I've been playing Final Fantasy X (HD Remaster) on Twitch near-daily (also being gradually archived on YouTube for dedicated VOD viewers) and just passed the 10-hour mark, so I want to get down some of my thoughts about the game so far. In no particular order:

Tidus is the stupidest person in the world.

Maester Mika has a cool voice.

Fire, Thunder, Water and Ice is a bad selection of RPG elements.

Kimahri's story is the most interesting to me right now.

They call themselves humans, but they can breathe underwater and it doesn't seem to be because of magic.

Dona is one of my favorite characters.

Who was that Psycho Mantis demon child?

Tidus' adventure game narration is very funny to me.

I always forget which skills are in which menu in combat.

Are the controls for switching between targets in combat really relative to the camera? That's what it seems like and it seems dumb.

I don't think I like blitzball, but I think I want to like it.

This game is really fun and I want to get back to playing it right now.

yes

The hungry adventures of Meg Ryan starts anew.

The true test of whether you like Blitzball will be whether learning the trick to completely break it causes you to like it even more or think it's the dumbest side activity in the history of video games.

yesx2

I genuinely liked Blitzball to such an extent that eventhough i knew how to break it, i just didn't want to do it. What's the point of collecting all these cool moves and awesome players if i wasn't willing to ball?! For all it's faults, Blitzball is a massive step up in ambition from Tetra Master. A game where 4 random rolls are done each turn, to figure out who wins, can't be a good cardgame. They had such a good thing going with Triple Triad, but couldn't do it better the 2nd time around :(

Blitzball is a genuinely interesting idea that they just self sabotage completely by what they do with it in the main story.

I really bonded with my blitzball team, one of the best parts of the game.

I didn't expect this to get so many people reading it, so I neglected to mention that this is also the first Final Fantasy game I'm playing! I wonder what the next one will be... (After X-2; definitely playing X-2.)

I need to finish this game. I went wrong on the sphere grid and backtracking on that is not a thing I want to do.

How'd you go wrong? Were you playing Expert Grid? Because you can't really go wrong on the Standard Grid unless you break a bunch of locks.

Not sure how far you are, but there's a point about 2/3rds of the way through the story that's an excellent leveling spot. You're in Bevelle, and you're on a very long bridge with a save point on each side, and a boss fight at the north end. The enemies here give insane AP. I guess because you're completely locked into the area and they didn't want players getting stuck on the boss. Just grind there until you feel the AP is no longer worth it. Though if I recall correctly, you can get 8.4k AP per battle there (with the right mob configuration and overkills), and leveling up eventually caps at 22k. So if you've got time to kill, you could just fill out everyone's grid.

At some point you'll also start getting more Return, Teleport and Friend Spheres than you'll know what to do with. If you just bank your AP for a bit, you can use those to travel all across the board and rectify whatever mistakes you think you've made.

The next step would be the first boss of Mt. Gagazet. You can, in theory, steal unlimited Lvl 3 Key Spheres during the fight, but the chance decreases with each steal. You should be able to get 7-10 spheres before the fight is over, though.

Aaaand, you're done. At this point nothing can stop you.

I actually prefer X-2 over X and it's in my top 5 favorite FF games. I had a lot of trouble with FFX's linear structure initially, and X-2 is the polar opposite that regard. It actually plays more like a SaGa game in that it's an open-world game based on fast-travel points. Just pick a location to travel to, and stuff will happen. NPCs will literally walk up to you with quests. The battle system is also the best the series has to offer IMO (and completely different from FFX), and the job/skill system has a good carrot-on-a-stick feel to it where you sometimes just want to grind to learn that next skill, which you can pick yourself in the menu. It also has a more lighthearted tone, which is when FF is at its best to me.

I don't know that you'd wanna immediately delve into FFX-2 after FFX, though... Depends on how prone to burning out on a game you are. Most of the areas have been recycled from FFX 1:1.

My personal suggestion would be to move on to FFXII next. Probably my favorite game in the series, and still has a more contemporary feel to it than the pre-PS2 era FF games.

@axersia: Thanks! I'll keep that in mind.

@axersia: It's as simple as missing something (I wanted Lulu to have Flare) and was way, way past it in the grid. And I felt underpowered late-game.

Getting good at Blitzball boils down to stealing the Al Bhed team's goalie. That's about all you need.

It's unbelievable how bad they made it seem in the single mandatory match.

@onemanarmyy said:

@imhungry said:

The true test of whether you like Blitzball will be whether learning the trick to completely break it causes you to like it even more or think it's the dumbest side activity in the history of video games.

I genuinely liked Blitzball to such an extent that eventhough i knew how to break it, i just didn't want to do it. What's the point of collecting all these cool moves and awesome players if i wasn't willing to ball?! For all it's faults, Blitzball is a massive step up in ambition from Tetra Master. A game where 4 random rolls are done each turn, to figure out who wins, can't be a good cardgame. They had such a good thing going with Triple Triad, but couldn't do it better the 2nd time around :(

FFX was my first and is still my favorite FF game of the ones i played so i'm glad your enjoying it. blitzball has an odd learning curve to it if you recruit the right ppl ( honestly rin imo is the best i usually had) and keep the the far side of the area then its pretty easy to win games usually. if you've only really played the mandatory game in luca i'll say that is the Worst example of a match. ...honestly tho just enjoy the story and only do side stuff you enjoy -curses chocobo race-

@styx971: @mamba219: I actually won the mandatory match 1-0 and haven't won again since. But I've only played a few more games and Tidus still hasn't gotten his 1XP to get to level 3 to be able to use Jecht Shot.

Jecht shot makes things a lot easier since it straight up eliminates some blockers before you take the shot. But yeah, switching out some of the OG team also helps a lot. It should be a LOT easier than that first Luca match. I think it takes a handful of tournaments before there's a bump in difficulty again to keep things interesting because once you have a decent team and some levels on you, you burn through those tournaments without too many problems.

10 being someones first FF is a choice. I wish you luck.

It is a stupid game and I love it.

@eccentrix said:

That's amazing! A lot of rolls probably went in your favor for you to win that. And yeah Jecht shot is handy but not that great...it will help you score more often, but I remember finding the bigger problem was that you basically have no defense early on. There's pretty much no way to prevent people from scoring on you. I think you can find a freelance blitzballer named Wedge who is a really good defensive player somewhere in Luca, then do everything you can to upgrade your goalie. Despite his name, Keepa is not doing much for you.

I haven't played in a while, but i remember that the best defense is trying to force 1v3 situations by playing around with the formations. You don't really want your players to run forward and get beaten in 1v1 situations when your stats are worse than the opponent.

Also, i think this is explained in game, but make sure that you press triangle and take movement control when you're on offense. Pulling players towards you (while you're at the side of the field) and then passing the ball to a teammate that can avoid these players is what you want to do a lot.