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The Characters The World Of Final Fantasy X The Story The Battle System Graphics & Sound |
Here, I'll place information relating to FFX. If you know more or want to inform me of mistakes, e-mail me.
The Characters Of FFX
The World Of Final Fantasy X
It doesn't seem like so long ago that I was writing "The world of FF9 is called Gaia..." Time flies, eh? Well, this time the world is called Spira. This next bit might sound weird, but it's full of water. Remember that movie Waterworld? Well, like that. Now, once Spira was an almost perfect world, when technology was incredibly advanced. However, a force known as Sin destroyed much of the civilisation. Sin is represented on the FF X logo as the fire creature. The story is set 1,000 years after the destruction, where people fear technology and live as members of the Ebon religion, while Sin still exsists somewhere on Spira.
The Story
Ah, now we get to the good stuff! Well, obviously nothing's absoulutely perfect in detail, but the storyline seems pretty good. As mentioned above, one thousand years before the start of the game, the force known as Sin destroyed the tecnologically advanced cities of Spira. In the game, players take control of Tidus the blitzball-playing youth. However, the real focus of the story is his love interest Yuna, just as Aeris, Rinoa and Dagger were the focus of the story in the last 3 games. The daughter of the great summoner Braska, Yuna has had disturbing dreams recently, and believes that Sin is the cause. So, she sets out to defeat it, by gathering all the Aeons, the guardian creatures, from each Ebon temple. Once she has them all, she will be able to defeat Sin. I think the only reason Tidus is in there is to create a male main character- which may be a wise marketing descision on Square's part (due to the number of male gamers), but may undermine the concept of "main character". Yuna has two guardians: Kimahri and Lulu, possibly assigned to her by her father(?).
The Battle System
Limit breaks are back, only this time they are called Overdrives. More FFVIII influence can be seen here, as some Overdrives need you to push buttons with good timing to be performed. Tidus uses a multiple sword slash like Squall did, and another character uses a button combo system like Zell's. Yuna's overdrive is a lot easier- it summons anb Aeon with a full overdrive meter. Yes, you read that right, Aeons have overdrives as well. Read on.
The creatures now work differently. When summoned, they no longer perform a technique and return to...the other place they come from...but instead battle in place of your character until they run out of HP. This sounds cool, but does that mean you can only summon each one once per battle? And they really do fight just like a character. Once the Aeon's overdrive meter is full, it can use its Limit Break. This will be their classic attack, for example Shiva's Diamond Dust and Ifrit's Hellfire/Flames of Hell attack. Isn't that great?
Okay, so as most of you know, the main hero is a young guy named Tidus (Tee-dus), who looks a LOT like Zell from FF8. I'm not aware of much pertaining to the character's attitudes, but he looks like he'll be relaxed, like Zidane from the last game rather than Cloud / Squall. His favourite game is Blitzball, which will probably make a great mini-game, much like the chocobo breeding of 7. Oh, and this character seems to enjoy wearing shorts.
This is the heroine, Yuna. She's the daughter of a Great Summoner, and has inherited the ability to summon magical creatures. She actually seems far more interesting than Tidus, and more interest has been expressed towards her than to the male character. A recent poll result says Dagger is the best female character so far, but Yuna is very different, and some people think that squaresoft is trying to make her according to the current Japanese fashion. This might not hold up amongst some American and European players, but I think she looks rather good the way she is. She also seems a bit like Rinoa to me....
Info on the supporting characters is scarce, but here we go:
Wakka, a red haired Blitzball player, Lulu, a mage who uses a magic doll as a weapon (like Cait Sith), Kimahri Lonzo, a beastman guardian who protects Yuna, Rikku, a thief, and Auron, who is the usual hard shell (Vincent, Amarant). Tidus, Wakka, Kimahri and Auron are the guys (i might be wrong about Wakka and Auron!) and Yuna, Lulu and Rikku are the ladies this time. Tidus looks like Zell, Yuna looks like Rinoa, Rikku looks like Quistis and Lulu sounds like she's going to be akin to Selphie (can you imagine a big, tough muscle-bound person with that name?).
Look at that! Ifrit, the fire creature, looks astounding. The creatures return for FFX. This time around they're called Aeons, and are a big part of the story as Yuna collects them. Shiva and Ifrit have both been confirmed, as well as a new flying creature called Valfor. And this time around the Aeons battle as characters until they run out of HP, with their own limit Breaks and all.
Battles have changed, too. Now you have a three-person team, instead of four as in the previous game. However, it seems you will now be able to switch characters in battle- cool! And the famous ATB (Active Time Battle) system is clean gone. Now, the turn based system is allowed to take full authority, as turns come directly after one another. I don't approve of this as it doesn't allow speed factors and therefore means that stats might not be as important. Another cool feature is that boss battles now take place in real time field screens instead of a seperate battle screen. Square seemingly wanted to put all battles in the field screen, but couldn't manage it (I already had doubts about PS2), so it's just the big battles.