Final Fantasy X-2 is just fluff.

Final Fantasy X-2 is a sequel that no one asked for, and I don't think we needed. It expands on the world of Spira and her characters, which is great, but it doesn't do enough. It's a great callback to more conventional games in the franchise but gives us a new application. It's also a lot of things that make me think things I shouldn't.

For starters, I can't suggest a game that requires you to follow a guide, word for word, to get the full enjoyment from it. There are far, far too many small, tiny scenes that you can accidentally miss if you do something slightly out of order. A few examples are a Toblie scene on the Moonflow in chapter one. I don't think that's a 100 percent req, but all the commsphere stuff in chapter four has a stupidly small window of opportunity. Don't accidentally speak to Buddy! Also, during chapter four, the Mi'ihen Highroad stuff with Rin has us calling him when we see something suspicious. I missed two things because I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. People aren't allowed to loiter on the high road, I guess. And the fact you need to play it twice for the useless story fork that changes nothing is just plain awful. And to say nothing of the missable items? How was I even supposed to know a Crimson Sphere was down there? I'm so glad Paine, a character who needs more screen time, got screwed by vague nonsense.

There's too much fluff. There were several areas that felt shoehorned in. The Calm Lands are the most obvious, but I feel like Zanarkand was misused. Mi'ihen, the last half of Mushroom Rock, and the Thunder Plains felt superfluous and were only here because they were here in FFX. There's very little story that grows the main plot, world building, or characters, but you still have to explore them. Five times, in fact! That might be the worst part of X-2. You have to explore every zone four or five times through the game to even think about getting the perfect ending. Tedium isn't a good game mechanic, and it's an even worst story! Gagazet and Macalania are great because it tells the story of the ronzo's rage against the guado; it's a story worth experiencing.

In a similar vein, X-2 is a major asset flip. Every camera angle, battle scene, and location is exactly the same as two years ago. The portraits of the guado elders are still on Leblanc's walls. Even the food Seymour prepared for us is still there! I et that it makes for a quick dev cycle, but they should have given us different views. I know what the high road looks like, but I want to see more of it. What's in the forests around us? Are there any other caverns in Mushroom Rock? Why couldn't we have explored more of the picturesque Moonflow? There aren't even any worthwhile new dungeons in these areas. Bevelle and Zanarkand have quick walks, the Thunder Plains has a giant massive waste, and Guadosalem has Leblanc additions. And that's it! Everything new is Kilika Port, the Bevelle Underground, and the final dungeon. The Mt. Gagazett ruins, the first dungeon, has a quarter of the game's differences! There are a million ruins in Spira, and we're sphere hunters? Why couldn't we have spelunked them? New forests, islands; what's on the otherside of the ridge in the Thunder Plains? How rad would it be if we stumbled upon an ancient civilization that knows about the machina War deep in the Macalania Forest?

Most of the main characters are Hollywood bipolar. They flip back and forth between worried and somber to happy and ecstatic at the drop of a hat. Sometimes, even in the same scene. Brother can get rejected by his cousin, party with his sister, and be egotistical in the span of four minutes. Instead of adding all the fluff, expand characters. Main characters, secondary, enemies. Maechan is the only person who definitive character growth.

I don't say this often, but the music is terrible. The few standouts make it better than Grandia, but I have no idea to hear most of the OST ever again. It's all very upbeat and peppy, which I'm not into, but this is a step beyond. Synth-jazz fusion that is based mostly on blips and whistles isn't enjoyable. It's not all terrible, of course. The vocal songs are some of the best in the genre. 1000 Words is excellent, and Real Emotion wrongly sets the tone for the game. Every time you hear a piano is a fun time, but I didn't get excited to be in battle.

Speaking of battle, it was boring. Because we have to explore everywhere so often, you can end up being way too strong. It makes you don't need to job change, which is the biggest thing that makes X-2 unique. I ended up mastering the first three jobs by the end of chapter one, and I didn't even try. This allowed me to only focus on their next job when I got them and never needed to balance anything. Towards the end of the game, you get items and grids to let you use other jobs' skills without being the job, so you don't even need to change late game! Sure, your stats aren't up to stock, but it doesn't matter. Magic sucks. An alchemist can heal better than a white mage, and black magic is objectionably worse than basic attacks, even on flans and elementals. Magic takes too long to cast, whereas basic commands don't. Buffs are vital, I guess, so max out that songstress, which you can only do if you get all the Crimson Spheres... And the GUI is terrible. The camera moves around and pans out too much, and it can sometimes limit what you see. At one point, Yuna got stoned, and I didn't notice it because the camera was a mile away. It's also hard to see who did what in combat. No one gets their moment of action like in FFX, so everything happens at once. If you're in the menu, you miss it. Did my status effect work, or was the target immune?

I'm still left with a lot of questions. Mainly, why are the aeons here? We filled them, and they went to sleep. Did we fight dead, Farplane versions of them? Why do so many people know what a dress sphere and a garment grid are? Shinra made them himself recently, right? I would have loved to see more about the dress spheres, too. We know Lenne and Maechen are the basis for the songstress and black mage, but what about the other ones? Why'd the devs only highlight two?

Sphere Break is awful, and they ruined Blitzball.

And, maybe the worst thing about the game, why is there a delay with closing out of the rewards screen?

Okay, so I hate everything about X-2. or do I?

If you take out the fluff, the story is really good. FFX was about the future and how to stop it. X-2 is about the past and recovering and maintaining it. Can Tidus be found? Can Yuna's Calm continue? Can Paine get over her pain? It should have been expanded with more character growth and additional light on the secondary cast. Rikku never changed, nor did Paine. We should have seen more from Gippal, Nooj, and Barelai, but we just had to play Sphere Break. But what we got is among the best in modern times.

I'm also glad that our former allies from X got some shine. Wakka and Lulu having a happy ending was cute, and they didn't just cut Wakka's legs off. He fought off the temple fiends all alone. Kimahri became the ronso elder, and it was rad. All the stuff WE had to do for him was a bit less so, but he's an important player in Spira, nonetheless. Does X-2 Kimarhi have more lines than X Kimahri?

Oh, boy! X-2 was a bad game. I didn't hate it that much while playing it, but looking over what I've written makes it seem like one ofo the worst games ever made. It's still not very good, don't get me wrong, but it isn't THIS bad. The flaws are numerous, but I think it's worth a play if you loved X and the extended universe that has since been written. But there is that caveat of needing a guide to get the true ending. I can not, in good consciousness, recommend anything that does this. All the fluff I've rambled on about makes the game tedious and boring. Think about all I've written in these blogs. How many of them were filled with nothing? But if you don't do them, you miss out on so much, and you'll end up underleveled. What shines in Final Fantasy X-2 shines bright, but the abundant flaws and fluff hurt it in ways that it can't come back for. Some people hate X-2 because it's a game for girls or a J-pop romp. Those are stupid reasons to avoid this, and it's even true. I wish it were! Instead, we've just got half of a game. There's plenty of structure, but the electricity, plumbing, and climate control were never installed. Final Fantasy X-2 doesn't live up to Final Fantasy X as a sequel, nor does it live up to other Final Fantasy titles. Typing that sentence kinda hurts...