Well what can I say..
The sphere grid was certainly an interesting innovation. But I have one problem with it. There's just way too much to do if you want to max your characters. I don't know the real figures, but judging from the "how to max your characters" guides I've glanced at, it feels like it would take literally hundreds of hours to get anything close to maxed our characters. Sure, it makes it a challenge for the hardcore players.. but this is just extreme. To even stand a chance at some of the Dark Aeons and toughest Arena monsters, you need to spend so much time on the sphere grid that I decided it's in no way worth it to bother. The sphere grid is fine if you just want to play through the game and not bother about doing just about everything, other than that, it's simply too difficult and time consuming to get your characters strong enough to defeat all ther super bosses. Sure it's meant to be difficult to do so, but I feel FFX takes it way too far. I like to build up my characters, but just skimming through one FAQ about how to max your characters made me give up that idea entirely.
So I have kind of mixed feelings towards it. If you have enough time and patience to fill the sphere grid with all the best stat modifiers, I'm happy for you. But for me, it's a task beyond the possibility of completion. It took away the fun of building strong characters. I'm not saying it should be easy, but not THIS hard (or rather, time consuming!).
Kudos to you who had so much spare time and managed to build your sphere grid enough to beat all the super bosses. You have no lives
