Finished FFX just yesterday, and if I had to rate it based on plot alone, I would have to place it first in my rankings. Of course, there were some aspects of the game that I found detracted from its excellence...
1. The soundtrack, as I had previously thought, couldn't measure up to some of the previous games in the series. Only "At Zanarkand" and "Suteki da Ne"
really shone (beautiful pieces, and I'm not ashamed to admit it
). Despite the fact that I didn't enjoy the music as much as in previous games, I felt that the pieces did match the situations/locations well, so kudos for that!
2. Voice acting... heh. The voices were fine in terms of character match, that I'll give the people casting the parts. In the end, though, I had gripes. The voice acting was inconsistent in quality throughout the game (sometimes decent/passable, sometimes just plain odd). For example, it was oh too easy to tell they reused sound clips thoughout the game. When Yuna or Tidus said "yes" or "okay," it was so short/terse, and the intonation sounded completely out of context with the mood of the situation at hand. Oftentimes, when characters were talking to each other, it sounded rather awkward in nature. Regarding awkwardness, that infamous laughing scene was indeed pretty cringe-inducing the first time around (I think I got used to it by the second watching, after I went to a previous save to test something). I understood that they were supposed to be "practice" laughing, but c'mon! xD At any rate, I heard the Japanese voice acting (not for that particular part), and it sounded better in terms of character expression. Kinda made me wish they could have given us the option to choose between Japanese and English voice acting.
3. Sphere Grid... Interesting idea, but a lot of the time, it felt really was tacky to use. Sure, it lets you see exactly how the character is progressing, but sometimes, I don't care, but I'm forced level them anyway
Character stat growth slowed
tremendously as you progressed though the AP leveling. And level grinding isn't my kinda thing, especially when I'm almost done with the game. So I ended up using cheats for unlimited SLVL and spheres right before I stepped into the Sea of Sorrow. I'm not much a fan of cheating, but when the final bosses have RIDICULOUS amounts of HP (upwards of 100000), and I'm hitting them (on average) around or less than 3000 damage at a time, I can't be bothered to leave the area, and come back after 20 hours of level grinding just to finish the fight off ;D (I cringe thinking about the amount of time I spent finishing off the fight in the Zanarkand Dome)
4. The Conditional Turn-Based system... was both awesome and annoying. Yes, it allows you to plan your attacks fairly well, but at the same time, you just feel like there's this sort of helplessness in the way the battle is about to unfold, that everything is (almost) predetermined. While we're on the subject of battles... Too. Many. Random. Encounters. It felt like every 10-15 steps, I would invariably run into some random monster.
All in all, though, I did enjoy the game for what it was, and the above annoyances didn't really tune me out
The game had me immersed just as easily as FFVIII and FFIX had me engaged. The above annoyances places this game still among my favorite 3 thus far (not sure where up there, but it knocks FFVII and the rest down by one).
Some other comments...
1. For some reason, the ending didn't feel that epic when compared with other FF games. It just felt like "Oh hey, we won. Bye!" The sense of resolution didn't feel that strong... Maybe that's because the ending sequence itself wasn't that long? *shrug* Maybe that's what FFX-2 is for
That's not to say that the game itself wasn't epic, but I guess it just seemed like the ending was almost abrupt, and didn't do the entire game justice.
2. Some people complain about the game's linearity, but I must admit that as long as the main plot interests me, I don't really care
Sidequests and minigames are niceties, but they've never really made or broke a game for me before. I find them too distracting sometimes too, as they can make me forget exactly what it is in a game that I'm doing (not good when I generally play games for plot more than anything xD). Of course, this is all unless completing a sidequest unlocks a nice nugget of information that shines light on otherwise unclear/unknown parts of the main plot. (By the way, Blitzball is an annoying minigame
:P)
3. I liked how the temples didn't involve annoying random encounters
4. What's with fire being weak against ice, but not water? D: