Spira's Angels

I finished my replay of Final Fantasy X-2 yesterday. FF X-2 is unique in that it's the only Final Fantasy game that is a direct sequel to an existing Final Fantasy game, from a storyline perspective anyway. Or, at least it was the only one at the time. There's who knows how many spin-offs to FF 7 now so anything goes, or so it would seem.

But FF X-2 was a simpler time, or a less FF 7 saturated one, at any rate. I should also mention that FF X-2 has an all-female main cast, which is also unique among Final Fantasy games.

The story picks up two years after FF X left off. The game is overall a bit more light hearted and structured fairly differently than its predecessor, being more mission based rather than a more-or-less linear romp through the world. It also brought back Final Fantasy's hallmark job system for the first time since FF 5, unless you count FF Tactics. (As much as I loved Tactics it's still more of an off-shoot to the main series, but I digress...) The new twist to this incarnation of the job system is that our three lovely ladies (Yuna, Rikku and newcomer Paine) can change jobs on-the-fly in the middle of battle rather than just between battles, which can come in handy. The transformation sequences also reminded me of some of those anime-styled transformation sequences one tends to see in magical-girl type shows.

Overall, I enjoyed FF X-2 and thought it was a solid entry for the series. Not the greatest FF game ever, but fun and entertaining in its own right and a nice epilogue to FF X and also an interesting change of pace to revisit an existing world for a change. I also think I enjoyed the job transformations a bit too much. Oh well, call it a guilty pleasure.

For this play through, I did a New Game +, based on my previous (and first) time through. I achieved 95% completion this time, opposed to a measely 63% last time. I'm still missing the Mascot dresssphere though, grrrr... Perhaps next time.

This also marks the official conclusion of my replay of the series. Technically, I could still do summaries for FF XI and FF XII, but the format of FF XI is so different from the rest of the series that I think it would be impractical to do a write up for and FF XII was not out when I started the replay so I don't really feel obliged to include it. That said, I probably will do a summary for FF XII eventually, but I want to go back and do one for FF Tactics first, preferably using the retranslated PSP version, provided my budget allows it.

Anywho, enough of the preamble. The actually summary appears in the post below this one so enjoy!

Freak Out,
-TFitC