This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

We are going to jump right into this one, because I have a feeling that this write-up will be on the lengthier side of things when all is said and done. Today we are talking about Final Fantasy X (I played the re-master on PS4, but I think most applies to the original), I think everyone should know what that is by now, so I will spare that nonsense. I will warn everyone that there are going to be major spoilers when we get to talking about the plot, and hopefully I remember to block out that portion so you can enjoy this write-up without having the game spoiled for you. If you need an early preview of how I feel about this game, it was a game I have played previously (not for this series), and yet despite spinning my “what game I playing wheel” and ending on the equivalent of a free space, decided I want to play this game again.

When we are talking about Final Fantasy X I think there are two things that we need to address right at the top of the hour here, even though it is out of order. Blitzball is not that f*cking bad! And that laughing scene is not the worst moment in video game history. I feel like whenever this game is brought up, people who either don’t like it (or never tried it) bring up those two things as these huge demerits to a fantastic game. First off, Blitzball is a side activity that you can COMPLETELY IGNORE! You are forced to play a single game that will take you 15 minutes tops and whether you win or lose impacts nothing in the game. It technically changes what a character is holding in a short cut-scene, but it never comes up again. And good news, you are never forced to play another game throughout the entire game. Now I can already see some people complaining that if you don’t engage with Blitzball, then you miss out on some specials and the best weapon for a character, but again it doesn’t matter. I have never completed this game having all of the best weapons, I have never fully leveled up a character, I have never come close to 100% this game with all the side quests, and it doesn’t matter. You can still beat the game without any of those things, and you can make Wakka (the character in question here) a powerhouse without those specials and ultimate weapon, by just leveling him up normally. I’m sorry Blitzball is not triple triad (from FF8), which is where I think the hate really stems from, but it is just as deep and fun to play IF you do enjoy it. Maybe we will talk about Blitzball more, but we need to address the other issue people have with this game, the laughing scene.

Yes, that laughing scene is weird and could have been handled differently, but it makes sense within the story and the rest of the game I would argue isn’t the worst voice acted scene of all time, as some people want to deem it. See (without getting into the spoiler portion yet), it is supposed to sound like a forced fake laugh, It is not supposed to sound natural, because it is not natural. Your player character, just learned some heavy shit, but he can’t share that with the group, so when the girl he likes tells him he needs to be able to smile and laugh through sadness, he has to fake it and then it diverges into kids (remember these are essentially teenagers) being kids. You can hate the moment and that’s fine, but it is…if anything… a very small blemish on a game that otherwise is very good. Is all the voice acting perfect? No, there are some bad line reads and just some poorly voiced side characters, but I would argue that a majority of the main cast does a good job. You have voice acting professionals in Tara Strong, John Dimaggio, and James Arnold Taylor all lending their voices to the game, these aren’t one-off voice talents that you check IMDB and they never worked again, these are people who were already industry vets who did a lot of voice work in cartoons and anime, or would later become vets who did it. Should I also mention this is the first final fantasy that is fully voiced? But I get it, lets look at a single 5 minute scene for something 22 years old and then complain that it doesn’t resemble the voice acting being done in today’s games.

