Final Fantasy X:
The first game in the HD Remaster is naturally Final Fantasy X, which was originally released on the PlayStation 2 in 2001. There is a bit more work made to Final Fantasy X compared to other HD remasters, including character model changes, additional content (i.e. compilation of the bits and pieces released over the years), rearranged soundtrack and upgraded resolution to support full HD. While the remaster overall was fantastic, the game looking great for the most part, the PS2 roots are still very evident with the fixed facial expressions of characters when they are talking and the stiff animation typical of JRPGs during that era. Characters would spin on the spot when turning, awkwardly bend their limbs when reacting and having the slight change in facial expression even when they are supposed to be very happy or sad. However, character models have been updated, in particular, Tidus' hair is impressive. NPC character models though are not as impressive, due to the flat and pixilated details. The environmental detail stack up to this day and age, and there are some areas where it will wow you such as the beautiful nightly glow of the Woods of Macalania or the lush plains of The Calm Lands. One thing you need to get used to are the fixed camera angles, you cannot move the camera at all, which is annoying.
The fixed camera means that the game forces abrupt changes to the camera angles as you explore, which gets confusing when you're suddenly facing another direction. The fixed camera angles also mean that it hides chests and other secrets easily, which feels cheap. Objects which you can interact with on the floor are often lost in the detail, making it easy to miss. Random encounters are here, the screen shatters suddenly and you're thrust into battle. Sometimes the encounter rate is very high, which can drag out an area, especially since the battle system leans towards being slow and strategic. The battle system is your classic Final Fantasy turn-based affair called the Conditional Turn-Based Battle System. Effectively, on the right side of the screen, it shows the order of the turns for team members and enemies, determined by character's speed stats. This means if you're fast enough, you can sneak in more turns than the enemy, and since you are not on a time limit to make you move, you can stop and plan ahead. What makes this battle system unique is that you can swap any of your characters in the active party (three members battling at one time) with another, with no peanlty. Swap from Tidus to Rikku and she can attack immediately. This is a neat idea although the fact that a character will only earn experience if they used a move at least once during battle means even normal encounters will drag on as you swap all characters in between killing monsters.
Each party member is basically representation of a particular job/s in previous Final Fantasy games. The characters focus on different aspects such as blue magic, a white mage, black mage, range, speed and power. Using each one at the right moment is crucial to defeating enemies and especially bosses. During battle, you can use magic, special abilities such as stealing and increasing attack without using MP, summon Aeons to fight for you and perform Overdrives (aka limit breaks). The different aspects are slowly revealed to you so it is not overwhelming for the player. Although sometimes there will be options specific to a boss battle which you don't realize as the game does not point it out. All the elements of a JRPG is here, you get to travel from town to town, upgrading your equipment (which can be customized with specific abilities), and leveling up. The leveling up system is determined with the Sphere Grid. Characters don't have a traditional level anymore, rather they earn points to be able to move around a spherical grid, gaining stat boosts and extra abilities in the process. It allows more freedom as there are blank slots which you can decide what to boost (strength, magic etc) and branching paths. There is even an Expert Sphere Grid for experienced players to remold each party member to their liking, want to switch Yuna from a healer to a physical attacker? No problem!
Final Fantasy X suffers from the annoying issue of being only able to save at predetermined save points. If you die in a random encounter, you will have to load your last save. While save points are fairly numerous, it can still get annoying if you're accidentally wiped out by a Marlboro and lost half an hour of progress. Loading screens are also prevalent, the game doesn't install anything to your hard drive. The story stats off slow but as you travel through the land of Spira, you can more backstory and it is more interesting. It takes 10+ hours before your whole party is together but once it forms, the dynamic and interactions between them are good. You can probably tell but it is partially the love story between Tidus and Yuna. It is not as detailed or as good as Squall and Rinoa from Final Fantasy VIII. Yuna is a Summoner, destined to defeat a huge monster called Sin, who keeps killing humans and destroying towns. Tidus is called upon to be her Guardian, as she travels around Spira to gain Aeons and their power to defeat Sin. Obviously, things get complicated, they meet questionable characters and the rise of the antagonists. It goes from a simple journey to becoming fugitives and an all-out battle of ideals. It is more complex than you would expect but the pacing can be off from time to time.
