To be frank, the last good FF game I played is FF10. Lets be honest, FF10 was the last FF that most FF fans would agree is a good game.
But everything after that FF12, FF13 & FF13-2 all had a very mixed reception, and I doubt the majority of the old FF fans, liked those games.
Heres some things I identified which are wrong with these games according to many people:
(10)No Towns, NPC's, Real Shop: FF13 and FF13-2 suffered from this. In FF13 they replaced the shop with a metal machine where you can save your game and buy your items. The problem with this is it makes it feel like like your NOT on an advernture, less like Final Fantasy and less like an RPG. FF13-2 had almost NO buildings or houses you can enter what so ever.
(9)Game opens up after 25 hours: FF13 suffered from this. Normally in FF games, right from the start you can play mini games to take you off the main quest, and you can explore, in FF7 for example you only spend like 10 hours at most before going into the word map. In FF6 this is reduced to 10 mins.
(8)The Insanely Stupid Summons: I don’t want my summons turning into motobikes, I want the old summons back. Forget these stupid Zodiac,Belias, Famfrit e.t.c FF12 should have given me Ifrit, Shiva, Odin e.t.c …and FF13 should not have turned my summons into motorbikes !!
(7)Little customization & choice: FF6 lets you equip multiple items & multiple espers, and you learn skills by equipping the espers for and going into battle. FF7 has a similar system but with materia. FF8 also has a similar system. In FF9 you learn skills from items. FF10 has a lot of customization and you can choose what abilities and effects should be put on your equipment e.g HP+20%. What skills can you learn from weapons in FF13, the crystarium system doesn’t let you explore much, FF10 is closest to it, but that was much better as there were massive paths you can take.
(6)Not so memorable Music: I don’t remember any memorable music from FF12 or 13 or 13-2. I have so many memorable tunes from the past FF's, but none from these? FF12 had a tune that came up when you fought Gilgamesh, called "Clash on the Giant bridge", but that song is from FF5.
(5)No more mini games, or replaced with mediocre mini games: I cant remember any memorable mini games in FF12, 13 and 13-2. FF10 had blitzball, FF9 & FF8 had tetra master. FF7 had the gold saucer.
(4)The Amazingly Uninteresting Characters: Hope and Lightning aren’t good characters. Hopes is as feminine as Justin Beiber (I need to relate with characters). In FF12 they should have made Balthier the main character.
(3)Utterly Broken Combat: I want turn based back, the battle system in the new FF's just don’t make the battles feel epic or strategic.
(2)No world map, or sense of exploration, just linearity: I wish FF10 had a world map, I guess we can see the series would lose many things in the future after finding FF10 didn’t have a world map. But it still had an overworld map where you can find hidden areas with the cursor and by selecting hidden coordinates (if that’s a compromise?)
(1)The Awful, Nonsensical Story: FF13 had a Nonsensical Story, and FF12 just had a mediocre story. The last FF to have an EPIC story is FF10.
Maybe the guys at Square Enix should sit down and play the past FF's and learn how it's done. What do you guys think is wrong with the newer FF's?
An existing community manager for Helldivers 2 has acknowledged the 'unfortunate' departure of Spitz following the whole PSN fiasco.
From what I see on Reddit, a lot of fans also hate him... it is just a guy that like the stir shits up, it is not good for both the Arrowheads and the fans.
Wccftech discussed the recent Xbox news with MIDiA Research analyst Rhys Elliott, who pointed out that a strong upcoming Games Showcase could help a lot with fans.
I was hoping for something different from Coalition, not Gears 6 so soon.
Their expertise in UE development could've propelled them to try out other IPs using the new UE5.
But guess, given recent MS' state, Gears 6 was the 'safer' call for the studio. But still hope they venture other IPs or even other genres ... at least FPSs in future?
Why would people be less angry? If MS made it's own games instead of buying up what was already available then we wouldn't be in the situation that everyone is angry at.
MS is the problem.
Fuck MS and Phil. I already told that shit bag off on Twitter, if the dumb ass responds I highly doubt it, I will go off much worse. What a fucking disgrace MS and Phil are to the gaming community.
Akimbot is an upcoming sci-fi action-platformer that shows its inspiration from games of the past.
Haha this has been a long time coming Ranma!
I have to disagree with you about FFXII though.
I thought it was a good game it just lacked the story
telling of the old games and it should of had the old summons from previous Final Fantasys, also Balthier is an absolute legend and one of the best FF characters ever.
I think it would of been better received by the FF fans if it was a spin-off.
I do miss the old games though I remember being so excited for a new FF game and you just knew it was going to be brilliant.
Now I worry about the voice acting,DLC choices and whether or not the game will actually be any good.
FFXIII and FFXIII-2 are probably the most disappointing games I've ever played and the only thing I can do now is play the old games over and over again and try to relive that exciting magical feeling of the squaresoft games.
Just to add FFIX is a damn masterpiece.
TBH, I don't really care about the mini-games that much. Very seldom are they worthwhile or even fun, with the worst example I can think of being that horrid card game from FFVIII that kept changing the rules. Their lack of mini-games does not bother me in the slightest, they're very tertiary and just minor distractions.
