Title: Final Fantasy X

System: Sony PlayStation 2

Developed by: Squaresoft

Published by: Squaresoft

Suggested Retail Price: $49.99

Available: Now

ESRB Rating: Teen ? Blood, Violence

It is said that time heals all wounds, but it can also ruin good ideas. Most long-running series, be they in movies, television, books or video games, tend to lose quality over time.

There is the rare series, however, that manages to maintain or improve its quality over time. The venerable “Final Fantasy” series of role-playing games has consistently set a high-water mark for the plot-driven genre in terms of visuals, music, storytelling and characterization.

Now, Squaresoft has released the tenth in the series and possibly the best one yet. “Final Fantasy X” melds gorgeous visuals, a strong storyline and excellent characters with stunning movie sequences, well-composed music, a revamped and much-improved battle system and, for the first time in the series, voice acting for nearly every character.

The story of the game follows a young man named Tidus, the star player for his team in a sport called Blitzball in his high-tech home city of Zanarkand. The game is a mix of soccer, basketball and water polo played in a huge, free-floating sphere of water, and the story begins with Tidus playing to a packed stadium.

But within a few minutes of the game?s start an enormous, mercurial ball called Sin appears on the edge of Zanarkand, absorbing chunks of the city whole and firing on the rest. The Blitzball game evaporates as the stadium comes under the onslaught of this strange attacker, which sucks Tidus up as he runs through the shattered city and deposits him on the edge of some oceanic ruins in a strange land called Spira ? a world where Sin is ever-present and Zanarkand was destroyed a thousand years before.

Lost and alone, Tidus eventually meets a young summoner named Yuna ? capable of calling forth powerful creatures called Aeons to fight for her ? and her guardians, who protect her on her journey to attain the only Aeon capable of temporarily defeating Sin.

Tidus tags along with the group, and his adventure soon begins in earnest ? eventually he will discover the true nature of Sin, among other mysteries.

Tidus is not the central focus of the story, however. He spends most of the game tagging along ? at first he is an outsider taken in by kind strangers; later, he becomes a rookie guardian himself; finally he is an equal among the others. But he never calls the shots ? Yuna?s journey is always the driving force in the game.

The story moves along smoothly, is always interesting and always giving the player a reason to proceed. However, except toward the end of the game, the player has virtually no options to take sidetracks or explore Spira. There is little to do on journeys between locations but fight the roving fiends of this world.

Fighting is a fluid, turn-based affair, carried on with a group of up to three characters from the player?s full party. Any of these characters can be switched out for another during their turn, and the fresh character can immediately act, so if a situation arises that the current fighting party can?t handle it?s a simple matter to change the makeup of the party to one that can.

Points are won in battle which the player can use to move character icons around on the “Sphere Grid,” a giant board covered in nodes which grant spells, skills and other rewards, on which characters are at first confined to a set path. The grid opens up, eventually, so any character can learn any skill with enough time ? the system is both flexible and balanced.

Spira is made up of tropical islands, deserts, snowfields, mountains and caves, ancient ruins and bustling cities, all rendered with an eye for realism and creative artistic design. The game?s main characters show a similar attention to detail, though townspeople and other incidental characters are much simpler-looking and not as well animated when speaking.Nearly every character?s lines are spoken aloud. Though some players may be turned off by some of the voices, any low points are offset by great line delivery for other characters.

The lip-synching system used for the characters, however, isn?t as good. Only rarely do mouth movements precisely match up with the words being spoken and, at their worst, don?t match at all. Still, this is a minor gripe and detracts little from the game, and facial and body animations are good.

The music in the game is also excellent, ranging in style from hard rock and electronic songs to acoustic guitar and piano pieces. Despite the disparate musical genres in the soundtrack, no track feels out of place or is too grating.

Despite its few flaws, “Final Fantasy X” stands as a near-flawless example of its genre. Full of familiar elements and new innovations, fans of the old and new games in the series alike should find something to enjoy.