Final Fantasy X goes HD for PS Vita
Michael Johnson February 18, 2013 - 3:49 pmGenerally regarded as one of the lesser entries in the never-ending RPG series, Final Fantasy X will be making an HD appearance on the Vita, as the handheld console gets a price-cut in Japan.
Final Fantasy X can be pin-pointed as the game where my relationship with the seminal series took a sharp downturn. Japanese RPG writing has always slightly annoyed me, the leaps in logic, explaining away events with lots of swirly magic, an over-reliance on mcguffins (usually magical crystals) and a tendency to wallow in sentimentalism – these things all react in opposition to everything I know about storytelling. Yet Final Fantasies 6-9 came out during my teenage years, they were full of great characters that carried the drama forward. Even if the narratives were incomprehensible when taken in their entirety, the personal touch – the squad of heroes who come together to defend against cataclysm or evil empires, always kept the player in touch with the action and gave you a reason to move forward through the games.
That is, until Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy X you see, stars sandy-haired Blitzball player Tidus. The single-most annoying character I’ve ever had the misfortune of controlling over a 60 hour epic adventure. A lot of people hate FF 8′s surly protagonist Squall, riddled with self-doubt and a crippling tendency towards the emo. Well, I say give me emo over the smug, brash, loud, whiny tit on display in X. (Spoiler warning) All I’m saying is, if I were Tidus’ dad, chances are I’d quite willingly turn myself into a world destroying uber-monster too.
Putting aside my own personal prejudice towards loud, confident people who are good at sports, there’s not a great deal to go on in terms of hard details here. A short video was released this morning as part of a Sony live-stream announcing titles and updates for the PS Vita. As I don’t speak Japanese, I can only presume the most of the video contains Square-Enix’s Hashimoto-san profusely apologising for Tidus, while compelling us to part with cash for this HD remake.
A price-cut for the Japanese Vita was also announced, the price dropping to 19,980 yen (around £140). There’s no news of a similar price cut for the US or Europe.
Check out the video below to see FF X in its HD glory and keep checking BeefJack for further news on the evergreen Final Fantasy series.
Comments (2)
FFX is my least favorite in the series (I never played X-2 as I detested X so much). For me the annoying characters weren’t the worst of it – it was the gameplay. Everything in the game felt phoned in to me. It was as if they had a check list of gameplay mechanics that they felt should be in the game, & just stuck them in there.
If I had to describe the game in one word it would be grueling. Dodging the lightning bolts wasn’t the only annoying minigame/side quest – the majority of them in the game felt just as tedious to me.
I wish Square would drop work on anything X related & finish Versus XIII so we can move on to XV. My logic here being that IX was superior to VIII, XII to X, so XV should be super!
Haha, your description of why you don’t like FFX is amusing. I actually enjoyed FFX quite a lot. At first I was immensely annoyed with the voice acting and story, but the second time I went to playthrough it I found so much extra content, some of which made the characters more interesting, and it came to be one of my favorites.