Video Game Vintage Title: Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square as the tenth entry in the Final Fantasy series. Originally released in 2001 for Sony's PlayStation 2, the game is scheduled for a high-definition re-release for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita in 2013. The game marks the Final Fantasy series transition from entirely pre-rendered backdrops to fully three-dimensional areas, and is also the first in the series to feature voice acting. Final Fantasy X replaces the Active Time Battle system with the "Conditional Turn-Based Battle" system, and uses a new leveling system called the "Sphere Grid".

Set in the fantasy world of Spira, the game's story revolves around a group of adventurers and their quest to defeat a rampaging monster known as Sin. The player character is Tidus, a blitzball star who finds himself in Spira after his home city of Zanarkand is destroyed by Sin. Shortly after arriving to Spira, Tidus joins the summoner Yuna on her pilgrimage to destroy Sin.

Development of Final Fantasy X began in 1999, with a budget of more than US$32.3 million and a team of more than 100 people. The game was the first in the main series not entirely scored by Nobuo Uematsu; Masashi Hamauzu and Junya Nakano were signed as Uematsu's fellow composers. Final Fantasy X was both a critical and commercial success, selling over 6.6 million units worldwide. In March 3, 2003, it was followed by Final Fantasy X-2, making it the first Final Fantasy game to have a direct game sequel.

Final Fantasy X Plot

The story begins in medias res (late in the story), with the main protagonist, Tidus, waiting with his allies outside the ruins of an ancient city. Tidus narrates the events that led to the present, spanning most of the game's storyline. It begins in Tidus's home city, the high-tech metropolis of Zanarkand, where he is a renowned star of the underwater sport blitzball. During a blitzball tournament, the city is attacked by an immense creature which Auron, a man not originally from Zanarkand, calls "Sin". Sin destroys Zanarkand, taking Tidus and Auron to the world of Spira.

Upon arriving in Spira, Tidus is rescued by Al Bhed salvagers in the area. Upon asking him where he is from, one of them, Rikku, tells him that Sin destroyed Zanarkand 1000 years ago. After Sin attacks again, Tidus is separated from the divers and drifts to the tropical island of Besaid, where he meets Wakka, captain of the local blitzball team. Wakka introduces Tidus to Yuna, a young summoner about to go on a pilgrimage to obtain the Final Aeon and defeat Sin; and her guardians, Lulu and Kimahri. Meanwhile, Tidus joins to help Wakka in the upcoming blitzball tournament to find a way back home. The party travels across Spira to gather aeons, defending against attacks by Sin and its "offspring"�fiends called Sinspawn. After the tournament, they are joined by Auron, who convinces Tidus to become Yuna's guardian. He reveals to Tidus that Yuna's father, Lord Braska; Tidus's father, Jecht; and himself made the same pilgrimage to defeat Sin ten years ago. Tidus thought his father had died at sea ten years earlier. Following another attack from Sin, they are joined by Rikku, later revealed to be Yuna's cousin.

When the party arrives in the city of Guadosalam, the leader of the Guado, Seymour Guado, proposes to Yuna, claiming that it will ease Spira's sorrow. At Macalania Temple, the group sees a message from Seymour's late father Jyscal, who declares he was killed by his son, who now aims to destroy Spira. The group reunites with Yuna to engage Seymour in battle, killing him; soon afterward, Sin attacks, separating Yuna from the others. While searching for her on Bikanel Island, the homeland of the Al Bhed where they had surfaced, Tidus has an emotional breakdown when he learn that summoners die after summoning the Final Aeon, leading to his desire to find a way to defeat Sin while keeping Yuna alive. The group finds Yuna in Bevelle, where she is being forced to marry the unsent Seymour. They crash the wedding and escape with Yuna. The group is captured at the Bevelle temple, and are ordered to stand trial. After escaping from their sentence, the group heads towards the ruins of Zanarkand, seen in the introduction of the game.

On the way there, Tidus learns that he, Jecht, and the Zanarkand they hail from are summoned entities akin to aeons based on the original Zanarkand and its people. Long ago, the original Zanarkand battled Bevelle in a machina war, in which the former was defeated. Zanarkand's survivors became "fayth" so that they could use their memories of Zanarkand to create a new city in their image, removed from the reality of Spira. One thousand years after its creation, the fayth have become exhausted from "dreaming" their Zanarkand, but are unable to stop due to Sin's influence.

Once they reach Zanarkand, Yunalesca�the first summoner to defeat Sin and has been unsent ever since�tells the group that the Final Aeon is created from the fayth of one close to the summoner. After defeating Sin, the Final Aeon kills the summoner and transforms into a new Sin, which has caused its cycle of rebirth to continue. Yuna decides against using the Final Aeon, due to the futile sacrifices it carries and the fact that Sin would still be reborn. Disappointed by their resolution, Yunalesca tries to kill Tidus' group, but she is defeated and vanishes, ending hope of ever attaining the Final Aeon. After the fight, the group learns that Yu Yevon, a summoner who lost his humanity and mind, is behind Sin's cycle of rebirth. This leads the group to infiltrate Sin's body to battle Seymour and Jecht's imprisoned spirits. With Sin's hosts defeated, Tidus' group battles and defeats Yu Yevon. Sin's cycle of rebirth ends, and the spirits of Spira's fayth are freed from their imprisonment. Auron, revealed to be unsent, goes to the Farplane, having died years ago after confronting Yunalesca. Just then, Dream Zanarkand and Tidus disappear, now that the freed fayth stopped the summoning. Afterward, in a speech to the citizens of Spira, Yuna resolves to help rebuild their world now that it is free of Sin.

