Games Happy

Like many RPG classics, Last Fantasy X is about saving the world. The world of Spira is devoid of house, and sends scores of individuals to their deaths as sacrifices within the title of survival. 

With out Summoners and their Last Aeons, the calamitous creature often called Sin will destroy the realm of Spira in its entirety. Solely by throwing these succesful priestly characters’ lives away is Sin briefly satiated – or so the legend goes – and so the cycle of loss of life spirals endlessly throughout a millennium.

Yuna seems destined to repeat this ghastly course of, serving as simply one other cog within the wheel. There are echoes of Last Fantasy VII, the place one pure-hearted character should die to avoid wasting the world. However Last Fantasy casts aren’t so good at obeying the whims of destiny – and in the long run, Yuna destroys Sin and lives to inform the story. The spiral ends – even when her lover, Tidus, should depart from Yuna’s world in a bittersweet finale.

Last Fantasy X is bittersweet. It’s additionally frank and profound in its musings on each the risks of organized faith and its means to unite individuals in occasions of nice want. Above all, what strikes me is how the sport teaches a very harsh lesson: You may’t at all times get what you need. Yuna walks away along with her life, a hero – however loses the love of her life within the course of. She’s as an alternative left to mourn and to steer, destined to assist Spira rebuild.

Last Fantasy X-2 is vastly bored with that sentiment, nonetheless. In keeping with FFX-2, you may get what you need – you simply have to decide to the laborious and unwieldy technique of gaining a 100% completion file. Drain this recreation for every thing it has on faucet, and the woman can nonetheless get her man. Every thing could be smiles. Overlook bittersweet; load up on saccharine goals.

A minimum of, that’s how I scornfully regarded Last Fantasy’s first ever direct sequel when it debuted two complete a long time in the past. Reality be informed, it’s been my dominant viewpoint on the brilliant, poppy story for almost all of that point – that by eschewing the sobering moments of loss so prevalent within the authentic, its follow-up story is little greater than an opportunity to place Last Fantasy X’s courageous protagonist in a pair of ill-fitting sizzling pants. Yuna is a totally completely different character right here, Spira is weirdly unrecognizable, and all that governmental strife between the novel Youth League and extra conservative New Yevon is simply lip service.

I made a decision to present FFX-2 one other shake just a few years in the past, at which level issues lastly crystallized. I started to understand it in all of the methods I believe its creators had hoped I’d – not as a botched try at an epic sequel, however as certainly one of media’s most in-depth epilogue chapters. 

To make certain, FFX-2 tells its personal story, from begin to end, and that story consists of discovering methods to fill that aforementioned governmental void while stopping a scorned man from activating an historical weapon. However above all that, and way more to the purpose, it’s actually only a string of associated misadventures between buddies as they discover a Spira that’s been free of its millennium of oppression. And each misadventure looks like a part of this huge denouement in service to the prior recreation. Catching up with FFX’s characters as they every take that monumental first step ahead in a wierd new world – I dig that. 

All these quirky moments in X-2 positive add up; take away each tacky scene from the script, and also you’re not left with a lot else. However the quirkiness of the world and its inhabitants is the beating coronary heart of Last Fantasy X-2, as a result of here’s a civilization that may ultimately rebuild, however has little or no consciousness as to how to take action. It’s a society collectively coming to phrases with the notion that what they do from right here has lasting that means, as a result of an enormous whale factor isn’t going to annihilate them ever once more. 

Last Fantasy X-2 is a continuing journey via a rapidly-changing Spira as the previous sacrificial Summoner, Woman Yuna, bears witness to what humanity can do when the therapeutic begins, when the time comes not simply to exist, however to properly and really dwell. Yuna herself is looking for what which means in private phrases; how do you reside? Current means inhaling, respiration out. Consuming and consuming sufficient. Sleeping, typically. 

However to dwell is to search out oneself, and whereas it’s truthful to wonder if changing into a vagabond pop star strains believability, it’s vital to notice that Yuna is quite awkward for a lot of X-2’s runtime. She’s forcing herself to push properly previous former boundaries on this, properly, magical woman transformation into idol tradition, till towards the top of the story when a poignant speech showcases a girl who has primarily fused her former, bittersweet FFX self along with her newfound, uh, Charlie’s Angels type. In that second, Yuna feels complete, her character arc fulfilled.

Actually, I don’t a lot look after the Youth League and New Yevon plot. It’s not a nasty idea, and in reality, it makes excellent sense {that a} energy wrestle would come up following the occasions of FFX. I simply don’t discover its characters notably compelling. I really feel the identical about Shuyin and the Vegnagun, besides I’m unsure I even discover the idea notably compelling. And the much less mentioned on LeBlanc, or – shudder – Brother, the higher. 

But I can admire FFX-2 now way over I did. Whereas I as soon as stood by its wonderful battle system and little else, I now discover even these huge story threads way more fulfilling, via the lens of perception that each flight Yuna and her Gullwing buddies take throughout Spira spreads hope via a ruined world. To observe as its denizens embrace the unknown future – and get fairly funky within the course of – it hits the appropriate notes now.

The mini-games galore, the corny character interactions, in a bizarre method it’s like all of Spira simply hit adolescence after escaping a perpetual painful childhood. It’s OK that everybody’s let their proverbial hair down within the course of, even when I nonetheless cringe on the sizzling springs hijinks and related fare.

In a method, then, FFX-2 is extra daring, extra bold, than its legendary predecessor. It’s not in regards to the warfare, however the period. It’s not in regards to the planet-saving (OK, so there’s a few of that too) however the persevering with protection of hard-earned survival. It’s about discovering the freedom to turn into your true self after a lifetime the place the choices are kind of made for you, usually starting and ending with ‘properly, what are the percentages Sin kills you this week?’ It’s lovely, weird, epilogue-style storytelling that examines one thing I want extra epic fiction did – it solutions that easiest and most elusive of questions: ‘what occurs subsequent?’

Don’t let me get too carried away, although. That 100% completion mechanic? It nonetheless sucks.