Ok, coming in hot, but now that those two things are out of the way lets talk about the game and how it differentiated from the norms set by previous Final Fantasies. Let’s start by acknowledging that this game continues the trend of giving you a moderate sized party to manage, but how it feels more inclusive. Ever since Final Fantasy 6, the amount of playable characters in your party at one time has expanded. Gone are the days of the game finding a reason for your party to always stay at a manageable 4 person party size. However, one we hit 6-9 we started getting a little more characters that didn’t have to leave our party to handle other business, turn to stone, or die from rolling boulders. However, there was still the party limitation of 3-4 party characters only being allowed to be out and about at a time. We were led to believe that despite trying to save the world, whomever we weren’t using was content just to sit on an Airship, or back at home-base playing solitaire waiting for the chance to be called up. In Final Fantasy X the story involves our cast of characters all going on a journey together, mainly on foot, so they need to be around for every scene and presumably every battle. So while your “starting” party is only 3 deep, on any of your turns in battle you can swap someone out and a new person in. Need a magic user, swap one in.. someone close to death, swap them out. A character has to take a turn in battle to gain XP, but the game does a good job of dolling out enemies that have weaknesses that fit each character, that you will end up doing this pretty naturally in most battles. Personally, I love this system, each character close at hand and able to jump in at a moments notice. It can add strategy as you start to plan out your moves, plan out the enemies moves, and give yourself the best chance to win. Sure, does it get frustrating when you are trying to make sure everyone gets a touch during an easy random encounter, and you have to use free skills like “cheer” or “guard” just to constitute a move because you don’t want to kill the enemy too fast, but overall a positive. Like in every previous Final Fantasy, your team is going on a world saving adventure, why are we sending team-members home to do laundry.. this change makes them all feel present at every moment. Cut-scenes can have every character there, they can interact with the surrounding world, comment on what just happened, and it’s not up to chance that you picked that character to be in your party, or were locked into taking them along.

Tangentially related, but another change to the battle system, is being able to see the turn order front and center. This is something that has become normalized more in current day, but at the time was used by very few games, and there are no downsides to report. It allows you once again to use strategy in almost every fight, plan more than one step at a time, and feel great when it all works. While you can’t see the movies the enemy is planning, you can certainly see when they are coming up, so you know who is going to act first. Perhaps its time to heal your party before a next turn, or risk it for extra damage, but at least you know the order. You don’t have to hope that your moves happen first (looking at you Lost Odyssey), now you know and can plan accordingly. If you know an enemy is about to launch a big attack, well you can buff your team, swap in someone with more health, or summon an aeon (this game’s summon creatures) to potentially take that blow for your team. It’s also not a cakewalk either, so anyone who misses the old system because of “a challenge.” There are instances where you aren’t going to be able to pull off your plan A. Perhaps your healer is already out, and not getting their turn before the enemy attacks. Perhaps the person low on health won’t get an action, before the next enemy boss, so you can’t pull them out early. There were numerous instances where I was in a fight and had to think a few steps ahead to be able to survive the battle. The challenge isn’t gone, but the guessing game of what person is going to act first certainly is, and that is a benefit.

At some point I mentioned XP, and another thing that this game does better than its predecessors is how it handles level ups. Previous games, you gained enough XP and then hit a level up, where stats would increase in the background (yes, some earlier games had it in the foreground). Was this level-up going to increase my HP, or my speed? Am I going to learn a new spell or is this a just a boost to Strength. Introducing the Sphere Grid, a huge grid that you moved your piece around picking up upgrades as you go. While this is essentially the same system just housed differently, it allowed you to see what was upcoming, and it gave you some choices in order to work towards how you wanted to craft your character. You could potentially see that you were 2 spots away from learning “Life” so maybe it would be worth doing a couple extra battles to get it, or a few battles away from more HP. If you were playing the original version of this game, the sphere grid was mostly a linear path for most characters with small outshoots, but later in the game it gave you the ability to make changes to someone’s character. The White mage (healing magic) and Black mage (damage magic) have their paths close together, at some points you could potentially use a path to move one of those characters to the other level-up tree changing all of the skills that they were potentially going to learn. Want Yuna (white mage) to switch over and learn all of the strongest damage spells, she can do that. It might cost you a little bit of time (and a key), but you can have her swap over. Maybe this means she won’t learn “Full-Life” but in return she will learn “Firaga” instead, and giving you choices is never a bad thing. On this playthrough I played the re-master and used the advanced Sphere Grid, which essentially starts all your beginning party members at the same spot, and you can have them go in any direction you want. Want Wakka to be your White Mage? You can technically do that, and have Yuna go down his path, its possible. There are some starting stats that you will have to overcome but it is a real way to play that game, and if you put the work in, they can assume each other’s roles. Now, if you are not careful you can really mess yourself up, but as long as you have some strategy to your decision you should be fine. For instance, I had Auron (tough guy) jump out of his lane too early in the advanced role, preventing him from learning a skill that is very much needed to make some fights easier towards the end game. I was still able to get through those fights, but I had to use a different strategy to get over those bumps. I have never fully maxed a player out (getting every upgrade on the grid), but that doesn’t stop me from believing it is a real possibility every time I start the game. That is the beauty of the Sphere Grid.

