Final Fantasy X is another fantastic addition to the Final Fantasy Realm. The game has memorable characters that you easily get involved with as the amazing and complex storyline progresses. The graphics are extraordinary in their tremendous details, especially in the cuts scenes. The battle system is easy to master, but the opponents not always easy to defeat. This game both captivates and challenges you as you explore a whole new world, meeting new friends and making new enemies.

You play as Tidus, a young blitzball player who is sucked into another time by some giant frightening… thing… that you won’t really figure out what it is until the game progresses. Tidus is a wonderful character to play because he is both likable and flawed. Tidus gradually meets up with the whole cast of the game who each in turn are very realistic and give their own little something to the game. Character interaction is very entertaining and believable and sometimes will leave you in stitches.

Personality makes a good character, but so do graphics! And the graphics of this game are astounding compared to the past FF games. The characters are lifelike and the scenery is breathtaking. Every cut scene is gorgeous and things flow very well. Character movement is realistic and the camera angle doesn’t really cause any problems with this game.

The battle system may seem complicated at first, but it won’t take you long to learn it. Instead of fighting enemies head on, you’re taken to a cut scene where each character in turn gets to take a whack at the monster. While this may seem a little strange, the point of this is to use strategy to beat an opponent. This isn’t your average hack and slash game. You have to put a lot of thought into what move you make next, or it could be your last.

To keep your characters going strong as they battle tougher and tougher fiends, there is the sphere grid. Instead of gaining normal levels, the characters gain sphere levels which they can use to fill out the board and gain new abilities. Along with these sphere levels, you will need to gain things like Ability Spheres or Magic Spheres which can easily be obtained in battles. If you play the game through without running from any battles, you should be able to fill out your sphere grid enough to beat the tougher bosses, so leveling up is not an annoying task in this game.

The characters each have Overdrives that are unique to them. Overdrives are abilities that do greater amounts of damage. Depending

As many people are aware, Final Fantasy XII is just around the corner, and the excitement of playing it will surely be gripping every RPG fan in Europe. But its times like this where we must re-live and re-play the past.

The Final Fantasy series has prouded itself on being graphically ahead than most. Final Fantasy X is no different. Highly detailed characters overload the screen and it all looks fantastic. Each character is excellently designed – matching their personality simultaneosly. For example, Lulu (The black mage) is very tough and appears stoic and proud. This is emphasised by her buckled goth black dress, however you later begin to notice a deeper more hidden person behind the stoic facade – emphasised by her feminine hair style.

Scenery and Locations are great as well, capturing breath-taking atmosphere that really captures your imagination, forcing you to believe that the world of Spira really does exist.

Animation is above par as to be expected also. This is particually seen in summoning the aeons. Smooth and crisp flowing movements create grace for everything and anything that moves.

On a downer the mouth movements seem unrealistic and dont fit well with the speech. This can be very frustrating at times.

As for gameplay – the battle system is again an enjoyment to use. The ATB system allows you to have much more control over the outcome of the battle, meaning that certain actions by your characters change how the battle plans out. Levelling up your characters is also unique for the series, introducing the sphere grid. At times this can be highly manipulated into evolving your characters the way you want, which ultimately means you can change your warrior into a white mage and vice versa if you wish. However after a while you’ll find that this becomes tiresome and somewhat linear – meaning you’ll just follow a set course.

The story of Final Fantasy X is what sets this game apart from all previous FF Games. On the surface it might just seem like a normal battle between good and bad, but as you delve deeper into the game politics and religion become intertwined offering uprisings of rebellion, back stabbing and alliagances.

This is fantastic because it offers a much more mature experience from the whole good vs bad storyline offered by previous games. A hierarchy is obvious in Spira and pretty much straight away you become accustomed to the whole Spira way. All of the experiences in the game is backed up by well chosen music

Final Fantasy X changed everything. As the first Final Fantasy title to be released on the Playstation 2, it paved the way for not only RPG’s but all games to reach for that higher standard. Now, i know a lot of gamers complain n retrospect because of the amount of story and dialog compared to actual game play, but i don’t care! I remember the first time i rented it and ran to my friends house to slap it into his newly bought PS2, my friend of course being one of those RPG haters, left the room and left me with the game, as the introduction played out, i found it harder and harder to pick my jaw up off the floor!

Of course, nowadays, we are swamped with these X360 and PS3 next gen games will sense defying graphics, sound and game play, but we often forget some of those seminal titles that made this generation possible. First off, the game starts off with Tidus, the main protagonist, getting ready to play a game of blitzball, and after talking to a few fans, and heading to the arena, the game comes to an abrupt halt when Zanarkand (the City) is attacked by a huge globular monstrosity that emerges from the sea, and proceeds to destroy everything.

