YMMV / Final Fantasy X-2

A-Q

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Here.
• Angst? What Angst?: Gippal has considerably less angst about his past than the other three Crimson Squad survivors. He isn't flippant about those events, but you can tell there was a lesson learned. He's the only one who acknowledges Paine when he meets her: He excitedly says "you!" but plays along when she pretends they've never met.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Vegnagun can be taken down pretty easily if the characters' levels are even slightly above average. And they probably will be if players sought 100% Completion, or partook in even a few of the game's many sidequests. Afterwards, the climactic fight with Shuyin is a joke. Though he actually tries to put up a fight, unlike X's Yu Yevon who was virtually helpless. Not to mention, the sheer number of Superbosses in this game means he's far from the toughest fight.
• Awesome Music: As with all games in the series.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Yuna, due to how her personality evolves in this game. Some feel that her goofier personality and skimpier wardrobe was too much of a betrayal from how she had been portrayed in the first game. Others feel that Yuna did already have a mischievous, goofy side in the first game that had to be suppressed by the Crapsack World she lived in, and now after two years of peace and freedom it would make sense for Yuna to let her hair down more.
  • Then there is the hotly-debated audio drama Final Fantasy X -Will-, wherein Yuna breaks up with Tidus out of nowhere by claiming there is somebody else she loves, which caused some fans to lose all respect for the character (while others would rather not acknowledge it at all). The audio drama does have its defenders, though: Some have claimed that Yuna's infidelity is blown out of proportion and that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that she made the whole thing up.
  • Chuami from the audio drama. You either like her for how direct she is, or...not. And that's without addressing her claim that she's Auron's daughter.
  • Paine had an uphill battle to fight, being a new character to take Lulu's place in the female trio from the previous game. Some found her dull, especially in comparison to Yuna and Rikku's more heightened personalities, and others thought she was trying too hard to be an Auron expy. Others however found her a fresh addition, with her playing the foil very well to Yuna. Her more tomboyish personality was also seen as refreshing compared to the returning girls from X.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Some people dismiss this as that one game where Yuna and Rikku gain much skimpier outfits, Yuna ushers in world peace via J-pop, the Hot Springs Episode, and the massage minigame scene between a disguised Yuna and LeBlanc, and the latter sounds really into it.
• Broken Base:
  • The game is definitely Lighter and Softer than its predecessor, and it's one of the lightest Final Fantasy series' entries. The game as a whole has a greater focus on comedy and Camp, the protagonists are far more upbeat and peppy than the previous title, and there's more focus on character development than plot. As such, there's quite a bit of arguing among Final Fantasy fans if this change was for the better or for the worse. Those who liked the change say that it's a natural progression since the Eternal Calm has arrived, argue that Yuna has already managed to Earn Her Happy Ending and thus deserves to be upbeat, and that the gameplay elements are still very in-line with the series' staples. Those who disliked the change say that the game is chock full of Narm (which being a more optimistic entry can't excuse all by itself), the new characters feel like rehashes of old ones, and that the gameplay changes result in a "kitchen sink" approach that leaves the game without a clear direction. Either way, there's very little middle ground when it comes to opinions on X-2.
  • Opinions on the secret ending vary, since it's heavy on Karmic Jackpot. There's thus debate if the true ending is pleasingly indulgent or just an Ass Pull. Those who dislike Tidus coming Back from the Dead say that it retroactively cheapens his sacrifice in the previous game. And washing up on Besaid just in time to be spotted by Yuna and the Celsius is one of those dramatic moments that strains the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Those who like the ending argue that Tidus' resurrection was shown to be implicitly possible through Shuyin and the Dark Aeons, it's what Yuna had been working towards since becoming a Sphere Hunter, and both games had some foreshadowing that Tidus was coming back.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Dark Knight. This Dressphere is essentially the complete package to a good number of players; not only is it the fastest Dressphere to master, it has the highest base Defense in the game, their signature Darkness ability is both a spammable (more so if you abuse the Good Bad Bug involving Spellspring) and non-elemental Magic Defense-piercing attack, and best of all, their auto-abilities essentially gives them permanent pseudo-Ribbon. The only thing that keeps the players from having a party full of Dark Knights is the need for a dedicated healer. And even then, Alchemists are about as complacent as Dark Knights thanks to their Stash ability, especially with Mega Potion.