Story has been a huge problem with the latest FF games, and that includes X. There's not much that separates X and XIII, they both lack a number of the trappings you mentioned above, and X has a very silly story with numerous plot-holes and suffers from the same "wrong protagonist" problem as XII. If anyone should have been the protagonist it was probably Yuna, and Auron would've been far more interesting as the main. But they just had to shoe-horn in a blonde pretty boy somewhere...
XIII's story isn't nonsensical (I hear XIII-2's is, though), it's just dumb and poorly paced, with not enough of it being exposed through gameplay and cutscenes (you have to read some bits to get the full picture). Fang and Sazh were the only likeable characters in the bunch, sadly.
Many people like to think that the series was going downhill since the merger and Toriyama took over, but honestly, it's been going down since X for me. X was a pretty big let-down, and even though I enjoyed VIII when it came out, playing it again recently shows that they REALLY dropped the ball with that game. Kitase had really run out of steam on VIII, and IX was really just a return to form rather than a progression for the series. It had begun to stagnate almost immediately after VII, long before the majority of people seem to think. IX was the last great FF for me.
I think people need to keep the nostalgia in check; most of what they complain about with XIII is almost as much of a problem in X as well, as it shares all the hall marks of a Toriyama game itself.
I also don't know if Nomura can turn things around like people think he can. I wasn't a fan of Kingdom Hearts and I'm not big on his character designs either, they're often pointlessly ornate (Seymour, lol) and just silly looking at times, and his main characters all seem to have the same haircut for some reason. While Versus XIII looks miles beyond XIII, does that really make it great?
Plus, XII marked some nice gameplay changes for the series that unfortunately didn't stick because the fanboys all cried "make it like X and Advent Children". And that's why we have XIII.
I don't care about turn-based battles, they can't simply go right back to systems as basic as those found in IV-IX because gaming's evolved too much since then. They'd be heavily criticized for playing it safe by everyone who isn't a Final Fantasy die-hard.
Anyway, I've been playing the Tales series recently, and if you want to see the genre moving in a good direction while still being decidedly "J", you should really play these games. They've replaced FF for me as the premier JRPG series going forward.
I don't think FF13 was as bad as people make it out to be, but it isn't the amazing game it was anticipated to be.
1. I liked the combat system once I embraced the change.
2. The music was a very strong point for me. I don't know why, but it really sticks out in my mind.
3. I liked the leveling up system and Paradigm system.
Unfortunately a huge chunk of what I enjoyed from previous FF games were absent. Towns, side quests, mini games and just an overall lack of magic. It took a long time to get the training wheels off too.
At it's core I think FF13 is a good game. 7.8 - 8.0 range for me. The bad thing is it is just a good game and doesn't do much to shoot itself up into the 9's for me. The core mechanics are there, though (from a gameplay perspective).
FFX-2... I semi liked it, but was a decline in quality in comparison to FFX. As for 12... I hated it and didn't play much. Instantly hated it. FF13 was good, but not great. Didn't finish because my HDD wiped and I didn't want to do the gameplay previous to Pulse again. FF13-2... I skipped because of FF13.
Great blog... thumbs up :-)
I didn't really start getting into rpg's until the PS1. Wild Arms and 7 sucked me in for good. Therefore, 6 and earlier don't really hold the sway that they do for many. I have even played 6 recently in an emulator and just wasn't all that impressed. I found other 16-bitters more enthralling, and technically competent.
7: The classic. The legend.
8: Initially didn't like it as much as 7, turned off a bit by the "love" story at that age (25 at that time). Grew to like the game much more as I got older. Story is still a bit convoluted even now; not clearly told with the limited dialog used at the time. Excellent music.
9: Was not interested at all in the regression in setting. Was too cutesy for me at the time. I liked the modern-ish settings of 7 and 8. Bought it on PSN when it came out. Still have yet to get past Lindblum. I *want* to like it. I guess. Hehe.
10: Loved it. Related to the father/son dynamic in it very much. Auron: Japanese Clint Eastwood. Laughing and whistling scenes: dear Lord. Imported the soundtrack from Japan.
10-2: Snicker if you want to, but it had the best battle system of all the games in my opinion. Girl power vibe was omnipresent, but bearable (am sure the insecure males in gaming could not take it). Obviously rides on the coattails of 10 with the characters. People bought because they wanted to know what happened to the characters of 10, not because they wanted 10-2 itself.
12: First FF I ever bought that I got about 25ish hours into it, and ended up putting it back on the shelf. Came back to finish it the following year. Uninteresting story. Shallow, vapid characters. Had to go look up who the bad guy was just now. Vayne was terrible. No depth. 1-dimensional. No complexity. Blech. Automated combat: ehhhh. Was there music?
13: Technically brilliant. Gorgeous in many areas. Clearly worked on for a long time. Story was only alright. Snow and Hope: DEEEAAATH. Sazh: believable, and genuine. Saving grace of the characters. Music was better than 12 by a mile.
13-2: not played
Yoichi Wada wont recognized a gem even if you put it in his nose.
I liked FFXII but it lacked everything that made previous FFs epic but it was a fun game.
I want turn based gameplay too, and everything the blogger points too.
I hope that the next FF is directed by kitase.