Square Enix remastered Final Fantasy X, along with its sequel, Final Fantasy X-2 for the PS3 and the PS Vita.
The game follows the story of Tidus and Yuna as they find a way to defeat Sin who has plagued Spira for hundreds of years. With Yuna following her father’s footsteps from 10 years ago, she will journey throughout Spira seeking the Aeons that will help her in the mission to defeat Sin. In her epic journey with Tidus, they will be joined by their Guardians that will help the two achieve their goal.
Final Fantasy X implements turn-based battle system which works quite well seeing how old the game is . You will see if it’s your character’s turn through the bar shown at the right hand corner of the screen.
The performance of Final Fantasy X HD Remaster on the PS Vita is good for the most part. Through the framerate drops but that is a rare case. Square Enix did a amazing job in optimizing the game to perform smoothly on the PS Vita. The animations are quite solid, framerate is good overall but there are certain parts of the game that stutter like in Guadosalam.
The contents included, in the HD remaster are the following: Expert Grid that further gives complexity to the game’s Sphere Grid, Eternal Calm video that bridges the story for Final Fantasy X-2, bonus bosses like Dark Aeons and the boss that is considered as the hardest in the series, Penance.
From the character models to the environments, everything looks gorgeous on vita oled screen. The cutscenes have also received a overhaul, with better resolution and polish to match the improvements done to in-game sequences. Long cutscenes can get irritating especially when they can’t be skipped . So if you get stuck and have to restart a boss battle, you have to watch the cutscene all over again.
From the Hymn of Fayth to the Zanarkand theme, the soundtracks which are brilliantly put together and will get stuck in your head. The soundtrack makes the story much more compelling. The unique control scheme of vita is implemented in the game but not in an innovative fashion. The touchscreen is used for quick healing but would have been better used in the sphere grid. Though it helps a lot of times in many battles, Square Enix could have used the touchscreen better.
