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Take a walk with me for a moment down memory lane to the days of the Playstation 2. I was a casual gamer at best, occasionally testing my skills at Mario Kart or Unreal Tournament against my brother. I really had never spent more than two hours a day playing a game until Final Fantasy X was placed in my hands. Two hours quickly became six as I immersed myself into the story, leveling my characters until their feats of power reached legendary proportions. Oh the joy I felt when I heard there was to be a sequel to the story, but ultimately I was disappointed.
To this day, Final Fantasy X-2 is the worst game I have ever played.
FFX-2 picks up several years after Final Fantasy X ends with Yuna, Rikku, new character Paine and some Al Bhed (who needed to die after the first cut-scene) flying around the world collecting treasure and hunting for clues about Yuna’s angst ridden, she-male boyfriend from the previous game. First let’s start with the good points: The dressphere concept as a way to change classes without adding characters was a unique and imaginative idea, the story is interesting even though I have to credit that almost entirely to its predecessor, and the pre-rendered videos are very nice… That’s about it really.
The characters are brainless caricatures of women who wear as little clothing as possible for the T-rating and break into random cheers and clumsy high-fiving that made the gaming experience like controlling a couple of chicks from a blond joke.
The main mechanic of the game is the use of “dresspheres” which take the place of your usual Final Fantasy pick and mix of characters of various abilities. These dresspheres must be leveled up for every character if you wish for more than one girl to be able to use a particular one. Yep, that’s right, you need to level up the same sphere FOR EACH OF THEM. And in the most erect of dick-moves, some of the enemies are only susceptible to a certain dressphere and if only one girl has the dressphere you need, you might as well kneel down and start oiling up because you’re about to get screwed. This was a constant problem for me because I was not going to grind up every dressphere for every girl, I can tell you THAT for fuckin’ sure. Acquiring grids gives you the option to change dresspheres in battle and different grids carry different bonuses should you pass through every node on the grid. However, changing between dresspheres takes that girl’s turn which in damage-race style combat is instant death so you might as well forget about it. The game seems to think that receiving these grids is some kind of reward and by the end of the game I had 30 different grids of various bonuses and sizes of which I only ever used 1 (the smallest) because there was no reason to use any of the others.
Most of the characters from FFX can be found in their original locations as if their feet have been nailed to the ground and they even built a fucking dialogue tree where Yuna identifies them and shares small talk. 40% of the game can be blamed on these unskippable, time-sucking dialogue trees without which the game would probably be about 5 hours long.
The mini games (another 40% of the game) are repetitive, difficult and time consuming. There was one point where I had to catch Chocobos for a breeder so he could send them out looking for additional dungeons for me to explore. Chocobos must be caught from random encounters and there is a chance that the bird will run away before you’ve had a chance to pummel them into submission. After I spent several hours catching my squadron of birds and leveling them up by feeding them grasses (soaked in steroids I suppose), I was finally ready.
“Go my minions.” I said. “Travel wide and find me epic places to explore.”
Not one single goddamn bird came back.
"Don't worry." The helpful online walkthrough said. "Just keep catching them, leveling them up, and sending them out and after several hours you should get a return."
You will be surprised to hear that I did not set this game on fire. I keep it around to remind me that no matter how frustrating a game can be, none thus far have reached the epic shittiness of Final Fantasy X-2.
It’s a good feeling.
Comments
12 years, 5 months ago
Indeed.
12 years, 5 months ago
Great debut article, Tara. I can't say I've played this, but I don't think I had any interest to especially after reading your problems with it. Hope to see more from you :).
12 years, 5 months ago
I feel the same way. Really only redeeming thing X-2 had for me was the combat system; hated just about everything else.
12 years, 5 months ago
I agree 100% with this.
12 years, 5 months ago
"To this day, Final Fantasy X-2 is the worst game I have ever played."
WHUUT??!
The character progression with jobs was SO SO fun. And lucky you, if the worst game you played was this, because theere's a LOT a LOT worst out there.
"Final Fantasy X wasn't originally planned to have a sequel, but after a strong fan reaction to the short story titled '"Eternal Calm" included with Final Fantasy X International, the development team decided to continue the story in a sequel."
