I am in minority that was fine with XIII, but I never expected it to be a VI or IX. I accepted it for what it was and enjoyed the battle system and some of the characters.

Happy to give XV a chance going in with muted expectations, not demanding it to surpass everything before.

Mod Edit - Nothing to see here. - Leadified

This is how I felt after FF VI. It just got too ridiculous after that.

I'm torn with Final Fantasy.

See, people keep saying there hasn't been a good FF game since X. If we're talking about main-line games I would push that further, all the way to VIII, and even at it's best FF is hit or miss. But at the same time most of the FF spinoff games have been really REALLY good. War of the Lions was incredible. Dissidia was good fanservice. Duodecim was amazing fanservice. Crisis Core actually (mostly) redeemed VII in my eyes, and XIII-2 is the fantastic FF game nobody played.

And Kingdom Hearts is absolutely amazing.

The one real exception is Lightning Returns, and in retrospect it was bound to be a clusterfuck when you put a graphics designer who doesn't understand jack squat about game design in the director seat.


I think there are two problems with FF.

1. There's probably WAY too much developmental oversight. Considering the huge difference in quality between XIII and XIII-2, I imagine XIII was spoiled by executive meddling rather than letting the dev team make a game. Lower budget FF games don't have this problem.

2. Square Enix directors by and large DON'T PLAY GAMES. To those of us who play games it's obvious giving bosses a billion HP is a stupid way of making things difficult because we unconsciously understand the difference between difficulty and tedium. Directors who don't play games don't understand this, which is why they unconsciously deflect things in the story-telling direction.


But when these problems aren't there--and they appear to be gone with XV--Square Enix has shown they can really make some great games. I won't be preordering XV or anything, but I will keep an eye on it.

If XV sucks, there's always XVI to look forward to.

I have the exact opposite happen to me. I loved VII, the characters and the story as well as the lore. When I played Crisis Core I couldn't even finish it, it felt boring and it lacked everything I liked about VII.

On topic: It always brings a smile to my face to see that more people have VIII as their favorite. I love it to death even if I acknowledge its flaws. I just wish XV is as good as it looks. I really disliked XII's gameplay, even if they are not going back to their roots, I just want another FF I can love like VIII and VII.

1. I agree with this as well and is the basis of why I think most fans of FF feel let down by the new games. I see evidence that they've learnt a bit from their mistakes, although I guess we'll see.

2. I think we're actually agreeing on this. My point is that we shouldn't complain about SE modernising the gameplay, but rather that the overall experience (story, world, lore etc.) has been sub-par for the series. The gameplay itself had to change to bring in new players, but they seem to have missed on the basics.

It's quite interesting to read up on the development problems of XII and XIII as they seem to explain some of their issues:

XII had a change of director mid-way through development and by some accounts, two of the characters were forcefully added by upper management for marketing reasons rather than artistic merit (I'll let you guess which ones). The story actually has a lot of potential and depth but it was told rather poorly and the two additiomnal characters really ruined my enjoyment of the game, especially later on where they have no relevance to anything.

XIII on the other hand was in development hell. Too many people on the team working on different aspects of the game but with no direction (nearly half of the assets made for the game were unused). There was an interview on Gamasutra a while back where they basically admitted that the final game and story only really took shape when they had to make the Japanese demo with the FFVII: Advent Children Blu-Ray. That was about 12 months before release; they basically shoved Final Fantasy XIII together in about a year. It definitely explains why there is such a lack of meaningful content and lore in-game.

3. OK, so everything I wrote above doesn't actually paint a very good picture for XV... but I'm still staying positive for it! I actually think FFXV has had a better direction from back when it was called XIII Versus. The past trailers seem more story focused, although obviously this may have changed.

I'm not sure why, but I never connected with the FF VII cast. Not like I did with VIII, anyway. I immediately loved Balamb Garden and I immediately wanted to go to school there.

But yeah, even the best FF game has its flaws. Final Fantasy is deeply hit or miss, often getting things badly wrong and massively right within moments of each other.

Case in point with XIII: Lightning is an introverted character who is trying to brutally suppress her feelings. That requires a fair bit of subtlety. Lightning never says why she doesn't let herself like Hope for so long, but it's probably because she feels like he's replacing Serah, although that's never explained and Light would never explain it in character.

And then Snow comes along with zero subtlety and utterly ruins Light's character development just by being around. It's like two people had great ideas and never once thought about if these ideas went together well.

But the ff series is always pushing the graphics to new levels. If it's not the best looking game during its release then it's easily one of the best.

ff7 - FF7's graphics are light years beyond anything ever seen on the PlayStation, making Wild Arms look like a Yarouze demo (we have nothing against Wild Arms, but FF7 is that good) - ign

http://m.ign.com/articles/1997/09/04/final-fantasy-vii

Ff8 - This is due in a large part to the character animation, which is beyond great. Whether it's the in-game sequences or the pre-rendered cut scenes, just squint a little and you could almost swear you're watching real, live actors. There are scenes in FFVIII (the witch Edea's parade; a certain scene with Rinoa gasping for breath) that rival anything you've ever seen in a feature film for scope, detail, and emotional impact. You will be amazed. -ign

http://m.ign.com/articles/1999/09/11/final-fantasy-viii-3

Ff9 - To begin with, credit must be given where credit is due, even if I can't imagine how to properly describe the look of Final Fantasy IX. The graphics in this game defy hyperbole.  - ign

http://m.ign.com/articles/2000/11/23/final-fantasy-ix

I don't see anything wrong with them being the pinnacle of innovation. the junction system is very very different from materia and i love that change. The funny thing is if the developers don't innovate then they're just milking the franchise and the gullible fanbase keeps eating that rehash ie CoD, if the developers tries new things then they're alientating their fanbase ie FF. 

Iirc you can go back to the places you've visited in ff13. I know for sure that you can backtrack in ff13-2 just like in ffX. 

The gameplay in ff13 imo is not that bad, at least you still use magics late game.;) What I hate about it are some of the characters. How many times does snow want to remind me about the word hero, I want to slap vanille everytime she opens her mouth and i want to stab hope dead especially in the 1st half of the game. Lightning is cool, she kinda reminds me of squall that is until *spoiler?* the whole change of attitude late in the game.

edit: now that i think about it, squall also had a change of attitude late in the game.

Leave! You'll feel better. It'll be a breath of fresh air. Not having to hear the bitching of the FF community every 5 seconds...