S-E feels the backlash from FFXIII with FFXIII-2 sales.Follow

after whats happened with 13 (less than stellar reviews) and 14 (terrible reviews) people are afraid to waste more money. i personally enjoyed 13, but only after it became explorable. the first 11 chapters were trash, or wherever it started gett8ing good.

square has done story telling very well in the past, (except for 8, people are still on the fence about what the *$^% the story was about) and they need to go back and really think about what made them so successful in the first place.

final fantasy has evolved well over the years always adding more goodness to mix while trying to keep things fresh. the games have always had RPG elements to it but the way they have been going about it is genius. there was regular leveling, then materia, then junction, then weapon leveling, the sphere grid, and the liscence board. they came up with a lot of different ways to progress which always made things feel fresh. the crystarium grid was terrible as it gave little room for customization, and merely gave the illusion of it.

there are 3 things that i believe square needs to really reflect on.
1) story
2) exploration
3) game mechanics

now the game doesnt neccessarily need to be revolutionary every single time, because they will run out of ideas eventually, but they need to keep it fun. 13 as i said i liked, but it definatley was on the bottom of my "order of my favorite final fantasy". even when there was exploration, the only thing there was to do was track down and kill the different marks and upgrade weapons. what 13 has to be acknowleged for however, is how real the bond between the characters were. beyond that it was just a generic RPG.

you have to give square credit though, they did make many, many good games. only a few out of a lot have been only "ok" and i don't think square plans to let their biggest franchise go down. they will bring the franchise back. it won't be with 13-2 or 14, because they will need to rebuild consumer confidence, but hopefully now square knows they can't just feed us anything.

No, they haven't. Yes, I've played Tactics. Yes, I've played Xenogears. No, neither story was all that great.

Square-Enix's stories are mundane and very plain. They try to do "twists" that ultimately make no sense because of their lack of conveyance in their mediums. Yes, FF stories are bounds and leaps above pretty much anything the Dragon Quest series has put out (though they have gotten better at trying since 8) but that's not a good metric to judge by. Tri-Ace, Namco, and Bioware easy trump anything SE's ever put out for story, the last two especially.

The allure of Final Fantasy titles (NOT TITTIES-- I MEAN TITTLES OSTIA) has always been the entire package. The hokey story is offset by a (usually) compelling set of characters. The combat is usually enjoyable, there's traditional RPG elements of character growth through gear, pure levels, and usually one or two "other" mechanics. Staple iconic figures show themselves and you get to compare them to previous games and see how they've been given a new twist.

The problem is they've been systemically cutting down and gutting the "packages" until you get what we have now: Final Failure XIII. You get a ton of grinding for cash/levels, no optional growth for power, zero freedom to explore (sorry FFXIII fans -- having *ONE* area in the game with 64 repeatable boring kill quests isn't 'freedom' or 'exciting'), and lately not even a coherent story or enjoyable cast. Hell, they don't even bother letting you choose who you wish to take with you at any point in time until near the end of the game anymore. You used to have a fairly cinematic ending that attempted to tie a resolution to the story and leave an emotional impact (especially when the Final Fantasy: Prologue theme comes out to tie it home), but now it's just a JPOP song out of left field while staring at a list of credits.

The fact that it takes them so long to even push this drivel out is pretty telling of the state of affairs at SE.

Edited, Dec 22nd 2011 7:17pm by Viertel

I was stunned when I heard the news of there would be a sequel to FFX and I couldn't wait to play it, but it turned out to be a dissapointment for my part. I didn't like the new music at all, it was too bright and cheerful and I was thinking I was playing Spyro when I heard the music in the airship. The villains were rather dumb and I felt rather embarrassed while playing through the massage scene. The new Yuna looked too much like Lara Croft and most of the dress spheres must have been made by perverted designers to make the game more appealing for male audiences. I don't have anything against good looking armor on women, but I feel a bra and a thong is not much of armor on Rikku. Most of the models from the first game returned so there was a ton of familiar faces while playing it so I felt that I had sometimes deja vu when I went to some places and fought the same monsters all over again. I didn't like the alternative endings as I rarely replay a Final Fantasy game. Maybe it's because of I got the worst possible ending, but I rarely replay a FF game. After 40-60 hours of playing through the game once I feel I've had enough of the random encounters which makes me throw the controller into the wall even to this very day. The sheer epicness of everything else is what kept me going, but it's not as fun when I know everything the second time around.

