Introduction

Final Fantasy X, a one of a kind game that defined many things for both the PS2 generation and games to come as well, as the turning point for both Square Enix and Final Fantasy. It is the perfect encapsulation of everything that had come before with pockets of old school SNES entries, and the more modern at the time evolutions of the series that would spark with the dawn of the PS1 era.

Final Fantasy X is a brilliant video game, that only grows on me more with time. It is an incredible game that captures the magic of the genre through all of the pillars that make a Final Fantasy game so defining and brilliant. It's the way the world of Spira becomes so etched into your memory, with the sunny beaches of Besaid and the vibrant music that depicts a sunrise, the expansive and robust amount of tools and approach to progression through the Sphere Grid, the proficiencies that each party member has in combat, along with characters that are all memorable and defining.

The more I explore and replay games in the Final Fantasy series, the more I discover the types of experiences that stick with me the most are the ones that offer a heavy emphasis on the world, and the party. Final Fantasy X is a game that focuses heavily on the world and its traditions, but one that uses the party as drivers to explore the facets of the world, and overall Final Fantasy X is a magical experience that you can see reverberate into the genre in the years that would follow.

I've said this about Final Fantasy VII and I think the same can be said about ten, that it is truly lightning in a bottle, its a game that reimagines and iterates on what came before mechanically, whilst not feeling like a major departure or rejection of what came before, and it is why many, and after replaying I echo this sentiment, believe Final Fantasy X is the best entry point to the series.

Development

The development for Final Fantasy X began in 1999, and would end up costing around 32 million US to make with a team of over 100 people who were mostly veterans.

The development of the script for FFX took roughly 3 to 4 months with the same amount of time allocated to the voice acting later on. Producer Yoshinori Kitase worked as chief director of Final Fantasy X, while the direction of events, maps, and battles was split between Kitase and Motomu Toriyama.

Tetsuya Nomura, Kazushige Nojima collaborated with Daisuke Wantanabe on scenario writing and Nojima expressed the importance of a relationship between the player and the main character. This would be expressed through the discoveries of the world and plot events that are revealed to both Tidus and the player at the same time.

Tidus' relationship with his father Jecht was based on stories "throughout mythology" particularly correlating to the likes of Greek mythos. The primary relationship originally was going to focus solely on Tidus and Yuna, but would eventually divide that focus to the father son relationship as it would serve to better produce impact for the world and history of Spira.

Spira's design and change of scenery stemmed from Kitase, who believed if the series went back to a medieval setting of Eastern fantasy, it would not held the development team advance. Testsuya Nomura was the character designer and identified the South Pacific Thailand and Japan as major influences on the cultural and geographical design of Spiram particularly concerning the geographic locations of Southern Besaid and Kilika Islands. He also said that the world of Spira deviates from the past Final Fantasy worlds in the level of detail incorporated.

Efforts were taken into many facets of the games influence, even the different clothing styles of different cultures and making sure that each different town and people residing in said town feel distinctive. This process was lead by Fumi Nakashima who had a meticulous level of detail in how she made the the different cultures and cities of Spira come to life with intentionally having the Al-behd wear masks and goggles to provide them that strange and eccentric vibe that we know and love them for today through their design.

Hironobu Sakaguchi the Executive Producer and brain child behind the series expressed concerns with the transition from 2D to 3D backgrounds, the voice acting and a transition to in game cut-scenes. The PS2 would be major leap from the original PlayStation there were still limitations presented to the development of Final Fantasy X, having the team need to focus on prioritizing resolution or the number of colors that could be used on screen. Initially the team thought the inclusion of more color would more adequately depict the lush and vibrant world of Spira, further bringing the world to life. However, during the development cycle it became clear that other games released around the same time prioritized resolution and fans expectations were for games to prioritize resolution of color.

This pivot to increasing the resolution came about in the last six months of development which would see major modifications to the experience. Final Fantasy X was the first in the series to not include a world map, due to the world running in full 3D and requiring a world map module which was deemed to expensive.