I saw some comments that people would complain that they got themselves stuck because they moved around the sphere grid and missed out on a pivotal skill or ability that is needed to move forward, and I am going to call bunk on that possibility. First off, it should go without saying that the advanced sphere grid should not be the one you use the first time through the game, I think it even says that in the warning before you pick it, but even if you do, as long as you aren’t wasting your level-ups walking back and forth on the same two squares you should be able to make progress. Why do I say that? Because I just beat the game missing two key skills for most of the game. “Armor Break” is an ability that allows you to essentially remove the armor benefit to any enemy that can be hit with that skill. If you are in a fight and notice that your melee attackers are doing low damage, chances are you can armor break that enemy and then watch them do real damage again. If you are following the normal path, this is like Auron’s 3^rd or 4^th skill he learns. I wasn’t paying attention and had him go in a different direction and he started learning other abilities and I never got Armor Break until way later in the game then I should have. Guess how I got around it, well I had a Wakka overdrive (think special move (status Reels)) that allowed him to hit an enemy with the break attacks. I used a teleport sphere (move around the sphere grid to a past location), to have Auron learn “Full Break,” or used more magic and summons to get through tough spots. In addition to that, I beat the whole game without any character learning “hastega” (case haste on all characters). A spell that if you look at the IGN guide for FFX, is usually the first ability they say to use during the final 5-6 bosses. I never had a character close to that ability, because I had them going all sorts of different directions, but I was still able to overcome every single boss that apparently required it. So is it possible to fully break your game, I guess, but that would either require you to really not understand the basics of the sphere grid, to move all characters onto the same path, or to hate the game so much that you refuse to do even a little bit of extra leveling, but just missing out on “Dark Buster,” or “Holy,” isn’t the detriment that you might think it is.

The other big change compared to previous games is that the world appears to be much more linear compared to previous games. The key here is the word “appears,” and the reason for that is in every other game you would stumble upon a big world map, where you can wander around and get into random battles, but you could start marching towards towns or dungeons or just strange locations that you see from afar. It gave you the ability to explore the world map looking for secrets and potentially stumbling upon them, but rarely were you ever able to sequence break or find an area that you weren’t supposed to get to yet. For instance in FF6, when the stories divide for the first time and you select Sabin, it would appear you have this huge map to explore on your way to recruit Cyan or on your way to the ghost train, but every direction is either blocked by impassable mountains, or a lake that your characters can’t go through. So while the world map appears to give you this huge freedom, it really funnels you to the same locations just in a different way. In FFX, the world map is gone, and so it feels like you are just going one main location to the next, with only some divergency when looking for treasure chests, but it is essentially the same. After FF7 and how that changed the world, FFX was their attempt to be more cinematic and to make it feel more like a movie. We got more cutscenes, more voices, more emotion, and they did that by cutting out some of that world map wandering. There are still side quests in FFX (granted almost all of them are late game), but they don’t feel as epic as the airship comes in much later, and you don’t have that worldmap to see your characters hike through. I’m not saying this is a good change, but I think it evens out as neutral. Do I miss the world map screen, and the music that played while you wandered around? Of course. Do I miss that world map screen allowing me to save anywhere? Of course.. but I can also appreciate that I don’t really have to guess as to which way I need to go.