  • Once you get the Cat Nip accessory, the game is as good as won. A Gunner's Trigger Happy skill will inflict 9999 damage per shot with this accessory on, meaning that you can get around a dozen shots per use of the skill and it costs nothing to use. This was unsurprisingly nerfed in the International/HD Remaster versions by making Cat Nip inflict Auto-Berserk and Auto-Slow, turning the Sphere Hunter who equips it into a Mighty Glacier while still keeping the spirit of the accessory intact.
  • Logos in the Fiend Arena. His Quick Attack spam is legendary and helps build up a chain, so his teammates' strongest attacks hit even harder.
  • Two Machina with Impale (a relatively quick attack which ignores Defense) is overkill, and three even moreso; even superbosses will get wrecked in seconds by seemingly innocuous and low-level machina.
• Contested Sequel: The Lighter and Softer tone contrasted sharply against Final Fantasy X. Probably the rest of the series too, aside from Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy V (which it shares gameplay similarities with). You either like it as a breath of fresh air to a normally dramatic franchise, or feel it's completely out of place and clashes with the tone of the previous game. Its soundtrack is also contested, due to not being composed by any of the series regulars and feeling very different compared to its prequel's, similarly being considered either refreshing in its own way or too drastically different from the previous game's. There's also a sizable amount of fans that stand in a sort of middle ground of liking the game's various gameplay features but not being too fond of either its story or its soundtrack, in that while being okay in their own right, feel like very significant downgrades from X.
• Cry for the Devil: What happened to Shuyin. Following his death in Bevelle alongside Lenne, the poor bastard spent the next millennium being forced to relive his death and the death of his lover. Over and over, without a break, for a thousand years. Yeah, you can understand why someone might want to reduce the entire planet to ashes after that.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Azi Dahaka has a nasty attack which knocks off 50% of your max HP. Not current, max. And it hits everyone at once. Its melee attack is actually several attacks done in one turn, so you can't stagger them all.
  • The following do not appear outside of Via Infinito and Fiend Arena, and for good reason.
    • Two words that will make many visitors of the Via Infinito quake in their boots: Mega Tonberry. Its attacks are more powerful and frequent than its normal brethren, along with inflicting some nasty side effects if the target does survive. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't require Cat Nip Gunner, it just requires players to be strategic in order to beat it. The Oversouled version also inflicts the Petrify status...unless the target has Stoneproof. In which case she'll just get hit with Confuse status instead, which cannot be blocked.
  • Chac can pretty much be summed up like this: A Lightning Bruiser who can inflict a Petrify-inducing attack that ignores immunity towards that status effect (which hits 100% of the time), along with a strong, party-wide attack that reduces several stats by 10 levels each, all topped off with a gigantic HP pool (which is almost half or Trema's no less). Have fun!
    • Individually, these two specific fiends are already a headache. But then you can face them together, as the Shady Duo team, in the lowest levels of Via Infinito and the Fiend Arena: Black Elemental casts powerful spells, Berserks your party, and comes with innate Auto-Reflect. Coming from an Elite Mook with max Magic, Ultima generally means Game Over even with Shell on, and it cannot be Reflected. (X's Ultima Buster actually had less Magic at 178, and the next two below that were Jumbo Flan and Nega Elemental who didn't even break 100.) Mushroom Cloud's Pernicious Powder is an unavoidable, party-wide debuff which lowers the Strength and Magic of its targets to a mere 1/10th of their usual values. In addition, it inflicts a bunch of the more nastier status ailments, including Petrify and Itchy (the latter of which always hits), so there's a chance this attack can simply kill you outright if you're not protected against those ailments. Oh, and Mushroom Cloud also knows Ultima. Put these two fiends together, and you have a recipe for a bad time.