So they did what fans wanted. I enjoyed the game, the nostalgia and job system was enough for me. Seeing everyone I had met in the previous journey was awesome for me. The freedom to go wherever you want. The game was different from other FF's. Yes it had fanservice from the girls, the story was not that good, and they didn't even bother changing Wakka to make him chubby, but who cares, I had so much fun playing.
S***ting on this and FF8 seems to be a fans favourite past time and it's lazy and at least for me doesn't boost gamer cred or "true fan" status.
"you need to level up the same sphere FOR EACH OF THEM" - doesn't jobs in FF Tactics and Dragon's Dogma do that too?
12 years, 5 months ago
I've never beaten a Final Fantasy in my life, but the stories of bs I hear and read from people never cease to amaze me. Thanks for the laugh.
12 years, 5 months ago
Why the is there a photo of Advent Children in this article?
"difficult and time consuming(...)
Not one single goddamn bird came back"
Doing it wrong.
"some of the enemies are only susceptible to a certain dressphere and if only one girl has the dressphere you need," WHUUUT? Give an example please because I really don't remember a single enemy that required a dessphere to be beaten.
This article annoyed me.
12 years, 5 months ago
eh... I liked the game. At least the characters who were supposed to look like girl were girls.
Story was ok, didn't care much about it, too busy being in love with class system. On the earlier comments about advantages of certain dress-spheres, I never had a problem with any enemy.
I prefer the dress sphere system over the sphere grid. For sure.
12 years, 5 months ago
Nice, an article dedicated to badmouthing a 9-year old game, I'll be sure to steer clear, Tara...
12 years, 5 months ago
I thought FFX-2 was a pretty good sequel to FFX. Definitely better than some FF sequel I recently played. At least FFX-2 felt like a finished game.
12 years, 5 months ago
In the words of the immortal Chad Wardenn, "Look at final fantasy 12 walking around with a little gun 'n shit. shi- everybody knows guns can't do shit other than SUCK.DICK."
With that said, this was greatly written and just about sums up my feelings on this shark jumper.
12 years, 5 months ago
I know that this is a fairly negative comment, Tara, but I would appreciate it if you'd give it a read.
The self-righteousness in this article undermines its credibility. The negative posts above mine have been doing a fine job of pointing out the issues here, so I'll leave it to those more familiar with X-2.
However, regardless of whether I agreed on the the quality of the game itself, making a name for yourself with overly-dramatic, juvenile posts like this isn't the best idea. I can only assume that you were hoping for some nerd-cred here. Unfortunately, the only agreements you'll find with a post like this will be from those who either aren't familiar with the game, or need a vent for some personal frustration, and will be more than happy to jump on the bandwagon.
You have some talent here, but you should try to focus on earning people's trust before you blast them with your opinions. Why should they are about what you have to say? Opinion pieces are the easiest to write (particularly negative ones), and will only earn you credibility from those who already agree with your viewpoint. Instead, write up something with some heavy research - prove that you know your stuff. I know that strong, sensationalistic writing is popular these days, but I encourage you to keep a humble attitude, and reserve strong opinions like this post for when they're truly deserved. They'll hit the audience all the harder if you do.
Anyway, I don't know if you'll bother to read this or take any of it into consideration, but, if you do, know that I (and I'm sure many others) would love to read your future work.
12 years, 5 months ago
Thanks for the article! It was good!
12 years, 5 months ago
While I agree the overly bubbly personalities and dumb fan-service moments were unbearable, this game is far from the worst one out there. The combat system is great and the dresspheres were an interesting take on the whole class system. I do agree it's at the bottom of the barrel concerning FF games, but I'm one of those people that tries to find a positive thing about any game I play. You know. To make it a better experience.
Shocker.
12 years, 5 months ago
Eh, I liked it. To me it was fun, goofy and different. I had no problem with the Chocobos or leveling up Dress spheres, though. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that there were a lot of pointless little scenes/events that could easily prevent you from getting a 100%.
Weird article.
12 years, 5 months ago
Dress spheres concept + smooth combat system were the only reasons I finished that game.
12 years, 5 months ago
Final Fantasy X-2 has one of the best combat systems in the series. Sure it had a shit story and all that but the gameplay was fantastic.
11 years, 2 months ago
I love how you quoted Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation for some of your rhetoric. You suck, and are a lame copycat plagiarizer who has no business being in a blog, or whatever shitkicker site this is.