Fnal Fantasy: Where did they go wrong?

[BelmontClan]

I've been lucky enough to play the majority of the FF games when they were first released. I hate to say it but this series is no longer THE RPG series. I appreciate that in each game they tried something different, be it the battle system, the world, the concept or what have you, but it's been way more miss than hit.

From 7 to 10 it's been up and down. At about 12 it started going into freefall. Why?

If I'm going to be playing this game for hours on end, I'd like to have my characters grow and change. You know, get to know how they work. There would be HOURS where I'm traveling and no one says a word and then I get a scene where Balthier TELLS me (not showing me) oh yeah, I used to be a judge but I quit. Wait, what? I guess people can either like or dislike the battle system, but I didn't like it because it really took all the control away from the player and turned ALL your party members into programmable robots. How can I be connected to these characters when I don't even have to control them? Why are there at least two characters that have no bearing on the story in this game? FF12 sounds like someone tried to take a really thick and well written novel and shove it into a game. FF12 probably WOULD have been better as a book.

I haven't played 13, but I heard there IS an actual book shoved with it to cover all the terms that aren't explained in the game itself. Oh THAT'S a great way to get connected to a game, by looking AWAY FROM IT and reading a book. Also, if it's true about that 25 hour mark where it finally gets good, I've played entire GAMES that are less than 25 hours. If you're a lengthy RPG that can't grab its audience and get the main story rolling within the first 5 hours, that sounds like fail to me.

 

[pretentiousname01]

Final Fantasy IX is arguably the best in the series and FFX was the the best RPG on the PS2 and again one of the best in the series

ff10 sucked balls. The sphere grid was awefull removed any uniqueness from the characters. Don't even wanna talk about blitz ball. Yuna was the best character in game. the VO sucked.

Also dragon quest 9 says hello.

I say I hated dragon quest, the sphere grid did remove the uniqueness towards the end I will admit that and there is only one forced blitz ball game in the entire game, you obviously didn't get wakka to max level where his over drive could do 99,999 x 16 and I have no idea what you mean by VO

That one forced blitz ball section made it so I never wanted to play again.

Whats the point of having a limit break do 99,999 x16 when it doesn't matter? The only thing it was likely relevant on was the optional bosses. Which I'm sure at that point you could just as easily sub in any other character.

VO was meant to be voice acting. I was too busy being awesome.

I accidentally flipped through the strat guide. I saw the end boss had a pitifull amount of hps, Then killed him in 2.5 rounds of combat. "Break damage limit" has got to be one of the dumbest ideas ever. Especially when you can just use a teleport sphere to jump to the middle of the grid as soon as you get enough rank 4 unlocks for ultima.

Not to mention the painful linearity. Total lack of an airship. With a wish wash story line.

 

[Timbydude]

-snip-

Lost Odyssey was a Final Fantasy game. Hell, I would probably have bought FF13 already if it had a different name.

Try different things if you like, developers, but don't put a well-known name on it, like FF or Castlevania, or whatever.

It's Lara Croft GoL, not Tomb Raider, for a reason.

You make a very good point. I agree with you; I don't knock the developers of Final Fantasy XIII/XIV for trying new things, but I do dislike the fact that they tarnish the FF name in the process.

 

[Negatempest]

usually follows the same formula for YEARS. You have the main character who in most cases does the most dmg, takes the most hits, and gets the best equipment in the game. A female lead created for the sole purpose of being looked after by main lead because she is fragile even though she may do serious dmg herself. Than you also have around 2+ characters in the game that will never be used because their dmg, gameplay mechanic, and/or they don't have enough background to be interesting.

Than usually the main lead stumbles upon the ability to save the world, rarely trying to actually find it int he first place. Than removing the ability to freely move around the battlefield to avoid dmg...yeah that is a great idea. Look, chess is a game-board game that mimics frontal assaults and taking turns is a sporting thing to do. When you are trying to save the world, being "sporty" for the villains shouldn't be on the list.
Considering that we now have the CPU strength to have MANY enemies moving on the field thinking individually, turn-based combat should stay more on portables now.

 

[The Rockerfly]

That one forced blitz ball section made it so I never wanted to play again.

Whats the point of having a limit break do 99,999 x16 when it doesn't matter? The only thing it was likely relevant on was the optional bosses. Which I'm sure at that point you could just as easily sub in any other character.

VO was meant to be voice acting. I was too busy being awesome.

I accidentally flipped through the strat guide. I saw the end boss had a pitifull amount of hps, Then killed him in 2.5 rounds of combat. "Break damage limit" has got to be one of the dumbest ideas ever. Especially when you can just use a teleport sphere to jump to the middle of the grid as soon as you get enough rank 4 unlocks for ultima.

Not to mention the painful linearity. Total lack of an airship. With a wish wash story line.

