And--it must be said--along with the improvements in graphics and sound that
Final Fantasy X sports, it also represents a delicious upgrade in gameplay. While there are still a few annoying videogame tropes hanging around--too many random battles!--
Final Fantasy X is the most well-rounded game in the series so far, with a high refinement of the battle engine and a delightful new leveling system. Oh, and a good storyline too.
The game starts with Tidus, our blonde hero, on the eve of a big Blitzball game. He's the star of his team, and we get to watch him playing the surreal underwater-soccer game in glorious FMV. In the middle of the game, though, something comes along and starts to tear up his city. Soon enough, he's flung into Spira, a world that seems both like and unlike his. There's Blitzball, and there's Zanarkand--destroyed a thousand years ago. There are also summoners, whose training lets them call Aeons (Final Fantasy X's version of Espers/Summoned Beasts/what have you). If a summoner visits all of the temples of the land, they can learn to summon the Final Aeon, which they can use to destroy Sin for a number of years. Yuna, the female lead, is a summoner just starting on her training, and it's into her company that you fall into.
The storyline, of course, has its share of twists and turns, although for the most part the course is set. You're going to the various temples to gain the Aeons, and as Yuna's guardians, Tidus and the rest of the motley crew devote themselves to protecting her life.
The characters run the gamut of the Final Fantasy legion. There's the main-character-sword-swinger, the supporting-female-white-mage (who also happens to summon), the powerful-older-man, the chirpy-young-female, and so on. The various generic characterizations aren't so important; what is important is that they're all characters. Everyone seems to have their place, and no one feels just tacked on to the game, to add someone else to the character roster. It's a nice change.
Speaking of changes, the battle system has finally left Active Time Battle behind. Instead, battles are strictly turn-based, although the turns come the same way that they did in ATB--the faster the characters, the quicker their turns come up. There's a queue on the side of the screen that shows you what's coming up next, so you can plan your attacks accordingingly. Battles are ostensibly three-character, but you can switch in any of the characters not 'on the line' without losing a turn, allowing you to cycle the characters you need into the party almost instantaneously. It works fantastically, and it's a great way to keep your hurt characters safe while bringing in fresh troops during a boss battle. It also means you're never stuck because you forgot to bring along your black mage into a magic-weak battle.
Another major change is the way that characters gain abilities. Instead of discrete character 'levels', where various stats get boosted and abilities are learned, the characters in Final Fantasy X gain Sphere Levels. Every character starts at a particular location on the Sphere Grid, a mind-blowingly massive tableaux that looks like nothing so much as a hypercomplex Parcheesi board. You can expend Sphere Levels to move on the table--one per new location, or one for four moves 'backwards'. You can also expend Spheres to pick up the various things on the boards--stat increases, new abilties, spells and the like. While characters start in predetermined areas, they can go anywhere they like on the board (given enough Sphere Levels), allowing you to customize your team as you like it. It's a brilliant change, because you're gaining stats after every couple of battles instead of every ten or twelve.
Along with these changes, there's the obligatory primary minigame (the aforementioned Blitzball, which is perhaps one of the most interesting 'sports games' I've played in a while), the obligatory hidden quests, tons of things to do on the side to enhance your characters, and so on. The game is plenty lengthy; you won't find yourself tromping through it in one day, or even one week unless you play it hard.
