Final Fantasy Official Thread

[Dcubed]

5 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Do people on here still rate the Final Fantasy series highly? There was a discussion on Era about this and when it comes to personal preference, it seems the series has been overtaken by franchises such as Persona or Dragon Quest. 

I still have a lot of time for Final Fantasy but it really is a shadow of it's former self. The PS1-PS2 days were the peak of the series and I still enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 (never got to play Lightning Returns). XV and XVI were a mess and the series seems to have lost its identity over the past couple of generations.

Both Persona and Dragon Quest franchises seem happy enough with not trying to reinvent the wheel each time and instead lean into what makes them what they are and so I can see why both have gained more and more fans over the years.

The series really lost its sense of prestige amongst the public after FF13.  That game really did tremendous damage to the brand as a whole.

For me personally though? I’ve always seen it as a very hit & miss series.  Even before FF13, there were as many mediocre & bad entries as there were truly great ones.

[Julius]

6 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

XV and XVI were a mess and the series seems to have lost its identity over the past couple of generations.

Both Persona and Dragon Quest franchises seem happy enough with not trying to reinvent the wheel each time and instead lean into what makes them what they are and so I can see why both have gained more and more fans over the years.

I think this is the main part for me. The fact that I've been on N-E for close to a decade now and that entire time Final Fantasy has been going through an identity crisis, whereas Dragon Quest and Persona both acknowledge what they are and are proud of it, unabashedly themselves, speaks volumes.

I think also having a consistent voice (or set of voices) spearheading those IPs is an obvious difference, too, and while the likes of Kitase obviously oversees a lot of the franchise, it's clear to me that he's very hands-off from a creative perspective – perhaps more of a stamp of approval in Sakaguchi's absence. 

6 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Do people on here still rate the Final Fantasy series highly?

I do, but I suppose this also comes from the perspective of someone still playing catch-up (and am happy to do so pretty slowly – there are only so many of these games and it's not like they crank them out as quickly as they used to!). I've played and completed VI, VII, IX, VII Remake, XVI and VII Rebirth, so a fairly scattered assortment of the games, and honestly? They've all been great.

Even XVI, confused as I think it was at times, really showed to me that S-E have a lot of ambition left with what that game is trying to achieve musically and visually – it's on a whole other scale of epic compared to other AAA titles releasing today, which is pretty absurd. That being said, it fell victim to what I refer to as VII Syndrome, where it just kind of falls away in its last act due to weird ass Final Fantasy shenanigans (as I first found to happen in my first FF, VII, but also happens in IX, VII Remake, and to a lesser extent, weirdly enough, Rebirth too). If that game ended where it did halfway through with that battle, I think it could have seriously been competing for the top spot out of the Final Fantasy games I've played. 

Which leaves VI, which, for me, is the one I would consider the the best of the bunch I've played purely because it doesn't fall down that same rabbit hole of Weird Ass Final Act Final Fantasy Shenanigans™. Don't know if that means it's my favourite, necessarily (VII and IX are so awesome despite their messier endings), but it never tries to be more than it is or gets lost in its own message the same way some of the others do. 

Sometimes I think Square Enix confuse their ambition with their pride, and while always wanting to do something new and push the envelope technologically is great, can you imagine how far that could go in a turn-based or action/turn-based system? What they've achieved with the combat in the VII Remake Project so far has been excellent, and any other developer would be doing the smart thing and branching out from that with future titles now that they've got a modern take in some of their older systems in Active ATB, but, I'll be honest, I think it's 50/50 that Square Enix go that way. And that's just nuts to me. 

I feel like the franchise right now is in a similar spot to Star Wars, where they're sort of spinning their wheels on what to do next. I think you could make a darker and grittier Final Fantasy XVI while also doing things lighter like the SNES/PS1 games, and I think - weird meta-commentary they won't let go of which is the weakest part of the VII Project in my eyes - VII Remake and Rebirth both hit that balance. The difference there, though, is that they're building on a nearly 30 year old foundation, and while excellent, I'm just not sure that they've shown that they can capture that same foundation again with new characters and settings – as much as I love XVI, you pit its story and characters against that if VI or VII or IX, or any of the others from that era that people love, and it just feels like it's shallow by comparison, whereas a VI Remake, for instance, feels like it could be fleshed out and bring so much new to the table still, despite being a remake of a 30+ year old title. Perhaps it's because of the gaps our minds were left to fill in with those world maps and chunky polygons or pixelated sprites, but XVI doesn't feel like it stacks up in the same way. 

Weird pivot to end on, but I think Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - that Final Fantasy -inspired game with a world map and an airship - which releases at the end of next week could really show Square Enix what people have been missing out on with their current crop of games. Even Rebirth, with its massive open world areas, felt linear and the side content optional, whereas the world maps of the classic titles, just due to how limited they were in scope and getting to fly around in an airship, felt so much more meaningful in exploring the world than the more linear approaches we've seen lately. 

[Hero-of-Time]

1 hour ago, Cube said:

 

Crystal Chronicles: Definitely made to be played with others, but then the barrier to playing was far too high. Slow and bland on your own due to the mechanics to encourage strategies with others. This is one game where an NSO release could be far better than the remaster. 

I recently picked this up during a sale on PSN. Gonna be interesting playing it in single player mode this time around.

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

For me personally though? I’ve always seen it as a very hit & miss series.  Even before FF13, there were as many mediocre & bad entries as there were truly great ones.

I loved the story of XIII and the battle system was awesome. The linear style didn't really bother me either.

As for poor entries in the earlier part of the franchise, 2, 3 and 5 stick out to me. 

@Julius lots of good points there. I especially like your comparison to the Star Wars franchise, one that I have fallen out of love with in recent years, despite it being a huge part of my youth. 

It's interesting you mention how XVI doesn't match up to the earlier entries. This is a conversation I was having with the guy at CEX whilst I was trading in my retro stuff. I was saying the older games probably stuck with us more because it was like reading a book due to the lack of voice acting. The younger lad behind the counter couldn't believe there were no voices used in the game and couldn't image sitting reading a whole JRPG. To be fair, this was a lad who thought FFVII wasn't turned based. Me and the older guy were confused until we realised he was talking about the Remake, whereas we were discussing the original. 

You mentioned that S-E no longer crank them out as quickly as they used to. It blows my mind that FFVII-FFX were released with 4 years and all of them were top tier. Crazy!