OUR RATING: 9.3 EXCELLENT About our ratings

TANGIBLES: Gameplay: 9 Visuals: 10 Audio: 9 Value: 9 Quality: 10

Why you should buy it: Not Available Why you should rent it: Not Available

UNIQUE RATING: 9.3 SUGGESTION: N/A

It seems that every time there is a sequel in the Final Fantasy series, it's the biggest deal on the planet. It's an even bigger deal when this said sequel is the first step in the next generation. If you can remember back to 1996 and 1997 around the early days of the Playstation, when Final Fantasy VII was announced, you remember that there was no other game that was more anticipated than that. Nothing even touched it, everything else that even tried to rival it was just swept under the rug in the hype. It's not like the hype was unjustified by any means, but that's just the way things went. Now, with the Playstation 2 out, we know that this is a whole new ball game, everything is forgotten and there are new rules to play by.

Final Fantasy X is the first step in to this generations RPG market. Like the others before, it has built up an incredible amount of hype and had big momentum pushing it forward to the release. If you are looking for the kill app RPG for the Playstation 2, it's here, it's FFX.

In this sequel, you're once again put in the role of a teenager sent off to save the world. Sound familiar' It is, but the story is fantastic. You play a character named Tidus, pronounce it however you want, they never say his name once, so it's really up for grabs. He is from a futuristic locale called Zanarkand where he is a professional blitzball player. Throughout the journey he teams up with another young lady named Yuna and a cast of unlikely characters to save the world from the all-too-powerful Sin. Sin is a giant being, or force, depending on how you look at it, who consumes towns and villiages one at a time and destroys everything in its path. All of this is thrown in to one for one of the greatest Final Fantasy stories to date.

The game itself is probably about 40 to 50 hours long, depending on how you take it. FFX takes a linear approach to the game, which is sort of a fresh take on the series, but hinders it in the end. There is no world map, anywhere. Well, there's sort of a world map, but it's not in the same veign that the previous world maps are in the series. You don't have to do any backtracking until very late until very late in the game, it's all straight forward to drive the story as much as possible. Depending on if the linearity of FFX sounds appealing or if the more side-quest, do as you choose feel of the older Final Fantasy games sounds more appealing to you will be a choice you'll have to make, but just so you know, it is different.

The gameplay itself is actually quite interesting. The combat and in-game play is very well done. First of all, the combat itself is still turn-based, but the leveling system has been completely re-worked. They give you more options as to how you take your characters. Making it more like a Western styled RPG, Square has made it so you can choose the path you want to take with each and every character. If you want to make Tidus a strong, sword-wielding character (which is recommended) then you can do so. Or if you want to make Yuna a magic / support character than you can do that. It's basically up to you this time around, which is pretty cool for a Final Fantasy game, but it will add to the strategy and make things harder should you not do it correctly.

Like most turn-based RPGs of the past, you'll have the option of switching your party around if you please. Something nice about FFX is that they allow you to do it on the fly. If you need to pull Lulu (the supreme magic user in the group) out then you can do that at your will. It's great for boss fights if you were stuck needing someone to do something for you.

Some other cool gameplay elements in Final Fantasy X are the extra side-quests. Chocobo Racing is nicely done in this game, and it also helps you win some ultimate weapons at the end of your journey. There's also a new game called Blitzball, which is what Tidus is a pro at.

Blitzball is sort of like Soccer, with a little bit of Rugby mixed in. You play in the water of all places, or at least it resembles water, and you have a small team. As you play, the objective of the game is to get the ball in the other team's net. It's a simple concept, but it's all too addicting. To top it off, you have the ability to recruit characters for your team and league all throughout the game, which adds a lot of replay value to the game.

So, now you know Final Fantasy X has great gameplay, but what about the graphics' Final Fantasy VII took the biggest leap the series had ever seen, going from 2D to 3D, and Final Fantasy VIII expanded on FFVII to make the most realistic FF game at that point. So you expect FFX to take a big step, too, right' After all, we are in a brand new generation now, and it's only expected. The answer is yes! Final Fantasy X looks great, it's by far the best looking Final Fantasy to date. In 2001 standards, there are few games that look better than this on the Playstation 2, it's simply remarkable. The character models look flawless and the facial animations are breathtaking. The environments are also memorizing and the CGI cutscenes are by the best on the market. The game is quite simply one of the best we've ever seen.