8.5/10
+
spira is the best world square has created easily
most of the characters are pretty good
good story with a great ending(if you ignore FFX-2's entire existence)
great soundtrack
sin is now my favorite giant sky whale with a city on its head thing
no more waiting for my characters meter to fill when they have the next turn anyway!
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yuna's...voice...acting...is...really...annoying. not sure why people rag on tidus the most, his VA isn't nearly as bad as yuna's.
random battles. they did streamline the battle system a bit but this age old JRPG trope should have been dead years before this game was even made. you can't get a no encounter weapon outside of customization until you get the airship. it really hurts the immersion in this game, spira has so many beautiful areas where you want to explore and go do a bunch of stuff but every few steps the game decides to interrupt all that for a riveting menu driven battle where you repetitively attack and heal without thought
tetsuya nomura is a hack.
linearity. the game never really opens up until the very end when you get the airship. the game having an oceanic theme, they really missed an opportunity by not giving you a boat earlier on. even when you do get the airship, you can't really explore the overworld in a fun way, it's just a list of warp points.
blitzball. not only is it terrible, but it also follows in FFIX's foosteps and forces you to play one game of this terrible monstrosity in order to advance the plot. uh, it looks really fun in cutscenes at least
unskippable cutscenes before some of the games hardest boss fights
most obnoxious use of status effects of any of the better FF games
pretty standard old school square game, wins a lot of points for the fantasy world it creates and its story, characters, and presentation, mostly loses points on a lot of gameplay issues that are fairly obvious and shouldn't happen.