for facial expressions. I think XII might be be using subtle texture changes to simulate expressions? Either way, it allows for surprisingly nuanced performances from the character models.
I'm also generally a defender of the voice acting in X as the issues mainly stem from sound design and localization issues rather than the acting itself, but without those sound design and localization issues, there's not doubt that the performances in XII are allowed to stand out as a much more positive aspect of the game's story in XII.
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So far I still probably overall prefer X to XII based on the story and characters; I'm also more a fan of the turn based battle system to XII's Gambit system, but there's no denying XII was a big leap for the series in multiple ways.
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