I played this 20+ years ago on PS2. It was the first jrpg I ever finished, and I had probably spent less than 20 hours in the various jrpgs I had dabbled in before that. My son recently played FFX and liked it, so I decided to play again so we could compare notes.
For the most part, this game lived up to my fond memories of it, but there are certain aspects of the game that are not great:
Random encounters that trigger (literally) every ten steps or so mean just getting through an area is an exercise in patience.
The voice acting for some characters is not great - and there is no option to play in japanese.
Unskippable (and sometimes quite long) cut scenes.
Late in the game almost every battle requires you to be equipped with armor to prevent certain status effects or you have almost no chance - and there is no way to get the right protections all on the same armors, so you have to juggle multiple sets.
I have other minor complaints, but those are the big ones.
Despite all that, I still like this game quite a bit - and found that it holds up pretty well in 2025. The turn-based combat is still among my favorite systems in all jrpgs.
Characters can be swapped in and out of the active party during combat with no penalty - so you always have all of your offensive and defensive powers available for every battle.
The armor and weapon customization system is deep and flexible (though farming for ingredients can be a major slog)
The end-game content is pretty crazy. I can easily see people spending hundreds of hours farming materials and customizing everything so they can take on the optional"super" monsters at the end of the game.
The sphere grid leveling system is one of my favorites in all rpgs
Blitzball is awesome (I know that’s a controversial take).
Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s available on Xbox.
For everyone else, Xbox is literally the only console that you can play almost the entire Final Fantasy mainline series from the very first game to XV, more games on one platform than any other ironically (we’re only missing XVI at this point and that’s just a matter of time and XI was shut down a few years ago on console). Thanks to BC, Xbox is the only contemporary console that can play the 360/PS3 Final Fantasy games
Bought this after seeing the miniseries a few years back, and I dropped it after a few minutes - wasn’t into this type of game at the time, and was disappointed it didn’t have the same actors the show had used. Picked it up again and really enjoyed myself. While not the same actors, it did have a very good voice acting cast, good music, and it’s a story I already knew I enjoyed - it just took a while to get going. I really enjoyed that the game lets you choose some things that affect whether at least one major character makes it to the end of the game or not, and it also lets you choose to skip some things entirely (but if you find them it’s rewarding for anyone into the story). There was one encounter in the second to last chapter that was a great reminder of a character that I hadn’t seen for a few hours, and he kind of redeemed my impressions of him a little bit - but I could have bypassed it if I wasn’t paying attention. While this game is about building a cathedral, it really gets into the power of the Church in England during the 1100s and also really focuses on good & evil within individuals.
I agree with most of your points, including that Blitzball is the best mini game. I will note however that ribbon does exist in the game, like every other FF game, which gives immunity to all status ailments. If I recall correctly, it doesn’t even require grinding ingredients to add it to armor, just lots of money. Also, the game is available on Xbox, it was even on game pass at one point.
Adios won’t count for the challenge, since you need a subscription for it.
But yeah, I enjoyed quite a few of those lesser known indie games from the GWG days. There was one game where you play as a blind person, with audio only. For a video game without the “video” part, I enjoyed it a LOT more than I ever thought I would! If you have that one in your library, give it a shot (with headphones.) I can’t think of the title right now. But if you claimed it, you’ll probably know which one I mean.
As @SilentJay76 pointed out, games you need a subscription for (aka do not own) does not count. We do count the Xbox 360 games that was given away with GwG though as those are ours to keep and don’t need Gold/GP to access.
Things like Game Pass, PS+ etc. doesn’t count either of course.
With that said, welcome to the Backlog Challenge! I’ll put you up on the leaderboard next week. I update it every Monday
I have been playing through this with friends lately. We finished up the base game tonight and will hopefully continue on with the other DLCs in the future.
We are, but it’s a remake of 7 - so canonically, we still have all the mainline minus XVI. I also have Rebirth on PC and would very much consider it a fairer/retelling then the definitive versions, but that’s my take.
Ribbon requires 99 Dark Matters to add to an armor. Apparently the only ways to get Dark Matters are farming some of the end game monsters in the arena or bribing a specific monster in the last dungeon (a brive of 1.5 million gil gets you 2 Dark Matters).
I never had more than 600,000 gil at any time in my playthrough, so the bribe wasn’t an option. And I didn’t want to spend all the time required to farm the end-game monsters.
So, Ribbon is the solution to the status effect issue, but it requires a ton of time/resources to get it on any of your party members (much less all of them).
Edit: I am not really a FF expert, so I only know the above from a Google search. I don’t think I got a single Dark Matter in my playthrough (though I did see it as a requirement for the Ribbon upgrade in the customize menu).
I guess I am mis remembering from 25 yrs ago. I could have swore it was 99 hi potions or similar. I did say I remember needing a lot of money, so maybe I was doing the bribe thing?
+2 Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 and Years 5-7 (Remaster for Series)
I’m honestly annoyed at myself for buying this after having played the games last year and dealing with issues in them then. Did not look noticeably better and the games had at least as many bugs as the original set (maybe more as I once again ran into issues with things not unlocking and for different reasons this time which again led to two full playthroughs of years 1-4). While this is supposed to be updated for the Series consoles, it definitely doesn’t like quick resume and I had to get in the habit of completely quitting the game and launcher from time to time, esp. right before something hard to get unlocked.
The underlying games are still fun and have the right feel for Lego games, but trying to buy characters or red boxes and figure out what I still needed to unlock was also frustrating and they didn’t do enough to make it accessible - especially in Years 5-7. Red on red that you can barely see doesn’t really feel like a good choice. I did see one thing that looked like they had tried to make it easier to read one type of on-screen prompt to push a certain button, but there was so much more that could have been quickly tweaked to make this pair of games good. If you have a previous version, I do not recommend buying this newer collection.
