The Downfall of Final Fantasy.

I've been thinking a lot about the series' reclining quality recently.

As many have already pointed out, the more recent Final Fantasy XII and XIII aren't as good as VI-X, which were all pretty solid. Although XII and XIII certainly excel in terms of aesthetics - the world in each game is varied and well designed, and the graphics in both are awe-inspiring - the plots, the characters, and the gameplay aren't up to standard. All three are too simple. This is partly because of a severe lack in character development. Furthermore, very little history is given for each member of the party. Who are the characters? Where have they come from? Where are they going? How did the past affect them?

The characters who appear in Final Fantasy VI-X seem more real; the audience learns about their past, and many of them experience conflicting emotions.

The spin-offs to VII and the game X-2 aren't a problem in and of themselves... I agree with those who argue that X-2 ruined the ending to X, though X-2 does have certain merits. However, the numerous spin-offs to VII could have been fantastic had they spent more time on them. What fan doesn't want to know more about a favourite character like Vincent or Zack?

Regrettably, I don't think we'll see a second Golden Age. I'm lucky, though. I've barely played VI and VII, and have yet to complete IX and X! There are many incredible hours ahead. :)
 
Lirael said:
As many have already pointed out, the more recent Final Fantasy XII and XIII aren't as good as VI-X
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This won't be aimed directly at you, but at everyone who speaks like your quote above: Opinions. I'm being anal about it, but that really should have been worded as 'I enjoyed VI-X much more than I did XII and XIII'. Again, I mean nothing against you, I just dislike seeing 'FF<insert here> is terrible' spoken as if it's a given fact...sometimes in completely unrelated threads, at that.*


*http://www.finalfantasyforums.net/showthread.php?t=47887

I've already voiced my opinion earlier in the thread, but I'll play devil's advocate again: The series is in no decline. XI and XII were the most experimental games in FF history, and the series is well known for trying new things. XIII focused purely on story, which is a departure from past games as well. Compare to Dragon Quest, SE's other RPG juggernaut, which has stayed mostly the same since its inception. FF is one of SE's testbeds for new ideas.
 
Damon said:
And I am telling you as long as a Final Fantasy game that has to somehow do with the main series (the number FF games) sells 1,000,000 world wide, it wont die, Square-enix wont die.
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XIII is good because it sold a million copies? Know what other game sold 1,000,000+ copies? E.T. for the Atari. And that is arguable the worse game ever made. Take your "copies sold" somewhere else.

Damon said:
Look I'm getting sick of reading about how everyone thinks FFXIII was bad and will be the end of FF games.
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And the above quote gives the impression that FF insults are taken personally. Hence why I said:

Tom Badguy said:
I'm sick and tired of people that feel it is a personal attack that some say FF is in its downfall.
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See what I did there?
 
Tom Badguy said:
XIII is good because it sold a million copies? Know what other game sold 1,000,000+ copies?
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No Final Fantasy XIII was a good game because I liked it... I like the story and the characters... for the most part... I like the game play in it, it was new and lets admit it, When has Final Fantasy ever did the same thing twice?

Final Fantasy is a RPG lab rat basically. Square throws all this stuff at it to see what works and what doesn't, and some say that XII work and some say XIII worked and some say it didn't.

So once again... You don't like it... That's cool I understand... I was just stating facts about the FF series, and how I think it Isn't on a downhill spiral. Sorry once again Tom if you take this as a personal attack on your well being and your thoughts and feelings and everything else.

Tom Badguy said:
See what I did there?
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Made me once again repeat myself because you are offended that someone has a different opinion about Final Fantasy XIII than you?
 
Everything is an opinion.
We can respect diverse opinions Right ? Right.rotfl

My opinion has been that FF started going downhill when that silly movie, The Spirits Within was made and it bombed.Sakaguichi left.

Of course some people believe another factor was that Square went from being Squaresoft to Square other things eventually becoming Square Enix and lost its identity in some fashion.

I buy into that to a degree but I am unsure how you would quantify that.I am not sure what changes occured within the company as the mergers happened that affected the direction of the FF franchise.Only someone who was working for Square at the time would know that imo.

But in my opinion..rotfl, the earlier games are clearly superior to the more recent games and something as well as someone is responsible for that.Yochi Wada ? Apparently.