While I talked around some of these things (combat, exploration, side quests) we can do a little clean-up around those things before moving on to plot and all the spoilers I need to talk about. Combat is still random encounter based, and still turn-based at this point. In fact this was the last turn-based “mainline” Final Fantasy, because after X was the MMO of XI and the real time combat of XII. You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that because I love turn based combat, I love the combat in X. I already talked about how I feel the game adds a level of strategy to each fight, and I like being able to plan my moves out. There are very few fights outside of some low level random encounters where I think you can use the “press x to win” strategy.

As for exploration the area maps are fairly big that allow you to search in nooks and crannies for treasure chests, or fun pickups. My biggest complaint is that I wish your mini-map you could zoom out to get a better lay of the land. For some areas like “Mt Gagazet” or “Bikanel Island” the mini-map is too small to see how far certain overshoot paths continue in one direction, and while I am sure that is the point (making you choose a path) it also means that if I want to comb through the whole map looking for pickups, that I might have to do excessive backtracking because I accidentally went down the main path, when I wanted to initially look down a side path. You can chalk some of this up to just extra leveling, and the risk/reward for trying to get all the treasure in a given area, but a simple zoom-out of the mini-map would have done wonders for me.

Side quests, are where this game really drops the ball. Its hard for me to classify what I consider a side quest and what I consider a side activity, because I think something like Blitzball is not a side quest but rather a side activity. But regardless, if I am using that distinction then I will say both sections drop the ball. For one, there just isn’t enough good side content in this game. The best two things I can think of, is getting the bonus aeons (Anima, Yojimbo, Magus Sisters) and the Omega dungeon, but both of these things come very late in the game (with both needing an Airship to be completed.) These aren’t really side quests you can tackle without having a fairly sturdy team to even begin, and some (like the Omega dungeon) are so late game, that by the time you beat this, you will probably be over-leveled for the final boss of the main game. As for the Side Activities (Blitzball, getting ultimate weapons, monster catching, etc.) these constitute some of the worst padding. Listen, I am a blitzball defender, but even I can’t play enough Blitzball games to get the item Wakka needs to get his ultimate weapon. Almost all of the ultimate weapons require you to do some task that is borderline torture to achieve. I have only fully played through the game twice, but started and played big portions many times, and this playthrough is when I got the most ultimate weapons.. You know what the number was? A whopping 2 out of 7 (Rikku and Kimahri). I could have probably gotten Yuna’s and maybe Auron’s if I wanted to grind out some more battles, but ultimately moved on to save time. Even Rikku’s which I will say is the easiest of all the ultimate weapons to get, has you doing a very long sequence of looking for cactuars in the desert, that should only be attempted when you have equipment that removes random encounters. I won’t even bother discussing dodging 200 lightning bolts in a row, or trying to get a SUB 0:00 time in Chocobo Racing, these activities will try your patience in order to even attempt. Even with the hindsight of 20 some years since the game came out, there are no cheats or great tips to get these you can find online. Are they doable? Sure, if you are either incredibly lucky or incredibly disciplined, but since I see no need in 100% this game, I can’t argue that those items are that necessary to put myself through that peril.

Ok we have put it off long enough, lets dive into the story of this game. I will try to do some non-spoilery talk here in the beginning and then block out any twists and turns, but I think the draw of this game is the story and the emotion that it pulls through making a surprisingly personal journey. You start off the game controlling a person whom you believe is ripped through time to the world of Spira. The world of Spira is a very religious world that is constantly plagued by this ultimate evil, which is simply known as “Sin.” Depending on whom you ask, Sin is the punishment bestowed upon Spira because they gave up their religious teachings and started using magic technologies to defy god. So until Spira atones for the transgressions of their ancestors, they will have to deal with this ultimate evil. Which Sin, totally is, we see it attack villages, kill people (including children), and ultimately cause destruction everywhere it goes. It was the monster that grabbed our main character and pull him into the future. The only way for Sin to be defeated is for specialized summoners to go on a pilgrimage, pray and visit all the temples for strength, and then to battle Sin and use their final ultimate power which results in killing themselves and Sin. It has been done before, many times, but Sin only stays dead for 10 years, and then is reborn to wreck havoc again. Very early on into the game, our Tidus character stumbles upon Yuna who is just starting out on her pilgrimage to try to fight Sin. Tidus tags along, as the party feels bad for him that he doesn’t know anything and because he is good at blitzball. Eventually he proves his worth and joins as a guardian in order to help Yuna complete her pilgrimage. As you continue down this journey, you eventually find that there is a corruption at the top (when isn’t there) and Sin actually is not your only enemy on this journey. If we stop there at the main story, I know this is a trend that we have seen in other RPGs, this collision of religion versus technology, or magic versus technology. Hell, that is a focal point of Lost Odyssey (the last RPG I completed), and a big portion of Final Fantasy 6 (the last Final Fantasy game I completed). However, I think the framing of this game tells that story better. You see remnants of destroyed cities as you walk through the land, you hear about it from the people, and you learn about how this all started. It is what makes some of the twists in the story work.