I thought the point of the freedom is that there is stuff to find. Most of the dark aeons, secret bosses and arena creatures need that kind of power

I will freely admit some of the voice acting was bollocks

Teleport spheres were ridiculously rare though, the only ones in the entire game were available from killing some of the hardest bosses in the game

There was an airship, I dunno what you're on about for the last one

 

[Ordinaryundone]

XIII wasn't a bad game, in my opinion, just tedious. It starts off really strong, but the story hits so many bland patches, and right when it starts to get interesting again it dumps you in Gran Pulse and kills its momentum. Its got one of the better characters in the series with Sazh, and the combat system IMO was actually quite enjoyable once it finally opened up (which sadly was 20 hours or so into the game). Ultimately, it was an experiment, like most FF games after 7, and it didn't quite deliver, but I do feel it gets an unfair rap.

And as a previous poster said, Lost Odyssey was really the last great FF game. Though unlike most people apparently, I liked XII. A lot, actually. Sure, the story was so faint to be hardly there, but it had probably the most in-depth battle system in the series. And the gambit system rocked. Plus, it did something the other FF games have never done, which is convincingly show the size of the world it takes place in. The trailing camera angle combined with its version of the overworld map worked beautifully. Just walking from one large city to another takes hours in game time, with several story developments happening along the way, unlike the older games where your giant characters would just tromp across the countryside in a matter of minutes. The only other game to pull it off (ignoring XI) was X, though the lack of freedom did hurt it somewhat.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I have no idea what you mean, Fnal Fantasy is still going as strong as ever!

Final fantasy however, is failing majorly in character design. In Final Fantasy XII the only problems I had with it were to do with the characters. Vaan I had a big issue with personality wise. So many of the character's appearances were just poorly designed (Baasch should have kept the armor, don't get me started on Penelo and Vaan should have crawled into a nice comfortable hole and hid there for the duration of the game). As much as I don't like to judge games on the appearances, it plays a key role in liking a character.

That's the only Final Fantasy I've actually played so I can't say whether or not they were ever good at character design.

 

[Sinspiration]

The actual question should be where did SQUARESOFT go wrong?
Oh yeah! Sometime after Enix got plastered over the end of their name.. XD

With a wish wash story line.

I dunno what you're on about for the last one

I think he meant to say the story SUCKED.

And may I just say your avatar has made my day, week, month and maybe even end of year.

 

[Sinspiration]

[ack delete this or something..]

 

[ultrachicken]

I've never been able to truly enjoy turn-based rpgs, so I've never gotten into final fantasy, except for 3, but that wasn't that great.

 

[Nosense]

Somewhere between the F and the N to my best knowledge

 

[MrGalactus]

They slipped up when they decided to drop the I in Final. It's just not the same anymore! Sorry
EDIT: Damnit! Beaten to the punch. I deserved that, I guess!

 

[Ashsaver]

They gone wrong when they start adding voices.

...I missed the golden lines of old,like "Son of a submariner!"

 

[00slash00]

Oooh! linky time!
http://spoonyexperiment.com/category/final-fantasy-viii/

According to Spoony, it started with 8 and rapidly went downhill from there.

i was just about to say exactly that. though i thought 10 had its moments

 

[The Rockerfly]

The actual question should be where did SQUARESOFT go wrong?
Oh yeah! Sometime after Enix got plastered over the end of their name.. XD

With a wish wash story line.

I dunno what you're on about for the last one

I think he meant to say the story SUCKED.

And may I just say your avatar has made my day, week, month and maybe even end of year.

Actually he meant the voice acting was balls and I completely agree
thank you

 

[ShinGundam]

FF didn't go downhill, the problem is an extension of heavily debated about what so called "Non-linearity" and what is the Real RPG before asking ourself what is the good RPG. If we analyze what western RPG fans think about Non-linearity it is usually referred to :
1- Mission based where you do a lot fetch quest missions( Fallout 3, RDR , GTA , FFX-2).
2- Multiple Pre-determined Morality choices test/Quiz.
3- Spacing and distance which isn't important in any FF title because combat always be a Turn-based or Active Time Battle. Both DQVIII and FF12 hve big spaces by Japanese development standard yet neither benefited from that in anyway.

The carnival of hate for FF and JRPG is kind of pathetic. While they might dumped down some features we love (like many many many franchises this generation), the video game community nonetheless blindly twisted things into JRPG VS WRPG to indict the JRPGs as a Fake games.

 

[Aphex Demon]

VII is the best IMO, so many childhood memories. :')

 

[Korolev]

When they started placing graphics over a decent world. FFXIII was a prime example of this. They spent so much time making it look good, and not enough time populating the world with decent characters or making the story seem epic in scope or scale.

It went wrong when it became nothing more than a commercial activity instead of an artistic one. It went wrong when almost everyone who made the original FF games great left SquareEnix.