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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Done With Final Fantasy

IFireflyl on 30 January 2015
thelalaby said:

You seem to forget that JRPGs used to be significantly more popular in the PS1/PS2 generations... the genre has become more niche now imo and FF is only one of very few successful JRPGs left. Surely this impacted XIII's sales (in addition to mixed reception from gamers, which also hurt its legs without a doubt). If anything, I find XIII's sales to be impressive with all that considered, especially since it managed to outsell XII and IX.

I don't find it impressive. I do not have proof of this, but my theory behind it is this:

A) Final Fantasy XIII was sold on multiple consoles to reach the greatest amount of buyers, whereas Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy XII were only sold on one console. Neither Individual console release of Final Fantasy XIII beat Final Fantasy IX sales, or Final Fantasy XII sales.

B) Final Fantasy XIII was hyped up, and a massive amount of their sales were during the first two weeks of its release (the PS3 sold 1,644,915 copies in the December 2009 Japan release, 1,144,364 copies in the USA and Europe in the March 2010 worldwide release; the Xbox 360 sold 852,086 copies in the March 2010 worldwide release). So almost half of their sales were in the first two weeks.

C) Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lighting Returns sold 3.38 million and 1.24 million copies respectively, and that is the total sold between the PS3 and Xbox 360. If Final Fantasy XIII was so good you would expect that the sales would have been much better than that. Instead Final Fantasy XIII-2 had about half the sales of Final Fantasy XIII, and Lightning Returns had about half the sales of Final Fantasy XIII-2. That's just sad.

thelalaby said:

Another thing is that XIII being different is not what made it so unspectacular. I mean, sure it was different... but its weaknesses came from questionable design choices more than anything. For example, if the game had X's battle system, it would have still been criticized for its hallways and convoluted storytelling. Basically I think the game had too many problems that extended beyond the "new" things that the game tried to do. Frankly, I think it was doomed by a half-baked vision and hopefully Toriyama will not be woring on FFXVI.

I could not agree more. Final Fantasy XIII had too many issues. The battle system was one issue, and a major one to me. The story and character development was awful, though.



 

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thelalaby on 30 January 2015
IFireflyl said:

I don't find it impressive. I do not have proof of this, but my theory behind it is this:

A) Final Fantasy XIII was sold on multiple consoles to reach the greatest amount of buyers, whereas Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy XII were only sold on one console. Neither Individual console release of Final Fantasy XIII beat Final Fantasy IX sales, or Final Fantasy XII sales.

B) Final Fantasy XIII was hyped up, and a massive amount of their sales were during the first two weeks of its release (the PS3 sold 1,644,915 copies in the December 2009 Japan release, 1,144,364 copies in the USA and Europe in the March 2010 worldwide release; the Xbox 360 sold 852,086 copies in the March 2010 worldwide release). So almost half of their sales were in the first two weeks.

C) Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lighting Returns sold 3.38 million and 1.24 million copies respectively, and that is the total sold between the PS3 and Xbox 360. If Final Fantasy XIII was so good you would expect that the sales would have been much better than that. Instead Final Fantasy XIII-2 had about half the sales of Final Fantasy XIII, and Lightning Returns had about half the sales of Final Fantasy XIII-2. That's just sad.

I could not agree more. Final Fantasy XIII had too many issues. The battle system was one issue, and a major one to me. The story and character development was awful, though.

A) At the time of XIII's release, PS3/Xbox 360 had a smaller combined userbase than the PS1 and PS2 did when IX and XII released (as the latter two released near the end of the console's life, and by then both PS1 and PS2 had sold gangbusters). Furthermore, PS3 sold half what PS1 sold in Japan and less than half of PS2 sold there, so the game had a massive disadvantage in its biggest market by default. I wouldn't say XIII had a bigger audience to reach out to than IX and XII, rather the contrary.

B) All FF titles are massively hyped up and get the majority of their sales within the first month of release. For example, XII sold 1.8 million first week in Japan and went on to only sell another 600k lifetime, or how VIII sold 2.5 million first week there and managed to only move another million copies lifetime. Whether those copies are sold in one day or over an extended period of time, that doesn't make a difference except that selling more copies closer to launch might be more profitable (as price cuts take place after). Anyway, XIII did have weak legs though and there's no denying that, surely caused by bad word-of-mouth.

