Price: £39.99 Players: 1 Final Fantasy X-2 is the first ever sequel in the Final Fantasy chronicles - all the others have been seperate stories with a whole host of new characters, but this is a continuation of Final Fantasy X (hence the X-2 bit) and sees the main character as Yuna (sort-of girlfriend of Tidus from FFX and hero who saved Spira from the evils of Sin). Her and two other girls, Rikku (also from FF10) and Paine (new addition) are all singing dancing sphere hunters who once again have to save spira from some bad stuff. The opening of the game really did put me off as its more like a teeny boppers concert (ok, the graphics are fantastic but it was a bit erm... gay to want to find another word!) The continuation from the other Final Fantasy brings a lot to the game and its a warm welcome to see the return of some fantastic characters, and all of the brilliant locations from the last game. Graphically, this is one of the most amazing things you will ever see on a console - in general, backgrounds and scenery are breathtaking - everything is detailed and just makes the game amazing.

In contrast to the previous Final Fantasy of this series, where strange ability grids which were overly confusing were used, this version has a much more simplified version called "dress sphere grids" - basically, you find a dress sphere (which are the different types of ability your characters have) and put it on a simple grid which holds various amounts of spheres and can be set to each person or all people - in or out of battle, you can change to any sphere on the grid which is adjacent to the one your character is in enabling the character to have a different set of moves and abilities, as each player uses a certain outfit, they become more experienced in it and can master even more moves or upgrade the ones that are already there. When changing dress spheres during battle there are really cool cut scenes of the girl you are transforming into her different outfit - similar to the ones where you called your aeons in FF10.

As you move from town to town in your lovely space ship (remember high summoner Yuna is now a sphere hunter - i.e. looking for spheres which make better oufits and show videos of Spira etc.) in search of spheres you cant help but come rushing to the aide of every single person who has even a minor problem in their life - this involves extreme amounts of battling fiends and other such bigger enemies, but all in all your main aim is to kill the Vegnegun - the machine built to destroy everything. At the end of the last Final Fantasy, Yuna's sort-of bloke, Tidus dissapeared so Yuna went in search of him and has never lost hope of finding him - all this is to try to bring them back together if he can be found. There are many twists to the plot and things start going really strange at a concert you perform at (about three quarters of the way through the game) - if you're already amazed by the graphics then you're about to be mind-blown by this awesome scene.

Fighting the fiends and enemies is the major part of the game and you will come across some fine and some very large enemies, all of which have different strengths and weaknesses. My advice to anyone playing this game would be to fight as many fiend battles as you can to gain experience points and different skills before each of the bosses. This will give you a great advantage as there's nothing worse than getting so far running into the boss and dying because basically you're just not good enough! In addition to the main story line there is a multitude of mini games to play - such as a kind of slot machine with insects, some crazy coin game, you can bet on animal races, play blitz ball - yes it's back from the last game but simplified, and other great games which stop you getting bored of fighting fiends. Everything about this game is fantastic, from graphics, to sound, to characters, to outfits - EVERYTHING! If you've played any Final Fantasy game before and liked it you have to get this - even if you've never played one before you can catch up on the previous story from the spheres (little movies) you collect which remind you of the past of spira and your previous journey. This is a must for any gamer and a brilliant sequel to an already fantastic game. I challenge you to put it down!

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Review copyright © Kirsten, 2004.