You would think that Tidus had it all as a famous Blitz Ball player in his home city of Zanarkand that is until the monstrosity known as Sin raises the city to the ground and transports Tidus to an unknown location. He quickly discovers that not only is he in a different part of his planet, Spira, but he has also been transported a thousand years into the future. With his city and family gone Tidus sets out to discover the nature of Sin and stop the destruction happening all over again...

Final Fantasy X is a role playing game from Square Enix, originally released on the PS2; the game has been given a HD makeover and released for the PS Vita and PS3.

As with most FF games, the developers have taken the opportunity to play with the game's mechanics and with the introduction of FF X, the levelling up comes in the form of an orb placement system which allows the player to weight the direction that he/she wants their character to grow into. Being a FF game there is a lot of fighting monsters and a lot of grinding if you want to survive as the game progresses. There is also the requisite number of mini sub games to play.

The story sees Tidus gradually gathering together a band of friends, including Yuna, Ronso, Wakka, Lulu and Auron, in order to defeat Sin and these characters have their own strengths and weaknesses which have to be balanced and developed on the sphere grid.

Although an improvement over the previous games, FF X contains no world map, except for a small local map, which only serves to orientate your direction, the world is one continuous playing area, with restrictions. To look at it the game area is expansive and the backgrounds are in perspective and enticing. The truth of the matter is that the game is very linear as you traverse the various environments offered. At a later stage you do get access to some air transport which makes getting around a lot quicker.

So, what’s new? Well this is the tenth anniversary of the game's original release and apart from the bulk of the game coding the visual and audio aspects of the game have all had a good working over. It no longer looks like a PS2 port, but a good Vita game in its own right. Much of the music has been rerecorded or rearranged; the combination gives the game a very slick look, considering this originally was released in 1999.

Its move to the next generation of consoles and handhelds also sees the inclusion of thirty-four trophies, not a vast amount but nothing which is missable in a normal play though. You even get a freebie silver for just watching the Final Fantasy X Eternal Calm, a prequel to X-2, a bit of watch-once-and-forget piece of fluff. Depending on what version you originally owned, there is also some more content as the game also contains all the content from the international version. If you have versions for both the PS Vita and the PS3 then you can swap your saves between them.

Overall, the game remains a good one and has benefited from its makeover; it’s probably worth a revisit for those of you who have played it before and certainly worth picking up if you missed it the first time around. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on X-2 as only the first game was sent out for review.

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Charles Packer