The story is told via cutscenes, which cannot be skipped at all. This is frustrating if you lost progress from dying and need to sit through those cutscenes again. There are also a lot of these cutscenes. It will often shift from cutscenes using the game's engine to pre-rendered cutscenes which are of a much higher graphical quality. Final Fantasy X is also the first game in the series to have voice acting, although the lip syncing is horrendous, there were even times when the characters has finished speaking before their mouths started to open. There are numerous boss battles and there is a noticeable difficulty spike towards the end of the game, and again in the final dungeon. Be prepared to be wiped out if you do not know what is coming, as a lot of those battles rely on the player anticipating the boss's attack patterns. It can get frustrating when your party, even if you have not escaped from a random encounter before, still getting wiped out so easily from a story boss. Anyway, persist because the ending is worth it. The ending was amazing, its emotional impact is huge and you come to realize you are very much attached to those characters.
There are a few minigames, the biggest of which is Blitzball, a variation of soccer/football but underwater. It relies heavily on stats and the game mechanics are deep and complex. It takes a while to get the hang of and you can easily get lost into it. The other major minigame is a type of puzzle called Cloister of Trails. The end up being extremely aggravating and destroying any sort of exciting within the story. The other minigames are equally frustrating to the point of not being fun at all, from the terrible controls of chocobo racing to the luck based and time-consuming monster hunting. Sure, it adds content to the game but it doesn't actually add worthwhile content. This is the International Version of the game so there are lots of superbosses which require near-maxed stats in order to even have a chance of defeating them. That is the issue of Final Fantasy X's endgame content, the story doesn't bring you near enough in terms of strength to even attempt some of the more interesting sidequests. Overall, Final Fantasy X is a great game, it has a strong battle system and an interesting story that evolves and gets better as the game progresses. The HD remaster makes the game prettier than ever. Final Fantasy X is one of the best JRPGs that should not be missed.
Final Fantasy X-2:
Final Fantasy X-2 was the first ever direct sequel to a flagship numbered Final Fantasy game (and the only one until XIII-2), in this case, this is a sequel to Final Fantasy X. Released originally for the PS2, this HD remaster has the added benefits of an increase in resolution and widescreen support. It also uses the International Version of the game, which has extras such as the Creature Creator sidequest and the Last Mission spin-off minigame. Being a sequel, it is unavoidable but Final Fantasy X-2 heavily reuses the environmental assets of the original game. While there are new areas of old locations such as in Gagazet, these new locations are very limited, maybe comprisong 5% of the game itself. Amplifying this flaw is the fact that you are expected to trawl through each of the same environments time after time through the game, especially if you are aiming to 100% complete the story. This feels uninspired and lazy. There is no longer the sense of excitement or awe whenever you go through an area, simply because you have seen it before in X, and now you've seen it ten more times in X-2. The other issue is the encounter rates. Final Fantasy X-2 has some of the most uneven encounter rates in a JRPG. There are absurdly high encounter rates in most of the game but from time to time, although rare, you will have those areas with such low encounter rate that you will not get into battle even after you've trawled through the whole section.
X-2 retains the random encounters and while each area has theoretically different encounter rates, it feels very haphazard and annoyingly frustrating. Final Fantasy X ended on a melancholy note, although sweet at the same time, you'd want more. Disappointingly, X-2 does not satisfy that hunger. The story is now upon Yuna, Rikku and new character Paine. They are now Sphere Hunters. After seeing a video sphere from 1000 years ago and someone looking like Tidus appearing in it, Yune decides to hunt for more of these spheres. Throughout the journey, you find out the aftermath of Spire after Sin was defeated and it does not look good. You see the holy ground of Zanarkand tarnished by tourists, and extreme factions forming: New Yevon followers against the Youth League (i.e. anti-Yevon, even though it was a Yevon follower who defeated Sin in the first place). It just feels too much change in the space of two years, to the point where it's a bit exaggerated and hard to believe. While Final Fantasy X's game defining iconic events are Tidus returning to Zanarkand or the underwater date with Yuna, X-2's game defining events are... pop concerts? Oh, how the game has fallen so far, it feels like a joke. You obtain the airship immediately and are able to go to any destinations at all. This gives players an amazing amount of freedom and non-linearity to the game.
