Final Fantasy X Comments by Tom Bramwell

For those of you interested in the game's added extras, FFX comes with a second disc of bits and bobs that made it onto the curiously-named Japanese "International Edition" bonus disc.

Wow! everyone is so tall in these (NTSC)screenshots. It seems the PAL version is based on a parallel universe in which the characters were deprived of a good nutrition and so they remained short.

Those Black borders!!!
Horrible. Simply unacceptable in this new millenium. Which time does square live in?

Its simply a lazy lazy conversion and really that second disc is just garbage imho. Big insult to us that they think they can just throw in a collection of crap onto a second dvd. And i guess it makes it alright if you're a collector and not a games player.
If they had converted the game properly, there wouldn't have needed to bother with all this fluff.

Anyway, square can jam this game up where the sun doesn't shine.

Good review of a great game. Blitzball is pretty cool when you start building a team & learning special abilities & its a lot better than the card game that featured in the last couple of FFs. The 3d world is a little harder to explore than the old pre-rendered backdrops, but this is balanced out by the new mini-map gives you a lot of clues to find those hidden, out of the way chests. The ability to swap characters during a battle is really useful & a good addition.

[trippy] - 16-Jun-2002
Big insult to us that they think they can just throw in a collection of crap onto a second dvd

It's not only an insult because its crap(showing us advertisments...come one!), but also because what they are displaying in that extra DVD is the fullscreen NTSC/60hz version. How much more insulting can square be?! Giving us an inferior version of the game and some videos of the better version to make us feel even worse about it, and to actually believe that they did a good thing.

I haven't even bothered to look at the extra DVD because I know how mad I'll get when I see the fullscreen game. It'll just be so depressing to see the fullscreen in video and then go back on playing the halfscreen dwarfed version.

When facing a collection of fiery blobs, you could fight them with Lulu’s water spells, but they are often too strong and their persistent flame spells can decimate the party quickly before you can flee

That would be a dumb move, as the opposing element to fire, is ice. The opposing fire to lightning, is water. Two blizzards can easily wipeout a "bomb".

In no way are we advocating piracy are we now?

Just buy it on import.
But don't buy the pal version, there should be a boycott of this shoddy shoddy shoddy title.
I thought the days of pal gamers getting shafted with poor conversions were long gone when the n64 left the scene.
but oh well, what a damn shame there square.

why should euro gamers spend import prices to play the game at an acceptable standard?

I'm not encouraging piracy as a whole, but if they think they can treat PAL gamers like that, they don't deserve any of my money.

time for bed now. its kinda late here down under.

have a good day to everyone else

I bought it, the PAL version, and have had absolutley no problems. Neither I, nor any of my friends that have bought it, have complained about the conversion. Actually, a lot of things (Tidus being a whiny brat, Blitzball being boring, the lack of freedom) I would regard as far worse than the conversion.

I thought the days of pal gamers getting shafted with poor conversions were long gone when the n64 left the scene.

Apart from some of the first games, there weren't any borders, and most of the big games were speed adjusted, but others ran slower.

[Nobby] - 16-Jun-2002
I bought it, the PAL version, and have had absolutley no problems. Neither I, nor any of my friends that have bought it, have complained about the conversion

Unless you got a 29" and above TV screen then having those huge borders is really annoying. Now if you and your friends have huge 40" TVs then surely you wouldn't have a problem and neither would I if I had a huge TV but on my 21" TV its really bad.

And the fact that I know that this conversion from NTSC to PAL was made in less than a day(because no optimisation was made) makes me even more furious. We waited 6 months for it.

Sounds like a really gorgeous game, really made my want a PS2 there. Shame about the bad PAL version, though.

Having always played 'bad' PAL conversions I really don't notice it at all & I wouldn't not buy this game purely because of borders. Number 2 on the Eurogamer saddo list (after console fanboys) are the people who do nothing but whine about this subject on every single bloody thread. You know who you are. I feel sorry for you if this really prevents you from enjoying a game.

