Well guys, ever since I was getting close to reaching this milestone, I knew that for my 10,000th post, I had to talk about my favourite game of all time. What made this even more important to do was the fact that I also finally beat this game earlier this month, concluding an 11 year adventure on my part. Now, I was thinking of maybe talking about the development and history of this game, but Darashiva already does that with his articles. I also concluded that a review was not something that I'd be able to do objectively, since I have so much nostalgia based around it that it'd be impossible to not separate it from that.
In any case, let's get started with my first memories of the game. Now, I had grown up with a PS1 beforehand, but my (eventual) step-dad had a brother whom he borrowed his PS2 from. Well, we in fact borrowed it for quite a while I guess, to the point that I don't even remember when we stopped borrowing it and when it ended up becoming ours. So, one of the games that he had was Final Fantasy X. I remember seeing my step-dad playing it for a bit, at the Mi'ihen Highroad I'm pretty sure, but I did not really try it out myself, and the game did not cross my mind again for a little bit afterwards.
Now, the second memory of this game, was the first time I actually played it. I had a friend back in the today who would just pick random games in our collection and then we'd play them. It was how we'd generally play games that we didn't check out much otherwise. It's mainly PS1 games that I remember doing that with, but evidently we must have done it on the PS2 as well, as he decided to pick out Final Fantasy X! And did I fall in love with it? Was it love at first sight? Do I have awesome memories? Well, I remember laughing at the game and the cutscenes, and thinking it was a joke!! I couldn't take the game seriously, and with that we ended up playing other games.
Now, unfortunately my memory is a little bit hazy of when I decided to pick it up again, or why I even did so, but what I do know is that I was much more engrossed by the game than I was the first time. I was playing it with another friend, and I remember enjoying it quite a bit. It was still not my favourite game, but it was definitely getting up there in terms of the enjoyment I was getting out of it.
Now, what made it my favourite game of all time? I remember playing the game with yet another friend, and making it to Besaid Island. However, my friend had to go home to do something for a few hours, so we (my brother and I) just kept the game on pause. And man, did we love it!! It was not the first song I remember enjoying, Servants of the Mountain being the first I can think of, but I fell in love with Besaid more than any other one. That's when I can say that it became my favourite game ever.
Now, it was not a simple path to the finish line. As you can see, it took me 11 years to finally complete. Well, you may ask, what took me so long? Well, there are numerous reasons why, but let's say I had to restart the game 4 times!!
1. I lost my memory card - I have no idea how I even did this, but I must have taken it out of the console for whatever reason and placed it somewhere else
2. I overwrote my save file - Yeah, I usually only keep one save file of a game, and I must have been playing a new game with a friend, and we overwrote the save file by accident
3. My PS2 broke - and with that we sold everything we had pretty much in order to get money for a PS3, so the memory card with the save file was sold as well
4. My friend formatted my PS2's memory card - So, even having multiple save files didn't save us 
So, with that I had to restart the game 5 times!! And what was frustrating, was that each of the 4 previous times we had made it pretty far into the game. So, the journey went on again and again But the 5th time I finally pulled through and...couldn't beat the final boss. So, I took a hiatus for a few years, planning on beating it but never getting the initiative to actually do so.
So, fast forward to this month, and I finally got the motivation to beat the game!! Bristow here kind of blackmailed me, in order to set me onto the right path. I finally pulled through and beat the game!! 11 years of experience, coming to an end. I can finally say that I had beaten my favourite game. It felt a bit hollow, making that claim when I couldn't even do that, but not anymore.
Now, unfortunately, I'm not the best writer. I could go on and on, going into the specifics, or talking about certain events in the game and my memories with them. I could go into detail about certain playthroughs, but the fact of the matter is that I'm a bit lazy myself! In any case, it wouldn't be able to convey my emotions for this work. Nothing can. I would love to talk about the music, I would love to talk about the times i had to re-purchase the game and the story behind my excitement for the remaster and all that jazz, but to say the least, I am not an eloquent one.
However, what I can say is that this influence did not just stay within the confines of this game. As a result of this game, I love both turn-based RPGs and story-based games. That's one thing that set me and my brother apart from our other friends at the time: we actually cared about stories in games. My other friends would skip the cutscenes whenever they had the chance, and would even refuse to play games at times if they were unskippable. My brother and I though, we ate story-based games up. Yeah, we also enjoyed the games we played with our friends, but we also started to develop our own tastes. We are much more nostalgic than our friends as well, among other things.
Now, I know I am not alone. There are other people on this very site who also adore Final Fantasy X. Bristow, Star, Kapi, Noble, I know that each of you enjoyed this game as well. If you care to explain your experiences, I'd love to hear it!! That goes too for anyone else who wants to share their experiences and memories with the game. I hope to hear back from you guys 
- Dominic (VGPolyglot)
I guess I was just a little bit upset that I went through the effort of making my post, and that's what your post was in response to it. But hey, I guess I did manage to get you to read it 
