[COLUMN] The World Needs More Sequels Like Final Fantasy X-2 | by Marty Sliva (Patreon)

As I've mentioned before, a few years ago, I decided to embark on a personal project to play through all of the mainline (and a bunch of spinoff) single-player Final Fantasy games in release order. I did this partly because I was excited for the then-impending release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, partly because I think it’s a fascinating way to experience and provide context to a large swath of gaming history, and partly because I have a head injury. 

This journey finally brought me to Final Fantasy X-2, the first true sequel in the series, and a game that I put very little time into back in 2003. Its reputation precedes it, both as a sequel to one of the most beloved JRPGs of all time, as well as a pretty fascinating tonal shift from what came before it. But honestly, jamming through it on my Twitch streams over the past few weeks has me thinking that this is the kind of sequel I’d love to see more of from big games in 2025.

X-2 kicks off two years after the event of X, and focuses on Yuna, Rikku, and newcomer Paine trying to unravel the mystery of a strange message from her former boy Tidus, while simultaneously dealing with the political unrest that formed from the power vacuum left behind following the previous game. In such, the sequel quite literally retreads the same ground as X proper, though you can now fast travel to any location thanks to your home base/airship called the Celsius, which kinda looks like a cross between a lobster and a Harley-Davidson.

A relatively small team was able to turn this sequel around in less than two years because of this economic reuse of locations, characters, and enemies. It’s a little bit like Majora’s Mask in that respect, though not as ambitious or successful as that Nintendo 64 masterpiece. But where FFX-2 excels is in delivering an optimistic, light-hearted tone that feels like a moment of catharsis after the gut punch of X’s final stretch.

While the main quest can be jammed through relatively quickly, the game encourages you to take a breath each chapter and revisit all of the familiar locales around Spira to see how the world has changed in the time since our heroes last saved it. It’s here that you’ll come across the game’s many sidequests, which slowly evolve and unfold throughout the five chapters of the adventure. 

These range from trying to inspire a group of musicians, hawking last-minute tickets to a show, or rescuing tourists who wandered off the beaten path. While most of these are far lighter in tone from the main story of FFX, they do a great job of adding context to the people you met and places you visited throughout that game. It often feels like a coda or a victory lap, which is something I really dig in my beefy RPGs.

The game also creates plausible scenarios for why the rest of your party from X doesn’t join you this time around – Kimahri is dealing with a bit of a Ronso revolution, Lulu and Wakka are expecting a child, Tidus may or may not be hella dead, and Auron is probably out drinking hooch and aura farming at the end of the world

The battle system here mostly forgoes assembling a large roster of pals to swap in and out in favor of focusing on the core trio and their ability to change outfits, and by doing so, classes. This magical girl inspiration fits in well with the lighter vibes and pop star aesthetic of X-2, and it’s genuinely fun to get a new Dressphere and see how each of the three main characters will look and act as a Songstress, Samurai, or Psychic. 

Yes, there is a Pokemon-esque monster collecting and training mini game which you can then use to swap your critters in for a party member, but when your core trio exudes so much character, it felt a bit odd to replace them with random beasties I found throughout Spira.

The speed of battles and your encouragement to swap between outfits/jobs on the fly lends a sense of energy and propulsion to combat that sets it apart from anything else in the series. This helps make the familiar enemies and locations feel fresh this time around, as you’re dealing with them in completely different ways. And playing the Steam versions means that the expected quality of life tweaks are present, including the ability to play at 4x speed, which really streamlines any optional grinding sessions.

As a sidenote, for some unknown reason, this and other quality of life additions are only available on the PC versions of X/X-2 Remastered, and not on any of the console versions, even though the collection was released even later down the road on Switch and Xbox. To quote the New Zealand prophets OMC – how bizarre.

Given the ballooning budgets and AAA development times in 2025, I’d love to see more games adopt this kind of mindset and reuse/remix assets for a sequel. We got a bit of that in Elden Ring Nightreign earlier this year, and Insomniac’s Spider-Man did this with Miles Morales to great effect. And you could argue that Nintendo did a similar thing with Tears of the Kingdom, though one look at the scope of that game shows that’s an entirety different beast. And going back even further, besides the aforementioned Majora’s Mask, we had Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, which took the setting and foundation of Resi 2 and made its own meal out of those ingredients. More of this, please and thank you.

While it doesn’t reach my personal highs throughout this Final Fantasy replay project of IV, VI, VII, and IX, I’ve had a blast playing through X-2, and I love how singular its tone feels among its many peers. My current plan is to take a bit of a Final Fantasy break before jumping into XII sometime in 2026. That’s a game I’ve loved since release, and regularly hold it as one of my three favorites in the series, so I’m stoked to revisit Ivalice, especially as I’ve been chipping away at Tactics over the past month or so. In the meantime, my Analogue 3D should be arriving any day now, which means that I’ll be spending a lot of December becoming reacquainted with the Nintendo 64 library.