Final Fantasy X would have worked better as a subtitled Japanese language game, and it’s a shame that this isn’t an option.

I totally agree, I think games lost a certain something a few years ago when voice acting became the norm. The best games still offer you the option of turning off voices and replacing them with subtitles, but it's becoming harder to find. Someone should start campaigning for DVD-style flexibility in games, there's no reason why they can't offer the choice of original soundtrack or no soundtrack with subtitles, it wouldn't take that much extra coding or disk space would it?

Another reason why I hate voice acting in games so much is that localising a game for the PAL market has never ever in my recollection led to a localisation of the English version for UK (or Australian) markets. We still get the American voice overs. So what exactly are they localising for us?

Oh and is this game coming to the PC?

Otto:"I think games lost a certain something a few years ago when voice acting became the norm"

The Monkey Island series, by any chance?

I'm pretty sure you can turn off the voice acting in FFX & just have subtitles, though I haven't tried it myself - they haven't started to grate yet (in another 20 hours or so of play it might be a different story of course).

Imagine how utterly repulsive the new Zelda would be if it were voice acted, they would end up having really cheesy voices, and you would end up disliking the characters

But voice acting is essential in modern point and clicky games. The acting in Monkey Island 3 and 4 is superb, and makes the jokes even funnier, and having just played through Balde Runner again, the voice acting is excellent and really lends the game a very cinematic quality (its just a shame about the horribly pixelated character models)

Oh and is this game coming to the PC?

For the third time: No.

Where are the first two times?

Somewhere else...

The Monkey Island series, by any chance?

You mind reader you ;)

Imagine how utterly repulsive the new Zelda would be if it were voice acted

Eugh please god no :p

But voice acting is essential in modern point and clicky games. The acting in Monkey Island 3 and 4 is superb, and makes the jokes even funnier

No it isn't essential. No it wasn't superb. No they weren't funnier. Apart from that we're in agreement. :)

For the third time: No.

For the first time: Thanks.

For the love of god, what drama queens.

Yes the borders are quite large but theres no flicker or slowdown at all and any and all graphical foibles (believe me the game is utterly gorgeous), are forgotten minutes after geting stuck in.

In my opinion FFX is easily one of the greatest games of all time.

I also thought the DVD had great extras.

I dont know, people just seem to be getting increasingly more jaded towards games, dont any of you just enjoy them any more without trying to tear them down ?

P.S The voice acting is also excellent, some of the best I've ever heard in game especially when you consider the sheer volume of speech.

Having played the game through i was rather let down by the total lack of freedom, i kept wondering when the ability to "free roam" around the world would come in. And whats the deal with fighting the same boss in different costumes all the way through the game? And the characters shaking about in the cutscenes like they have parkinsons? 9 is a bit OTT for this title.

Can someone please compare the borders in the PAL version of FFX, to the borders in the PAL version of FFVIII?

FFVIII had borders, but they were small enough they never bothered me, even though I played it mainly on a 14 inch TV.

Hey Docx ..

I agree with you in regards to not letting some borders decide whether or not you should buy the game.
However, regardless of how good the game is.. ultimately its not how the game was intended to be by its creators and to fully experience the game.. you really need the ntsc copy.
if the borders were pretty narrow so as to be insignificant it would be ok.. but in this day and age its simply really insulting i feel for eurogamers.

Looking at the other games that have been released on all the other consoles, a pal full screen 60hz option would have been very much appreciated and everyone would be very happy indeed.
None of this was done... which is the most dissapointing aspect of square's conversion.
Although if you're happy with the pal conversion, then good for you too.
I'm not.

The only reason it took six months to release this game is because Square had to finish the Japanese FFX International version first, and then crappily convert that into a functional PAL version. The launch of the Gamecube probably had something to do with it as well.

It is so disappointing that a good game is given such a careless conversion.

