Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy X is the Tenth instalment in the Final Fantasy series. It follows the story of Tidus and Yuna. It was the first Final Fantasy to appear on a 6th generation console (i.e. PS2, Xbox and Gamecube). It was also the first in the series to have a proper sequel, this being Final Fantasy X-2.

Story
The story unfolds on two levels: the historical one, and the narrative one.From the historical perspective, 1,000 years ago, Spira was a world full of technology and machines, dubbed machina. Two city-states, the machina-heavy Bevelle and the summoner magic city of Zanarkand, were at war with each other. For clarity's sake, we will divide Spira's calendar into two periods: before and after the events on first game of the series (FFX) take place, abbreviated as "BG" and "AG" respectively. Following this notation, FFX takes place in the year 0 AG and the Bevelle/Zanarkand war takes place in year 1,000 BG.



Bevelle's machina gave them the upper hand and Zanarkand was about to lose the war, when the survivors gathered in Zanarkand under the guidance of Yu Yevon, their leader. Believed to be the most powerful summoner alive, Yu Yevon directed all Zanarkand citizens to flee to the nearby Mt. Gagazet. There, refusing to admit the fall of their beloved city, Yu Yevon and the people of Zanarkand decided on a drastic and definite course of action: They let themselves be turned into fayths, all gathered in a massive wall on Gagazet's slopes, fayth that Yu Yevon would use to begin the casting of a huge summons: A city, a new, ideal Zanarkand, forever at piece and eternally holding alive the memory of its former glory. In order to protect himself while summoning the huge city, Yu Yevon gathered millions of stray pyreflies around him with powerful gravity spells, forming a formidable armor which later became known as Sin. In order not to get distracted from his summoning, Yevon "programed" a series of guiding instincts into Sin: among them, to attack any larger human settlement, to attack any machina and to respond to aggression with overwhelming force. Unfortunately Yu Yevon lost control of Sin and got trapped into a instinctive behavior himself, from then on living only to cast the summoned city. A masterless Sin turned around and completely destroyed the real Zanarkand, proceeding to decimate the incoming Bevellian army. From that point onwards, Sin destroyed any large city, quickly becoming a terror to all Spirans and uniting Spira under a common fear.

Defeating Sin for the first time: The First Calm
On the eve of Zanarkand's destruction, Yunalesca, Yu Yevon's own daughter, herself a very skilled summoner, managed to escape the doomed city with her husband Zaon. After Sin's appearance she and her husband travel to Zanarkand, where she turns Zaon into a particuliarly powerful fayth and defeats Sin for the first time. However, at the moment Sin's shell got cracked, a purely instinct driven Yu Yevon took control of Zaon's aeon, forcefully severing the mental link between Zaeon and Yunalesca, and thus instantly killing both his daughter and her husband. With Sin's defeat, a short period of peace settles on Spira. Unfortunately, within a couple of months, an instinct driven Yu Yevon is able to regenerate a new Sin using Zaon's aeon as a core, and Spira's plight begins anew. The intermission during which Sin is being regenerated will further be known as "The First Calm".

The Second Calm
Bound by her promises towards both her father and Bevelle, Yunalesca remains in Zanarkand as an unsent. It is assumed that she crafted a deal with Bevelle: in exchange for an immunity to Sin's rampage for Bevelle, and all people honouring the memory of her father, she would show Spirans a way to defeat Sin. During the following decades, Bevelle's leadership slowly mutates into a religious organization whose central figure is "Yevon", a benevolent teacher who tells Spirans ways to atone for their faults and reliance on machina, which supposedly has brought Sin to their world. While the nascent church slowly establishes its hold over most of Spira, summoners from all around gather and try to vanquish Sin, with little success. Finally, after more than 600 years, a summoner named Gandof is able to defeat Sin for the second time, thus creating the "Gandof's Calm". However, Gandof suffers the same fate as Yunalesca: Yevon takes over his guardian's aeon, severing the link between both of them and killing both the High Summoner and his Final Aeon in the process. As before, this calm is very short lived and Yu Yevon soon rebuilds Sin which restarts it's mayhem.

The High Summoners Pilgrimage
Gandof's succes at defeating Sin was a major accomplishment, even though the calm lasted less than a year. Given the length of Sin's unchecked rampage any brief respite, and any victory gives Spirans hope of overcoming the beast one day. Gandof's path sets the measure of the accomplishment, and probably finished the shaping of the pilgrimage as it is known in modern Spira. After his death Gandof was named "High Summoner", a title which will from then on be bestowed, posthumously, on all who have defeated Sin, and statues of Gandof were built and put in all Spira's temples.