However, Final Fantasy X featured innovations with its use of motion capture and skeletal animation technology. This allowed for more realistic lip movements. Nojima stated the inclusion of voice acting enabled him to express emotion more powerfully than before, enabling him to also keep the storyline simple, having character and personality shine through the voice actors and their expression.It's reported that at one point, Final Fantasy X was originally supposed to have online elements, which would later be dropped and re-incorporated into Final Fantasy XI, Square's first stab at the popular MMORPG genre.

But in July 2001 Final Fantasy X would release to widespread critical acclaim and enshrine itself as one of the all time greats for the PS2 and the Final Fantasy series.

Story

Overview

The story for Final Fantasy X begins in the futuristic city of Zanerkand following our young athletic hero Tidus, who is a star playing of the famous sport Blitzball. During his match, the city is attacked by a mysterious figure known as Sin, and Tidus is thrown into the world of Spira and with it thrusted 1000 years into the future. Along this journey Tidus meets Wakka a blitzball player, and Lulu a mage who is very reserved and has little to really say. Lastly Tidus would meet Yuna, a summoner who is on a pilgrimage from to defeat Sin, through acquiring aeons and journeying through the lands of Spira to acquire the aeons needed to banish Sin for a duration of time called the Calm. As fate has it, Yuna's journey sees her travelling to Zanarkand accompanied by her guardians Wakka, Lulu and Kamari. Tidus joins along as a guardian and sets out on this journey with Yuna.

As I mentioned in this game, Final Fantasy X really does put an emphasis on the relationships Tidus shares with his father, but it also does intersect with his relationship with Yuna, as these characters are both a conduit for each other providing strength and the encouragement needed to see their journey, their story through.

Themes

Please Listen to My Story

It took me a while to truly grasp why Tidus repeatedly declares, “This is my story.” At first glance, it seems like Final Fantasy X revolves more around Yuna—her pilgrimage, her sacrifice, her growth. But over time, I’ve come to see that Tidus’s statement comes from a deeply personal place. Despite being the protagonist we follow and a star Blitzball player, Tidus constantly feels like he's living in someone else's shadow—most notably, his father, Jecht.

From a young age, Tidus was bombarded with stories about his father’s greatness. Yet, behind those tales was an absent parent struggling with alcoholism. Tidus grew to resent Jecht—not only for his absence but for how his presence loomed over every aspect of his life. One scene captures this perfectly: Tidus tries to speak with his mother, but she’s too fixated on Jecht to notice her son. Even in that quiet moment, Jecht takes the spotlight.

This resentment follows Tidus even after he’s hurled a thousand years into the future. Jecht’s legacy—now amplified by his role as Sin—continues to define how others see Tidus. It’s inescapable. But Tidus isn’t just running from his father’s legacy; he’s striving to carve out a legacy of his own. “This is my story” becomes a declaration of self—his way of claiming agency, of breaking free from the expectations imposed on him.

There’s a beautiful parallel here with Yuna. Both she and Tidus are children of famous fathers, left with the burden of living up to legacies not of their choosing. For Tidus, it’s about reclaiming his identity; for Yuna, it’s about fulfilling a duty. Their bond is rooted in this shared struggle, and that connection blossoms into love and mutual understanding. The symbolism in their names—Tidus representing the sun, and Yuna the moon—emphasizes this duality. They are two halves of a whole, from different worlds and times, walking the same path.

What adds even more depth to this dynamic is how it echoes in Seymour, the game’s main antagonist. Like Tidus and Yuna, Seymour is also burdened by his father’s legacy. But unlike them, Seymour was shunned—both he and his mother were outcasts. This lack of love and support warped his perspective. Where Tidus and Yuna strive to find hope, Seymour seeks to end suffering through annihilation. His path diverges not because of his circumstances alone, but because of the absence of care and connection.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy X is a story about inheritance—of burdens, of expectations, of pain—and how each character chooses to respond. What separates them isn’t the weight they carry, but the people who help them bear it.

