Introduction

Full Story (Spoilers)

     This game takes place exactly 2 years after the end of FFX, in which Yuna defeated Sin and brought peace to Spira in the form of “The calm”. However, 2 years later, Yuna ditched her high-summoner status and became a sphere hunter, which oddly enough, seems to be all the rage in Spira in this game. Along with Rikku and Paine, they make up the group known as the “Gullwings” and initially look all over Spira to find various spheres, which document past events, etc. The game actually starts off rather slow, however, somewhere along the line, Yuna and her friends get caught up in the struggle between the New Yevon and Youth League factions that make up Spira. Soon they find a sphere which shows Tidus trapped in some unknown area. Yuna, who hasn’t forgotten about Tidus yet, vows to reunite with him again someday. Later on, Yuna finds out that a guy who looks almost like Tidus, has evil intentions for Spira and wants to use the ultimate machina, Vegnagun to bring chaos and destruction to Spira. Along the way, Yuna finds questions about identity as well as meeting up with some familiar friends and other people along the journey to destroy Vegnagun and restore Spira to it’s former peaceful status again. The game offers many side-stories that aren’t exactly connected to the main storyline but it does depend on what you do throughout the game. Whether it be the Ronsos grudge against the Guado or Wakka’s anxious wait to become a dad, there are enough different episodes in this game to complete. Suddenly, the leaders of Spira’s various groups go missing and the world itself turns upside down. Nooj of the Youth league, Gippal of the Al Bhed and Baralai of New Yevon all go missing, as they try and defeat Vegnagun. Yuna begins to feel Lenne’s feelings as the game wears on, even though Lenne and Shuyin are connected, much like how Yuna is to Tidus. As Yuna still commands great respect throughout the world, she tries to unite Spira together in the heat of tough times. Just when it seems that things can’t be crazier then it already is, the fayth go out of control and fiends run around the temples as well as other places throughout Spira, terrorizing the people. Reluctantly, Yuna ends up having to defeat the Aeons that fought alongside her two years ago when she was a high summoner. After all, that is the only way to stop fiends from entering the sacred temples of Yevon. Once Yuna brings Spira together again, she and her friends make a frantic rush to head to the farplane to find Nooj, Baralai and Gippal. Upon arriving at the farplane, they find that Baralai’s body has been taken over by Shuyin. Yuna and her friends help Nooj and Gippal along with the Leblanc Syndicate, who oddly enough are rival sphere hunters, to defeat Vegnagun once a for all. Yuna convinces Nooj that sacrificing himself wouldn’t do any good and they agree on destroying Vegnagun entirely. After finishing off Vegnagun and Shuyin, Yuna sees Tidus again, as an image of the fayth and realizes that as long as both believe in each other and themselves, they will always be together. In the end, Spira is once again reunited and Nooj, Gippal and Baralai vow to keep the world strong and united without any more needless fighting again. Lulu has her child, a baby boy and Wakka is a proud father. Tidus and Yuna see each other again and the world of Spira is happier than it ever has been, since the defeat of Sin. Another thing to note is that the voices and spirits or Jecht, Auron and Lord Braska guide Yuna along to help defeat Vegnagun. Indeed, the new Spira is what motivates everyone in the end.

     Probably the game’s strongest point. Given, the graphics and character models themselves look pretty much the same, though some aspects are slightly improved. The menu layout and colour scheme seems much easier on the eyes and isn’t as colourful as what was found in FFX. The FMV sequences are pretty impressive to say the least. Otherwise, I don’t seem to notice that much of a change, perhaps it is for the better as the game remains almost identical to FFX as far as the backgrounds and other worlds go. Think of it as the same as FFX, though slightly more polished.

     Good and bad. The good thing is that the Job system makes a return, though not in the same form as before. The battles move along at a very fast speed and it is based on the ATB system from past FF games, sure to be a good sign for any Final Fantasy fan who loved ATB, like myself. However, I find that the battles move along too quickly and it is very easy to miss out on understanding and experiencing the garment grid system as a whole. The special dress spheres for Yuna, Rikku and Paine aren’t that great and really, you can go through the entire game without using them once. In fact, if you just want to beat through the normal game without going through the extra dungeons or super tough monsters, you probably wouldn’t need to use more than say 2 dress spheres per character, at the very most. The concepts are there, the new use of chain attacks and switching dress spheres on the fly to suit the battle conditions are all nice things, however, Square just didn’t put them to good use in the end.