But the question remains. Why ?
 
To me FF started going down after the merge of Square with Enix, i.e. around the time of X-2. In my opinion all the games after X were sub-par. I still bought them, I still played them and yes, I still enjoyed them, but they were nowhere near the previous titles. Why do we keep buying FF titles, even though we are watching the series decline? I know why I do: because maybe, just maybe this time it will be the game that brings back the feelings I get when I play I-X. I realise I am hanging on to the past however, and the FF series is changing and evolving, and if I want games like I to X I must go play I to X and stop complaining. Which I do (most of the time). I appreciate the different direction FF has taken. I thoroughly enjoyed XIII, and I don't care what anyone says. I have no interest in the online games, and I'm ambivalent about XIII-2, but you know what, I will probably end up playing it anyway, because I am curious like that :)
The only part of the series that has really and truly and utterly disappointed me is the VII compilation, but I won't let that colour my views of the future of the series as a whole. Who knows, maybe there will come a day when I'll say, "I'll never play another Final Fantasy." But that day hasn't come yet.
 
Hello There.

I read this entire thread before I decided to create an account. I was surprised that these posts were only still days old. So, if you're up for a little less arguing and a little more experience sharing about what made the franchise so special to us in the first place. perhaps if this thread gets a read by some staff, they might be able to recall why they joined up with Squeeeeeee in the first place.

First things first.

I first started playing JRPGs when I found a copy of dragoon in my friends bedroom. I loved it. But the learning curve was a little much for me at the time. The concept of grinding was.... yet undiscovered. I raced through the title until I reached the "brick wall". You remember the brick wall right? The point in the game where you realize you either had to (a)reset your entire file and start anew and rush through less or (b)be doomed to an eternity of grinding it out in one area pre boss battle. Next I moved on to FFVIII simply because at a pizza hut, I received a demo disk with purchase with a VIII demo on it, and I repeatedly beat the demo until I couldn't stand it anymore and received VIII on xmas. The appeal to me was that during all-nighters with my friends we could pass the controller in the middle of grinding, thus making X-pressing that much less daunting (though daunting it isn't) in between story progressions and snacking. It was always more appealing to me to share the story experience and I always enjoyed watching an RPG be played while giving and receiving input on how it should be played or what should be done next. This was key in VIII for me for a few reasons.

If I may ask, what made initial open worldedness appealling to you (or unappealling for that matter)?

Admittedly, upon my initial departure from the academy I had no idea where to begin in the world map. My friend and I just kinda roamed and RE'd until we found the place we were meant to be. Over time we chose our favorite townships to be chosen as our hubs. How many times do you recall revisiting a particular inn in VIII over the course of the entire game? in VII? In X?

Simply put, the towns felt like they were mine. Like I was at home in certain places. And in others, I "ain't from round there".

This was something I respected about XII, yet I agree that Vaan was more shallow than Tidus even who was specifically DESIGNED to be shallow in that he is nothing more than a dream made reality. It's that quality about Tidus that made me love him though. He was taken from Fantasy world and thrust into a plot he couldn't begin to understand or control. Even though, he always had the power within him. To me, that in his revelation that he wasn't real but still had it within him to save an all-too-real world; I, then, knew what me and my shallow little buddy must do. I knew how capable we were of it, and that Yu Yevon MUST be absolutely nothing if Sin had only survived on misconception and traditional lies, much like Catholicism. I knew what would happen if I plunged my Brotherhood into my Fathers soul. That's what it felt like to me for I had lost my own father not to long after the game's release and I was still recovering from it. I felt the timing was impecable. I learned to take control and responsibility for the things I can and let go of those things I really can't control.

I bought XI, not knowing what I had done in that. I never actually played it. I stared into the blackness that was class building and I threw that mother fucker out, feeling no remorse. MMOs aren't my thing I guess.

I never finished twelve. I enjoyed only the monster hunter elements and the rest of the story could kiss my ass. I killed a T-rex. That's all I meant to do the whole time.

I never got to deeply involved with the compilation of VII. Watched a friend play it several times and appreciate its value and its dynamically fundamental battle system along with the materia system which i liked as customization system only feeling it lacked more freedom. However, I've only ever been satisfied with the synthesis in the KH franchise anyway so I'm just to picky and want to be able to play God with my weapons and things, SO...

