When comparing Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster vs Crashlands, the Slant community recommends Crashlands for most people. In the question“What are the best games on Steam with a rich story?” Crashlands is ranked 36th while Final Fantasy X-2 HD Remaster is ranked 80th. The most important reason people chose Crashlands is:
For just the medium difficulty setting there is hours upon hours of content, and that's even if you skip all the side quests and just focus on the main story. Plus there are two harder difficulties to try and in the near future a tool will come out which will let you build your own adventures as well as play other people's.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Fun turn-based combat with a cool job system
Final Fantasy X-2 has an exciting turn-based system where you can change jobs on-the-fly. During the fast-paced battles, you can choose to switch jobs to handle different enemy types and situations. When you change your main character Yuna from a gunner to a songstress, she can sing tunes that can debilitate enemies or buff the party for the duration of her song. Character models update to the new job costumes in real-time with special animations, like how Yuna will have a spotlight on her as she poses with a microphone when she changes to her songstress job. It's a fun and unique system that with the way you can swap jobs at any time to handle whatever your enemy throws at you.
Pro Heartfelt and thoughtful story
Set two years after Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2 is much lighter in tone, featuring Yuna as the main character as she searches for treasure across Spira with her friends. Although the story seems overly positive and campy at first, almost like a cheesy movie with silly one-liners and hammed-up humor, there's much more depth to the story that reveals itself as you play through the game. As a world leader, Yuna tries to do what's expected of her by fixing the power struggle between Spira's two ruling factions, but she's also deeply upset by her love interest's absence. She questions if it's possible to find him with so much mystery surrounding his disappearance. It's an emotional experience watching Yuna struggle with her obligations to maintain peace in the world, and going after what she personally wants for her own happiness and fulfillment.
Pro Great soundtrack with a nice blend of different genres
Final Fantasy X-2's soundtrack is filled with energetic pop songs, pensive ballads, and an overall jazz and rock-inspired sound that matches the game's fun and adventurous themes. "Real Emotion" is an infectiously catchy pop song that would fit right in with the Top 40s charts in real life. "Yuna's Ballad" is much more thought-provoking and emotional, with pianos that sound a lot like how Yuna's sorrow and conflicting emotions would be in musical form. The normal battle theme has a great rock sound to it, mixing in violins to keep things interesting, and it doesn't get old no matter how many times you hear it during normal encounters. The soundtrack is amazing with the way it experiments with different genres that all manage to blend well together.
Pro Risky but fresh change in tone from Final Fantasy X to X-2
Final Fantasy X-2 does a complete 180 from Final Fantasy X's more grounded themes of life, death, and corruption, showing the world after the darkness passes, and featuring an all-female cast of party members. The themes here are much more fun and upbeat, showing Yuna as more on an overall light-hearted journey with her troupe of treasure hunters, although the story does have its moments of seriousness and melancholy. Even the opening CGI cutscene is of Yuna performing a pop song at a concert. It's a risky, but bold and fresh move that you'll either love or hate depending on your tastes.
Pro Hours of content just in the main quest alone gives the player plenty to do
For just the medium difficulty setting there is hours upon hours of content, and that's even if you skip all the side quests and just focus on the main story. Plus there are two harder difficulties to try and in the near future a tool will come out which will let you build your own adventures as well as play other people's.
Pro Pleasing graphics that show off a well designed and polished game
The graphics look nice and you can tell time has been put into designing them. While not the most flashy, there is a certain style to the whole game that makes for a very cohesive experience.
Pro Pick up from your last save, no matter the device you are using, thanks to the built in cloud saving
Playable on Android, iOS and PC you're able to transfer the one game between multiple devices (on same or different operating systems) and take it with you anywhere you go. with a Butterscotch ID (the devs self implemented cloud save system).
Pro Excellent progression system where you never feel like you are grinding too much
Progression never feels sluggish or rushed, everything has a good pace to it from the farming of materials and grinding out the various components for the tons of items, to the incredibly unique combat/interaction system, it all blends well into a long gaming experience.
Pro Hundreds items to craft in a deep and varied crafting system that will keep the user busy for hours and hours
There are over 500 items that can be crafted in the game, giving the player quite a lot to experiment with and explore when it comes to crafting items.
Pro Great soundtrack that suits the humor and setting of the game quite well
A great mix of chill and energized music, that fits the setting of the game at all times. A pleasure to listen to on its own as well.
Pro Multiple game modes
Once you've finished the basic mode there's also a challenging and insane mode for replayability.
Pro Good writing
You don't need to read everything to enjoy the game but the writing is very good and really adds to the enjoyment.
Pro Lots of entertaining pop-culture references
Cons
Con Extremely linear environments
The locations in Final Fantasy X-2 are beautiful and detailed, and yet there are lots of invisible walls blocking you off from exploring those locations. More often than not there's only a single path in any given environment to follow. It's a lot like running down a single corridor from the start of the world to the end. The good part is that you'll rarely get lost, but you won't be able to run around outside of the incredibly limited boundaries in each level.
Con Airship travel is limited to picking points on the world map
It's really disheartening to have the airship available near the start of the game, only to discover that all you can do is pick a location and go to it automatically. You can't maneuver it through the skies like in older Final Fantasy games. It would have been nice to have the freedom to explore and see the world of Spira from high up.
Con Blitzball is automated with no player control
Blizball in Final Fantasy X is fun and addictive because of how in-depth it is, but all of that depth goes out the window in Final Fantasy X-2's version. The mini-game is like a mix of soccer and rugby played underwater, where the players pass a ball around the sphere-like field, trying to score goals while the opposing team tackles and kicks to try and stop you. In this game, you can't manually control the characters, turning you more into a manager with access to player stats and rosters and little else. It's more like a spectator mode, watered-down from the exciting matches in Final Fantasy X.
Con Cloud saves not through Google services
An extra account will need to be used in order to take advantage of the cloud saving as it does not work with Googles solution to cloud saves. While this does allow for the cloud saves to work cross platform, people may not want to take the extra step to make a new account with Butterscotch Shenanigans.