Religion and Tradition

Final Fantasy has never been a series that is afraid to explore religious themes, but in Final Fantasy X it really is a centerpiece and major backdrop to what sets the more central themes and state of Spira in motion. It explores the pitfalls of blind faith and an inability to identify fault in tradition. It in many ways is a cautionary tale of how our mindless devotion to beliefs and teachings, blind faith and ignorance

The teachings of Yevon are what perpetuate the cycle telling the people that they carry the burdens and sins of the past and need to atone, and created the tradition of the Summoner's pilgrimage to defeat Sin and is based on the teachings of a summoner who existed 1000 years ago known as Yu Yevon.

It's pretty clear immediately that the teachings of Yevon are an allegory in many ways for religion and the Yevonite's people who follow Yevon inhabit many different characteristics of existing religions such as Shintoism for practices and usage of temples, Buddhism for how it incorporates ritualistic disciplines and Abrahamic religions for its usage of pilgrimages and doctrines. The teachings of Yevon is designed to give people a sense of meaning in the face of death and Yoshinori Kitase wanted to showcase how the people of Spira behave and react in the face of death.

There are many different comparisons and iconography that you can derive from Final Fantasy X such as the Farplane which even has its own equivalent of a cemetery, a place of where one can see the memory of those who have passed, and also an after life for where the deceased reside, similar to the concepts of heaven.

But the usage of Yevon and the teachings are not just the setup and backdrop to Spira's culture, but it is also a theme that reveals how easily corruptible ideas of faith and tradition can be by the people who run and guide the people. You see the religious organization of Yevon is full of issues and drama. You see when people have died and their body can sometime linger and refuse to move to the farplane, and it is the duty of a summoner to "send" these people, helping them cross over to the farplane. However, it is revealed that the organization that runs the religion of Yevon is led by people refusing to be sent, who exist to govern the majority of Spira. As the story of Final Fantasy X unfolds the origin of Sin which we will discuss in the next section, and how the faith of Yevon and the ministry that administers the people, seek to have control and not even follow their own beliefs and teachings, begins to showcase the corruptible nature of blind beliefs and an absolute subservience to tradition.

The Stasis of Sin

The next theme of Final Fantasy X revolves around the concept of stasis and how Sin the main antagonist of FFX's story holds the world of Spira in stasis. Spira lives in an endless cycle of stasis believing that they're atoning for their past and leaving people unable to move forward. The world is in an endless cycle of Sin arriving, summoners setting out on a pilgrimage to stop Sin, they defeat Sin, and usher in a period known as the Calm and so the cycle repeats on and on.

The backdrop of FFX's world and this sense of stasis is embedded in tradition and religion one aspect that FFX isn't afraid to explore. As I mentioned in the previous section the world of Spira is largely guided by the teachings of Yevon and the Theocratic ministry and advisory that guide and dictate the summoners to their destination. But the teachings and faith of Yevon is hiding one major secret, one that ultimately collides Tidus' world with the world of Spira.

It is revealed 1000 years ago Zanarkand and Bevelle went to war one which Zanarkand would lose. Yu Yevon created Sin as a mechanism to preserve Zanarkand looking it in a state of stasis where Zanarkand would be in a dream-like state where Yu Yevon could preserve both himself and his home.

The whole pilgrimage, Yuna's journey and the calling of the final aeon, would provide Yu Yevon the power to continue to preserve the dream world of Zanarkand.

I used the stasis intentionally, Zanarkand is a world that is being locked and preserved, one that is slowly fading but is caught in a loop that is trying to keep the dream alive. So what does this mean for Tidus? The boy who is a fish out of water in a new world, well it means that he is an entity of the dream world, one living on borrowed time.

