Exactly. Ever since Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square Enix, the companies ability to make a good JRPG has crashed.

No really, remember how many great SNES and PS1 JRPG's there were? Valkyrie Profile, Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy 4-9, Final Fantasy Tactics, Front Mission 1-3, Chrono Trigger and Cross, XenoGears, Grandia, Vagrant Story, etc? Ps2 had a good bunch as well, but only because most of them were PS1 sequals. Squares 360/PS3 JRPG venture has been a big disappointment, while Mistwalker is still capable of producing good/great JRPG's (Lost Odyssey and The Last Story being great).

Square-Enix has damaged the Final fantasy brand. Final fantasy XIII and XIII-2 were both dull, boring games with linear pathways from Point A to B. Square in the past made great FF games in VII, IX and X. Since Square merged with Enix to form Square-Enix, the quality of FF games have fallen in quality and moved away from the traditional JRPG successful formula towards to attract western audiences.

Successful winning formula of delivering JRPG game- Final Fantasy has been replaced with a casual friendly style wannabe western style game. FF games have become a mish mash of action-adventure, hack n' slash and WRPG completely foreign to the traditional JRPG genre and disappointing existing Final Fantasy fans.

Why change the formula/system when it is not broken?

It is naive to think that the game would have been exactly the same if it was PS3 exclusive. There were probably some structure changes to the game when they decided to go multiplat. With FF XIII-2, SE planned on it being a multiplat game from the beginning.

However, SE is the main one to blame. They were fixing things that weren't broken to begin with. The story and characters would have been just as shitty as a PS3 exclusive. I could see it being a little less linear and maybe allowing for more backtracking if it was a PS3 exclusive.

Now, SE's insistence on putting out jRPGs as 360 exclusives at the beginning of the generation (along with Namco) was plain stupid. I think those decisions hurt the genre quite a bit.

srry i had no idea what a genre was back then. i've been so deprived but from what i here you're spot on.

ssrry, i'm use to agreeing and disagreeing with you. this one way street thing doesn't look good on my resume.

After seeing this thread pop up again I have to say yes... SE made the game available for a larger userbase who then came in contact with a bad FF.. damaging the brand.. If it were a PS3 exclusive it would have sold much less and less people would have been exposed to this bad FF thus less damaging the FF brand.. the 360 did indeed indirectly damaged the brand.

Well... this actually makes sense

Do you think Square Enix starting making poorer quality JRPG's because of the merge with Enix, or because the departing of Hironobu Sakkaguchi, and other staff a little before it? I think some PS2 JRPG's are still good, but this gen, outside of portables, the quality is good at best, nothing great.

P.S. I didn't even realize I quoted you, you just made a great realistic post which I wanted to comment on.

This thread is amusing. its no longer subjective FF13 is a good game; its taken as fact that it is bad and the reason for it being bad is to do with multiplatform development, lol!

on an interesting note, i think Kenji Infuane has made some very relevant comments regarding Japanese games, Square Enix in particular would benfit from that type of critical self-examination.

well i'm not really qualified to answer that because i'm really not familiar with Square like that. 7 and 10 are the only 2 i know, but based on user feedback this gen., i'd go out is a limb and say it's mostly because of the merger, but talent goes without saying really.

if the current teams vision doesn't represent what made the franchise what it was, or what made it great then then it's the team, and from what i can tell, they lack a vision for the franchise, and for its future. 

Final fantasy XIII was indeed a disappointing game. I believe it received higher scores than it deserved solely due to the fact it was a Final Fantasy game.