Developed by: Squaresoft | Published by: Squaresoft

+

The voice-acted cinematics is by far the biggest improvement in RPGs that the PS2 has provided. Before I had to use my imagination to read the dialogue and press a button everytime I want to go to the next text box. Now I can just kick back, relax, and watch the characters interact with each other while munching on popcorn.

Like any fantasy story, this is a story of the struggle between good and evil stripped down to its core. You are battling Sin - the representation of suffering, pain, and all things that are evil. Yuna represents the desire to be strong and persevere the hard times so that perhaps one day the can be calm (except its fantasy so they call it the great calm). Sin comes back eventually, and Sin is defeated again eventually. It's a victious cycle. The cycle of good and evil. Squaresoft also tends to spend much more attention to the dynamics of this struggle, which is probably why their stories have remained so popular.

The story poses many questions and explores several subjects - whether Yuna should marry the Maester for love or for purpose, what Tidus should think of his rude inconsiderate father, why Kimahri should continue protecting Yuna, whether or not humans should develop powerful Machina, whether to continue the cycle of defeating Sin with the Final Summon for short-lived hope or to break tradition and find a new and better way, whether to live for a cause or to live for yourself and you own life, and other very interesting philosophical questions. Further explanation as to why Squaresoft stories are so popular.

Tidus was concieved of a dream inside his father's mind, inside Sin. Within Darkness, there is always, somewhere, a trace of light.

Squaresoft continues their tradition of offering a new well-balanced system of gaining experience and abilities, as well as varying the balance of the gameplay slightly. Its a tradition that keeps them one step ahead of the competition. The challenges are not too hard and not too repeditive, and the rewards come at a nice pace. The game is also littered with a few minipuzzles here and there.

The artwork and the sound are incredible as they usually are with Square.

Each character seems to play a distinct role and has their own unique personality. When there is a diverse bunch of characters, each with their own unique view of things, interesting conversations and character growth can only follow.

There is some effort put towards making this a mass-market product. The blitzball sport with the fans cheering, the trial, the wedding, the fantasy with magic and dragons and such, the variety of different personalities of each character, the variety of different fashions worn by each character, the variety of different landscapes, the churches, romantic scenes (that work! rare for a video game), the reactive gameplay during a special attack, and so on. They put in so much variety that there has to be something for everyone.

-

Sometimes there were some awkward pauses in the voice acting. The movements of the characters also sometimes seemed robotic and unnatural (usually rotating to a new direction).

This game, like pretty much all RPGs, is a combination of watching movies and playing Dungeons and Dragons. The two relate to each other in that the dungeon (or area) you're in and the monsters you fight all tie into whatever point you are at in the story. But that's all that ties into the story. The vast array of abilities, magic, attacks, weapons and armor, and other major components of the gameplay have very little to do with the story. That aside, other important parts of the story are left out of the game play. All of the social dynamics between the characters, and other curtial elements of the story all happen during cinematics. The vast potential that the video game has as a medium is not being realized.

Many of the minigames and puzzles are just lame. The thing with the orbs, the fitting people into holes one, and especially the Tetris puzzle. They were just there for you to play with. They were very poorly integrated.

There were many spots where the cinematography was really bad.

Both the Dungeons and Dragons battle system, and the minigames require extra explanation before you begin playing. This is bad.