I wonder how hard it would be for Sony to release American NTSC versions of games (such as FFX), which would be able to boot on a PAL PS2 (not hard I suspect). They could then be released in limited numbers and there would be no licensing/ distro/ whatever-crap-excuse-they-give- for-banning-import-games issues because they would be genuine product licensed to and for the PAL region. How good would that be???

Well this was one of the reasons i got my PS2, along with MGS2.. and having rented both i found no reason to purchase either, MGS2 was dull and the PAL conversion of X is disgusting. oh well, theres always ICO.

I had to re-login this morning here at work, so it's not an IE6 thing that makes you appear logged in as Blank.

Anyway, when someone makes a Pal conversion to PAL50, why not at least leave an NTSC60 option on the disc. I'm sure anyone who has a telly that does PAL60 can do NTSC60 option also.

Just my 2 pence worth on the matter. Not FFX related, I can't stand these games as a genre, so I just ignore them.

The borders are pretty bad, I'm absolutely positive I'll hate the voice acting with a vengeance, I don't really like Western-styled 'realistic' characters in my RPGs, and the FF battle system seems so clunky and antiquated compared to the Grandia series.

But I'll still buy it. Damn you, Square. :-)

No, not necessarily. A lot of TVs which have RGB (thus negating any colour encoding issues) and do PAL60 do not do true NTSC 3.58, which can obvisouly be a problem for some (the PAL PS2, unless I'm very much mistaken, outputs NTSC in 60hz mode).

As such, all the lazy bastards need do is add an option to let those with compatible TVs use NTSC. Poor show, Sony. Poor show indeed.

On a brighter note, I refuse to let Sony/Square spoil what is clearly a good game, so I'm going to get a sealed copy off Ebay - this way I get to play it without putting extra money in Sony/Square's hands.

My tuppence 'orth on borders: I played right through FFVII on my PC with fairly massive screen distortion, a goodly percentage of the game screen must have been off to the bottom right of my screen and there were huge borders along the top and left. Probably something to do with my graphics card, and no I couldn't be bothered to recalibrate my screen every time I played it, it simply didn't bother me at all. In no way did it detract from the playability of the game. Now if you want to grumble at Square for cutting corners and not treating European gamers properly, that's fine, but I think it's going too far to boycott the thing and/or say it's somehow a less fantastic game just because of the borders.

I would not mind the borders if they did not distort the display.

[otto] - 17-Jun-2002
and no I couldn't be bothered to recalibrate my screen every time I played it

What? Your monitor doesn't remember the calibration settings for each game/program? I thought that was a standard. My crappy 7 year old Compaq monitor remembers each settings I change on it for each program/game, and I never appreciated that.


And about the borders, lets say a massive game like FFX got absolutly very low sales cause of the borders, wouldn't you think that every company would shit on their pants and from now on give us full optimised conversions or an NTSC/60hz option just because they'll fear of something like that happening again?

The problem is a lot of people didn't have any idea about how big the borders were before they bought it, most gaming publications don't even mention it in their reviews(I wonder why?), and a lot of others don't even know that the NTSC version is actually fullscreen and at a different aspect ratio.

Otto... which is why I'm going to grab it 2nd hand. Yeah, Square will have gotten their 40 odd quid from someone, but they'll not get another penny from me. This way, I get to play what is a superb game whilst still being able to extend my index finger at them.

lets say a massive game like FFX got absolutly very low sales cause of the borders, wouldn't you think that every company would shit on their pants and from now on give us full optimised conversions

I fully sympathise, but the more likely result would be that Square says, oh look, Europeans don't like RPGs, and that's the last time you ever see a Jap RPG sold on a PAL console... :(

The borders alone are definitely not a good enough reason to boycott the game, but the combination of:

- borders
- 6+ months delay compared to the US
- extra price tag (€ 69 compared to €59 for other PS2 games rrp)

do qualify as a good enough reason, I'd say.