C) Like I said, XIII had bad word-of-mouth so naturally there were huge drop-offs for the sequels. We were discussing XIII's sales though, so I don't see what the sequels have to do with anything.

Overall, I'd say XIII's sales were very impressive given the circumstances. Surely a big part of that is the power of FF brand, but it is what it is.



Darc Requiem on 30 January 2015
IFireflyl said:
Materia-Blade said:
pokoko said:

That somewhere along the line was FF7.  Massive budget, focus on style with giant swords and spikey hair, and the best graphics in videogame history.  Considering how much money that game made, it's pretty easy to see why they followed that path.

FF7 graphics weren't even close to the best of videogame history at the time.

Yes they were. Final Fantasy VII was released in January of 1997. The graphics were insanely good for its time for a game that size. I don't know if it can be said, empirically, that it had the best graphics of its time... but if it didn't have the best graphics, it was close.

VXIII said:
The Fury said:
DigitalDevilSummoner said:
Every thread like this makes me wonder; don't you people realize every single numbered FF game is supposed to be a completely different game ?! I mean it's kinda funny -even stubborn- that you bank on that every future FF will be crap.

And another thing; if you didn't like FF XII on account of its gameplay then you just like a particular type of rpg; not FF. Because FF always tried to do something different -every time limited by the technology of the then current technology.

FF is not necessarily a turn based or active time rpg. It's a fresh rpg every time.

No, it's not. It's a fresh world, story, characters and how the magic system worked but for the first 10 (plus sequel) games all combat was done in a self contained arena with a turn based combat whether by traditional (X being more traditional) or ATB. The reason many liked FF was because of it's combat system, this is what made it popular because it was done so well. all they've done since is change that which made it Final Fantasy. Adpting to change it like an MMO or Kingdom Hearts won't change the fact we want a self contained battle with ATB. Assassin Creed is still just jump around and stab people, CoD is stil an FPS shooter, Tekken is still a 3D combat fighter, Street Fighter is still a 2D fighter (look at how their 3D versions did and let me know if they are still making them?).

This post is contradicting itself in my humble opinion. You expand the limits/rules and then reduce them as you see fit with no clear logic or reasoning behind it. All you are saying is " they are the same, except they are not".

With that said, I don't think anybody can argue that XV is a "traditional" FF, it is even more different and daring than usual... As it meant to.

I don't see how the post is contradicting itself. The poster states that the main (numbered) Final Fantasy games from Final Fantasy 1 to Final Fantasy X-2 had a self-contained arena for the battles, and that the battle system was a form of turn-based (either directly turn-based, or ATB which is a variation of turn-based). The poster goes on to say that the combat system is what most people loved about these games. The believe that the poster is saying that the world, story, characters, and magic[/summon] system was different per game, but that the games all had the same feel of Final Fantasy, and that this was due [mostly] to the battle system.

Final Fantasy VII had a prendered backdrop/polygonal character graphical style that was predated by Resident Evil. In addition to doing it first, Resident Evil just did it better. Resident Evil released in 1996. Unlike FFVII, the character models in Resident Evil were actually good for the time. FFVII had "Popeye" armed monstronsities on the overworld. The battle scenes only ran at 15fps and featured models that lacked texture maps and were merely gourad shaded or flat shaded.

How can a game that launched a year after Resident Evil with half the frame rate and less detailed models have "insanely good" graphics for the time? FFVII had substandard graphics and sound for the time. The MIDI audio files on FFVII, despite being on 3 CDs, had a lower sample quality than the MIDI audio of FFVI. FFVI was on a 3MB cartridge. That's 1/600th of the capacity of 3 CDs. 



IFireflyl on 02 February 2015
Darc Requiem said:

Final Fantasy VII had a prendered backdrop/polygonal character graphical style that was predated by Resident Evil. In addition to doing it first, Resident Evil just did it better. Resident Evil released in 1996. Unlike FFVII, the character models in Resident Evil were actually good for the time. FFVII had "Popeye" armed monstronsities on the overworld. The battle scenes only ran at 15fps and featured models that lacked texture maps and were merely gourad shaded or flat shaded.