While the game doesn’t explicitly do this, the main character of this whole story should be Yuna. Tidus has his own reasons for continuing the fight (more on that in the spoiler section), but Yuna is the girl who at a young age not only decided to become a summoner but committed to trying to do everything to help the world gain just 10 years of calm. To put things into perspective our main characters are supposed to be about 17 years old. Think about that, before she would even be out of high school, she trained to be someone who would willingly give their life to bring a sense of calm to the land. There was also no guarantee that she would even make it that far, but she has the resolve to start that journey and if everything went according to plan, to die before her 18^th birthday. I know our world is very different than Spira, I am also sure life expectancies are a lot different, since our world is not constantly being attacked by a Godzilla like monster every ten years, but at 18 years old I wasn’t ready to do anything near uplift the entire world with my actions. This is who the story should follow, a young girl who is willing sacrificing her life, her childhood, and more in order to bring joy to people she has never met.

Okay tangent over, there are obviously things that I left up in my story portion that we need to talk about, but these are spoilers for the game. I would encourage you, if you have any interest in playing this game for the first time, to not click through the spoilers and just play the game for yourself. It has my seal of approval, and while that doesn’t mean anything, I think hitting all those stories beats for the first time in the game is worth it a lot more than just reading about it. ****SPOILERS***** However we can’t talk about the whole story of the game without mentioning two critical pieces. The first is that Sin is in fact Tidus’s dad. See when a summoner uses their most powerful summon, they have to convert someone they love into an aeon. When that Aeon kills Sin, it is then destined to become the next Sin. Tidus has a fraught relationship with his dad, and part of that is the fact that he was led to believe that his dad died one day off doing some training, which had a domino effect on Tidus’ mom never recovering from the grief and Tidus growing up in a broken home. It isn’t until now, some 10ish years later, that Tidus learns his dad was alive… somehow transported to Spira… gave his life to help save Spira… and is now the enemy that is ruining the world. There are a lot of emotions to work out here, it comes out during the game, and quite frankly I loved this little wrinkle. I thought this characterization was done very well.