• Fanon:
  • Yuna somehow being a reincarnation of Lenne is a popular theory. This is mainly due to Shuyin mistaking Yuna for Lenne even though the two look nothing alike. The in-universe reason is that the Songstress Dressphere has Lenne's outfit and her memories are imprinted on it; it's also implied that Yuna sings with Lenne's voice. (This is better represented in the Japanese version, where Lenne's speaking and singing voice are provided by Koda Kumi.)
  • There is some confusion as to the age of the Crimson Squad survivors. Baralai is mistakenly thought to be the youngest, possibly due to being voiced by Rick Gomez's younger brother Josh. Gippal is actually the youngest, only being eighteen, while Baralai is twenty. It's All There in the Manual.
  • Rikku and Gippal being an Official Couple is mostly Fanon. While there are definite hints in the game, it's entirely a Maybe Ever After situation.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • A few fans choose to outright pretend this game never happened, either in canon to X or at all. The criticisms mainly revolve around mood whiplash from the previous title, which went from a rather dark and corrupt world to one dealing with the aftermath of the game's ending. If not that, then the criticism is about Yuna's characterization being too far off of what was presented in X, even factoring in a Time Skip and change in attitude for her.
  • Even among those that like the game, there’s some fans who choose to ignore the Golden Ending feeling that Yuna accepting Tidus' disappearance/death and moving on with her life is a much more thematically appropriate and moving ending than Tidus getting resurrected.
  • The English version of Last Mission was the nail in the coffin for many. Nothing is said about Tidus except for a few lines, during which Yuna talks about dumping him for someone else, even after everything she did to bring him back. The Japanese version is much more likely to mention Tidus, so why the English version reduced these numbers is baffling.
  • The audio drama Will has few defenders. Yuna breaks up with Tidus because he's supposedly cheating on her, and then claims to be in love with someone else, all of which comes out of nowhere. A new character made specifically for the drama claims to be the daughter to Auron purely on the basis that her mother told her so. Lastly, Sin comes back into the picture just because someone or something wished it back. A lot of fans prefer to ignore the audio drama and preserve what they liked about the characters, and it's never been mentioned in any Final Fantasy media ever since. About the only things consistently brought as positives are that it explains how Sendings are handled without Summoners, and Lulu pointing out that people claiming to be Braska, Auron, or Jecht's illegitimate children for perks is a pretty common thing.
• Franchise Original Sin: A lot of fans hated how Yuna became Denser and Wackier, feeling it was a betrayal of the character that was seen in X. Likewise, her Hotter and Sexier outfits seem at odds with her modest kimono-inspired dress from the previous game. In the previous game, Yuna did have several moments of playfulness and goofiness — playing along with a binoculars routine, the infamous fake-laughter sequence, being the referee for the Aurochs' foot race in Kilika, and Kimahri recounting a story of when she was younger and repeatedly jumped off a Shoopuff because she found it fun being picked up by its snout. Yuna was also the only one of the female characters to have a love scene in the game — a very passionate make-out with Tidus in the Macalania Spring. Her wedding dress (the only other costume she wears) was also somewhat revealing. It's just that the first game's sombre tone meant that these were only occasional moments of levity, whereas the second game shows this side of Yuna much more prominently.
• Game-Breaker: Here.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Although it received positive reviews upon release, the game has a sizable hatedom partly due to being marketed to women, especially when compared to other Final Fantasy games. What's more is that in The New '10s and The New '20s, discussion shifted to how video games often have to walk a thin line creatively with their female protagonists (who are often Flawless Tokens to avoid accusations of sexism). Final Fantasy X-2 on the other hand had three female leads, all with very exaggerated personalities and more overtly feminine hobbies (changing clothes to get new abilities, a heavy emphasis on pop singing), thus leading the game to having a significant hatedom.
• Harsher in Hindsight: One of the Fiend Tales depicts a Bomb pretending to be a blitzball to encourage a little kid (his best friend in the fiend's human life) to train hard. The audio drama has a scene of Tidus getting blown up by a grenade he thought was a blitzball.
