The slow painful death of the Final Fantasy series

[hereticascendent]

Okay this is something I guess I've been wanting to mention since Final Fantasy XII, "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!" for those who aren't too informed since the merge between Square and Enix in my opinion the once might Final Fantasy series has fallen rather badly from grace, don't get me wrong I would still rate them as good games, but when you have to compare to the Legacy of what many will refer to six until ten they don't come up to scratch, the characters are mostly cliched, the back stories about as deep as a pothole and the plot lines are too the point where I can easily work out the motives of the villains by the second cut scene, what happened to the mystery we felt when we first saw Kuja and not knowing whom he was, Ultimecia directing things behind the scenes and only knowing at disc 3 and Sephiroths changing destinies as he journeyed deeper into self-discovery, now we practically get a villain for Level 5 but with a better dress sense.

Oh and speaking of that just a sub rant WHY did they make of Final Fantasy Dissidia's villains either really gruff or camp WHY!?, don't we have any good English dub voice actors left or something?

But I guess on personal conclusion what the biggest loss is for the Final Fantasy series has been is story, there is none, its a game not a story anymore, that what kept us entertained it was not the game play or the interface, but it was the world the character's the NPC's for fuck sake that made us love and long to be in those worlds, they still try hard but for me (and maybe I'm just resistant to change) its not the same...

[XenLár]

I'm inclined to agree with you to certain extent here.

I'm not an amazing final fantasy player but I have a friend who is nuts about the series so I know quite a lot about the games. Personally I've only played X.

I will say right now that I absolutely LOVE X and think that it's a fantastic story that makes me cry many times.

I haven't played the newer games but I have seen the characters and I shall take a moment here to say - HOLY SHAMOLY!!!! - the graphics of the newer movies are mindblowing - there's no way of getting around it.

However, though I'm not going to make any clear statements about the new ones being bad, the fact that everyone loves the older games and talks about them a heck of alot more than the newer ones kinda indicates that the old ones are still the best...

[The Jim]

I first got into the series with 8, and as such that has been the bench-mark of the series for me, and yet to be beaten. That being said, 6, 7 and 9 are also excellent. 10 I would call "very good", but not excellent. A bit too linear for my liking, as it lacked a real world map that could walked upon, but it was still fun.

XI and XIV I haven't played, as I don't do MMOs. XII was pretty horrid in that it really wanted to be an MMO, going as far as to let the player create AI settings that means ya can go through simply pointing your character in sort of the right direction, and fights will be done for you with little input.

I haven't played XIII, and really have little desire to considering the negative remarks as to it also being linear, and it also using a version of the gambit system.

Best JRPG of the current generation that I know of, has to Lost Odyssey on the 360 (though I wouldn't mind going Valkyria Chronicles ago).

[The Jim]

I too enjoyed Crisis Core, but I wouldn't put it on level with the numbered games, as like with X-2, it was too short, and didn't have the depth of the core series.

As for who's idea it was to make FFXI a MMORPG, I imagine it was a high-up Exec who was more concerned with the bottom line, rather than the fans. Though that being said, in a world where the titan that is WoW seems to completely control the MMORPG world, FFXI did pretty well and got a good number of players (thought I never personally took part in it). With that being said, it is shocking how badly they did with FFXIV.

And yes, I would've have preferred it if neither of those games were part of the numbered series, but I do imagine they would've made less money if they weren't.

[Jupitris]

Ill just jump in here, first off the admitance, I have never liked Final Fantasy any of them, I've played some of them, my reaction was firmly "Its ok" there wasn't much great about the titles, standard JRPG gameplay, always fairly boring story (I played 10 through 13) characters personally I coulsn;t identify with (In the case of 10 specifcally) an incredibly unlikable romance sub plot and themes that frankly made me hate the thing anyway without any of the rest of it.

Now after that slight rant, why I think the series has fallen, (I didn't play any of the earlier titles so I'm going on a lot of what Ive been told so this opinion is slightly ignorant)
The games , 6 , 7 and 9 , which seem to be the big 3 in the series, all brought something new to the table, be it a combat system, the depth of story , cut scenes, other game play mechanics, the newer games add nothing, they simply re-tread old grounds with no real major innvoation (Yes there are some things) but nothing that changes the face of gaming (Rpg gaming) like those earlier installments did, that's what people remember and loves games for, that goes for all the major and loved franchises they at some point brang something new and the reason a franchise will go downhill , because they stop innovating, relying on what they did before, but not changing that concept enough to better it, or to once again chance the nature of gameplay or fear of ditching a concept that has become irrelevant.

[The Jim]

10-13 is the weakest point of the franchise. 10 was playable as it generally stuck to something similar to the classic turn-based battles, except changed the ATB for Conditional Turn-Based Battle, which still worked well.

And to be fair, they are obviously innovating, like in 12 with the Gambit system and making it play like an MMORPG. The problem is that the innovations are taking the franchise further away from what made the franchise popular.

[tonyb]

im halfway threw the old one, cloud is always my best on that final fantasy seems to have slipped down the long drop after 8 (im debating 9 and the stories in online 11 and 13 are quiet good) but they need to get the original writing team back, most of what enix wants to do is acutely make it more marketable so they can brand with toys/cloths/merch and its not sitting right with square.