I never got people's complaints about "poor voice acting." Wakka, Lulu, Auron, Kimahri, Rikku, Jecht, and many of the minor characters were voiced very well. The only ones that I had problems with were Tidus, Yuna, and Seymour. And even then I liked their voice actors, I just wasn't entirely happy with the performances they turned in.
I don't really follow the voice actors so I couldn't properly judge them on anything but the performance they gave. And my list of bad voices is smaller than yours. Just Tidus and Yuna (not saying there weren't other flat bits and Seymours didn't add much, it just wasn't bad) but they just happen to be the two most important characters
James Arnold Taylor actually did a really good job with Tidus' most important scenes, and his narration was excellent. But I think he was overall better in Dissidia because he didn't overact quite as much. And Hedy Buress had her moments as Yuna in the game but really did better in X-2 and Kingdom Hearts II. Don't know why she reverted back to her old style for Dissidia just because she was playing the Staff Chick version of the character.
My problem was Seymour's was only how...girly it got at times. The guy voicing him had a perfectly good voice for the character that showed on many occasions, and his acting when Seymour was being really evil or crazy was great. So why did he have to make him sound like Evil Winnie-The-Pooh so often? Sure it was effectively creepy, but was it nessecary?
I don't believe it. A review about a review. This is so meta.
Your message was fairly short and could have gone more in-detph. The hyperbole of "I don't believe it" is unnecessary to the overall message, and word intensifiers likes "so" are not a good idea. I give you a 3/5, since you did correctly state the main issue with his review.
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.
Eh, most people are much too harsh on the voice acting methinks. It's certainly... patchy... at times, but even by current standards they certainly can't really be said to be "poor," even from a subjective point of view. It was still a comparatively new part of video game production; certainly to Square. Voice acting directors and crew made a lot of mistakes the performers are blamed for.
I'd forgotten I even review this game :P I don't really know where I was trying to go with this, it feels like I was trying to squeeze past the word count limit but what was the point of all those paragraphs? They don't fit together at all, it's just like I've grabbed handful of points out of a bag and decided to make them. At the same time there are touches of attempting to illustrate what the feeling of the game is like and I still think pointing out the connections between the gameplay and the story was quite nice. In some ways it's a little worrying that I haven't really improved all that much since then.
It's quite a fun time to discover it actually, Final Fantasy X and The Last of Us (the latest game I reviewed) are spiritually similar in quite a lot of ways, even if FFX is much more open and less driven. They're both linear stories about journeys with strong cutscene usage that try to use the gameplay to give over the feeling of the characters and what that journey is like. In terms of how they were positioned for the people at the time, I think the adventure game style is actually what's providing people with the closest kind of experience in modern day terms. Our RP Gs are much more self-expression/gameplay driven now instead of being the genre to tell a cinematic story like FFX was.
Also check out all the comments about people being surprised that the comments critique the review. There's a comment just like that in the other FFX review that resurfaced. We'd never even begin to think to highlight it nowadays, even for a joke.
Right, what the hell else would people use these for?
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One flaw and we all know what it is
FFX was my first good game it's still one of my favourite games of all time and has stolen several hundred hours of my time.
The game is linear and cutscene heavy, it's a story to experience, not create. A journey through a beautiful but monster ravaged land. There is a way to stop the monster, it's been done many times and yet the monster came back. But this time it may not, there is hope. As such, the gameplay is part of the narrative, showing the pains of this long difficult journey that so many fail.
The gameplay in itself is far more tactical than most FF games. It's turn based, turns decided on speed and move choice. The order for several turns is displayed and using it to employ the right attacks is vital.
At any time active members can be switched out for inactive ones and battles involve knowing who you need for what enemy. The mighty and stoic Auron has a hefty punch can take out the strongest armoured foes. Impatient and keen Tidus can take out creatures that are too fast and evading for Auron to touch. This matching of combat and character makes them feel consistent in gameplay and cutscene, they are still the same person.
Levelling up involves moving along curving and intersecting paths and buying attributes and abilities with spheres dropped by the enemy. Each character has paths that define them but there is enough flexibility to adjust the party and by the end everyone as started branching out on other paths.
The setting is breathtaking and combines with the plentiful cutscenes to drive you ahead, to see the next magical and marvellous thing in this world. Stopping and staring is well known. The story has some amazing twists and some more complicated ending and a more mature ending than could have been expected. There is always enough mystery to hold interest and the music is some of the best piano music of all games.
There are plenty of sidequests and a particularly deep turn-based sport sim. Love or hate them, you can ignore them but they are required to unlock the best weapons (if you don't build your own).
In the end this games represents the best of fantasy. It's both escaping into a whole new world and dealing with important facets of character and society. Only the voice acting is poor and that alone can keep people away. But I managed and at the very least please check out the opening cutscene on youtube.