Final Fantasy X was a great game that ultimately helped the survival of the PS2 by setting a high standard in graphics, voiceovers, and overall gameplay. It is possibly one of the most well rounded Final Fantasy games to date and a great game to play.
     The first great advantage in the game is the balance of characters and attributes. By integrating a battle system that allows you to swap out characters, you are forced to use essentially every character in order to easily defeat enemies. There is a total of seven characters, which may very well be the perfect amount for a Final Fantasy, and each of these characters has his/her own personality and battle effectiveness. In addition, because of the swap out battle system, you aren't forced to choose between your three favorites, and therefore all seven can grow in strength and character. You're no longer required to keep your white mage in the party just to cure your party.
     Another great factor provided by the swap out battle system is the boss difficulty level. For a large majority of bosses, you cannot simply take your three powerhouses and wail on the boss until he dies. Each boss requires that all members participate equally, even if that participation is to send Rikku in to steal an item and then take a powerful hit.
     The sphere grid is one of the most important factors in Final Fantasy X's replay value. With the sphere grid, you can basically level up your characters how you want them to level up. Each of the characters is given a basic path to follow except for Kimahri, so you still have somebody that you get to choose entirely how he will level up and what abilities he'll get. The characters with basic paths really should follow the paths they are given (trust me on this one) until they reach the end of their paths, at which point it's free game. Do you take Lulu the slow-ass black mage down Rikku's path to get some speed? Do you take Yuna through Lulu's path to get some attack magic?  For the most part, I always take people through Rikku's path as a secondary so that my powerhouses can get some speed, but the fun part about the sphere grid is playing around with it and finding the shortest paths to an awesome second path.
     Both the graphics and voiceovers of this game are exceptional, especially for their time. When I first played this game, I couldn't tell the difference between normal game play and an FMV. Of course, I can now, but the gameplay graphics are very good. Another factor contributing to the overall feel of FFX are the voices. Sure, people like Tidus degrade the whole thing, and Yuna's voice, although annoying and sounds permanently stoned, is actually very very close to the original Japanese voice, but people like Auron and Wakka easily make up for any poor voice acting... and then there's Seymour. The villain. He has a perfect voice.... half the time. He really has a split voice. He either talks like a complete fruitcake, or he talks like a super evil villain.
     The music of FFX is possibly the greatest hook factor of the game, but not necessarily the line nor sinker. What I mean is that while you start to play the game, you quickly come across the Zanarkand blitzball scene, which is an awesome scene by itself, but add in the Otherworld theme, and now you've exceeded awesome. Is it the best FF music ever composed? No, far from it in fact. But it is something that hasn't been experienced in a Final Fantasy before and in my opinion was a very successful blend of hard rock into the Final Fantasy series. Aside from this song, however, the music is decent, but not incredibly memorable. There is a lot of background music that fits well, but it's only background music. Nothing spectacular, but nothing bad.
     Now onto the important stuff; namely the plot. I know a lot of people complain about FFX's plot for being too linear. You're on a long pilgrimage to defeat Sin, and after a few slight detours and all, you're finally at the end with a final FF4esque twist. Still, as far as plot goes, it is simple, yet entertaining. It is extremely character driven, but I still highly enjoy the story. It changes immediate goals while always keeping to a single objective. For example, the beginning of the game (not that crap in Zanarkand or the Al Bhed boat, but the real beginning) all I really cared about was playing blitzball. I didn't know exactly what blitzball was, but I just knew I couldn't wait to get to Luca. Still, in the long run there was still the overall objective of defeating Sin.
     Onto blitzball. Yes, I was slightly disappointed with blitzball. It was way to turn based and slow compared to how it looked in the opening video of the game. Still, I enjoy playing it. The biggest downside to blitzball is knowing what it could have been. If they had put a bit of effort into making blitzball into a new and inventive sports game. With two joysticks on a controller, a 3D environment wouldn't have been that hard to make, would it? Also some speed tackling in quick passes into one-timer shots at the goal? It could've been sweet. Even if you could never change your character and were forced to permanently play Tidus in there it could have been friggin tight.
     Sidequests. I swear sidequests are a large part of FFX. Let's put it this way: The game takes about 20 hours to beat, yet I have a game of 200+ hours. The sidequests are large and moderately entertaining. Whether you're capturing creatures for the monster trainer, collecting Al Bhed magazines, or powering up the ultimate weapons, the sidequests are all pretty tough and yet well worth it. The sphere grid gives players a high incentive to max out their characters (a few times in my case since I went around and completely altered the sphere grid), and all the sidequests have very good rewards. Even the difficulty of certain events to power up the ultimate weapons is very high, yet most of them are still fun in certain respects. Even dodging 200 consecutive lightning bolts without saving in between can be tiring, but it's a nice sidequest to gloat about completing. And maybe I'm just really good at the chocobo race thing, but I can do that one fairly quickly and it's usually fun doing it. 
     While Tidus and Yuna do their share to drag the game down (especially since they're the two main characters), this game still holds strong because of a strong support of characters, exciting and/or profitable sidequests, and a great (although short) story involving a less than perfect system of beliefs and an almost King Kong like sacrifice ritual. It captures several typical Final Fantasy elements while adding in some new never before seen twists and one of the highest replay values Final Fantasy has ever seen. Sure is a good thing the game is short enough to accommodate such a replay value!

Goatbob's Rating: 
8.5/10 Lamps