The full voice acting lends a realism to the game that the series has always sought after. I’m sometimes bothered by the translations in RPGs because the ambiguity sometimes found in the phrasing can lead to multiple interpretations of emotion or impact. This is a cure to that problem if I ever heard one. Aside from taking the guess work out, it also makes characters seem more distinct and colorful. (When I read dialogue, and imagine the voices, all the characters end up sounding the same—this solves that problem too.) While PC games have enjoyed full voice acting for years now (all the way back to King’s Quest VI), console RPGs are only recently catching up. Hopefully FFX is the mark of a new generation of games to come.

Again, a couple of minor problems though. The lip syncing is almost always off, or not synced at all. Sometimes a line will end half a second before the mouth stops moving. Sometimes, but not often, a short line is accompanied with mouth movement that takes twice the time to finish. I would like to see FFXII made with some more effort in that department, perhaps with real-time lip syncing software—which also has been used all the way back in the King’s Quest/Lands of Lore days.

Gameplay

I know I wrote that I’d spare you too many details, but here are some things that I feel are worth mentioning:

There is no longer a world map; not in the traditional Final Fantasy sense at least. From the airship, all you do is select your location from a list. This can sometimes be annoying if you’re trying to get somewhere very specific, and the airship drops you off five environments over.

Weapons now no longer have strengths or weaknesses, only attributes and auto-abilities, which you can customize after a certain point in the game. I like this change. It’s no longer the case that you buy a weapon and simply replace it with a more powerful weapon at the next village. You now pick a choose the right weapon and armor for the right situation depending on character attributes and enemy’s attributes.

Summon creatures (Aeons) now fight as if they were characters. They die off quickly in earlier parts of the game, but later (with the right equipment) they can inflict upward towards 99,999 damage on an enemy. The final hidden Aeon makes the rest of your characters obsolete (Knights of the Round, anyone?). Plus, there’s a treat for those of you who remember FFIV. Making Aeons playable is a nice touch and a new feature to Final Fantasy, but sometimes they die off too easily, and since they replace your entire party (and not just the summoner), they can sometimes be none too helpful. Sometimes they’re downright useless since they can be banished by certain bosses instantaneously.

Chocobo activities in this installment are light. Chocobo breeding fans, don’t expect much.

In the main mini-game of FFX, Blitzball, the first thing you need to realize is that despite the way it seems, it’s a turned based mini-game. Relative player positions do not matter in the least bit when intercepting and blocking, only proximity does. Someone from ten feet behind you can block you even if you’re passing to a guy two feet in front of you. You can shoot a goal from behind the goalie and see the ball miraculously come from behind you. It’s wonderfully addictive, but can get old the moment your players become really good and start to shut out every match.

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