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People defending Final Fantasy X

I have written previously in length why Final Fantasy X is one of the worst games I have ever played in my life. Even worse than Final Fantasy XIII. (The tl;dr version is: Everything that FFXIII did wrong, FFX did before it. Every complaint that you may have about the former is true for the latter. In fact, FFX is IMO even worse in almost every such complaint, and it even introduces a couple of its own.)

What I find curious, however, is that I seem to be the only person in existence who thinks this. Every person I have talked about it, either online or in person, who has played FFX, defends it.

Curiously, none of them seem to be able to give any rational reason why. For example I asked one such person, who I was talking to in real life, to name even one thing that was wrong with FFXIII that was not equally wrong in FFX. The only answer was "the battle system was better in FFX." No, seriously, that was the only answer they were able to give me.

I actually took that as an indirect admission that FFX was in fact effectively not any better than FFXIII (although I didn't say it out loud.) If the only argument is "the battle system" and nothing more, then that's pretty much the same as "effectively equally bad".

(As a tangent, it's a matter of opinion which game's battle system is better. In my personal opinion there isn't much of a difference, but I think I enjoyed the one of FFXIII more.)

Why people defend FFX is beyond my comprehension. It's an absolutely horrendous and frustrating game that does not deserve the bear the name "Final Fantasy" and does not deserve the category of (J)RPG.

Comments

  1. Most of the people in my circle of friends despise FFX. And many of them are JRPG fans. We're always ready to crack a joke along the lines of "(barely) playable movie" or "is that the Spirits Within thing?" should it be mentioned.

    I'd like to add that the fact that it's an auto-leveller (you touch on this in the "The dilemma of difficulty in (J)RPGs" article) makes me hate it even more.

    FFXII was a lot more playable, I found, despite it being very MMO-ish. I have yet to play FFXIII, but I can't imagine it being _worse_ than FFX unless it's simply a DVD/Blu-ray movie disc.

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    1. FFXIII is indeed eerily similar to FFX (as said, everything that FFXIII did wrong, FFX did it first). It's mind-bogglingly linear, and bereft of almost everything that makes a JRPG a JRPG.

      On the other hand, to my recollection it was not as bad in terms of cutscenes (although, to be fair, it has been so long I played it that I can't remember anymore for certain), and the fighting system, while not a traditional JRPG system, was enjoyable once you got used to it (and might be the only reason why I was able to play the game to its end.)

      FFXIII was certainly not a good game in the series by any means, and certainly not deserving the franchise name, but in my opinion it was slightly better than FFX.

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