» Reviews » Final Fantasy X-2

Square's first Final Fantasy sequel, with more action and less storyline, but is just as good as his big brother?

¤ Story

The story takes place 2 years after Yuna and her guardians defeated Sin. Yuna has ditched the Summoner look and has become a sphere hunter after she saw a sphere with a familiar someone in it. Together with Rikku & Paine they search all over Spira to find spheres.
Well, the game begins in Luca, where Yuna gives a concert (Real Emotion) to her fans in the stadium, but something fishy is going on. It isn't the real Yuna who is performing on stage and so Rikku and Paine are fighting their way to get on the stage. After your first battle on the stage against the imposter, she runs away. Rikku & Paine are going after her, and after some battles you met Ormi and Logos. Then the REAL Yuna appears. After the battle against the goons the imposters (who is called Leblanc) shows up. What gives, she stole the Songtress Dressphere from Yuna and she wants it back! After Leblanc gives the Dressphere back, YRP have to fight her. When she's injured she fled away along with the other goons.
And that is the completion of your first mission! You have to complete quests to advance in the story.

¤ Graphics

They look the same compared to his big brother, the FMV's still looks awesome! That's all I want to say, just great! :D

¤ Gameplay

Basically you have to complete missions, and the missions are divided into chapters. By completing a missions you can get further in the storyline and see what happened in the 2 years. Some missions are hotspots, they will get your further in the storyline, but some are not. If you complete those mission your completion percentage will increase. There are several ending movies of FFX-2, depending on how high your completion is. But after you finished your game you can start a New Game Plus; Your Dresspheres, abilities you learned, items, gil and more will be saved.

During the game you can collect Dresspheres, you can equip Dresspheres to learn abilities and gain stronger. It's just like the Job System in Final Fantasy V. You must equip the Dresspheres first into Garments Grid in order to equip. There are several Garment Grids with each their own stats. For example the White Mage dressphere has low HP and attack, but high MP and Magic. You can learn abilities like Cure, Life, Esuna. Depending on the Garments Grid you can equip several Garment Grids, so you can switch Dresspheres in battle. There are also special Dresspheres, each one. You can change to that when your Garments Grid has been fully changed. With those Dresspheres you can do special attacks, but beware your on your own then...

The battle system has been changed too. Your not fighting one by one according to the position, but just randomly. This increases the speed of battles and the gameplay. Also it's nice that you can switch Dresspheres during battles, but the sequence between that is kinda long...

There are also quite some mini-games, the big one in FFX-2 is Sphere Break. It's a game played in Luca. You have a field full on coins, with numbers on them from 1-9. Then you see which number you have to require. For example it's 16. You first have to select a orange coin (there 4 of these), then other coins. You've selected the coin with a 8, one with a 4, one with a 3, and one with a 1 on it. In total that's 16, you've to do it in a time limit, depending on who you have challenged. When you have reach the quota in the turn you get, you won the game.
Also you can play some games on the Calm Lands, easy looking games...

¤ Sound

This time the sound hasn't been done by the great Nobuo Uematsu, but by Noriko Matsueda and Takahito Eguchi and you can hear that. The music is kinda weird and it do NOT fit in the game. Maybe some, but most are not! Except the concerts songs,  they are very nice. But next time, please let Nobuo do this. This is properly one of the worst music I've ever heard!

¤ Characters

There are only 3 characters that you can control in battle, Yuna, Rikku & Paine. Since they are the YuRiPa together. They look very nice, but maybe a little bit to nice and too girly :P

The other characters just look almost the same as from Final Fantasy X, so they aren't really updates about this...