Considering how vocal people are on these various forums (and frankly, how hard would it be for someone from Square to sit down of an afternoon and gauge views from sites like this?), I'd say Square (and CAPCOM! are you listening, you bunch of turds?) would have to be the kings of not being able to do market research to believe that it is RPGs which don't sell over here, as opposed to the fact that it's just a low an effort conversion as you could hope to do.

That was indeed a long sentence.

Otto: Agree with you - I doubt Square would ever identify borders as a reason for poor sales, they'd look elsewhere & just not bother with Euro releases at all.

UncleLou: If those are the criteria used for buying games, I guess you don't get to play many at all. Isn't it a bit like cutting off your nose to spite your face?

What? Your monitor doesn't remember the calibration settings for each game/program? I thought that was a standard. My crappy 7 year old Compaq monitor remembers each settings I change on it for each program/game, and I never appreciated that.

Remembering settings for individual programs seems a bit far fetched to me, how can the moniter tell what program you are running? It just outputs pixels. What moniters should do though is remember settings for specific resolutions, so if you have games on different resolutions, you might think that your moniter is checking the game, but then I might be wrong and you might have a weirdly knowledgable moniter

Oh, and why would you want a 60Hz NTSC option over a decent PAL60 conversion? PAL has a higher resolution and better colours. Granted, NTSC is better than a crappy PAL conversion, but is anyone is going to the lengths of converting to PAL 60, they are going to make a decent job of it. Has anyone seen a bad PAL60 game yet?

I can't believe this got a 9 and Halo only got an 8.

LOL! It was only a matter of time. ;)

I can't believe this got a 9 and Halo only got an 8.

Don't get 'em started! ;-)

Mwahahahahahaaaaa can't resist!

Oh, and on a completely unrelated thread saw Spider-Man last night and it's the mu77s. I'm off to Forbidden Planet to have a looksie at lunchtime!

I like the borders :)
I've got a widescreen tv and the game fits nicely in 16:9 format :)

Oh, and why would you want a 60Hz NTSC option over a decent PAL60 conversion? PAL has a higher resolution and better colours. Granted, NTSC is better than a crappy PAL conversion, but is anyone is going to the lengths of converting to PAL 60, they are going to make a decent job of it. Has anyone seen a bad PAL60 game yet?

That's a common mistake to make. PAL60 actually outputs at the same resolution (and of course uses the same timing) as NTSC. The difference being the superior colour encoding. However, RGB negates this advantage, so it's swings and roundabouts.

As such, you couldn't convert a game from NTSC to PAL60, you'd simply get your hardware to output PAL60 instead of NTSC (which is what the Xbox is doing) without changing your game at all.

You're absolutely right about PAL60 being the superior format (for gaming anyway), but as most people with PAL60 capable TVs have RGB anyway, the point is moot.

If you ask me, everyone should take a leaf out of MS' book and implement hardware which automatically renders games in either PAL50 or 60, negating the need for developers to give a shit about Europe. Big up MS.

I like the borders :)
I've got a widescreen tv and the game fits nicely in 16:9 format :)

I assume you're taking the piss.

They DONT KNOW that they're playing games 20% slower than they should be!

Well, it's actually 16.6%, but your point is well made. However, with a bit of luck, a bit of market penetration of the Xbox (with its all round improved output quality, never mind the graphics) will see increased apathy towards apparently shoddy conversions. Again, big up MS.

I think this argument will run and run on FFX borders, but to be honest it's kinda missing the point. Is it a good game? Alot of people seem to think so. If borders are your only real argument against playing the game, that's a pretty lame reason.

I don't get borders on the 'box or cube so it's not really an issue for me, but I think as a PS2 owner you shouldn't worry overly about a small technical issue and just go and enjoy the thing!

Didn't say I wasn't going to enjoy it though, did I? Having seen the JPN version running, I'm rather keen to get hold of a copy to play.

However, dismissing the general apathy of developers to the European market is a mistake. Yes you're glad to play FFX, but are you glad at having to wait over a year to do so?