     Funny how you should ask about this one. Perhaps if you don’t really care too much about the main story and really concentrate more on the sidequests in this game, you would like it more. However, I really put a big emphasis on the main storylines in FF games and sadly, this game is far behind other FF games in terms of depth, charm and character development overall. The main storyline itself isn’t very convincing or should I say intriguing. Sure, the side stories are nice and all but they don’t seem to have strong connections to the main plot and a lot of characters that were prominent in FFX are reduced to nothing more than short cameo appearances or smaller roles. I can’t really think of an FF game that had a storyline as shallow and as weak as FFX-2, if you exclude such games like FF Mystic Quest and what have you. The fact that there were only 3 playable characters is not a great thing either, it would have been nice to add balance or had some more playable characters too. Not only that, but a lot of characters are horribly annoying and irritating. I swear, if I see Brother again, I will shoot him in the ****ing face. The dialogue is nowhere near as serious as it should be, considering some the situations and instances, makes me believe that I cannot take this game as seriously as I would with other FF games. The main characters remind me a lot of Charlie’s angels and the dialogue is just overall terrible and cheesy for the most part. It’s also a bad thing that I ended up hating almost every character in the game, only a few of them I actually liked. Too bad there isn’t very strong character development and personalities for the majority of the characters in this game. Sure, the ending is a happy note but far too many things go unnoticed and there is a glaring omission of several key details. The whole “Girl power” message and theme seems to be incredibly irritating in my mind.

     You are ****ing kidding me right? No seriously. You probably would come up here, expecting a good rating for this category but actually, the answer is a resounding NO. In fact, the sound is the worst I have ever heard in any RPG game, let alone Final Fantasy. The music itself puts a large stain on an otherwise great franchise and the music itself is a sin to listen to. It doesn’t even deserve a passing grade, let along a high rating. To even consider giving it a mediocre rating is a crime to humanity. Let me just say that the normal battle music is full of generic drum beats, it has no flow or rhythm to it and lacks the overall feel of any battle in previous FF titles. The actual background music, now that’s a funny one. It is absolutely terrible and you should turn on the mute button if possible. The songs repeat frequently, they are boring as hell and have no place to be in this game, let alone any RPG game. Square seems to be going for more of a “hip” or “cool” sounding game but let me tell you, the music sucks. The more popish tunes seem to be rather out of place and it makes you wonder if you are really playing through a “Final Fantasy” game after all. The main composer of the FF series, Nobuo Uematsu didn’t do this game and it shows. The boss music isn’t very eventful either, even the final battle themes, while slightly better, aren’t worthy of mention compared to the themes in FFX even. Lip-synching in this game is as bad as before, though I admit the voices have improved. Do yourself a favour and play another FF game if you are looking for good music. The only thing half-decent is the song “1000 words”; I didn’t like “Real emotion” too much though. Here is a good tip, play the game with the volume turned to mute; you will save yourself a lot of headaches later on. The music in this game makes me want to kill somebody, which is how bad it really is…….

     Yes, while there are loads of sidequests to do and such, the game may be fun or not, depending on what you are looking for and stuff like that. If you still care about the main storyline, or should I say storyline in general, then you probably wouldn’t want to replay this game too much. I admit, some of the mini-games and sidequests are interesting but I wouldn’t probably spend more than 100 hours playing through this game. Truth to be told, my main focus when it comes to FF games is also on musical score. Since it is so bad in this game, I don’t think I can last playing through this very long without feeling the urge to kill somebody or just being annoyed or irritated before long. Really, I rate the fun factor as being merely average. The number of sidequests is probably it’s saving grace here, if it weren’t for that, this game would be rock-bottom as far as fun factor goes, since the storyline and music is weak.