I also have roms of the infant titles on iPhone simply because simplistic grinding with simplistic max-outs is somehow more appealling then just playing pokemon. any pokemon game TO DATE is just FFI-IV with characters substituted for abilities in a way. Four attacks never did it for me.

My thoughts on XIII.

My first time playing it, I felt it was a little lack luster. It starts with your very very basic battle system + chain atb + combo chaining. I'm thinkin hmmm... this seems a little too intense of story in comparison to what's going on. AND WHERE IS MY XP! battle rating? wtf. does this mean anything?

Fast forward. Oh hey there's my xp... i mean... cp... (the need to constantly develop new names for exp baffles me) not to mention my ratings keep going down. and im not sure why.... maybe the battles are just too long. well shit, they have ridiculous HPs

Fast forward. WHOA. brick wall here. That's a lot of grindin... I dont really wanna. do i even have to? yea who needs trophies anyways. ill replay it some day. probli not.

fast forward. I won? but what about all that grinding and linear crystoprogression? fuck it.

several months later. (oh btw. i really like the characters. because... in the beginning they are [respectively in order of appearance] independent to a fault, non-threathening black man w/chocobo{good move SE}, Rebel w/a cause, Cry-a-baby Cry-a-baby Cry-a-baby Cry, Skirt-clad bubble-gum teeny-bopper, and fierce and vicious WHILE NEARING THE END they are [again respectively] an iron-willed leader, slightly more threatening black man w/chocobo[father], protectorate of what he believes in yet still annoying, a fuckin BOSS, "quasi-evil-ish" Skirt-clad bubble-gum teeny-bopper[but that's how female characters develop in REAL life too!], and bitchy grumpy fucks-you-up and THAT redeemed them in my eyes for the MOST part. They were almost a family. Not to mention, they were somewhat enemies at one point until they developed as characters and let go of their vindications)

Anyways, several months later. I returned to the game in order to platinum up. I found that in knowing the battle system as well as i did, the learning curve was a little more breezy AND after I finished maxing the early expansions of the crystarium and moved on to pulse (which I found can be done in almost no time if you skip scenes since youve seen them all and ultimately theres nothing more sweet then the ability to skip EVERYTHING and just plain monster hunt) I had a revelation as to what the stupid little ratings system meant.

Yes. It actually has a point. It's sort of tells you how good you have grinded thus far and signals (if youre five starring everything you can kill) that its time to move on to the next monster quest. After I found the growth egg, grinding took very little time as the rating scale could tell me how effectively I was accumulating cp based on number of monsters killed and time spent. I find if I'm consistently scoring four stars then im in the right area. and eventually you just make it rain in the fault warrens until youre maxed out. and then go finish the game so you can come back and wrangle some giant turtles to get your 1000G or all the trophies or whatever the case may be. Like I said for XII, I killed a T-rex. And in XIII, the baddie was even bigger and stronger. doing 11 THOUSAND damage with the mere stomp of a foot. even fully maxed, they aren't expressely easy to take down. THAT was my boss battle. Barthandelus was merely a means to an end. Freedom, if you will.

As for the future, I'm not THAT excited for XIII-2 because XIII wasn't nearly my favorite but it was a journey. And for that I'm thankful. I think the moogle as a weapon is sort of playful. HOWEVER, the main characters other than serah are NOEL AND YULE... so... I'm rather disappointed. Not the best xmas presents ever.... but its the thought that counts right SE?

VERSUS.

I'm more than excited. I'm... flippin a tit.

Have you all heard all the things we are to expect out of it? Open world. The biggest EVER supposedly. You can Walk. You can Fly an airship I'm told. You can Fast Travel. And, you can Drive a Car, manually I'm also told. These are all seperate yet effective modes of transport and if the vastness of the city in the trailer cinematic is any inclination, i think we are in for a ride.

And thats just roaming.

Noctis apparently can USE every weapon, however, only in the basic sense of equipping a weapon. (not to sound lackluster BECAAAAUSE) everyone else (while not being able to use weapons as freely as Noctis) has a speciality such as a character whose name i can't recall who is a gun-user who can switch to a sort of fps mode and target enemy weak points or environmental things like the good ol exploding barrel. only a little more creative than just the barrel but you get what i mean, right?