Now that part I hate to point out is the next big story piece. In fact, when I think of this game, I REFUSE to actually acknowledge that this is part of the story, I would prefer to live in my world where the main story is the pilgrimage to stop Sin, the corruption of people in power, and the whole Tidus’s dad bull, but we have to be honest with ourselves. For some unknown reason, the writers of this game needed another twist, so you find out later in the game, that Tidus and Zanarkand, Jecht, none of them are real. Yup, they are all just dreams. Without really going down the rabbit hole, the fayth are people who willing gave their life during a great battle. They are who summoners pray to at all the temples and then give the summoners access to call an aeon which is a manifestation of that fayth’s power. An aeon is technically real, it can be touched and talked to. Well there is a whole wall of fayth who are “dreaming” the Zanarkand that Tidus came from, including all the people that lived there. Those people don’t really know they are just dreams, but they are. When the game ends, part of the plot is that the fayth, want to stop their endless dreaming, because they are getting so tired of having to manifest all this stuff, so in beating Sin and Yu Yevon (we don’t need to go into that guy, but basically created Sin and the wall of fayth) the fayth are allowed to stop dreaming, and thus end their dreams of the Aeons (they will cease to exist) and magical Zanarkand, and Tidus. Now there are a lot of interpretations here, and I haven’t played X-2 yet so I am sure some stuff gets explained, but you can choose to believe that because Sin came in contact with Tidus, and that so many people remember him (like the movie Coco) then he is at least somewhat real, and that as opposed to just not existing he gets to go to the farplane (think Heaven). It doesn’t really matter what the real reason is for all the justification, but what matters is this is the single worst plot point of the game. The game does not explain it well, a lot of my understanding comes from visiting old message boards of people who did more research, and a lot of dialogue and other information about it, comes from you going the extra mile and re-visiting old areas and getting that sweet extra dialogue from sources. However, on top of the terrible explanation, I don’t understand it’s existence as a plot point. We have a plot twist in Jecht being Sin, we have plot points of Seymour and Mika essentially wanting Sin to continue to exist so that they can stay in power (or in Seymour’s case, destroy the whole world so it can get a fresh start). There is enough there to give this game the emotional weight it wants, without coming up with some over the top reason, so that Yuna and Tidus can’t be together at the end. This game doesn’t have a perfect story, but it had a damn good one, and then at the 90% mark they decided to just throw in some bullshit about a character being a dream, and ruin it. Yes, I know that Auron is actually dead the whole time, but that makes sense. They explain how un-sents work way better than how the explain dream kids work. ****Spoilers****

So yes, I think that ~90% of the story is great, but the reason it is great is because I love this cast of characters. Sure, there are some tropes here, but I could have played this game for another 10 hours easily because I liked existing in the world, and I liked engaging with the characters. Nearly every character has an arc that you actually get invested in, and that makes them enjoyable to be around. Some get it more than others, but you can see how their personalities change or show themselves as you go through the game, you feel the pain as to when they experience loss, whether that is literal loss of someone/something, or a loss of sense. As an example that isn’t a spoiler, but Rikku is an Al Bhed which is basically the classification of characters who are on the opposite side of the religious grouping. She is trying to protect Yuna and other summoners, because she hates knowing that they are marching towards the end of their life. She believes that there has to be another way to defeat Sin that doesn’t end with the summoner dying. She gets frustrated, angry, and scared at the prospect of losing Yuna, but she still signs up to be a guardian and go on this pilgrimage in order to be there to protect Yuna as she marches on. Auron who is considered this wise old sage, you get to see throughout the game that he is just as scared and worried as the other guardians are. He wanted his previous summoner to drop out, because he couldn’t stand losing him. He tried to fight a god by himself, because of his rage in losing his friends. He is loyal and at first you don’t understand why, but then his story plays out and you realize everything he has gone through and how he is still going to uphold his promises to those before him. I could go down the line, and nearly every character has a story and an arc that make them good characters. You could convince me that Lulu grows the least, but that is because much of her story comes in the early part of the game, and she isn’t as impacted by late reveals, but I digress, what kept me playing this game, and what almost made me play it more, was because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this cast of characters. I liked leveling them up, I liked seeing them in cut scenes and hearing their dialogue. I liked watching them grow as people. For anyone that doesn’t like the story or the characters, I’m not going to convince you otherwise, but there is a reason that all the thumbnails of people do playthroughs of this game, have them in tears towards the end. It’s because they got attached to these characters and the story and that is a good sign of a well told game.

Last thing I should touch on, but that is the music of this game. It is fantastic and I would expect nothing else. It is a damn near perfect soundtrack to the game. When you are on Besaid island or Kilka island in the early stages of the game, the music perfectly fits those scenes. When you are right after the Sin aftermath by Mushroom rock road, you feel that music in your emotions as you mourn. When you finally get to Zanarkand and you are working your way to the temple, *Chef’s kiss.* Music for Final Fantasy can be a very personal taste, and a lot of it comes down to nostalgia. My first Final Fantasy was FF4 and I can still listen to any track and know exactly where it occurred in the game. FF6 has some of my favorite tracks of all time, but FFX has such a unique and perfectly suited soundtrack to the game, that it amazes me. It can’t be a soundtrack that your first listen is outside the game, but after you have played it through, then you can listed to the tracks and have them hit the same way.