The secondary antagonist Seymour believes that if he is able to become Sin, he can break the cycle by ending the loop via brute force, meaning that he will destroy Spira and wipe out all life that lives. This false sense of ending the cycle that is in fact no real solution and no way forward.

The statis and inability to move on from the past is also an internal commentary in a way on the Final Fantasy series in of itself. With Final Fantasy 10 feeling like the last of its kind and depicts the change that was internally culminating at Square at the time. I've mentioned this in a few of my Final Fantasy videos in the past, but the early 2000s really was a changing of the guard for what Final Fantasy was, and what it would be going forward in the future, trying to redefine its identity and place within the landscape of video games. But it was also the closing chapter for Hironobu Sakaguchi being the last single player Final Fantasy that we would be Executive Producer for, before departing to form Mistwalker.

Breaking the Cycle - Sacrifice, Legacy and Memory

Final Fantasy X's genius comes from how the story flips the script on you. Where you start this journey as Tidus exploring this world and accompanying Yuna on her pilgrimage as she marches towards her eventual death to call the Final Aeon and bring about the Calm to Spira. But eventually flips the script on you revealing that Tidus is a product of a world that was, a world that is now living on life support through preservation of the Yu Yevon and destroying sin and defeating Yu Yevon will break the cycle of Sin and bring about the Eternal Calm, but will also spell the end of the Zanarkand that he is from and with it will mean Tidus will disappear and be sent to the farplane.

There is a quote that Yuna makes a specch during the closing cinematic of the game about all the things that everyone has lost, whether it is people, homes or friends and talks about how with the defeat of SIn, Spira can finally move forward creating new hopes and dreams and a future full of hopes and prosperities.

But it closes with her talking about rebuilding Spira, and she mentions the people that they've lost or the dreams that have faded to never forget them. The perfect closing and finale to a story, that although we may move forward and break out of the stasis of the past, may we never forget those who came before, the dreams and ideals that came and inspired and brought us to the place we're at today.

Gameplay

Combat

Conditional Turn-Based Combat

The first major overhaul that has been made to the combat is the move from Active Time or ATB combat to CTB or Conditional Turn-Based combat, which would display in the top right corner of the battle screen the amount of turns available and who would be up next, and would also visually show how both the player and enemy could extract and shift the tides of allotted turns in their favor.

That doesn't mean that there isn't a metric or gauge that calculates how long before a party member can attack, Final Fantasy X uses something known as the tick system a more underpinned system to combat that determines the action and recovery that a party member can make after being involved in combat. It is correlated to the party members agility.

Final Fantasy X also allows you to swap out party members on the fly during combat, which offers a unique and versatile approach to combat making every party member feel unique and useful in battle. Much like in most Final Fantasy games, your party is made up of different classes that are skilled and proficient in a particular discipline, FFX is special in a different way to this that I'll get into later, but inversely enemies will have a certain weakness like airborne enemies being weak to Wakka's ranged attacks or heavy enemies being weak to Auron's heavy attacks.

But it isn't just party members that can be swapped, but also weapons and armour too which enables you to strategize and adapt to different encounters and biggest accomplishment of Final Fantasy X's combat and approach to turn-based encounters is how flexible and varied the solutions to encounters can be.

Overdrive

The famous limit break ultimate attacks see a return here in Final Fantasy X as well, in the form of overdrives, which have a prompt that charges them up to do more damage similar to have the limit breaks of Final Fantasy VIII work. What's interesting here in Final Fantasy X is how there are different ways to fill the overdrive gauge that unlock throughout your playthrough such as taking damage from enemies, dealing damage to enemies and other modes as well. It's again another layer of flexibility that contributes to the players expression, and approach to composition, that works incredibly well within the system.