Tidus then awakens to find himself at the mercy of his acquaintance, Auron, who, seems to know whats going on. He tells Tidus, who stares at the monster in the distance, “We called it SIN” an proceeds to battle his way towards it. After a few tutorial battles, Tidus, Auron and everything else is sucked up into Sin, and at that point i was just floored. The scope of it all, the graphics, the overall presentation….WOW…simply breathtaking. The rest of the games story is long and has to be experienced first hand. But its that first few moments that really get you gripped.

This games overall value just makes other publishers looks cheap by comparison. its one of those games that is copied by everything that comes after it. The games scope is one of the first things you’ll notice, with the usual FF level up system being swapped for a sphere and path based system, that can break even the laws established by the Final Fantasy series, and make the User able to inflict almost 100,000 damage per hit, meaning no more level 99…in fact, no more levels! All thanks to insane and customizable weapons, and HUGE summons that i believe are responsible for changing the way the NIS is considered in all games since!

The games actual story is pretty linear, leading the player through a path through the world around them.

To a lot of people that came to Final Fantasy games late, it’s often voted as their all-time favorite. I’ll disagree, but it’s still heads and shoulders above most other RPGs you’ll find on the PS2.

It was the first FF title for the PlayStation 2 and that meant it had to “wow” those of us that have been following the series since the old NES days as well as interest new fans – and it delivered!

Graphics (10/10): The cut scenes are phenomenal. From the moment the game loads you’re treated with the introduction of the main character, Tidus doing what he does best: playing Blitzball (kinda’ like a 3D game of soccer played in an aquatic sphere – you’ll learn how important spheres are later). When the cut scene is over and you get to control Tidus you see how the ‘regular’ graphics are: Almost as good. If you really like all the cut-scenes, you can later find a place to watch them over again.

Music (10/10): This was Nobuo Uematsu’s last time at doing the music for a complete FF title and it’s perfect. The beautiful graphics of each scene are supplemented by an equally score. It’s actually worth buying the Official Soundtrack for. Some parts actually brought tears to my eyes (but, this isn’t altogether uncommon with FF music).

Voices (9/10): That’s right: VOICES! For the first time, there is an actual voice-over for most of the dialog in the game. A fantastic cast of voice actors were brought in for this game and most were just great to listen to – although, there were times I wanted to strangle Wakka.

Characters (9/10): Gone are the horrible caricatures of Final Fantasies VII and VIII. These folks have very dynamic personalities that develop over the course of the story. Tidus isn’t as wooden as Cloud or Squall. Yuna is bubbly, but not annoying (if you had the burden she had to carry you couldn’t be that bubbly). Auron and Kimahri are enigmatic, but still enjoyable. Rikku is the reason this only gets a nine out of ten.

Sub-games (8/10): If you want to beat the game, it’s not that difficult. Just give yourself about 60 hours and you’ll be done – however, if you want to try and hunt down 10 of each monster to fight Uber Bosses, this is fun (these guys make Ruby and Emerald Weapons (from FFVII) look like total wimps!). Of course, if you’re going to do that, you’re going to need Uber Weapons. Each character can find one, but then you have to do a couple of mini-games to unlock their abilities…let’s just say that getting Kimahri’s caused me to scream

To preface my aesthetic experience, I will say that, though a growing number of people believe video games have been or are becoming art, many people still consider video games the same way they still consider comic books, TV shows, and Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) too “low” to be art. Yes, there might be a good cartoonist, guest star, or clever Photoshop-ist, but they are just that. They are good, but they aren’t artists.

When I first started playing, video games were nothing more than interactive entertainment. They were lots of fun, but basic and depth was expressed through a story filtered through graphics that couldn’t give it its due. I think it’s completely fair to say that a large percentage of the games produced were shallow and frustrated attempts at the ideas developers had. In December 2001, Final Fantasy X (FFX) for the PS2 came out. In Fall 2003, I first laid hands on the PS2 and FFX.

Here is a thought experiment to understand the art of FFX: a blank world with people and no history. What would it take to make that world like Earth today? Religion? War? Government? History? Then would that world be comparable? FFX fills these requirements with astounding humanity through story and an entire, mostly visual, cultures. However, there are subtleties that require an education of some caliber to understand. For instance, one of the great swords has a move named after Bushido, the code of the samurai. The summons, called aeons, mirror gods, goddesses, myths, and legends from around the world. If indeed, as many claim, having history behind the strokes of a painting makes it worth more, then most certainly histories behind the histories of the models in a video game are worth something.

When people talk about video games with contempt, they usually cite its attempted realism against it – that is, it fails not because of vision, but because of hardware. This claim, though a bit superficial, has its merit. Generally people do not take giant strides and go no where, fight enemies through a system of hit points, or have places where they cannot go (see: pre-rendered). However, it takes time, as with any art medium, to find a stride where portrayed subjects are mastered (compare early cave paintings to Roman art). For video games, the vision is intact, but the tools to give these visions life are waiting on their own type of mastery. In Final Fantasy X, though the gameplay itself has many unrealistic characteristics, the cinemas are works of meticulous