Final Fantasy X: Tips and Tricks

While going through Final Fantasy X’s story, there are a few things you can do or keep an eye on throughout to help you out or save some time later. Here are some tips that will help you out through your run of the story, and a couple of things to keep in mind if you want to do some of the most difficult content later.

 Leveling and Sphere Grid

• If you want to level everyone together, swap party members during battle and make sure everyone takes at least one action.
• It’s ok if you don’t keep every character caught up in levels constantly. The game is pretty well-designed so you won’t get completely stuck if some of your characters aren’t caught up, and it’s even possible to beat the game without leveling at all.
• Don’t be afraid to use Key Spheres and Purple Spheres as you get them. Key Spheres will unlock a path for all characters when used, and you get enough to unlock every node eventually. While you don’t get a lot of Purple Spheres, having the extra stat increases will help throughout the story. You will be able to farm these and customize your Sphere Grid later on in the game.

Overdrives

• For Kimahri’s Overdrives, if you Lancet every new enemy you see, this will teach you just about every Overdrive by the end, with the only exception being Nova (which can only be learned by using Lancet on two superbosses). If you miss Ronso Rages, there will be a fight where he’s alone against two enemies, and you can learn just about every Overdrive by using Lancet on them 3-4 times each.
• If an Aeon has their Overdrive ready, and Yuna uses hers to summon them, the Aeon will have two uses of theirs stored, allowing them to use two Overdrives back to back.
• Tidus learns new Overdrives by using his current ones, so using them as his gauge fills allows him to learn them all as quickly as possible.
• There are some Mix Combinations that are really useful and cheap to make. Mighty G is a great one, and can be made with only two Distiller items, for example.

General Boss Tips

• Getting your party’s Overdrive gauges full before starting a boss will give you an advantage early in the fight.
• If you know a hard-hitting attack is coming, you can summon an Aeon to have them tank the hit for you. You can have them use Shield on top of that to help reduce the damage they take.
• Having ‘Sensor’ on at least one party member’s weapon will allow you to see the boss’s HP, and any weaknesses they have. Summoning an Aeon will let you temporarily see these as well, as they passively have the Sensor effect.
• Haste (and later Hastega), Protect, and Shell are useful spells to learn as soon as you can.

Exploration

• When doing the Cloister of Trials, make sure you get the Destruction Sphere treasures from all of them. These are required for getting a couple of Aeons for Yuna, and while you can go back and get these later, two of them will be guarded by a superboss if you wait until later in the game.
• When you get to the Calm Lands, go to the Monster Arena and buy weapons with the ‘Capture’ passive. Equip these while exploring areas to capture as many fiends as you can, and it will save you some time for when you want to capture fiends later for the side quest.
• Giving a weapon the ‘Stonestrike’ passive or using Petrify Grenades will instantly kill a lot of regular enemies and save you time. If you put Stonestrike on a Capture weapon, you can even instantly capture fiends.
• Keep an eye out for Al Bhed Primers as you go through the game. While they don’t affect anything gameplay-wise, they will help you understand the Al Bhed language. Keep in mind that while you can always go back and get most of these later, volumes XIX through XXII are missable if you don’t get them immediately (since you can’t go back to the area they’re in later).

Affection System

There is a hidden system within the game that is never mentioned or explained in Final Fantasy X. Every character besides Tidus has a hidden Affection value, which can be increased if the character is healed or protected by Tidus, and if you talk to them first in areas of the game that allow you to talk to party members.

While the Affection system doesn’t affect anything in the gameplay, it does affect certain cutscenes in the game. It also determines who throws the blitzball to Tidus during his Blitz Ace Overdrive. The easiest way to have the character you want have the highest Affection is to make sure you always speak to them first in areas when given the chance.