Characters can be switched on the fly depending on what your unique strategy might be. battles will be more tricky than any kh battle has ever been looking more like fight sequences in FFVII:AC than user controlled battles.

Aside from a few CGI scenes all "cut-scenes" are interactive functioning more like real-time events. if a bomb goes off in your neighborhood theres no load screen before the shit hits the fan right? that shit just catches you off guard and you spill your coffee all over your pants and then you run frantically in the streets.

Thats what they're going for. youll be able to interact and move about throughout the meat of the game no matter who is talking to you. keeping you on your toes. never knowing who to trust. gone are the segways between encounter and battle. encounters are battles. scenes featuring fights. on massive fighting maps. vertically and horizontally.

so fret not, humble FF fans. We will be fed once more. The storm will clear. this will be the best selling game in the fuckin universe let alone the genre. unless its vaporware or it doesn't live up to that hype i just gave you.

Killzone, anyone?

:awesome:
 
one more thing

If I wasn't clear enough, picture that you are in the middle of free-roaming and suddenly a behemotherfucker jumps into your chosen path of egress. You're like "HOLY SHIT!" and then you start to run away. not cause you don't wanna get down and dirty with it, but because you wanna get somewhere safe enough to snap a picture with your cell phone (yes, you do have a picture phone in versus) and post that shit on your facebook (your real life facebook, but i just might be making that one up. wouldnt it be fuckin sweet tho?
Ace Kleinberg 4:20 PM near Denver
Ace is currently doing battle with Behemoth
[screen shot goes here]
Cloud likes this.)
before you jump down and impale that brohemoth. and when its over something cues you that youve accumulated agro without impeding your egress any further and you book it out of there.
Didn't that just feel sweet readin it?
 
Excluding FF VIII which I played for about 30 minutes I haven't played any Final Fantasy game beyond FF VII, so I can't speak to the more recent games in the series. However I have heard how many fans of the series have been disappointed with FF XI through FF XIV. My brother has played most of the post FF VII games and agrees that the most recent games are disappointing.

I do hope the series picks up because I am currently playing through the first games in the series and they are generally great. I may play FF VIII through FF XIV as time and money permits, however I am not thrilled about anything after FF X
 
I can honestly agree to a lot of what's been said in the start of this thread. Mainly the fact that FF just isn't what it used to be. I mean hell the last FF game I got was Crisis Core. Mainly because I love FFVII so much. I don't want to miss anything in the story. VIII was amazing too. I loved nearly every aspect of that game. Everything else seems washed up to me even though I haven't played FFI-FFVI. Those are lost to me and I will never know them. But I'm glad they plan to make spinoffs for FFVII. Keep the story alive until you can close it properly is what I say. Now whether or not the staff making these compilations does a good job and ending the story with dignity and leaves me in awe is out in the open. I mean who knows right? Cloud could die and be with Aeris or get with Tifa and start a family or whatever. I mean I don't know where this is going to go. But for me that's the beauty of it right now. It's a matter or wait and see. The anticipation is half of the fun. I think FF games should be put to rest. I don't plan on buying another FF game that isn't a spinoff of FFVII.
 
I can't believe there is a thread about the downfall of Final Fantasy on here that is twelve pages and I am just now noticing and posting in. Huh.

Honestly, I think Square Enix went wrong with FFXIII, and not before that. I am one of the few people who genuinely enjoyed FFXII, and regard it as the best in the series to date. It was what FF needed to be at that point: different. It was an interesting leap forwards, and I don't think it deserves to be penalized for that.

Now, you could argue that XIII is different as well, but XIII is where the problems started, because in the time it took to develop it, games started to focus on style over substance, and Square Enix decided to hop on the bandwagon in a vain attempt to appeal to the Western market. They sold their souls to the West, and XIII was the result: an RPG with nothing but flashy graphics. There is a reason the Japanese market is dying out, and that is because Japanese RPGs have always focused on substance over form, and that isn't what the market - or the media - want to see anymore overall. People talk about a Golden Age of RPGs and gaming, and this is pretty much the same thing; it was a time when how a game played was more important than how it looked, which is no longer the case. In short, the downfall of Final Fantasy, in my opinion, can be directly linked to the downfall of video gaming in general; this ridiculous prioritising of how a game looks, not how it plays, which is what we saw with FFXIII. Up until that leap, FF was fine.

