I dared to try to take on my own nostalgia and fell into the classic pitfall of "you think you do, but you don't." In this blog, I go over some of the game design features that have absolutely not stood the test of time during my latest play-through.
Blitzball
This is hands down one of the most awful parts of the game. There's a decent amount of content gated by items that are unlocked through the tournaments due to the fact Wakka is one of the most powerful characters in the game. Additionally, the NPCs on opposing teams always seem to be able to exceed their displayed stats making the game itself a random number generator.
On the other hand, you are given a character out of the gate that can almost guaranteed score when surrounded by three defenders and a very high catch level blocker. So that's nice. The mini-game just isn't fun. Most players will score a single goal and run behind your goalie since that causes all the other players to spin in circles, allowing you 2.5 minutes of freedom to enjoy the video you were watching on the side.
Chocobo Racing
This really is the free square on the bingo card, but this is absolutely awful. You go the entire game being able to freely control your chocobo with the joystick and move any direction you please. You finally make it to the Calm Lands, a tranquil grassland where our feathered friends can run free.
Or so you thought. These idiots can only run straight and turn at a glacial pace. The controls with a joystick are so bad you're better off using the d-pad, and then on top of that all the mini-games make you play as if you're drunk or are under attack by an ungodly number of birds that are coordinated and enjoy spawning out of nowhere. To top it all off, let's make one of the most important weapons in the game be locked behind one of the worst races in any game ever, dare I say worse than FFIX Hippaul?
Combat
This game really was made for a younger version of me, because the core loop here is to press X with melee attacks until things are dead. Granted, that changes with the optional content as you need to use a few more complicated overdrives in order to maximize damage. This game did a menu-based combat system fairly well by introducing a "timeline" view, so you can anticipate what's coming up and gives you plenty of time to think.
Sphere Grid
When playing the base game without considering optional content, I really actually think this plays fairly well. Maybe this is the part I get excited for with my nostalgia. Once you get past the base game though and need to grind out all the spaces, this seems to eat up an ungodly amount of time.
You follow the exciting steps of move 3 places, unlock all 3 nodes you passed, and repeat 33 more times (since a method exists where you can get 99 levels). Including farming the sphere levels and replenishing the spheres used for unlocks, a full loop takes about 30-40 minutes for 3 characters, only 5 minutes of which is combat. Almost all that time is spent unlocking stuff on the grid!