I did enjoy however how unlinear it was as I could go where I wanted and still get the story with me. The job system was fun, but I never got the hang on the dress sphere system so I mostly just changed between different roles when I needed to. I recall the animations taking a long year even with the animations put on "short". Some of the dialogue were cheesy enough to be funny, but not as solid gold cheesy as the laughing scene in FFX. THANK GOD for the ability to skip scenes though! It was bloody irritating in the first game to mash the X - button to skip a very long cut scene before a difficult boss fight which you just wiped on. But overall I don't think I'll play this game anytime soon.

Final Fantasy IV the after years was a huge dissapointment as it was basically FFIV all over again but in a different order for 38€ on the Wii. I could count on my hand how many new sound tracks and enemy sprites there were in this game. The mysterious girl theme plus the battle theme was pretty good though. I'm aware of it's supposed to take place in the same world 17 years after, but I really did expect more changes during that time period. I guess SE went green for eco friendliness by introducing recycled content which they did with FFX-2 plus FF11's events, reskins of armor and monsters every year. I really liked how fast the menus were loading, no fancy transitions or animations to slow down the menu navigation which seems to plague the newer titles. I think the FFX-2 menu were running at like 10 fps or something.

Basically my thoughts about FFXIII-2 is that it recycles a lot of elements from FFXIII, a game that I didn't really enjoy as it was "run through a corridor for 40 hours while mashing X - button". From my earlier experiences of Final Fantasy "sequels" is that they do not live up to their predecessors. I don't feel like paying full retail price for a game I already own the half of.

[quote=Kachi]Not doing a proper remake of FFVII and/or ChronoTrigger are perpetually stupid business decisions. It would be incredibly easy to squeeze some cash out of those games. Hell, they could probably turn a quick buck by porting Xenogears to a portable.

That is exactly the problem that has tarnished the SE/Final Fantasy name. They need to stop trying to squeeze out cash from the series and get back to focusing on innovating and immersive gameplay.

Fun fact: When you put up any modern FPS against each other it's hard to tell the difference.

In fact, most games I've played over the last years all uses the take-cover-behind-chest - high-walls formula. I think SE should implement it in one of their FFs just for the hell of it.

Yeah, Skyrim was pretty cool. I wound up with about 80 hours on it and am level 50 with all my pertinent stats capped for my 1st playthrough. I completed pretty much all the achievements except for the $100,000 gold, and definitely feel I got a long play time and value for my money. As for FFXIII I did enjoy parts of it. What drove me nuts was that I wasn't able to enjoy it once the "story" was over. I mean, I know you can cap out your crystal thingy or w/e, and do all the stone missions, but it was SO boring to go through all that stuff that I couldn't do it. I didn't feel that way with other FF games. I mean, I have got my characters to level 99 (or capped them) on pretty much all of them before that, and it was fun to do it.

As for FPS I would definitely agree they're pretty much all the same as well. On top of which, I don't really enjoy them.

WTF?! All I can say is play a little known game by Square called Vagrant Story. Far and away one of the best story's in an RPG! Play that and tell me the story is mundane and very plain!

Right, well, As I disliked XIII alot, I can see where you coming from....you dislike the game I loved the most :p, for all the same opposing reasons. And I couldn't play FFIX anymore, it was just too boring for me to replay, though Vivi and the kupos were very enjoyable. It's like me talking to a Tales of fan, I really don't like Tales of, and they mostly don't like Star Ocean ;)

It's really up or down on XIII and XIII-2 I guess for most people. Is there anyone who likes XIII, XIII-2(once it's released), and the old style FFI-FFVI, FFIX, but on the other hand FFVII and FFX too? Or is that person just an SE fanboy in general?:p

I'm glad I'm not the only one that liked 12. I played the bejeezus out of that game.

can also DL this on PSP


Edited, Dec 23rd 2011 5:34pm by Olorinus

ive played every final fantasy game (main title at least) except for 12. i just started playing it today because i realised i could use an emulator to run my ps2 game i have.

the first hour of ff12 made me remember my time as a noob playing 11 and not knowing wtf is going on. (seriously i find the game a little difficult but ive played tales games so the gambit system isn't new to me. the AI is a LOT better than tales AI though. at least they do what i want them to do.(Estelle is such a dumbass))

if i had to pick a FF title to remake it would have to be 6. 7 isn't a bad choice to remake, but 6 was my favorite and the one i found very entertaining. imagine that game with 13's graphics. that would be sick.

a remake of anything is typically a sign of "lets remake something easy to squeeze some more money out of it".

I like pretty much every FF up to and including 11

- have not played 12
- 13 was the first I didn't care enough to finish, it felt like there was too much FMV and not enough actual game.
- 14 isn't atrocious but I don't buy games "because they aren't bad enough for me not to buy"

I would like to fiddle around and pretend I can make suggestions but they already have talented developers and producers, I believe they just get lost in the whizbang rather than focusing on firstly designing a great game and then adding some glitz and glam.