I will say that the sequels and prequels are a huge problem, though. JRPGs have always been self-contained epics, and those that lead into direct sequels have (generally speaking) never really been regarded very well by fans; they need to be done in a certain way, and SE just don't get that. A game like FFX, which had a conclusive ending, didn't need FFX-2, as amusingly fun as I found that game, and a game like FFVII doesn't need an entire compilation to explain a backstory that wasn't even that relevant in the original game, at least not to the point that it'd need an entire game to explain it. There is such a thing as too much detail, especially if it's in more than one game. Fine, fans enjoy seeing this stuff, but at the same time, it isn't as good an experience as it should be. You can only do so much with fully developed characters as well, making sequels quite pointless, really.

Also, I love how people are getting touchy about differing opinions. You guys should visit the news section sometime if you don't already, you'd have a field day in there :lew:
 
I agree with your original statement, Final Fantasy is going down a long road that it may never turn back from. I bought 13 thinking it would be the game of my life. I planned to 100% the thing. But i disliked so many design choices. Instead I bought 8 and 9 on psn and played those for 100 + hours instead.

I now try other games and think twice before buying a new Square game. But i deffinatly still enjoy their older games. I think thats where squares magic still lies. x
 
Nbotff said:
I now try other games and think twice before buying a new Square game. But i deffinatly still enjoy their older games. I think thats where squares magic still lies. x
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Square isn't different from any other developer. Some of their titles are bound to be hit or miss, and some not as 'good'. I applaud you for going out and trying other games than just FF, there are a ton of other great RPG series to be had that weren't created by SE (and many that are).
 
FF Brand Damaged?

Recently it has been quoted that Yoichi Wada, the CEO for Square Enix said "The Final Fantasy brand has been greatly damaged." He put the blame on XIV's launch. This was taken from Andriasang.

http://andriasang.com/comyby/

I for one don't believe the brand is done for, but the rep of FF is worse after the pathetic launch of XIV. Do you guys believe that the brand is slowly dying, already dead, or healthy as always? If so, why do you think that? What game for you made you disappointed in SE? I think XIV has emabrassed it for now, but after XIII-2 or Versus XIII, I have a feeling they'll be known as great RPG makers.
 
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I don't think its "dead" -they sell to many games for that. What I would like is for FF to go back and just focus on 1 game (15?) and just put their effort into making it awesome- I have no real interest in the spin off type games (like theta-rhythm, dissidia, crystal chronicles).
 
If anything, it's these fucking sequels and cheap spin offs that are killing it. They now make games specifically to sell, not to be good games that might sell well - games that should sell first of all, no matter what. And for that they are licking western asses like crazy.
"Oh, oh, you don't like that, you 15 y.o. braindead tasteless assholes from the west? You won't buy our games because of that? Well guess what? We will take that away, and replace it with what you want, despite of how stupid and unnecessary that is. M'kay? Will you buy it now? Please buy it now".
 
they have too many projects going on at one time, perhaps if they focused on a game with brilliant game play and awesome story and more sidequests you can shake a stick at then they'd get right back on form. They just seem to be interested in making things look pretty, which they've always been good at, but they have always excelled at the other things

Pillocks
 
So, we're going to avoid the adamantoise in the room that is FFXIII, i.e. the REAL reason why the FF franchise is royally fucked beyond all salvation?

...works for me. I'd love to be able to forget that interactive movie ever came into existence anyway. Shifting the blame to FFXIV is a smart tactic though, since the slightly smaller adamantoise that is FFXIII-2 is just on the horizon, and I suppose the last thing they want to do is draw attention to how little justification its release has. But still, between the two of them, FFXIII is the far bigger culprit: FFXIV can be fixed with patches and upgrades, whereas FFXIII will stay as bullshit as it ever was.

Another part of the damage might actually be due to the fact that Square Enix love announcing games so much that they actually forget to make anything but trailers for them. There is also the issue of duplicating their characters over and over again, as well as this ridiculous "we must appeal to the West!" mentality that has robbed them of all cultural identity and originality. It isn't just the franchise that's been damaged, it's the entire bloody company.
 
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