How could Final Fantasy be fixed?

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Clearly I was answering the part of your post that talked about stories. If you didn't want to discuss that, you shouldn't have said anything about it.

So you don't like the stories and you don't like the game play. Why are you even in this thread. People who want to fix Final Fantasy generally like SOMETHING about the damn games. I don't go into threads asking how to fix Call of Duty because I don't like Call of Duty in the first place.

What would you like Final Fantasy to become? Bayonetta?

I don't hate Final Fantasy. JRPGs to me are like anime, they have so much potential but 99% of them suck but those 1% are amazing (kinda like how Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is one of the best TV shows ever but Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball, etc. are complete garbage). JRPGs at least create new worlds to experience whereas WRPGs make you trudge through the same Tolkien-esque world over and over again so JRPGs have that potential to be quite awesome. I literally haven't played FFXIII because I know I'm going to fucking hate Hope so fucking much (he seems like a young, more annoying and whiny Tidus and I HATED Tidus). FFXV actually looks like a game that could be fun for once. FF and many JRPGs use horribly slow, boring, and unstrategic turn-based battle systems. The whole fucking point of a turn-based battle system is to be STRATEGIC; if it's not strategic, then you can just do it in real-time so the turn-based aspect of it becomes pointless. Every battle in FFX was pointless because of how easy the game was, why even make me go through the motions of navigating the same menus over and over when I can literally write a script with a few if-then-else statements and the game would play itself (exactly like FFXII)? Lastly, one of the most important aspects of a proper turn-based battle system (going all the way to DnD) is to have positioning play a key role but FF (and most JRPGs) is just your party on one side and the enemies on the other side. FF and JRPGs need to fix their gameplay.

FFX and FFXII aren't even good RPGs when you look at them. In FFX, all your characters (except Kimari) level up down a set path for the most part and you can't deviate probably until like halfway through the game. Then, all the characters from a stat standpoint are the same in FFXII. It's like the developer has no clue on how to make an RPG.

If you watch great TV shows and movies or read good books, you'll find much better stories and characters than you will in a FF game; however, the FF game will force you to trudge through all this crappy gameplay to get to the story and characters that may or may not be good. Even if the story does end up being good, I could've experienced a story as good or better in other medium in much less time and annoyance.

 

[beastro]

Whatever I am forced to do the most in a game, that better be good. The FF games and pretty much all JRPGs make you battle more than anything else so if I don't like the battle system, I'm not going to enjoy the game as most of my time will be spent not enjoying the game, I'm not going to trudge through the crap to get to the good stuff. I don't think the FF games have stories that are as good as people make them out to be. I played most of FF6, beat FF10 and FF12, none of those were good story-wise. I read a plot summary of FF7 so I could get what was going on in Advent Children and FF7's plot didn't seem like anything special either.

I fully agree about the battle system, it's at the heart of why they hold your hand, you're never dumped into a situation far above your level or force you to improvise while structuring the games so you're always around the right level for the content.

FFIIIs story isn't that special and it knows that, it's why Kefka's in the mix and why he makes the game so much more than it is. FFVII had a pretty interesting story for its time only really comparable to Xenogears when it came to exploring mental issues and such.

With that said, the series suffers from hanging onto too many themes that really got tired early on with the worst being rebelling against some evil empire/corporation/etc and repeating many other things too much.... cept airships.

Airships are cool.