Over the last few weeks, I've been putting every spare shred of free time into actually getting another computer game ticked off the list.

This time, due to the fact that the game is now 25 years old, it was Final Fantasy X's time to be in the spotlight.

Other than a couple of very short, sub 1 hour efforts at this game back in the PS2 era, I'd never actually played it. So in a way, it's been the first "new to me" classic FF since FF6 back in 2014.

Not gonna lie, after starting this one again, I quickly learned why I didn't stick with it back in the day. The first few hours of this game are super rough. Things are just so slapdash, and all over the place. You (as Tidus) get dragged from pillar to post, between lots of different locations, and not only do you meet a few different groups of people, you also end up spending a lot of time alone. I just had no idea what was going on.

A lot of time is also spent underwater. This is true at small parts throughout the rest of the game, but in the opening sections, you are underwater a lot. Seriously, do these people not need to breathe?

And then there were the technical difficulties. Not only did some cutscenes not display, instead just slapping a solid green screen in my face, at several times the game also just dipped out entirely and sent me back to the desktop.
Nice.

Luckily, the 4GB patch turned out to be the solution, and so I was able to get these issues to go away and bother me no more.

I can't say I'd been enjoying the game that much, and things were about to get even worse when I arrived at the mandatory Blitzball game.
Oh boy.

Even after watching three different guides on Youtube, it was not until my 6th attempt that I actually managed to win. And yes I was well aware that I didn't need to win in order to continue the story, but something just made me feel like I needed to smash those big-headed idiots.

The game where I finally won was a really weird one, too. It was 0-0 at half time, and it was the only game I played where Tidus had his Jecht Shot blocked, because there were so many defenders in front of him. I managed to get another shot off right before Wakka came in, but the cutscene interrupted the shot, so I did not think I'd scored. I thoroughly panicked for the rest of the game, until I managed to score with Wakka with just 2 seconds left. It was only in the cutscene, when the scoreboard ticked over to 2-0, that I realised it must have registered the first goal. Very weird.

I also found it strange that, immediately after the game, a load of enemies attack and Tidus has his sword. Where was he keeping that?

Thankfully, after those first few pretty terrible hours, I found myself enjoying the game a lot more.

While there were a few drawbacks with it, the best thing about the game is undoubtedly the combat. I really like that you can switch characters in and out of the active party on the fly, though I found myself wishing that unused characters would still level up like they do in other FF games.

Speaking of levelling up, I wasn't a huge fan of this either. I'd been led to believe that the sphere grid was a good way of doing character stat development, but I found it very annoying and limiting. For example, if I wanted someone to have a cure spell, or a haste spell, I would have to find a way to get them over to that section of the sphere grid, or use very rare items to unlock those abilities. Just didn't seem like the best way of doing things in my opinion.

It also sucks that this game started the trend of having very linear world design. It's essentially just corridor after corridor, with no explorable world map. Nowhere was this more evident than when, after fighting the Spherimorph, it was recommended that I run all the way back to the start of the game to find all the Jecht Spheres. Very boring level design indeed. It's really not what I want from a classic Final Fantasy game.

While the story and characters are not my favourites from the series, they are certainly far from the worst, and I was quite onboard with the majority of the game in these regards.

And I know this was the first voice acted Final Fantasy, but sheesh some of the acting was very cringey. The worst offender was definitely Seymour, and I'm not sure why anyone would think that voice was a good idea.

So after a few very long and gruelling efforts to beat the final boss, I'm finally done with just my third completed game this year. I can't say that I'll ever want to play this again, but as I've also recently bought both FF12 and FF15, and still have lots of FF7 action to look forward too, there'll still be a lot of Final Fantasy on my itinerary going forward.

It's a shame that I probably won't be able to get to 12 and 15 this year, as both games also have anniversaries at 20 and 10 years old respectively.

Oh well. I'll get there.

So, the final part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series has been announced.

If, for some bizarre reason, you wish to read about my initial thoughts, click the following button:

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40 years.

That's how long it's been since I had my very first cinema-going experience, when I saw a film which was part of my favourite franchise back when I was a kid: Transformers.

In honour of the film's anniversary, and because I'm a stupid nostalgic freak, I thought it would be a good time to finally play Devastation, as it's something I really should have played all the way back in the PS3 era.

As the game was no longer available on PC, I had to look at getting it second hand for console.

I'd have much preferred the PS4 version, but whenever I saw it up for sale it was always way too expensive. This left me with just the PS3 version I could use, though as I did not want to use my old console again due to the lack of screenshot capacity, I was left with learning to emulate the PS3 for the first time.

Luckily, RPCS3 is only slightly more complex to set up than something like PCSX2, which is not exactly that hard itself. The only problem I had, which is a known issue when emulating this game, is that the cutscenes play in very slow motion. This led to me looking at some of them on Youtube, but mostly I just skipped them and played without really knowing what the story was.

Firstly, I was actually quite surprised by how hard this game was. Or at least, how hard it was to play it well. I was expecting more of a button-masher, but you really have to be quite precise on your dodges and parries to be the most effective.

It also didn't help that the controls were a bit funky, especially in vehicle mode. There was also a very strange lock on system, if you could call it that. It just auto-locks on to the nearest enemy whenever you attack. This is very disorienting if the nearest enemy is behind you when you're trying to attack someone in front, particularly at range.

Because the bots can all be upgraded individually, I just stuck with Prime and pumped all my points and effort into making him as strong as possible. This became more apparent nearer the end of the game, when I realised that I could spend credits to upgrade his stats, which made a lot of fights a lot easier than they had been.

In fact, I found the easiest chapter to be the last one by far. I got S ranks on several of the missions, and got an A overall. This was a marked improvement over all of the other chapters, which all ended with me getting a C.

There weren't really any other problems, but I suppose it would have been nice to spend more time in other locations, as most of the game takes place in the same city, and re-uses the same map.

A lot of the boss fights were also repeated, with especially the Constructicons popping up multiple times.

It was also very weird seeing how big they made the fully-formed combiners. I mean, Prime should at least be up to Devastator's knees, not down around his ankles.

Thinking about it, the other combiner in this, Menasor, was an even stranger fight, as they made him able to move so fast for such a big bot. It just seemed really absurd.

It was however very cool to hear a lot of familiar voices, as a lot of the 80s cartoon actors voiced their characters again in this.