(Why it sucks.)
Let me start off by describing my position on the "issue" of Final Fantasy. I absolutely adore FF4, FF6, and FF7. I have a particular fondness for FF9. This should make it pretty evident that I like the old style of Final Fantasy. FF8 was a painful experience for me, but that's another writeup. I love Nobuo Uematsu, I love Yoshitaka Amano, and I thought I loved Hironobu Sakaguchi.
Final Fantasy X, for me, was like watching in horror as a very old and dear friend shot his brains onto my face. The score is practically nonexistent. The artwork is boring at best and offensive at worst. The protagonists are all sissy jock teenagers. The direction of story scenes is unimaginative, and reminiscent of a video feed from a beach party. The ability system seems to offer nothing new, and in fact re-introduces some elements of FF3's (that's the NES FF3, not the US version of FF6).
I don't speak Japanese, and thus can't comment on the story and dialogue, but the voice acting seems good enough. The US version will be dubbed, though, so forget about that. Motion capture is good, but the character models are so banal that it really doesn't matter. As for this new combat system that was supposed to introduce so much strategy to Final Fantasy, I'm not seeing it. I hope that in the later parts of the game it becomes more complex (and I'm sure it does), but don't expect any battles in early-game to be anything more than seeing who runs out of HP first. It's like Xenogears all over again.
The quests are particularly linear, and fetch-oriented. Things like finding flint and steel (because the steel from his sword won't work, apparently) to make a fire to trigger a story sequence. Really, really insipid.
So unless you like prissy, effeminate heroes and boring entourages of 90210-types in a story, and you like dull, thoughtless gameplay, boring music, and fucking God-damned Tetsuya "I drew this with my ASS" Nomura, stay the fuck away from FF10. Just sit in a locked room, play FF7 one more time, and pray that nobody accuses you of being closed-minded for knowing a fucking awful game when you see one.
