THE ENDGAME: Final Dungeons of the Final Fantasy Series Part X

Final Fantasy X: Inside Sin

Sin is the creature who has dominated Spira for 1000 years. It has claimed countless lives in random and meaningless attacks. Distraught by what Yuna and her guardians discovered about the truth of its defeat, they destroyed the only known way to defeat Sin for even a momentary reprieve. If you can’t kill it, no one ever will, and you will have doomed the people of Spira.

So there’s certainly gravity here. Our heroes save their world in every Final Fantasy, but Sin is a bit of a special case because you’re saving them not from a new catastrophic threat, but one that has tormented them for ages. One that has already killed hundreds of thousands at least. The dungeon itself is not built up over the game, because, obviously, the heroes themselves don’t really know what they plan to do. The weight of what you’re going for however, is enough to get you anxious.

Final Fantasy X represented another huge leap forward, the graphics are far superior to IX and voice acting, for better or worse, had to come eventually. The presentation of this game was unlike any other in the franchise, and the lead-in dismantling Sin’s outer defenses, the airship blasting huge limbs off of Sin, and the final approach pictured above are all spectacular. It was one hell of an introduction to the PS2.

Unfortunately, that makes this dungeon that much more of a letdown. When I was planning out this retrospective, I came up with some points for each dungeon and I could not for the life of me remember anything about Sin’s innards. I didn’t think that bode well for it and I was right. This is an unremarkable dungeon in nearly every sense.

Honestly, I have no idea what the inside of Sin should look like. I guess I thought it would look like the inside of a whale, but I could see it being anything given Sin’s magical nature. At least two dungeons have already squandered huge potential in the interest of doing just another castle, so I could see the inside of Sin being a recreation of Yu Yevon’s Zanarkand palace, if indeed he had one. But this

is not gonna cut it.

Walking on nothingness? Even those runes only show up every so often… Now dungeons have done little segments of this before, FF9 had you walking through space briefly, but not a significant portion of the dungeon. With all the effort that went into this game, I doubt this was the result of laziness, but its how it comes off. After the midway boss, the scenery changes, but just to a bland…city? I guess it is.

What is it anyway? Is it a city that Sin ate? Or is it just conjured? In either case that solidifies that this dungeon could have been anything. How do they come off the mind trip of Memoria and make this? Swimming away from that giant fish in the beginning was more interesting.

It is pretty difficult, even for a high level party. In all likelihood you will be healing after every battle (Behemoths use Meteor as a final attack every time). And that means you will be healing a lot because this dungeon has a ridiculously high encounter rate. It borders on NES FF levels of annoyingly frequent battles. I suppose that makes the dungeon more difficult but damn.

There is no boss gauntlet either, we wouldn’t want anything resembling a diversion, after all. Between the two areas you will face Seymour yet again.

AND IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME!

There is technically a gauntlet at the end, but its entirely for story purposes and doesn’t add anything to difficulty.

After the city segment, a tower drops from the…sky…and hurray! We’ll be going somewhere different? What’s in the tower? Will it be like in the Rift, when walking through a door you come out somewhere else entirely? Would it be like Memoria, where you climb up to the Invincible just to appear on the edge of existence?

Nope. It takes you to a single room containing the most inane time wasting device I’ve ever seen. It’s a boring circular area with crystals stabbing out of the floor. If one hits you, you fight a battle. Occasionally easter eggs materialize and you have to grab them. Once you get ten, you are transported to the final battle. It is every bit as stupid as it sounds, trust me.

The music is serviceable, it’s driving beat is filled with tension. Tension that would be great if the scenery ever amounted to anything. The song is very simple, mostly a drum beat, and that would be fine if it went somewhere eventually. Such as other dungeons in which the music increases in excitement or ominous tones. It doesn’t here, and even if it did you barely get to hear the song because you’re running into near-constant battles! The music during the closing requisite “story battle” is very epic though, so hold out for that.

Final Fantasy X is not a bad game, it is unfortunate that there is next to nothing positive to say about its endgame. It is amazing to me that the series went from the unbelievable scenery in the Northern Crater, Ultimecia’s Castle, and Memoria to this exceptionally bland dungeon.

Bear with it though if you enjoyed this story, and your patience will be rewarded with one of, if not the, most poignant endings in all of Final Fantasy.

In a few days we will actually be remaining in Spira, so it’ll get a second chance to impress.