• He Really Can Act: One of the biggest gripes with X was Hedy Burress attempting to lip-sync with Yuna's model, something the other actors didn't bother with, since the lip flaps weren't changed from Japanese. Burress had zero experience with voice acting, and her dialog felt wooden — while one could argue this tone fit the character, it still got some criticism. The improved graphics in X-2 allow the lip flaps to be rendered in real time, and Burress was likewise more expressive, ending up with a performance that was received far better. Even people who dislike the game cite Burress' improvements in the booth as one of the title's high points.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Creator/George Newbern and Rick Gomez were eventually picked as the English voice actors of Sephiroth and Zack respectively for the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. In other words, once again they were playing soldiers who had worked together, with Newbern's character voicing a soldier who went mad from his war experiences while Gomez's character got shot.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Shuyin. The main reason X-2 existed was to reunite Yuna and Tidus, but this plotline is only explored in Tidus' portion from Mobius Final Fantasy. Still, Shuyin is quite an interesting villain for the story due to the dark moments surrounding him, which heavily contrasts the Lighter and Softer Charlie's Angels-like approach.
• Les Yay:
  • There's quite a bit of it between YRP, particularly during the hot springs scene in Gagazet. Rikku checks out both Yuna and Paine, making it clear that she's commenting on their boobs/butts. The girls proceed to have a bit of a playful Cat Fight until Brother interrupts them with his horniness.
  • A later scene has Rikku compare herself to Lenne's dead lover, Shuyin, by recounting how she once tried to save the one she loved, complete with holding Yuna's hands. Perhaps Brother isn't the only sibling who thinks cousins are fair game.
  • There's a Mini-Game where Yuna has to straddle LeBlanc and give her a massage, complete with suggestive moans of pleasure. When she falls asleep at the end, Yuna peers at her magic fingers and remarks with awe about how "good" she is.
• Magnificent Bastard: Shuyin was once a noble warrior trying to protect his love Lenne when he was executed with her and trapped inside the Den of Woe. Forced to relieve his death for a thousand years, Shuyin became a vengeful spirit, hellbent on ending all wars by putting Spira out of its misery with Vegnagun. Unleashed during a Crusade expedition, Shuyin loosens his wrath, killing everyone except for four survivors, and possesses Nooj, forcing him to non-fatally shoot the rest, lying inside dormant for his plan. Influencing Nooj to find Spheres and create the Youth League to track Vegnagun, Shuyin realizes he can't take the weapon with Nooj and so manipulates his host into allowing Shuyin to possess Baralai and carry on. All the while, Shuyin sowed chaos with his powers by summoning the Dark Aeon and even driving the Gullwings mad enough to nearly kill each other. With Vegnagun, Shuyin nearly succeeds in destroying to Spira, fighting until the end until Lenne's spirit manages to make him relent and finally accepts his defeat before going with Lenne to the Farplane in peace.
• Most Wonderful Sound: When you change to Lady Luck mid-battle. "Ladies and gentlemen!"
• Narm Charm:
  • "Who the heck is Lenne!?" Yuna's aversion to swearing is indicative of the game's Lighter and Softer tone, but her voice actress manages to sound genuinely pissed off, to the point that the line still works.
  • Yuna's "Oh poopie!" line and Rikku saying not to talk like that and Yuna's indignant "I'm just copying you!" is quite goofy and childish — but Hedy Burress and Tara Strong make it sound rather adorable all the same.
  • Yuna's line during the final act of the main campaign, "I don't like your plan. It sucks." Unintentionally funny for some (everybody present recoils as though she just uttered a string of raunchy expletives), but it precedes a Rousing Speech about how Yuna is tired of people sacrificing their lives for a hollow victory, and how she will make sure Everybody Lives this time around. She manages to get the Machine Faction, the Youth League, and the LeBlanc Syndicate on the same page, along with perpetual Death Seeker Mevyn Nooj. While the line itself is a bit cheesy and out-of-nowhere for Yuna, the speech that goes with it makes the line work.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Shinra fusing with and separating from Omega Weapon in the International version.