If it wasn’t apparent from nearly 7,000 words, I really like FFX. I breezed through 60 hours of it, being the only game I played during that time. Normally I alternate playing games to not get bored or make any game feel like a slog, but when I had a minute to sit down with a game, I only wanted to play FFX. I could have easily played 80 hours and gone for every weapon, and fighting extra bosses, or just to complete some sphere grids, but ultimately I felt I had to move on and play the other games on my shelf. Before we get to rating this game, I had to have a long conversation with myself as to if this is my favorite Final Fantasy game, and it was difficult. So my top 3 (not in any particular order) have always been FFX, FF6, and FF7. I had to do some real soul searching, and comparing the two and trying to remove years of nostalgia and bias to really decide should I rank this one over 6. I think 10 is an easier recommendation to someone who (just between those two games) is looking to try out a Final Fantasy for the first time, because it’s more streamlined, more modern, and has some great quality of life improvements compared to 6. FF6 certainly has better side quests/activity than 10 does, and might have better showpiece moments (world of light/world of ruin moment, opera scene, ghost train). The music and characters are a tie to me. I think the characters have more of a life in 10 than 6, but 6 also has more characters to juggle, and for every great character with an interesting story (Locke, Shadow, Celes, etc.) there are some stinkers in the mix (Gau, Strago, Umaro, Gogo). To make up for that the characters of 6 all have unique abilities that make them more enjoyable to play, while in 10 those differences get leveled out the more experience you gain. They both have a great story, but I think 6 takes the edge here because 10 loses some points because of their weird twist at the end. Whichever one you pick, I could make an argument for, so without further ado.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No, but it currently a top 10 game

Where does it rank: I think initially upon completing this game, I probably had this above FF6 and below Yakuza 0, but i let my food settle, i weighed pros and cons and changed my vote. I still think this is a fantastic game with an insane amount of heart and some fantastic emotional moments with a killer soundtrack, but.. I hated the story beat that I hid in the spoilers, and the side content is either lacking (if we are being generous) or downright awful. Side stories in other Final Fantasies (and especially in Yakuza 0) are better and allow you to dawdle in the world better than monster catching, or dodging lightning bolts. So, I still have FF6 being the superior Final Fantasy game (but I would still highly recommend people play 10 or give it another shot) and have it ranked as the 6th Greatest Game of All Time.This is out of 150 (woo hoo!) games, and it sits between X-Com 2 (5th) and Stardew Valley (7th). I liked this game so much that I "almost" wanted to roll right into X-2, which I have never played before, but I need to hold steady on the process and spin to see my follow up first.

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up (actively playing) 1) Judgement 2) Dorfromantik 3) Catherine

Something that really helped me when dodging lightning bolts was putting a piece of paper over the top of my screen to block the sky. The flashing was very distracting and threw me off a lot.

The Blitzball Defense Force has logged on!!! I played water polo for a while, so it was the closest I knew I’d ever get to seeing it in a video game. I’ve put way more time than I care to admit into it.

Agreed that the second twist was unnecessary and overly silly. They did try to retcon some details of it in X-2, but honestly they shouldn’t have bothered. I do recommend checking out X-2 because it’s so different, but in a nearly equally satisfying way. Great writeup!

@eccentrix: I can honestly say, I would have never thought to try that. If I revisit I will give it a go, but I imagine outside of using a no encounter item, I would just have to dial in my focus.

Hear, Hear. Blitzball might not be up there with the NBA2k's and the Fifa's of the world. It's not as solid as Rocket League.

