What hate of the Final Fantasy series? FFVI made it's way onto my list of the 50 greatest games of all time.
As for why I hate 10, I wouldn't want to waste a good non spam artical, but I'll give you the cliff notes.
Story
Let us get the big one out of the way first. Final Fantasy X is, without a doubt, the worst written video game I have ever played.
I could go to three thousand words simply detailing all the elements of the plot that do not make sense. Couple that with dialog that made FFVII look like the work of Dickens.
The overarching narrative is dull and cliche. The party of heroes journey between X random and unconnected destinations in order to collect the X magical maguffins in order the defeat the vague and generic evil power.
The character narratives are all but none existent outside of Tidue and Yuna, who I shall deal with later.
Characters
When I say characters I mainly mean Tidus and Yuna, since they are the only one with any attempt at depth.
Yuna is fine. She's a boring, idiotic doormat; but she's fine.
Unfortunately Tidue is a whiny little shit and he holds the apart for only video game character to actually make me find child abuse amusing.
Tidus has a grand total of one character trait, which is his daddy issues.
Daddy issues aside Tidus simply makes no sense as a character. He is sucked in to a parallel reality, learns that everyone he has ever known is long dead, and takes everything in his stride. His reactions make absolutely no sense, render him impossible to relate to as a protagonist and make him far and away the world Final Fantasy hero in history (and this is a franchise that gave us fucking Squal)
World
Definitely the least developed of the Final Fantasy game worlds, it is quite apparent with FFX that the game designers were simply making it up as they went along. The world makes no rational sense and no location feels remotely connected to any other location.
Art Style
Now I don't hate Japan, I can make my peace with characters who dress a bit weird and look like they do their hair with polyma-cement.
What I can not stomach is this...
The scary part is that somebody clearly thought that these character designs were good. They are not. Wakka'a hair was the dumbest in the series to date, right up until Seymour showed up. Then there's Tidus's idiotic clothing. Lulu, the giant perambulating pair of tits that should probably render her unable to walk upright. On the subject of tits with have Rikku, the FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL who is played exclusively for sex appeal. Do I need to continue?
Everything about the art in this game makes me want to cry myself to sleep at night.
Sound
[YOUTUBE]5FTJxfV3pc[/YOUTUBE]
Defend the voice acting in this game. I FUCKING DARE YOU.
EDIT: If that didn't show up, it was a video of the infamous 'Tidus Laughing' scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5FTJxfV3pc
I have played games on the Sinclare Spectrum that had been voice acting than the US release of FFX.
I haven't even got started on how Wakka makes me want to stove his head in. Why does he have a Caribbean accent? Nobody in his village had that accent. Nobody else in the game world has that accent. I'm aware of the FF series comical record when it comes to ethnics of any kind, but Wakka was just taking the piss.
In fairness, because I aim to give credit where due... some of the music is not bad. Usually it's the bits that have been recycled from previous games, but as scores go, FFX is above average.
Gameplay
Where the fuck do a start? Final Fantasy has never been much of a series for strategic combat, but there has always been some. FFX took that away. The single function characters coupled with the ability to change party at will rendered almost every combat a near identical experience.
That's not the main problem however. The main problem is that the sprawling open world that had been the trademark of the series since its origins was suddenly replaced by a sequence of corridors. EVERY. SINGLE. MAP. essentially boiled down to a single winding corridor, possibly with one or two intersections with chests at the end. There was no exploration and no sense of openness. For the entire game you are locked on railtracks, guided from cut-scene to cut-scene. This would not necessarily be bad if the story was worth anything, but as we have discussed already, it is not.
Corridor, cut-scene, boss, corridor, cut-scene, boss. When neither your cut-scenes or your boss battles are worth a damn this is a fucking horrible way to structure a game.
Believe me, I could go on much, much longer, and make a much more academic post detailing exactly why the game sucked ass, but it will do little good here. Keep your eyes open when this damn tournament comes around.