  • Chapter 3 has you fighting Dark Aeons. While their appearances look evil, so is the boss fight music, complete with scarestrings!
  • The haunting music that plays as you travel through Bevelle Underground to find Vegnagun.
  • The bloodcurdling scream Rikku lets out just before Yuna is forced to fight her.
• Older Than They Think:
  • X-2 is often credited as "the first direct sequel" to a mainline Final Fantasy, forgetting that Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals predates this game by nine years.
  • Paine is not the first character to tame a falcon. That was the Ranger from V, who could randomly summon one.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Not everyone was keen on the direction of the game relative to its predecessor. However, most agree that X-2 features a great implementation of the Active Time Battle system, with characters performing multiple actions all at once and allowing players to switch Dresspheres on the fly during battle.
• Questionable Casting: It seems odd that they'd hire a Non-Singing Voice for Lenne, when her English voice actress Cree Summer is a very gifted singer too. Even outside of her album, she demonstrated in All Grown Up! that she has quite a powerful voice, and could have added a lot to "1000 Words"; Jade Villalon and her could have duetted the track, with the former singing for Yuna's Songstress voice.
• Quicksand Box: If you picked this up without playing X first, you'd have absolutely no idea where to take your Celsius, because Yuna's narration doesn't cover that game's events, and the few she does mention are thinly-sketched.
• Retroactive Recognition: Rick Gomez would later be picked as the voice of Zack Fair in The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (even sharing his Japanese voice). Also, George Newbern, Nooj, became Sephiroth.

S-W

• The Scrappy: While Brother was likable enough in X (partly due to how useful he was in Blitzball), here his incestuous and childish antics tested the patience of more than one player. Brother also suffered from being a Replacement Scrappy for Cid.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Yuna can jump across pits and to ledges in this game. However, it's implemented horribly. At times you'll see her jump failure animation a dozen times before she finally bothers to actually jump. And then you have segments that require you to jump multiple pillars in a row...
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Some players say that there's not a lot of good challenges in X-2 since they tend to restrict one's Dresspheres, and the whole gimmick of the battle system is being able to switch Dresspheres on the fly and have lots of obscure abilities. If you're stuck with a single Dressphere for each girl, that could make the run of the game feel more akin to Final Fantasy or the Four Job Fiesta for V, though not as good. However, there are still a few options:
  • The one many fans always point to is the "First Steps Challenge" (First Steps Garment Grid, no accessories, and no items). You have to use a ton of different abilities throughout the run and switch Dresspheres constantly, all with minimized stats and abilities. This can be done in a New Game Plus on a maxed file, which is nice since players will most likely already have all of the Dresspheres and abilities without needing to grind for them again by that point.
  • Solo runs are viable challenges thanks to the International/HD Remaster versions, though some might find this pretty boring. The biggest positive about this challenge is that it makes the more Awesome, but Impractical Dresspheres, such as Festivalist and the Special Dresspheres, more viable thanks to their versatility. Many people end up choosing Yuna as their only character, however. This most likely has to do with a certain side quest, should they choose to go for 100% Completion.
  • The "Fewest Steps Challenge", which basically involves taking the shortest-possible route to the final boss. Not the most difficult (especially if you're using Creature Creator), but can be pretty interesting.
  • "All Songstress" team. A few players find this one pretty amusing, especially in the early parts of the game when you can only kill things using magic, which requires creative use of accessories and Garment Grids. You have to balance out which girl is using her MP and how much, so you don't reach a boss and have no way to kill them. Though the rest of the game can be easily-broken by cheesing the Dances and Songs.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • Compared to the original, the game has a lot less emphasis on being a JRPG since there are a lot more minigames and it's also easier to grind to Lv. 99. A good number of fiends tend to roll over and die from melee attacks, so strategies that require different combinations of Garment Grids, Dresspheres, and accessories are put on the sidelines more often than not. That and you have Dresspheres that can break the game in half like Dark Knight and especially Mascot, plus the Cat Nip accessory. At least it's far more balanced in the International and HD Remaster versions: you can still use it, it's just riskier and requires strategy. (But then again, the International and HD Remaster versions have the borderline overpowered Psychic Dressphere obtainable from the start.)