<productive internet discussion>

I liked Final Fantasy [insert Roman numerals] but hated Final Fantasy [insert different Roman numerals]. I think that the series died with [insert a Roman numeral between I and XIV].

</productive internet discussion>

Just a side note, but since you're building a machine for gaming anyway you'd be better served with the i5 2500K model. It doesn't have the virtual cores since most games don't handle those well. A lot of benchmarks show a slight improvement with an i5 2500K versus the i7 2600K because of this fact. If you were doing a lot of other tasks aside from gaming (heavy music composition, video editing, "photoshop"-esque work, etc.) then the i7 would easily be better.

So, you'll be saving ~$100 USD and getting better gaming performance in the long run. Pretty sweet deal.




Edited, Dec 24th 2011 8:17pm by Viertel

Remake Final Fantasy VII!

Stop making all these nice graphic garbages such as FFX, FFX-2, FFXIII, FFXIII-2 and sorry guys, Tanaka's FFXIV. I will not buy FFXIII-2. We deserve better.

I honestly don't believe people really want remakes or sequels. People want a new Final Fantasy. I'm not talking about a radically new Final Fantasy, I'm talking about a new game which actually has some non-progressive, classical elements we expect and love from the franchise.

Memorable characters or enemies that have a lasting comedic impact. Lone Wolf, Gilgamesh, Ultros?

Areas that aren't linear, optional dungeons, bring back the world map, summon sequences, randomized battles, memorable music with an appropriate ending theme created just for the game. (Sorry, FFXIII. I'm calling you out on that.)

The development team seems to think we want something extremely new and different in all aspects of the sort in every new game. Sure, new characters, new enemies, new story, new world is great. But expand and develop the features that work, don't try to rebuild a foundation every damn time.

Emulate on PC, or buy a physical copy (it'll play on your PS2). You don't have to pay $200+ to play a game that's fourteen years old.

Really.

ugh they already made a remake for 1+2 and only released in Japan >.> for serious man... they need to get their crap together.

I am not a huge fan of remakes - though I don't mind a little clean up. Like, I actually dig what SE did to FF II for PSP - they "remade" it enough to smooth out the edges of the graphics and speed it up a little, and made it so you could save not just at an inn - and that was enough for me. The PSP one has slightly nicer graphics than the GBA version (which I also have) but either one is fine.

I might be just old fashioned but I actually generally prefer older style rpgs with 2d sprites and top down look. Like I said above, I hate the Dragon Quest monsters release on NDS because they replaced the simple graphics with hideous "upgraded" graphics - they really ought to have followed on what pokemon has done - with not trying to "improve" the game by changing the graphic style entirely - but making things more functional and smoother looking.

Like I am playing heart gold right now, and they improved the pokemon boxes (though I miss the duplication trick!) and ADDED stuff like personalities to the pokemon, but they didn't try to make it that ugly as sin fake 3d type thing that some DS games try to pull. Why, I cannot fathom. Nothing looks worse that terribad fail non-3d DS sprites

eh, I think I am just olde.

Edited, Dec 25th 2011 3:11pm by Olorinus

There was some talk about SE might be outsourcing the FF franchise to a western company after the reception of the newer FF titles. I wonder if that'll gain some speed after the salesnumbers of both XIV and XIII-2.

Good question. Makes you wonder why a lot of XIV was outsourced...

I completely agree 13 was sold on brand devotion alone. 12, whether it was your cup of tea or not story wise, was a pretty solid game. Good to most, good to me, fell short for some. I can respect that. 13.... was pretty horrible. On rails game play, really shoddy battle system. It was completely HORRIBLE, and they decide to give THIS a sequel. I am not surprised at all.

I think 14 had nothing to do with the slump in sales. The fact is that not too many people liked 13 from the get go.

Not completely, but much of XIV was outsourced to china. It isn't something they would admit to, but shortly after launch they had some emergency maintenance to fix some problems stemming from it.


Edited, Dec 26th 2011 3:57am by FilthMcNasty

I had no clue they outsourced to China. If they had the idea to outsource it, they should have outsourced to a company who knows what they are doing >_<;

Whoa, I totally thought you guys were trolling when you said it was outsourced to China, I didn't think it was actually true.

As for my Devil May Cry franchise statement, it's not what I mean though. There's an actual development team in Europe that's doing the new one rather than Capcom's Japanese studio. That's different than saying FFXIV being developed in Japan and being programmed in China.