Not to pile on ;) but I have to agree -- use a walkthrough, at least to get all the Crimson Spheres and Paine's backstory. Now, one might argue that if the game requires a walkthrough to get all the important story, it's a poorly designed game, and I might not argue. It's one of the downsides of non-linear game. A trade-off, I guess, since the non-linearity of X-2 is one of the things I liked about it.

I am a freak because I actually like Sphere Break. But then, I have been known to do math puzzles for fun. ;) I may be the only person on the planet who prefers Sphere Break to blitzball -- when we played FFX, I made T do all the blitz stuff.