      If you are looking for a good storyline, or should I say good all-round RPG game, FFX-2 is not for you.  I highly recommend other FF games over this one, as this seems to be more of an experiment or should I say bad dream.  Not only that, the main game itself is very easy, the difficultly level is not very hard at all.  However, the game does have a lot of sidequests and stuff like that.  But this is supposed to be a sequel to FFX and sadly, the game has a lot of holes within the storyline and the character development is fairly weak.  Not only that, this game has one of the worst if not the very worst musical score I have ever heard in any RPG game to date.  To me, this title is a slap in the face to the Final Fantasy series and is not deserving of even the name “Final Fantasy” itself.  I cannot take this game seriously, honestly, I tried to get into this game, sure sidequests are nice and the gameplay has some new features going for it but it wasn’t utilized very well and to top it all off, I really didn’t like most aspects of this game overall.  Not everyone may agree with me here, but I like to put sharp criticisms where they deserve and due and vice versa.  Frankly, I believe that this game is the absolute worst in the FF series, from FFI-XI.  Hopefully, Square can learn from this bad mistake.

     In this game, you can equip dress spheres to various sphere grids with vary with different abilities and other bonuses, depending on what sphere grid you decide to choose. Dress spheres essentially are like the Job system of FFV. You can switch between different dress spheres in battle on the fly and you garner a new set of abilities and attributes when you switch to another dress sphere. Some classes are: White Mage, Gunner, Songstress, Dark Knight and so forth.

Lyrics

“1000 Words” (Japanese version), by Koda Kumi

Kimi no kotoba wa
Yume no yasashisa kana?
USO wo zenbu
Oikakushiteru
Zurui yo ne

Tabidatsu kimi ni
Sameta senaka misete
Kiiteita yo
Hitori tatakau no?
Zurui yo ne

"Kaettekuru kara"
Oikoshiteyuku kimi no koe
Iji hatte
Tsuyoi Furi
Toki wo modoshite
Sakebeba yokatta?
Ikanai de to namida koboshitara?
Ima wa dekiru
Donna koto mo

Ienakatta
1000 no kotoba wo
Haruka na
Kimi no senaka ni okuru yo
Tsubasa ni kaete

Ienakatta
1000 no kotoba wa
Kizutsuita
kimi no senaka ni yorisoi
dakishimeru

Yume no tsuduki wa
Kimi wo omoinagara
Ano hi no koto
Wasureta furishite
ZURUI yo ne

"Tegami wo kaku kara"
Shisen sorashita kimi no koe
iji hatte
Tsuyoi Furi
Toki wo modoshite
Okoreba yokatta?
Matenai yo to kata wo otoshitara?
Ima wa dekiru
Donna koto mo

Kikoeteru?
1000 no kotoba wo
Mienai
Kimi no senaka ni okuru yo
Tsubasa ni kaete

Kikoeteru?
1000 no kotoba wa
Tsukareta
Kimi no senaka ni yorisoi
Dakishimeru

Ienakatta
1000 no kotoba wo
Lalalala..
Kimi no senaka ni okuru yo
Tsubaksa ni kaete

Kikoeteru?
1000 no kotoba wa
Lalalala..
Kimi no senaka ni yorisoi
Lalalalala....

"Real Emotion" (Japanese version), by Koda Kumi

Ano hi kokoro no kanata ni egaiteta basho ni iru
Tohô no kuretetari suru keredo mô modorenai
Yume ni mita katachi to wa nani mo ka mo ga chigau
Genjitsu ni wa memai sae suru

Real na sekai ni yureteru kanjô
Maketakunai
Mô tada hashiru shika nai kono mune ni kikoetekuru
Kimi wa hitori janai

Kessite furimuki wa shinai anata ni wa tayoranai
Nani ka ga areba kanarazu sugu ni kitekureru kara
Ima boku ni dekiru koto sore wa shinjiru koto
Shinjitsu nara kono mune ni aru

Real na sekai ni yureteru kanjô
Sasaeru no wa
Sô anata ga oshietekureta subete ima no watashi
Dakara hitori janai

Real na sekai ni yureteru kanjô
Kanjitemo
Anata ga me o tojita nara soko ni iru kizuna ga aru
Dakara hitori janai

Real na sekai ni yureteru kanjô
Maketakunai
Mô tada hashiru shika nai kono mune ni kikoetekuru
Kimi wa hitori janai

Movies

     (coming soon)

Music

     (N/A)