Is Final Fantasy X the latest true Square Enix masterpiece?

Twenty years ago, when Final Fantasy X debuted in Japanese stores, the Square series (Enix was still working on its own) was at the height of its history. Final Fantasy VII, thanks also to Sony and PlayStation, had transformed the idea of ​​Hironobu Sakaguchi into a worldwide phenomenon, and while Final Fantasy VIII had aligned it to a new generation of players, Final Fantasy IX helped not to forget the past. The tenth chapter combined what has been learned in the last decade into a single product projected body and soul into the future.

And the future of video games, as imagined in the early years of the new millennium, could only be gargantuan, directed as it was towards constant and, hopefully, infinite growth. Video games, like society, were experiencing an optimistic hangover that in a few years would have to deal with a reality made up of new problems, and new challenges for which no one was really prepared.

But which ones are the elements that make us say that Final Fantasy X is the last true masterpiece of the series? Why has Square Enix no longer been able to replicate this magic? Let's find out together.

Linear poetics

Setting new production and narrative standards, but without forgetting what had made video games so popular until then, Final Fantasy X became one of the greatest exponents of medium. The game was welcomed by a unanimous consensus which, however, we will discover later, instead of pushing the developers towards a better balanced balance of ingredients, led them to enhance the cinematic nature of subsequent projects, to the detriment of an increasingly atrophied depth.

Not just a creative choice: this lightening is largely due to the need to have more and more detailed graphics, to dub more and more dialogues. The appreciation of Final Fantasy X established a trend that a few years later also arrived in the West, in fact there is a certain symmetry with the trajectory of Elder Scrolls from Oblivion, which would be released about four years later, onwards: many more voices and details , but also much less play and freedom.

The event game

After all, net of every technical aspect, the extraordinary music, the charismatic cast, the inspired setting, the plot exciting and one of the most successful and appreciated minigames ever, we refer of course to Blitzball, Final Fantasy X was and will remain for many years the most linear Final Fantasy of all.

To see worse we should wait for the release of the thirteenth game, and consequently the return as director of Motomu Toriyama. This shows that even a great, if not downright extraordinary game like Final Fantasy X can have mostly negative influences through its legacy. The great success of FFX, as well as its cost prohibitive at the time, also gave way to another revolution in the Square house which at first glance may seem positive, but which on balance has created a supply chain that squeezes every chapter a lot. more than it is actually capable of offering: they are the spin-offs that recycle part of the cast and the setting and that allow Square to fill the increasingly long time that separates the release between one Final Fantasy and the next.

Final Fantasy X-2, which transforms the female cast of FFX into idol to create a sort of JRPG that also tries to be a musical, is pure fan service squared, likeable, but decidedly sacrilegious in handling the original material.

Kolossal at any cost

Excellent products for making cash, but often capable of damaging the memory of a Final Fantasy which must first of all be an event, and not by way of a development restarted from scratch once, twice or three times, but because we worked well on a clear idea for all the necessary years.

The success of Final Fantasy X has also led to a sort of blockbuster addiction, with the almost chronic inability to think a little smaller, thus offering drier and at the same time effective experiences. The wonderful disaster represented by Final Fantasy XV is the emblem of this desire to amaze at all costs while losing the key to the problem, and with the only result of keeping a game in the garage for an entire decade, a suicidal move for any software. house that isn't called Square Enix.

Apex and precipice

Final Fantasy X is then imbued with a mysterious charm that explodes into wonderful CGI. Do we really need to remind you of the incredible opening? Auron looking at the city from above, Tidus concentrating before his first official match in Blitzball, Zanarkand at night, Yuna dancing and being lifted by a column of water while the remains of the fallen slowly re-emerge on the surface, always Yuna who this time the sky commands.

And what about the first assault of the mysterious Sin, the unforgettable kiss between the two protagonists. It's all so poetic, exemplary, that perhaps it deserves more affection than the untouchable Final Fantasy VII, but it's not easy to fall in love with a product when years later you discover its painful duality: being apex and precipice at the same time.

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