In a post-credits scene, Tidus is seen swimming towards the ocean surface, and the screen fades to white. This scene segues into the sequel, Final Fantasy X-2, in which Yuna investigates Tidus' possible survival in order to find him.

Final Fantasy X Gameplay

Like previous games in the series, Final Fantasy X is presented in a third-person perspective, with players directly navigating the main character, Tidus, around the world to interact with objects and people. Unlike previous games, however, the world and town maps have been fully integrated, with terrain outside of cities rendered to scale. When an enemy is encountered, the environment switches to a turn-based battle area where characters and enemies await their turn to attack.

The gameplay of Final Fantasy X differs from that of previous Final Fantasy games in its lack of a top-down perspective world map. Earlier games featured a miniature representation of the expansive areas between towns and other distinct locations, used for long-distance traveling. In Final Fantasy X, almost all the locations are essentially continuous and never fade out to a world map. Regional connections are mostly linear, forming a single path through the game's locations, though an airship becomes available late in the game, giving the player the ability to navigate Spira faster. Like previous games in the series, Final Fantasy X features numerous minigames, most notably the fictional underwater sport "blitzball".

Reception
Final Fantasy X received critical acclaim by the media, and enjoyed high sales figures. Square expected the game to sell at least two million copies worldwide owing to the reduced PlayStation 2's fanbase, making it smaller than the last three released titles. However, within four days of its release in Japan, the game had sold over 1.4 million copies in pre-orders, which set a record for the fastest-selling console RPG. These figures exceeded the performances of Final Fantasy VII and IX in a comparable period, and Final Fantasy X became the first PlayStation 2 game to reach two million and four million sold copies. In October 2007, the game was listed as the 8th best-selling game for the PlayStation 2. The game has sold 6.6 million copies as of January 2004.

Japanese and Western critics have generally given Final Fantasy X high review scores. The Japanese video game magazine Famitsu and Famitsu PS2 awarded the game a near-perfect 39/40 score, and readers of the former magazine voted it the best game of all time in early 2006. Another Japanese gaming magazine, The Play Station, gave the game a score of 29/30. Famitsu, Famitsu PS2, and The Play Station expressed particularly favorable responses toward the game's storyline, graphics, and movies. The game maintains a 91% approval rating on GameRankings and 92 out of 100 on Metacritic. Producer Shinji Hashimoto stated that the overall reception to the game was "excellent", having received praise and awards from the media.

IGN's David Smith offered praise for the voice actors and the innovations in gameplay, particularly with the revised battle and summon systems, the option to change party members during battle, and the character development and inventory management systems. They also felt that the game's graphics had improved on its predecessors in every way possible, and that the game as a whole was "the best-looking game of the series arguably the best-playing as well". Greg Kasavin of GameSpot praised the game's storyline, calling it surprisingly complex, its ending satisfying, and its avoidance of role-playing game clich�s commendable with Tidus viewed as an appealing protagonist. He also lauded the music, feeling it was "diverse and well suited to the various scenes in the game". Similarly, GamePro described its character building system and battle system as "two of the best innovations in the series". The visuals of the game were commended by GameSpy's Raymond Padilla, who referred to them as "top-notch", as well as giving praise to the character models, backgrounds, cutscenes, and animations. The voice casting was praised by Game Revolution who noted most of them were "above average" and called the music "rich".

Edge rated the game considerably lower, criticizing many aspects of the game for being tedious and uninnovative and describing the dialogue as "nauseating", particularly panning Tidus. Andrew Reiner of Game Informer criticized the game's linearity and that players were no longer able to travel the world by chocobo or control the airship. Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell noted that the game's puzzle segments were "depressing" and "superfluous", and that although the Sphere Grid was "a nice touch", it took up too much of the game. The linearity of the game was positively commented on by GamePro who stated that a player would not be required to participate in side-quests or the mini-game to reach the game's conclusion, finding some of them unappealing. Game Revolution complained that cutscenes could not be skipped, some even being too long.

Final Fantasy X received the Best Game Award from the Japan Game Awards for 2001�2002. In GameSpot's "Best and Worst Awards" from 2001, it came seventh in the category "Top 10 Video Games of the Year". Final Fantasy X came in fifth on IGN's "Top 25 PS2 Games of All Time" list in 2007 and sixth in "The Top 10 Best Looking PS2 Games of All Time". In a similar list by GameSpy, the game took the 21st place. 1UP.com listed its revelation during the ending as the third-biggest video game spoiler, while IGN ranked the ending as the fifth best pre-rendered cutscene. In a Reader's Choice made in 2006 by IGN, it ranked as the 60th-best video game. It was also named one of the 20 essential Japanese role-playing games by Gamasutra. It also placed 43rd in Game Informer's list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time". In 2004, Final Fantasy X was listed as one of the best games by GameFaqs, while in November 2005 it was voted as the 12th "Best Game Ever". In a general overview of the series, both GamesRadar and IGN listed Final Fantasy X as the fourth best game. At the sixth annual Interactive Achievement Awards in 2003, it was nominated for "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" and "Console Role-Playing Game of the Year". At the end of 2007, it was named the ninth best-selling RPGs by the Guinness World Records. Readers from GameFaqs also voted it as Game of the Year during 2001. In 2008, readers of Dengeki magazine voted it the second best game ever made. It was voted first place in Famitsu's and Dengeki's polls of most tear-inducing games of all time. Both Tidus and Yuna have been popular characters in games in general due to their personalities and their romantic relationship.