Final Fantasy X: anyone try it?

Nine rocked!!

I beat X over winter break. It took me about 50 hours, and I went straight through, without bothering with many extras. I loved it... I played 7 extensively, but gave up on 8, and only looked briefly at 9 (but 9 did look better than 8). In my opinion, X is the best FF since before 7 sometime.

The best way to describe FFX is 'polished'. The annoying little things from previous FF games (at least 7/8/9) are gone: no irritating minigames, no throwaway characters (everyone is at least somewhat interesting and useful), not too many summon magics (and you're not made too dependent on them), and not too many random encounters (and none in puzzle areas!).

The old class system is gone, replaced by a more flexible one where you buy your abilities with skill ranks - every ability is on a map relative to others, and you move your characters from node to node acquiring new abilities. Some abilities are "closer" for some characters, and so end up costing less, so that some are naturally tending toward white magic, others toward stealing, others toward high physical abilities, and so on, though anyone can eventually learn any skill.

The story is quite linear, well told, with a few interesting twists. The game's pace alternates between long periods with no random encounters and shorter ones that have them. You usually control how much time you spend in various areas, so you can spend as much time as you like exploring (for instance there's an arena you can capture monsters for and win prizes in, which I didn't bother with).

I really liked the music, though I can't really say why.

The one thing that bugged me a bit was the voice acting (I played the english dub version, which is the one commonly available in the 'States). The story sequences are all voice acted, with optional subtitles. It grew on me eventually, until I liked that of all but one character (that was unfortunately Yuna, the most central female character).

All in all, a beautiful game that I enjoyed very much. Word around the 'net seems to be that it's a big step up from Square's most recent efforts, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Oh yeah, one more thing, and I think it's important, so I'm putting it in a second post:

You regret that Square turned the FF line toward mass appeal, and I feel much the same way. I think X is "mass appeal done right", and even the most hard core RPG fans should like it quite a bit. The story is above average, and might not be quite enough to satisfy everyone, but it's the attention to detail that makes this a truly outstanding game. Everything, and I mean everything, about it just felt right.

I don't have enough experience with 9 to say. I haven't gotten around to playing it much, because I don't own it (8 left a sour taste in my mouth, and I wanted to try it before buying), but I borrowed it for a little bit and started playing. I got sucked into Baldur's Gate II (on my computer) the next day, though, so I never got anywhere.

My friend beat it and he said it was better than 7, though he never played 8. One of my complaints with 7 was that it was seldom obvious what had to be done next... sometimes I had to wander around and wait for the story to find me. None of that in X, the game moves right along if you want it to.

Word seems to be that 9 is better than 8, about on the level of 7.

I got my start with FFII (Japanese 4) on the SNES. I spent a winter vacation doing nothing but playing it when I was in junior high school. Soon after I played FFIII, and Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana... great games all. Eventually I beat the original a couple times - on an emulator, because I never owned a NES. My favorite FF is still II, though. At least, my memories of it are the most fond. I'll probably pick up the Chronicles PSX disc that has FFII and Chrono Trigger on it. Square updated the translation for FFII, so it should read a little more smoothly.

I don't know if I like X better than FF2/3 on the SNES. That was a different era and I am a different person than I was. I can only say that X restored my faith in Squaresoft. That is a weighty statement, given how long I've been a fan of the company's games, and the depths to which its more recent products sank.

Are these gonna come on PC?

Ive been waiting for soooo long

prob have to wait longer .... *sigh*

This is getting to be a bad habit for me, but I wanted to create another post to more specifically address one of your points.

There isn't that much equipment in X. Every character has one class of weapons and armor to use (only Auron uses katanas, Yuna uses staves, and so forth). One weapon and one armor are equipped at a time (no accessories a la FFIII). There are not very many individual pieces of equipment in the game, and you tend to get better ones more by winning from monsters than from treasure chests (stores are also important for "empty" weapons, that can be heavily upgraded, as I'm about to describe).

The really fun aspect is the ability to find or steal various upgrade components that let you permanently "weld" various abilities onto your armor and weapons. Stuff you find has certain abilities already prepared, and varying numbers of empty slots to graft new abilities onto. Each graft takes varying numbers of various items. These items usually have a one use power (like one will cast Shell once, another will blind the target, and so on), though not all do. The items for some powers are very rare and hard to come by, only obtainable from exotic monsters. Some of the more powerful abilities are experience doubling and avoidance of all random encounters. More common stuff is a bonus to HP or MP, or resistance or immunity or even getting healed by various kinds of attacks, (fire ward, fire proof, and fire eater, respectively). Items have a maximum of four slots, and usually at least one will already contain a pre-selected ability when you find or buy the item.

I like the system a lot. It's just another way FFX is more flexible (and less convoluted) than some of its predecessors. Messing around with materia in 7 really irritated me.

I doubt FFX will come to PC any time soon. You can play any of the FFs up through IX by emulation, though. Careful what you wish for, anyway... Squaresoft's PC port of FFVII was really terrible, a buggy and almost unplayable mess.

Even so, I'll still wish for a FFX port to PC, because I refuse to buy a PS2.

No way...ff7 was kewl on the pc I didnt come across one single bug while i was playing it.

ff9 via emulation? which emulator?
I might get the game if it works...i hear that some emulators only emulate some but not all parts of ff9

A good playstation emulator for win32:

http://www.epsxe.com/

You can play off the CD's or an image on your hdd. I've tried Chrono Cross and FF9 on it and it works pretty well. I only tried them briefly though, as I've become very bored of console games.

great thanks