Young athlete Tidus lives in Zanarkand, “the city that never sleeps” in the future. In blitzball, players throw the ball while flying. A terrible disaster strikes suddenly. Monsters rise from a dark wave that floods the city. Tidus meets the mysterious creature and travels a thousand years ahead. His civilization has vanished. He learns that Sin, a terrible, indestructible being, destroyed his world. Yuna, a young summoner, recruits Tidus as a guardian to end Sin.
Japanese role-playing game Final Fantasy X is set in a South Asian-like world. Explorers can only visit specific locations; there is no “world map” and exploration is linear. The series’ traditional ATB (active-time battle) combat is replaced by a Conditional Turn-Based Battle system, which determines participants’ turns based on their stats and actions and displays them in the upper corner of the screen. Enemy encounters are random.
The game’s leveling system is also different. No character levels exist in the game; players can upgrade characters’ parameters with experience points from battles. Each character’s “sphere map” has straight or branching paths with spots that boost stats or teach active and passive abilities. Characters have class attributes, and all party members can switch during battle. Monster summons, called aeons in the game, now have HP and fight for the party until defeated.
The series’ first cutscene conversations have voice overs. The game’s main mini-games are blitzball tournaments.