  • Since MP scales when you change Dresspheres, and you can also do it outside of battle, just flip over to the White Mage temporarily and then use her MP reserves to heal up between battles. You'll usually have one melee character who isn't using her MP for anything else, anyway. Through this method, White Mage trivializes most of the game's dungeons.
  • The Alchemist's Stash ability isn't so much of an instant win button as a can't lose button.
  • The First Strike Garment Grid is a near necessary for catching chocobos, and more than flexible everywhere else.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • Aeons are no more, and they were part and parcel of a lot of strategies for surviving superbosses.
  • Stat grinding is also no more (unless you're playing the International/HD Remaster versions), so you're limited to what the Dresspheres give you and what you can scrounge up from accessories and Garment Grids, which also dip into your auto-abilities.
  • No customization of your gear. Accessories tend to give you only one or two auto-abilities, if even that, and you usually need a slot or two to make way for Defense and/or Magic Defense boosting accessories if you hope to live through whatever kind of nasty encounters the game throws at you, especially in the Via.
  • The reason the Cat Nip exploit was so popular is...seriously, bosses are so cheap in the later parts of the Via Infinito (it's on par with trying to do XI's late-game content having missed missables), and your own strength has been kneecapped compared to X. Or VII and VIII, for that matter. So the 'grin and bear it' strategies that saw you through the tougher fights in X are no longer viable. You more or less have to finish off enemies quickly here, or you don't stand a chance.
• Shocking Moments: If you don't defeat the second-to-last final boss, Vegnagun, under the given amount of turns, or if it kills you, Shuyin fires the cannon and completely annihilates Spira.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Creature Creator in the International and HD Remaster versions, which allows you to recruit nearly every fiend out there and have them join your party and fight alongside or instead of YRP. And every single one of them has their own capsule bio. That's not even going into the tournament-style Fiend Arena, which grants you incredibly valuable items like Psychic and the ever powerful Mascot, and the requirements needed to unlock certain fiends and tournament cups. There's just so much to do, you could spend hours in Creature Creator without even progressing in the main story (especially during a New Game Plus).
• Special Effect Failure: As with its prequel, the lip-sync can be seriously off in places. The most notorious instance is Rikku's calling out "Monkey!", which is accompanied by so many lip movements that it looks like there was meant to be a whole line of dialogue there.
• Squick:
  • Brother being madly in love with Yuna...when you remember that they're first cousins.
  • After he jumps out of the Celsius trying to save her, when she thanks him for his efforts he seemingly leans in to try to smooch her, or at the very least try to cop an uncomfortably feely and exploitative hug.
• Strangled by the Red String: A variation. Since X ended, Lulu and Wakka are now together and expecting a baby. There were approximately two scenes in the first game which hinted at a possible romance between them: The first being Lulu comforting him during the Blitzball finals, and the second being Tidus suggesting she hook up with him (which she flatly refused). Although it's entirely possible for them to make a love connection in the two year Time Skip, especially since they both have had some more time to move on from Chappu and probably a lot more opportunity to bond and have fun now that Sin is gone.
• That One Attack:
  • Heartless Attack, which drops your HP to 1. It's only used by a few enemies outside of the Fiend Arena, but a lot of the exclusive enemies in said arena use it, to the point where L-sized party members are nearly useless beyond Grand Cup: Hard.
  • Pernicious Powder. As you might guess, it's an enormous Game-Breaker in the International and HD versions. You can capture your very own Mushroom Cloud as soon as the Via Infinito opens up. And yes, it can use this very same attack, with no downgrade in power whatsoever. Pernicious Powder's stat-lowering effect works on every enemy in the game, even foes normally immune to such debuffs, and it will obliterate the Arena bosses.
  • Paragon, basically Nemesis (X's bonus boss in all but name), has kept his Apocalypse attack, here renamed Big Bang. It does 99999 damage more often than not, and you can't have more than 18000 HP in a vanilla game. (You have the option to HP-boost creatures in the HD/International version.) Paragon casts it whenever special attacks are used, which kind of limits your options against him.