But back in the day, to have a fully featured sports minigame in a franchise that stuck to cardgames (of which Triple Triad was fun, but Tetra Master was an abomination of a game) it was a huge step in ambition. And most of all, it was captivating and quite complete. You had players to gather, build up, abilities to learn. A tournament structure. Meaningful 'bumps' in difficulty throughout the game.

Sure you could ruin the game for yourself by scoring and hanging out behind your goal, but at that point you're basically saying that you have already decided to hate the game and would rather walk out for a few minutes than try to have fun with it. And if you really don't want to play it, you can straight up avoid 98% of it.

@allthedinos: when this game came out, my older brother lived with me and would have me play all his blitzball matches. Even at a young age I was a blitzball prodigy. If I had to gripe about blitzball, it's that I actually find it a little easy once you get a chance to recruit people (wedge, shami, jumal). It became tedious when I would have to play a 10 game season to get a set of reels.

As for X-2, I'll be excited to start it (whenever that is). I will finally solve the mystery that has been plaguing me for seconds, and that is "where is Lulu".. but don't spoil it for me.

As always thanks for the read

@onemanarmyy: amen! Everyone hating on blitzball, because they were forced to play it for 5 minutes in the story. In fact blitzball was a head of its time. Now we have plenty of sports RPGs, but blitzball was on the cutting edge of merging the genres.

Great write-up. I love the game and its crazy story. The mini-games are super frustrating but there's so much to love here, and that ending is my favorite in the series.

The chocobo balloon game to get Tidus' Sigil drove me to madness

@sparky_buzzsaw: Thanks for the comment.. if this game had better side content I think it would easily be the best Final Fantasy (for me). However, even though I like Blitzball, the side quests and mini games are kinda torture to get the maximum rewards.

@sombre: I gave it a real honest try, and had a single run of 2.1 seconds. If I would have gotten one more balloon, or hit one less bird I would have had it. Unfortunately all my subsequent runs were never that good again.

10 was my first and my favorite still , granted i've only beaten it x-2 ,15,and 7R but played a large chunk of 8, 12 , 13 and met the ex-husband in 11 on phoenix server. i pretty much agree with everything you said about it even with its weak points the combination of it all is just really great as an end result i think wakka's character arc is pretty great in the changes in his beliefs/personality in regards to the al bhed and yevon. without saying much i also think that while it didn't need a sequel i think its almost just as good and argueably fixes a chunk of the issues X had in terms of side stuff , so for anyone who hasn't played that or both its highly recommended imo , i know plenty of ppl are probably put off by the all female group but its still worth it .

@styx971: thanks for the read and comment. When I was younger (and much dumber) I was initially put off by the all female cast, but now I'm very excited to start X-2 for the first time.

As for wakka in X, I love his character arc. I love how at points he is clearly upset with the path he is on, and then accepts it and realizes he has been wrong for years.

I really wish X, Side stuff was better. It was the only thing holding it back from being my vote as the best.

@imunbeatable80: lol alot of ppl were put off , it happens , its a great game that only builds on this great game tho , i definately recommend jumping right in if its on the docket less you need a pallet cleanser ,the character arcs in x-2 are good too, i won't say the side stuff is amazing but theres definately more of it.

First FF I finished, so it'll always have a soft spot for me. Really loved the combat system, the pacing, and even had fun with blitzball (it was fun taking my team of screw ups and becoming unstoppable).

Anyway, here's a cover I did of its most... striking song.

@csl316: thanks for the comment and a good cover. I love the soundtrack to this game.

I love Blitzball. I love FFX as well, but these days, every time I start a new game, I end up putting like 50 hours into Blitzball before moving the story at all.

it is a fun and challenging minigame that adds depth and variety to the FFX experience. However, it's worth noting that FFX has a compelling story with memorable characters and engaging gameplay lie zombie catchers, and it's worth investing time in progressing through the game's main plot.

@ginormous76: I actually had this derail a previous run about a year ago.. I was convinced I would just knock out all of blitzball off the top, and then got sick of playing and eventually put the game down. I made a point to not have that happen this time.