Exploration

Final Fantasy X is a mostly linear game and is the first Final Fantasy not to feature a world map as we've discussed, but it is also subject to the criticism which would later be the focal point of Final Fantasy XIII, and that is the linear levels. For me, FFX's world and story do have a sense of linear structure to them, but I don't feel like it quite matches the same "corridor complaints" and that is because well one, there are branching paths, and two these paths are explorable and you're able to backtrack and take on a plethora of side activities in the game. But for 80% of Final Fantasy X's duration you are moving forward, place to place tackling the main story.

Once you do reach a certain point in the game much like many of the
previous entries you'll unlock the airship which will allow you to re-visit areas you've previously travelled to in the past. There is also a location in the game that later on opens up to the party called the Calm Lands which is in many ways a playground and starting point for where many of the different side activities will begin to appear. Speaking of side content Final Fantasy X has a lot wealth of variation that takes shape in different forms of content, which I'd like to breakdown in this part of the video starting with Blitzball, which I'll be honest I haven't played a ton of throughout my playthrough, but it is a whole game that is packed into the broader experience here. There is a lot to the game too, it has its own mechanics, recruitable players that you can add to your team along with tournaments that you can enter as well, which offer up some pretty solid rewards.

When talking about Final Fantasy 10's world and story, I talked about how the world of Sphira feels realised and alive in it's culture, its cities, its rituals and I think one of the coolest additions that Final Fantasy 10's gameplay and exploration, and collectible side content does to illustrate this is have you learn Al-Bhed through books that will translate letters in Al-Bhed to English, making the NPC's from this region slowly more understandable.

There are also optional Aeons that you can acquire through optional temples which are tied to side dungeons in the game. There is also a beastiary and Monster Arena where you will go out to all the different locations of Spira and capture different monsters and fill out a compendium. You can also battle the collected monsters for rewards too. There are Chocobbo Racing mini-games and hidden locations you can discover on the world map via the airship too. Final Fantasy X's exploration, open with tons of little details that make revisiting old areas feel worthwhile and whilst you may not be able to visibly run around on a world map, it doesn't mean or make the game feel restricted at all to me.

Gameplay Systems

Progression

Sphere Grid

Final Fantasy as a series always is shaping and shifting the ways in which it handles its progression, a big part of what goes hand in hand with its combat. A majority of mainline Final Fantasy games are turn-based, but it is there progression system that shapes the way in which you interact with the games combat. Whether it is the flexibility of materia or resource driven magic of drawing there are often many systems that underpin the expression and sense of flexibility offered by a Final Fantasy game.

The Sphere Grid has to be the most streamlined and comprehensive method of progression I think to appear in a Final Fantasy game. Whilst it may lock the players into a set path early on, familiarizing and associating each party member a particular role, it does open up and provide for a sense of a multi-talented party. Unlike traditional RPGs it does away with traditional levels which provide the party progressive stat increases for each level they amass, instead providing the party with a currency of points and sphere, with points allowing the party member to move along the grid and the spheres the ability to unlock particular spheres that are adjacent to the party members current position or their current position.

Where the flexibility comes into player, is later on in the game when you start to overlap and have the choice to start mastering skills another party member has acquired making you multi-specialized , and their is no real right or wrong way to go about this, and their are even unique spheres you can unlock later on that provide you the ability hop to another place on the grid or unlock a magic spell that another party member has already unlocked, and it gets you thinking, planning and tailoring the party to your play style and how you want each of them to work. Yes, they do have a default role and they'll operate pretty optimally within that role, but the more stat spheres that you unlock, also will lend themself to making that party member more effective in that field. If you want Yuna to use Black Magic, make sure you're increasing her magic which naturally you will be.

Item Management

The Item management and the way that Final Fantasy X handles weapons and upgrades is also really unique too. Different weapons instead of having stats applied to them like 30 Strength or 20 Magic, they're given perks that increase their proficiency. So you could give the weapon the ability to inflict silence on an enemy or allowing you to counterattack enemies, whilst also being able to have the more typical Strength 10% modifiers. But what this system does is it makes all the different weapons you collect throughout your playthrough feel pretty useful. Yes, like with any Final Fantasy, there are Ultimate weapons that are generally the best but for a majority of your playthrough there are weapons and also accessories that allow you to tweak and customize your play style and also enable you to prepare for tons of different situations and it is quite freeing and straight forward to understand.