  • The Delta Attack from the Dark Magus Sisters. It automatically drops the HP of all your characters to 1. Worth noting that if you do the math, it did a LOT more damage when used against fiends in X; considering it can only harm your HP cap, the Dark Sisters' version is actually quite handicapped.
  • Final Impact, which randomly hits 14 times for 1/8th of each target's maximum HP and MP per hit. Needless to say, somebody will more than likely die, and unless the remaining party members have very high MP or Spellspring, they won't be reviving anyone. It's used only by Oversouled Paragon and Almighty Shinra, but you'll especially loathe it in the hands of the latter.
• That One Boss: Like X, the story campaign is a cakewalk (even more so without the worry of Seymour popping up), but it makes up for that by piling on the Omega-tier enemies:
  • Azi Dahaka can be a major headache if you don't realize it can be skipped. It has over 150k HP (which is more than all of the final boss's phases combined), his regular attacks have a HP-draining effect, and its Damocles Photon attack hits the entire party for 50% of max HP. Fortunately though, tou can skip it by solving a puzzle.
  • The Experiment machina at Djose with all of its stats at Level 5 can wreck even a high-leveled party with ease. The (mercifully rarely used) Lifeslicer does damage equal to its target's max HP. Unless you're using a Garment Grid or accessory with Break HP Limit, you will die.
  • In the Den of Woe, Meyvn Nooj. His Greedy Aura attack does hefty damage to your party on top of MP damage, but his biggest problem is his Lightfall attack; 5,000 fixed, unblockable damage on the entire party, in a game where the maximum base HP at Level 99 is around 6,600. Thankfully, he only uses it when he Turns Red, so cutting him down to size before he uses it is quite doable. Unfortunately, Lightfall is his opening attack in the Fiend Arena, after which he'll use it in repeated intervals after cycling through his other abilities.
  • Tonberry the Ripper team (ie. Mega Tonberry). You can't expect to win without any sort of strategy or putting thought into your setup. Even then, only a certain set of creatures will have a high enough Defense.
  • Yojimbo's Zanmato does the same thing as Delta Attack, with the added "bonus" of depleting all of your MP. Oh, but keep in mind that he uses an attack which Poisons a target, so either guard against that or heal it, else you're in deep shit: At 1 HP, the Scratch Damage from Poison will kill anyone affected by it.
  • Almighty Shinra catches a lot of players off-guard. It's well, Shinra, absorbing the pyreflies of Omega (who wasn't a terribly difficult enemy), with near-max stats and some of the strongest moves. Of course, any party who prepared for this battle will have it easy, but considering that YRP can charge blindly into most fights and win, this is one of the more memorable ones. He opens with Clione, which makes it difficult to outwit his A.I. script, since he will prompt YRP to go into recovery mode. Clione delivers non-elemental damage to random targets.
• That One Level: The New Cave in Thunder Plains is unlocked in Chapter 5 and can be fully explored after defeating Humbaba and rescuing Cid if you're going for 100% Completion. A veritable maze with non-sequential doors that unlock by adding up certain numbers (fiends encountered, gil earned, etc.) that are given to you throughout. Have a pen and paper nearby, as the combinations of later doors often involve the codes from previous doors! (It also helps to wear a Charm Bangle to prevent random encounters, because you'll have to keep track of the amount of fiends defeated and gil you've earned since entering the dungeon.)
• That One Sidequest:
  • The matchmaking/publicity side-quests, which requires you to walk up to random NPCs and pick from a list of five pitches each, which will prompt either a positive or negative response from the NPC. The problem is, without a FAQ or guide, you're given no clues whatsoever as to which statement to pick for which NPC. And if you want the best results for either side quest (especially for the former since it is required for 100% Completion), you have to be near-perfect. Now that's just pure sadism! You're thus reduced to either consulting a guide as mentioned earlier, Save Scumming to oblivion, or blowing all your money over the minigames at the Calm Lands building to boost your rep the slow way. Even if you do consult a guide for it, it's a game-spanning quest!
