Lord_Jaroh said:
Well, it may have had some help since it was the only RPG from a high profile company on the PS2 at the time, if I remember. I bought the system and the game and after playing it for a bit, went back to my good ol' Gran Turismo 2 and played that until more games came out for the system.
As well, quoting popularity contest listings as being proof of "best ever" (whatever rank) doesn't really say much. That's more of a snapshot of what is available at the time. I choose to hold the opinions of what my friends think of the games higher than people I don't know trying to get a few page hits. Just because McDonalds and Walmart are "popular" doesn't make them "good".
I do agree with your first point in that the series likes to change a lot, but if you look at VIII-onward the changes are more pronounced, and varied from game to game. VII was simply an asthetic change, from the sprites to polygons and aside from the story being worse than the previous incarnations (only my opinion), it mainstreamed the series, and cemented in Square's mind that people must want cutscenes and over the top anime-style flash with no substance. And since then, that's what we have been getting, barring XII, which stands out like a sore thumb as being a good game in the glut of other modern Final Fantasies (Maybe because it wasn't created by the same team, but rather the minds behind Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story if I remember correctly).
Myself, mini-games are not what is needed to make a "better" XIII. How about a better story, coupled with less cutscenes, better characters, a new world which is more open to exploring and a much better battle system. Hmmm. I guess what I want is a new damned game, completely unrelated to the previous. Funny that.
I'm waiting for sprites to come back in some form. I know I'll be waiting forever, but maybe, just maybe with their return, less emphasis will be put on "OMG! Amazing shiney graphics! With big boobies!" and more emphasis will be put on the world, characters and game itself. Hopefully an independant company will make this happen. Until then, I will eagerly play Square's old titles on my PSP. Hopefully they will release VI without screwing with it too much...
A lot of the things I listed and a lot more of the awards it's won were several years after it was released, getting on 2007ish when the PS2 probably had the widest and best selection of RPGs that has ever occurred on any console at any point in time. And none of that has anything to do with a Metacritic score of 92, which is very high and means a lot of reviewers loved this game.
Also you are right that trusting your friends is a much better way to judge to quality of the game for yourself, however it is an absolutely terrible way to judge the quality of a game at all in any kind of objective manner and even worse at judging how popular a game is. There's is actual a wikipedia article on this specific logical fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect
Basically by talking to only a few people, people who have already been selected for how they agree with you (that's just a natural part of finding friends, and in a larger sense, you and me are talking, we're both on the Escapist and we've both clicked on a FF article so we're both more likely to have similar views about things than if we were randomly sampled(like the Escapist being a good thing, for one)) you can give yourself a false impression to how well something is received by most people.
I think my measures are sufficient to say that a lot of people liked FFX and that FFX was very popular. Certainly the weight of evidence is against you and the burden should be on you to prove otherwise, rather than dismiss my evidence solely.
There's not really much I can discuss as far as the rest of the your post goes. Almost everything you said, I both agree with and enjoy, thinking they're some of the best quality of the series.
The good thing is, the way games variate the chances are there will soon be some that you enjoy. I'm curious that you disliked IX and lumped it in with the rest of them though, because in many many senses IX has more in common with the older games.
If you would permit me to include IX though as one on your side of the preference, then in the last 7 true FF games (6-13 no MMOs, no spinoffs) there have been 3 that suited your style (VI, IX and XII) and 4 that suited mine and they've actually even alternated good bad good bad, so maybe it isn't the doom of the series.
I will say that cutscenes were more integrated with the gameplay in X than XIII though. Because X was about a journey, a world that you were observing for the first time and a hero that you were following, with (like the typical travel epics including Lord of the Rings) the journeying broken up into 1.Journey. 2.Point of interest. 3.Event happening at point of interest and then back to 1. So the cut-scenes made sense and the combat ability of each character reflected their character motivation in cutscene, so everything fitted together nicely. In XIII they told a brilliant story but didn't quite manage to drive home that feeling of running away that would have fitted the story better.
Crono1973 said:
1) Final Fantasy X was released in 2001 in Japan and the US and 2002 in Europe, not 2004.
2) ATB was used in Final Fantasy 4,5,6,7,8,9 and X-2.
If you're gonna tell us some Final Fantasy history, atleast research it.
Final Fantasy X was a fantastic game the first play through but try to go back through it again and you will find it very, very linear. Much more so than previous games because it lacked the world map. It was one corridor to the next with no real freedom to go left or right at will.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 would have to completely change the combat. I don't care for if they use ATB but it has to let me control all the characters in battle. It would also have to give us a world map to explore, not this corridor to corridor BS. I doubt they have addressed all the flaws but we will see.
If you read my post again you will note I included the letters etc. These letters are a standard abbreviation for "and there are more I'm far too lazy to list", all I said was that X, XI XII, XIII didn't have it and I was generally doing the thing where Final Fantasy games before VI aren't really discussed (I think I was one year old when V was first released). I left out XIV and knew I'd left it out but didn't really have a reason for doing so
The 2004 and for thing was a genuine mistake that I only realised when writing this post (and before I'd read your comment) and I thank you for correcting me on that
EDIT: I meant to type "fastest selling RPG game" sorry, I've done terribly at this