Visuals and Sound Presentation

Visuals

The visuals for FFX still to this day holds up well, with the in-game visuals still being a great feat for the time and sustaining the artistic charm, but man the FMV cutscenes are absolutely incredible and still to this day are absolutely stunning, I feel like watching that opening scene with the Blitzball game or arriving in Luca, its these moments that are a showcase of how the cutscenes and FMV's used to feel like a reward when you'd reach those moments in the game. It also was a big move from 2D background to 3D and you can see the changes in the environments and the level of detail in the character outfits too as we touched on earlier.

There is something so beautiful and harmonious about the world of Spira, the visual presentation of the tropical backdrops, the inner sanctums of the temples of Yevon, the remnants of Machina and futuristic cityscape of Zanarkand all feel like they have a distinctive presence in the societies and culture that reside in these cities, the clothing that they wear and the ways in which they speak. The atmosphere of the world is visually stellar and although this game is over 20 years old, it is a re-enforcement on the idea that a good art style and commitment to an overall theme provides a timeless feeling.

Sound

It isn't just the overall visual presentation that sells and creates the incredible mood and atmosphere of Final Fantasy X, but also its music which was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu, and Junya Nakano. This was the first Final Fantasy soundtrack to not solely be composed by Nobuo Uematsu and Uematsu wanted to make the soundtrack for Final Fantasy X feel more cinematic and the overall mood and atmosphere for Final Fantasy X would shine through. There are old fan favorite tracks like the chocobo theme that have that old school Final Fantasy feeling to them. But much like its visual counterpart there is an overall variety of music that is fitting of the sense of place. The islands of Besaid feel like a warm sunrise, the temples of Yevon feel reverent and the famous Zanarkand theme that begins this adventure feels somber. There is something that is special about how Final Fantasy's soundtracks come together and Final Fantasy X is no exception.

Conclusion

The closing thoughts that I have for Final Fantasy X are that it is one of the best in the series, there's a reason why so many people swear by this game and love it so dearly, and that's because there is something so unique about it. The visuals are distinct and different for the genre, the music is eclectic switching between warm and care free tunes that make you feel like you're living on a secluded island, to reverent chants that hum like a prayer. There's a really different feeling to Final Fantasy X, and it can be felt in its gameplay, it's progression with the Sphere Grid still feeling like one of the most comprehensive yet, flexible ways to tailor and branch out your parties abilities.

I truly do believe that whilst Final Fantasy X may not be my favorite Final Fantasy it is the best one to start with. It offers an insight into everything that the series does so well, and a narrative that showcases what the series can do when it flexes its muscles, but outside of all of that it truly is just a special game that makes you feel what emotion it is trying to convey at the time, a story that hooks its claws into you within the first ours, and characters you don't want to say goodbye to when the story comes to a close. If I can sum this video in a few words Final Fantasy X is truly magical.

Thank you for Reading

Resources

https://shmuplations.com/ffx/
https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasy/comments/75tuyk/who_is_the_main_antagonist_of_ffx_obvious_spoilers/?rdt=36565
https://youtube.com/shorts/GWT89AEqPN8?si=be2loOeEdis9n_PA

Development Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X
https://shmuplations.com/ffx/
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/266935/history-of-final-fantasy-dreaming-ahead-final-fantasy-x/
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/643146-final-fantasy-x-x-2-hd-remaster/68273929

Remake Claims

https://wccftech.com/final-fantasy-x-remake-2026/
https://www.frontlinejp.net/2021/08/01/the-possibility-of-ffx-3-final-fantasy-x-20th-anniversary-developer-interview-part-4-4/