  • Sphere Break against Shinra (either in Chapter 3 or 5) if you're bad at math. If you're not, it still requires a bit of luck, because his core tends to generate core spheres of 1, which is likely to break your echo chains. You must beat him if you want to acquire the Lady Luck Dressphere. The new Sphere Break players in the International/HD Remaster have quotas starting from 300 and go all the way up to 500.
  • The Chocobo Ranch. The only useful thing you can reap from it is a few Bonus Dungeons, a few Garment Grids, and access to the Central Expanse for digging. Aside from that, you'll just end up getting lots of Shop Fodder. And locating one of those dungeons is completely obscure.
  • Did you hate the Cactuar side-quest you needed to tackle in order to power up Rikku's weapon in the previous game? Well then you'll be thrilled to learn that hunting 10 Cactuars to complete a quest, including playing minigames with them, is required for 100% completion. But not only that, they are spread all over Spira this time, so good luck decoding the clues to find them all!
  • By the time you reach the more deeper levels of Via Infinito, even random encounters feel like you're on a highwire. Lacertas with terrifyingly high Agility and Auto-Haste, Elder Drakes that can easily crush your party while disabling your Escape/Flee command, Mega Tonberries with their on-crack attack speed and physical damage going upwards to 99,999 HP.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A fair amount of people dislike the changes to Blitzball, becoming a coaching minigame of sorts rather than an active sport.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • While dealing with the groups who emerged in the political fallout of the last game made for an interesting last act, some people think that the game would have been a lot more interesting if that was the entire story.
  • The Good and True endings, for some. There is no buildup or reason (except one vague line from Bahamut) to explain why Tidus comes back two years after the events of X, or how Shuyin's incident is related to him.
  • Brother's relationship with Yuna. It's stated that he learned the common language so he could communicate with her, which could have been a decent subplot about Yuna and Brother bonding as cousins after they were prevented from doing so as children. Instead it was used for a widely-disliked Running Gag about Brother's blue balls.
• Uncertain Audience: Some male gamers were turned off by the sassy female leads and the dress-up aspect, while some female gamers were weirded out by the blatant fanservice. That's not to say there weren't fans who enjoyed those aspects (there are many cosplayers of all the Dresspheres), but they are more aspects that come off as polarizing when coming off the heels of the previous game.
• Values Dissonance: Yuna has no problem bending the rules when it comes to other peoples' beliefs, but has a major stick up her butt when it comes to Zanarkand, and takes action to drive people away from an ostensibly public place. Yuna's version of events would be valid if she had extended the same courtesy to Gagazet. After all, Kimahri was upset that the Leblanc Syndicate were defiling sacred ground, so Yuna broke up their pool party—only to do the exact same thing. Even Rikku expressed some hesitation. (Maybe Kimahri should breed monkeys in the hot spring to stop Yuna from coming.) Unfortunately, there is no line of dialog to indicate that Yuna has proven her worth to the Ronso, or that they consider it a compliment that she would want to use their hot spring. Why? This is a Japanese game. There's not one example of a sacred hot spring where you aren't supposed to bathe in it. That's usually the whole point of why a particular hot spring is considered to be sacred. They usually aren't places where you are expected to be very solemn or serious, either. On the other hand, generally speaking, treating things like battlefields as tourist attractions in Japan is considered disrespectful. It doesn't mean it isn't done, but it isn't something which is regarded very highly as compared with Western cultures.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Years later, longtime fans look back warmly at the gameplay, even considering it to have one of the best battle systems in the series.
  • Some fans have also since learned to embrace all the camp in the game.
  • After the novel was released, a lot of people are praising the game for not having the same shoddy quality.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Nooj's costume gets a lot of snickers from fans for being simultaneously overdesigned while also being essentially a skin-tight bodysuit with a crotch zipper.
  • Tetsuya Nomura himself found the Gullwings too revealing which led to their redesigns in Kingdom Hearts II where they wear more clothing.

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