The other Calms
230 years after Gandof's Calm, a former Kilikan blitzball star, Ohalland, manages to equal Yunalesca's and Gandof's feat and defeat Sin - only to bring about a much too short Calm. 200 years later, Lady Yocun becomes the first female summoner to achieve this momentous task. Finally, a mere 10 years before the game's present times, Braska, an outcast summoner, brings about yet another Calm. Thus the stage is set for FFX' events.

Modern Spira
The modern Spira is quite different from the one which saw the Millenium War. Machina, once abundant, is shunned by Bevelle's edicts, and only the outcast race of the Al Bhed tries to regain some of the lost knowledge. From a probably relatively common kind of magical fighters, summoners have become a sort of special caste of their own: help and privileges are granted to them during their pilgrimage in exchange of their coming sacrifice against Sin. The Yevon church dominates every aspect of Spiran life, spreading their teachings and pretending to be the benevolent rulers of a much diminished world - a world where virtually any kind of technological and social progress has been asleep for 1000 years. Yet beneath the surface unity of Spiran mainland, distrust and old anger still boils deep: one has to wonder if the various warring factions wouldn't have blown each other to smithereens without Sin's dreadfully pacifying presence.Only Blitzball truly unites the whole world around a common passion, the sport which survived Sin's coming and which holds annual tournaments in Luca's stadium, oddly left untouched by Sin's wrath.

Game Start
This is where the narrative starts.Tidus, a young star blitzball player of the Zanarkand Abes, plays on a match against the Zanarkand Duggles on the 10th anniversary of the disappearing of Jecht, his own father and another legendary Blitzball player himself. During the game, terror is unleashed on the city of Zanarkand: A giant thing appears in the sky, wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting city.Fleeing the attack, Tidus meets Auron, his mentor, who identifies the enemy as Sin, and gives Tidus his father's sword to fight some fiends unleashed on the streets of Zanarkand by Sin. But a bit later on, after an odd monologue with Sin, Auron grabs Tidus and drags him into Sin's vortex.Tidus regains consciousness near Baaj temple, where he is eventually rescued by Rikku and her Al Bhed tribe. After befriending her, Tidus learns, to his bewilderment, that Zanarkand has been destroyed by this same Sin 1000 years earlier. Another encounter with Sin lands Tidus on the beach of Besaid Island,where he meets Wakka and his team practicing something familiar: blitzball. After revealing that he is a player himself, Tidus agrees to help out the Besaid Aurochs (who have been on a 10-year losing streak) who, in turn, will bring him to Luca, hoping that a few of the annual tournament's spectators might recognize Tidus. Indeed, for some time, most people will believe Tidus' story of being from Zanarkand due to a hallucination because of proximity to Sin. Before leaving for Luca, Tidus is introduced to Yuna, a young summoner starting her pilgrimage to defeat Sin, and her guardians. While travelling,Tidus learns that Jecht, his own father, was a guardian to Yuna's father, who died after beating Sin and bringing a short Calm a decade ago.

In Luca, Tidus finds Auron, who turns out to be none other than Braska's otherguardian. After winning the Blitzball tournament, both of them join Yuna's pilgrimage as guardians - as the goal of the pilgrimage is to obtain the FinalAeon in Zanarkand, Tidus hopes to find a way to return to "his" reality.During their travels, the party will go through many ordeals, eventually finding out several disturbing truths: That the Yevon church is built on a lie, and that the Final Aeon is none other than one of the summoner's guardian. They further find out that using a Final Aeon to defeat Sin only brings a short Calm, as, after beating Sin, Yevon takes over the Final Aeon to make a new Sin and killing the summoner in the process. This also means, on a very personal level, that the current Sin is none other than Jecht, Tidus' father. The final revelation is made to Tidus alone: that "his" Zanarkand is not the one destroyed 1000 years ago but the Dream Zanarkand summoned by Yevon, and hence that he is himself part of that Aeon.

Because of the fondness which grew between Tidus and Yuna, as well as the former's stubborn nature, when meeting Yunalesca at the end of the pilgrimage,the party decides to refuse to continue in the old Final Aeon scam, and to find a way to destroy Yevon directly. Using an airship salvaged by the Al Bhed, they attack Sin and enter its distorted interiors, to finally confront and defeat Yu Yevon himself.

In order to confront Yu Yevon, the party must have one final confrontation with Seymour, and then proceed towards Dream's End and a painful reunion between Tidus and Jecht. Tidus is finally able to realize he was wrong for blaming his father, yet must consciously preserve his hatred for him in order to complete the task of destroying him. After defeating Jecht, Yuna summons each aeon that has accompanied their journey one by one and destroys each one, preventing Yu Yevon from merging with them and recreating Sin. The final battle is with Yu Yevon himself, resulting in the end of Sin and the end of the dream world.

Other
Jecht

Braska

Yunalesca

Minigames
Blitzball