One of my favourite Final Fantasy game.
I like the linear progress. No backtracking.
Uses the old random encounter round based battle system which can be very time consuming and feels a bit slow for today's time.
Fortunately this version has some nice Quality-of-Life features:
-speed mode (2x & 4x)
-battle encounter modifier (frequent, normal, no encounter)
-fill overdrive meter
-auto battle

Storywise this game is okayish. Nothing special really but could need a bit more complexity since a lot of things where so obvious and predictable like Tidus and Yuna where into each other from the get go or Seymour being a bad guy. I also wished the two love birdies weren't main characters. They were both so extremely childish and cringy.

But what I hated the most about this game are some of the annoying mini games and side quests. They are not obligatory but you have to do most of them to maximise your character's potential. Blitzball is probably the most boring and time consuming mini game I've seen and Chocobo Racing being the embodiment of randomness in this game. Good Luck with them. I really can't help but assume the devs had sadistic intentions making these. Esspecially after I finished these and Steam decided to overwrite my savegame after a crash.

Nontheless the skill-system makes this game so glorious. In the end of the day it feels fulfilling seeing how your characters progress.


The battle-system was reworked and made a little more dynamic. The core feels really fresh and new but comes with its downsides.
You don't have a big group of characters from which you can choose to form a party anymore which I personally prefer since you usually ended up maining certain characters and leave the others behind anyway. Instead you have only Yuna, Rikku, Paine accessibble and dresses which change your characters appearence, skills and stats. So basically now your roles, e.g. white mage, black mage, warrior, thief etc. are your dresses which you have to level up individually to unlock their skills. The idea is actually fine but I think it killed the flow of the battle a bit if you have to change your dresses mid-fight. The animations look also cringy and reminds too much of Sailor Moon.
A quite unnecessary feature are the Garment Grids. I got to the last chapter with one of the very first grids easily. They just limit you and kill the flow if you pay too much attention to them.
Another useless feature are fiends as party members. You can somehow catch fiends and train them to let them fight alongside you like in Pokemon/Digimon. Total joke and never used it once.
Instead of adding these weird unnecessary mechanics they should have brought back the overdrives. Eventually they could have left the old system since this is a direct sequel and put their time, money and effort on other things.

Story-wise it is a quite nice addition. You get to know Spira again with some more and some less changes to its locations and people. The main story kept my curiosity and didn't feel boring since it was quite political without any obvious good or bad guy and threw more questions than answers at the beginning.

The music was less enjoyable. It is more happy and mainstream-ish compared to the main game. I guess they just wanted to make the music fit the new Spira. But there are still one or two heartwarming tracks you may find like the intro soundtrack. Fair enough.

Now to the negative Part. I really like simplistic gameplay design and compelling stories. This game has obvious issues with keeping things simple. If you plan to do as many side quests as possible you are more punished than rewarded. You actually pay with your motivation and sanity. The opinions on the mini-games of the main game are an indicator of the incompetence of the devs concerning mini-games. This sequel is bombarded with pesky sidequests/mini-games. You have to do them in order to get 100% on your save game and receive items and those unnecessary grids. They often don't contribute much to the plot and are just annoying. I estimatedly spent more time into mini-games and sidequests than in the main story and actual battle-system. The quantity of those are considerably high. To me this is alerting and indicates that the devs are desperately trying to overextend the required playtime. Each sidequest/mini-game has it's own tutorial, mechanic and riddles. They really could have left at least half of them. If you just focus on the main story the game is extremely short. Do the sidequests you pay by having bad memories about the game. I always forgot where I was in the main story due to the interval between my progresses. That is not how I like my stories to be told and experienced. The main game did it way better by leaving you the option to do all the sideuests right before the very last battle and let you just enjoy the game for the while. In X-2 you have to do your sidequests within their respective chapters ortherwise you miss them.

My recommendation is: Focus on the main game, forget the side quests, farm your exp/ap with auto-battle and speedboost.