Thumbsticks contributor Callum Rymer recently revisited Final Fantasy VI – that long cited ‘alternative’ hipster favourite of the series – before breezing through the light and fluffy Final Fantasy XIII-2. The experience left him shuddering, cold, wet and huddled in the depths of a motel shower. It is no secret that a cloud-sized cavity has cracked and worn away a series that has been exponentially eroding all sense of wonderment, awe and contentment for years.
Looking back at Final Fantasy 6 on its 30th anniversary provides a snapshot of one of gaming's most important franchises at a pivotal turning point.
Gary Green said: It’s interesting to revisit the roots of your favorite franchises to see first-hand what’s changed and what’s stuck around all these years, though perhaps ‘visit’ would be more accurate than ‘revisit’ since apparently, Europe wasn’t worthy of the original six Final Fantasy games the first time around. By the time we started getting ports of these iconic games, we’d already been through the PSOne JRPG golden age. So we’d already seen the best of what Final Fantasy had to offer, while these predecessors looked outdated, unrefined, and (dare I say it) ugly. We aren’t bitter about the delayed releases, honest…
I'd love to but square said fk you to the ps fanbase that wanted these physically. Meanwhile switch got a physical release.
Discover the top 10 hottest Final Fantasy characters, from iconic heroes to memorable allies. Dive into their captivating stories and traits.
I always go Yuna, Aerith, Rikku, Rinoa, and for some reason Vanilla, Ashe, Cindy, Lunafreya, Quistis
Graphics did kill FF. Alot of people on this site have said the same thing. FF games use to be about deep story telling above all else but now the story and gameplay take a back seat to the graphics. I'd even say theres know strategy to them anymore now that there no longer turn based. It's sad it really is.
They screwed themselves badly with the in-house graphics engine work last gen, but I'm not so sure that they're screwed in this upcoming generation. It looks like the engine Square made is something that bridges their past-gen, not reinventing the wheel the way their XIII engine did - I mean, it looks like they brought the PS3 Versus work over to this new system, not just redid the whole thing. With any luck, they made a framework that can scale, be used on portables too, and could be used for this entire gen, starting with XV as the pilot project.
Yes, the high-quality graphics still take a lot of art asset-generation time, but that's way better than spending a good bit of the console's cycle floundering around, trying to make a new engine, with XIII as a town-less afterthought. Here's hoping the former Taito exec can get their studios' stuff together, though - organizational management was a huge issue, something that made FF12 half the game it should have been, and probably made FF14 the mess it was.
I dont think they screwed themselves due to the graphic. I think they screwed themselves by trying to westernized the Final fantasy series. It seems that the series is heading toward more action oriented then the traditional JRPG. They are so focused on the westernizing the series that they forget about what made it great back in the days... the story.
People, the 'fall' of the Final Fantasy series has NOTHING to do with the series' next installment being an action RPG. NOTHING. The series has suffered poor direction and storytelling over the last few years. And if the series was westernizing, they would have become some generic medieval-setting game by now. It's all to do with direction and storytelling.