You might say I’m a little late to the party, having just now finished a game I started when it first came out in December 2001. I would say, “No, you are!” in a childish manner and then run away. As it turns out, I have a very bad habit of starting games, getting really far in the them, but never getting around to finishing them.

Around the time I got my PS3, I decided to pick up “Final Fantasy X” again. I debated starting over, but the last time I had done that, I found that I was only a few plot points from the end, and this save file was even farther than that one had been.

So how does the game hold up by today’s standards?

Surprisingly well.

From a game so early in the PS2′s life cycle, both the in-game and pre-rendered scenes still look good. They might not have all the flash of the upcoming PS3 “Final Fantasy XIII”, but to expect so would be insanity. The voice acting is just as horrible as you remember it, and while the plot is decent, most of the actual characters tend to get on my nerves. This can, at least partially, be blamed on said voice acting.

"Pre-Rendered Scenes Still Look Good"

The plot revolves around Sin, a giant monster that appears every few years, and the pilgrimage of summoners in their quest to learn the “final summoning”. This allows them to temporarily defeat Sin at the cost of their own lives. The overall tone of the game is very dark and gloomy, and probably the main reason it’s sequel, “Final Fantasy X-2″ is so chipper.

What holds up the best from this game is definitely the battle system. Many games still copy aspects of it today. You have a total party of seven characters, only three of which you can have in battle at a time. There is a display in the upper corner that lets you know the current order that both your party members and the attacking monsters will take their turns in. This dynamically changes when you use spells or items that effect a characters speed.

"An Example of the Battle Screen"

You also have the ability to tag out to any of your other party members as often as you’d like during battle. This was a big innovation at the time, as it made your entire cast of characters readily available for the entire game. You never have “I don’t know who to pick” syndrome, where you spend hours trying to figure out what combination of characters to use as your main kick-butt team.

Instead of the traditional leveling system of older FF games, there is what is called the Sphere Grid. All party members start at different points on the grid which is all interconnected. Theoretically, you could max out every character with every stat boost and ability… if you are a crazy person.

While this leveling system is fun and unique, it does have a strange side effect. Through the normal course of the game, Yuna, your white mage, can and most likely will acquire black mage abilities. Once she does, it renders Lulu, the character set up to be the black mage, useless. This is due to Yuna’s starting area providing her with significantly better stat boosts on her part of the Sphere Grid. By the end of the game, I found that I was only ever using a three man party, because those three had learned everything useful that the other four would normally do. The up side is, it saved me a lot of time normally spent on grinding.

If you are looking for a good RPG for the PS2 and missed this one the first time around, I would still recommend it. Like most Squaresoft RPG’s (yes, this is from when they were still called Squaresoft), it still holds up in all the areas that matter. Ignore the infamous “laughing scene” and enjoy a fun battle/leveling system wrapped around a decent fantasy storyline.