The non-linearity is also X-2's downfall as it causes the game to not be able to focus on telling its story. The story will not end up engaging the player. You don't care about the story anymore, cutscenes are overly long and boring, lacking any charm or purpose. Yuna's personality literally does a 180 degree flip, which feels weird and out of character. Since the reuse of environmental assets means that it's a mix of pre-rendered and real-time rendering again, the camera angles are still fixed. This remains annoying when the angle shifts suddenly as you're walking and suddenly you're pointing and walking in the wrong direction. Or how the game hides items within the frustratingly detailed/blurred environments and makes it hard to notice. There is the addition of a jumping and climbing mechanic for the character, although this is only available at predetermined spots, it feels extremely gimmicky and in the end, unnecessary. The Battle System is surprisingly vastly different to Final Fantasy X. X-2 reverts back to a variation of the Active Time Battle system, which feels much less strategic and initially makes you feel rushed when battling. There are bars that fill as time goes on and once it is full, your character can then perform an action. In addition to waiting for your turn, there is also an additional Wait Time when using magic or other abilities which means you wait even longer before you can execute that attack.
Magic casting and ability animations take time and can be interrupted, which means you could have attacked physically twice even thrice before you can finally use that attack you selected in the first turn. It's frustrating, annoying and pointless. The three protagonists make up your party for the duration of the game. The key feature in the game is the Dressphere system, which is basically a job class system from previous Final Fantasy games. It is much more complex though, there are a variety of dresspheres that you can obtain such as the conventional Warrior and Black Mage, to the unconventional ones like Lady Luck and Festivalist. Each dressphere has its own unique abilities which you earn when defeating enemies (separate from the character leveling system). You can switch between dresspheres at any time during battle, however, which dressphere you can change into is dictated by equipment called Garment Grids, which is also earned during the game. Switching dresspheres is time consuming and puts you at a slight time disadvantage, even when you turn the animations off, so you'll end up just using whatever dressphere you have equipped at the time. While the game looks decent in HD, it feels as if there wasn't as much attention put into X-2 since the character models can be horrible, even the protagonists. There are heaps of loading screens and the load times add up quite a bit when you think about it.
With the focus on non-linearity, naturally this means that there are a lot of sidequests. If you want to 100% complete the game, you will have to complete all these sidequests which can be a huge drag. The 100% complete requirements are ridiculous, especially since it'll be impossible to do so if you do not use a walkthrough due to the tiniest and pointless actions the player must perform. The 100% ending scene you get isn't worth it and doesn't make much sense, rather it feels like a forced retcon. These sidequests do not add to the game at all. Sidequests are boring, lame and time consuming. While it adds to the game's length and content, the fact remains that you end up grinding excessively and running through the same environments again and again. The game is filled with minigames and some of them are extremely frustrating or annoying, to the point of feeling unfair. Then you have confusing puzzles which is made worse when punctuated with battles. You seriously wonder about the design choices of X-2, and it makes for a horrible game. The non-linearity also dumbs down enemies. The experience given by enemies doesn't increase much, and they're of a similar strength. The only challenge comes from cheap attacks such as the frequent "reduce HP to 1" or even "instant death" attacks, needless to say, those are frustratingly unfair.
Story bosses are a joke if you aim for 100% because you will be severly overpowered. On the other hand, optional bosses can be horribly overpowering and wipe you out before you know what happened, requiring you to grind above and beyond all that grinding you already did. The music is average, it is skewed towards pop which does not suit the game, especially after the epic feel of Final Fantasy X. There is a bonus minigame call Last Mission, which is a roguelike game (i.e. dungeon crawler). In it, you have to traverse 80 procedurally generated floors. It is vastly different to the main game and will take some getting used to. It acts as a final ending to X-2 and a glimpse of what happened afterwards. The last bit of bonus is an audio drama set after the events of X-2 which is... weird and vague. Let's just say the Final Fantasy X universe ended at the end of X... Overall, Final Fantasy X-2 is a poor follow up to the fun and rewarding Final Fantasy X. It has bursts of slight fun but with an overabundance of minigames, a story lacking substance, boring sidequests, cheesy dialogue, bad examples of pop music and excessive reuse of environmental assets, Final Fantasy X-2 is really for you to play in the hope that it'll be able to match the heights of the original.
Overall:
Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster is an amazing package. So much attention has been put into the games that other HD remasters don't, and it shows clearly here. X remains fantastic JRPG goodness to this day while X-2 doesn't fare as well. With the bonus of the Eternal Calm short movie, Last Mission spin-off and an audio drama, there is so much content here. Even if you only play X, this collection is worth it for that alone.
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