Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster review

[Paddy]

Good to hear your impressions Shakey Jake. Nice to see SE taking care and time with re-release one of their flagship entries on the PS2. Might be worth picking up when it lands in mid-March.

[sj33]

As a spruced-up HD re-release (rather than a full-on HD remake), it's pretty difficult to find fault with this. I was impressed by Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix, but this is an even better job as SquareEnix have put in a little bit of extra effort to ensure the game does not look dated.

Minor grips might be the 2.0 sound, lack of true analogue control, buggy Blitzball etc., but these are all issues that the original game also had. I played the Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII demo the other day, and it's telling that SquareEnix games *still* lack true comprehensive analogue control. In this case, the controls are identical to the PS2 version.

[Darwock]

I absolutely loved Blitzball, it's one of my favourite of all the final fantasy mini games (close contender with triple triad). I didn't know about any glitches or cheats though, I suppose that might spoil it.

[sj33]

It seems to be quite popular, but I'm just not seeing the appeal to be honest. It's a nice concept but the AI is broken in so many different ways. One of the biggest issues is that that the computer AI is actually not capable of human error - you never see them trying to be overly ambitious with the breakthroughs or passes, for example. The computer AI appears to be calculating everything internally using mathematical algorithms. A sign of good AI is the ability to emulate a human opponent as closely as possible, including all the mistakes than a human can make. I'm not just complaining because the AI doesn't make enough mistakes - I'm complaining because the AI feel more like superhuman robots.

The AI of both teams can also get 'confused' extremely easily. It's amusing watching the map display, you can tell when an AI player is confused because the little arrow starts spinning around on the spot. There's usually at least one player doing this. It makes it extremely easy to bug out the computer AI by swimming along the bottom of the dome to baffle the AI closer to the top, but the same issue affects your own players - a computer AI can be swimming right towards them carrying the ball, and your player will just be spinning around on the spot. Extremely frustrating. The easiest way to demonstrate this broken AI is to get the blitzball and swim behind your own goalkeeper - watch every single player on both teams suddenly start spinning around the spot! It's hilarious, but also frustrating that this has not been fixed in the HD Remaster.

Each to their own of course, and it's good that these issues aren't an issue for you. Blitzball is largely optional (bar a couple of mandatory games), so people who don't take to Blitzball can just not play it. It's just criminal that these bugs which are well known (you can Google for forum posts as far back as 2002 about these issues) have not been fixed or tweaked in any way, 12 years later. I also do want to finish a tournament in order to get the Trophy though, which has been a real chore so far.

[sj33]

I've noticed one or two little niggles as the game has gone on. Nothing major, but worth a mention.

The framerate is generally a locked and constant 30fps, same as the original game, and looks really smooth... but there are one or two occasions when the framerate does drop. It never drops in actual gameplay to be fair, but there is a noticeable framerate drop during some of the summon animations, and also some of the more intensive cutscenes. The latter is more obvious because they've attempted to hide it by using motion blur (one example being during the attack on the Al Bhed home).

It's barely noticeable to be fair. I'm rather sensitive to framerate drops, and hate all kinds of motion blur, so it was always going to stand out for me. The framerate also never actually drops during gameplay. If these rare drops are the price we pay for the 1080p native resolution, then so be it. Still, it's there.

[danholo]

Nice. Seems there are plenty of games to get in the coming months including this one.

It seems there will be a Japanese voice/English sub version as with FFXIII and XIII-2. At least it's listed on Play-Asia.

[kryss]

Anyone played the Japanese Vita version? A friend's wife is looking to play it in English and needs to know if there's an English language option on it.

Edit::

Nevermind, Vita version isn't out until March 18th worldwide it seems.

[shaffy_oppa]

Its out in Japan and there no English option unfortunately.

Incidentally the PS3 version has English menus and subtitles on disc but only accessible with CFW unsure if the same goes for the Vita versions.

[sj33]

It does seem like the mainland Asian (not Japanese) version of the PS3 game will feature Japanese voices with English subtitles, though. This won't be confirmed until release, but the fact that the data does exist on the disc supports this.

Completed FFX last night, it was a real treat - enjoyed it much more than I did back in 2002. The final area and even final bosses are embarrassingly easy if your characters are even moderately well levelled, however.

[shaffy_oppa]

Argh playing against the Luca Goers... promised I'd win but this is ridiculous.

Doesn't help that the cut scenes are not skippable.

[analog dog]

I've never played these games before so got excited and bought the bundle. BLITZBALL IS POO! Lovely looking game but it's a bit of a slow start, how long is the campaign roughly? And do you have to play blitzball much ?

[nakamura]

Campaign?

40 hours for FFX and Blitzball is only required once.

[sj33]

Blitzball certainly is poo, but it's not really mandatory. You can actually lose the only mandatory game. I played Blitzball long enough to unlock the trophies, and also get Wakka's overdrive.

Oh and it looks like the Asian version isn't Japanese voices/English subtitles after all.

[J0e Musashi]

I've got the Asian English Vita version in the mail. It's full English, although that doesn't bother me because I switched it to English on PS2 anyway.

I'm borrowing the UK version for now, but it doesn't work on Vita TV. I keep pressing O instead of X too.

[shaffy_oppa]

Yeah, that's really irritating me, I keep pressing O instead of X too. Weird they decide to override it now all three XIII games didn't nor did any other SE game.