Smartbomb

Final Fantasy X-2 is the most unusual Square RPG I’ve played since Live A Live. It includes many traditional Final Fantasy game elements but changes their gameplay functions, resulting in a weird subversion of the typical FF formula. It still has an unintelligable story, random battles and a cast of moody teenagers, but playing the game is a strange experience.

The party is stripped right down to three characters – bubbly thief Rikku, skeptical swordfighter Paine, and wistful heroine Yuna. All three girls are available from the start of the game, following an opening sequence that resembles a James Bond title sequence set to a JPop soundtrack. All three girls can train in any job that the player has collected (although, disappointingly, outside of the battle the game always shows them in their ‘official’ job outfits, shown above).

With such a small group, you get a very strong feeling for how the girls relate to each other. Rikku and Yuna are old friends from their FFX days, and they spend a lot of time talking about their former associates. Paine is the outsider of the group, but she’s comfortable with that – she’s focused on the job, and has no interest in discussing her personal life, or her past. Rikku is quite happy-go-lucky and often tries to persuade Yuna to live dangerously and act like a hero, while Paine is objective and pragmatic, always turning conversations back to the mission at hand. Most of the emotional development in the game is therefore provided by Yuna, who often finds herself caught between her two friends.

FFX told the story of Yuna’s early life as the High Summoner, a sort of Dalai Lama figure who was expected to save the world from total destruction. The game charted her pilgrimage across the world of Spira, from her seaside village on Besaid Island to the ancient ruined city of Zanarkand – if you look at a map of the game world, you can probably see that the game is geographically quite linear. Her whole life was laid out in front of her – almost literally, in a straight line.

In FFX-2 Yuna has already saved the world, escaped the life of the High Summoner, and is now a young woman who is free to choose her own destiny. Her life has become a lot less certain, and it shows in the way that everyone she meets expects different things from her. When monsters attack, the people of Spira expect the High Summoner to drop out of the sky and save them; When treasure is detected, her captain expects her to go forth and steal it; When a concert promoter loses workers and equipment in a bandit raid, Yuna is asked to do everything from selling tickets to performing as the headline act.

But what does Yuna want? As she comes to terms with her newfound independence, she spends much of the game pondering this question – particularly with regard to her relationship with Tidus, the now-dead protagonist of FFX. Cutscenes throughout the game are narrated by Yuna’s internal monologue as she has one-sided conversations with her dead lover:

“So many things seem intertwined. But nothing leads to you. Why be a sphere hunter if what I’m hunting for can never be found?”

Listening to her private thoughts makes you feel like you’re peeking into her diary – it contributes to the game’s sense of intimacy. She loves Tidus… loved Tidus… but should she hold on to her feelings and continue to search for him, or get over her loss and move on? Her predicament is mirrored in that of the game’s antagonist, a hunky young Blitzball player called Shuyin who, as it happens, died 1,000 years ago. Shuyin and his lover Lenne have a lot in common with Tidus and Yuna, not least their physical appearances. They were killed together at the height of a great war, but Shuyin’s spirit refused to pass on to the afterlife without Lenne – his ghost has spent a millennium wallowing in rage and sorrow, and has now returned to exact his revenge by destroying the world.

Shuyin clearly represents the dangers that Yuna faces if she continues to cling to the past, refusing to accept that Tidus is dead. If there is an antithetical character in the game, it is probably Wakka – Yuna’s childhood friend, who during the course of the game comes to terms with his brother’s death and vows to be a good father to his newborn son. It shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that the ‘good’ ending of FFX-2 involves Yuna saying goodbye to Tidus’ ghost and looking ahead to a future without him.

The problem I have is that there’s a special ‘perfect’ ending where Tidus is brought back from the dead and they are reunited. I know I’m being a real killjoy here, but this magical fairytale romance ending really put me off! After 40 hours following a story that is all about letting go of the past and moving on with your life, your ultimate reward is to have that message swept out the window. Sometimes, if you want it badly enough, dead people can come back to life! You can turn back the clock on your relationship and start over! It’s shameful fanservice fluff that undermines the entire game in my opinion.

That aside, I enjoyed it. I did have issues with some of the FF traditions they failed to cut – level grinding, occasional bosses with ludicrously unfair abilities, secret equipment that reduces the game to trivial effort – but there’s a lot of stuff I really loved. The side-quests are a lot of fun, and all have their own special briefing and debriefing scenes that go beyond the usual conversation-in-a-pub that normally take place. The girls are a likeable bunch, and the supporting cast are just the right amount of quirky (the weakest characters seem to be the NPC hangers-on from FFX, who only seem to exist in order to wrap up their loose ends from the previous game).

The thing that I’m realling coming away from this game with is that it feels very feminine. Not just because of the all-female cast, but the way all of the stories are about negotiation, making actual decisions, and changing relationships – not just ploughing through a linear course of action and imposing your will onto the world. Plus it spends a lot more time than most games talking openly about feelings and relationships and stuff, mostly from Yuna’s point of view but also from characters like Lulu (the mother of Wakka’s child, who wonders what kind of father he will turn out to be) and Dona (a former summoner who has fallen out with her repressed admirer Barthello). In FFX-2, Square-Enix have done a good job of portraying female perspectives without falling back on dumb stereotypes (much).