How can a game that launched a year after Resident Evil with half the frame rate and less detailed models have "insanely good" graphics for the time? FFVII had substandard graphics and sound for the time. The MIDI audio files on FFVII, despite being on 3 CDs, had a lower sample quality than the MIDI audio of FFVI. FFVI was on a 3MB cartridge. That's 1/600th of the capacity of 3 CDs. 

One, it was still better than most games at that time.

Two, the graphics exceeded the graphics of previous Final Fantasy games.

Three, Final Fantasy VII is a bigger world than Resident Evil, meaning they are trying to fit a lot more into the game than Resident Evil was. The fastest Final Fantasy VII speedrun was approximately 8 hours, and the fastest speedrun with 100% completion was approximately 24 hours and 17 minutes. Compare this to Resident Evil where the fastest speedrun was under one hour, and the fastest speedrun with 100% completion was approximately 4 hours.

For the size and scope of this game they were damn good graphics.



 

arcaneguyver on 02 February 2015

Not too surprising - if you don't like MMO gameplay or FF13, the last gen and a half has been nothing but disappointment. It has for me, at least. I'm sort of keeping an eye of 15, but I don't understand what the hype is all about to be honest. Besides the free-roaming aspect, I've seen nothing to make me believe the story will be told better or the characters will be more interesting than in 13.



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IFireflyl on 02 February 2015
thelalaby said:
IFireflyl said:

I don't find it impressive. I do not have proof of this, but my theory behind it is this:

A) Final Fantasy XIII was sold on multiple consoles to reach the greatest amount of buyers, whereas Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy XII were only sold on one console. Neither Individual console release of Final Fantasy XIII beat Final Fantasy IX sales, or Final Fantasy XII sales.

B) Final Fantasy XIII was hyped up, and a massive amount of their sales were during the first two weeks of its release (the PS3 sold 1,644,915 copies in the December 2009 Japan release, 1,144,364 copies in the USA and Europe in the March 2010 worldwide release; the Xbox 360 sold 852,086 copies in the March 2010 worldwide release). So almost half of their sales were in the first two weeks.

C) Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lighting Returns sold 3.38 million and 1.24 million copies respectively, and that is the total sold between the PS3 and Xbox 360. If Final Fantasy XIII was so good you would expect that the sales would have been much better than that. Instead Final Fantasy XIII-2 had about half the sales of Final Fantasy XIII, and Lightning Returns had about half the sales of Final Fantasy XIII-2. That's just sad.

A) At the time of XIII's release, PS3/Xbox 360 had a smaller combined userbase than the PS1 and PS2 did when IX and XII released (as the latter two released near the end of the console's life, and by then both PS1 and PS2 had sold gangbusters). Furthermore, PS3 sold half what PS1 sold in Japan and less than half of PS2 sold there, so the game had a massive disadvantage in its biggest market by default. I wouldn't say XIII had a bigger audience to reach out to than IX and XII, rather the contrary.

B) All FF titles are massively hyped up and get the majority of their sales within the first month of release. For example, XII sold 1.8 million first week in Japan and went on to only sell another 600k lifetime, or how VIII sold 2.5 million first week there and managed to only move another million copies lifetime. Whether those copies are sold in one day or over an extended period of time, that doesn't make a difference except that selling more copies closer to launch might be more profitable (as price cuts take place after). Anyway, XIII did have weak legs though and there's no denying that, surely caused by bad word-of-mouth.

C) Like I said, XIII had bad word-of-mouth so naturally there were huge drop-offs for the sequels. We were discussing XIII's sales though, so I don't see what the sequels have to do with anything.

Overall, I'd say XIII's sales were very impressive given the circumstances. Surely a big part of that is the power of FF brand, but it is what it is.


A) This has nothing to do with anything.

B) Final Fantasy XII had a crappy storyline, and they changed it to an MMO-style feel. My point was that I don't like the direction Final Fantasy has taken, especially with their battle system, and I think that many/most people would agree with me. You're kind of proving my point with the Final Fantasy XII example. Also, Final Fantasy VIII didn't sell 3.5 million copies in its lifetime... it sold 7.86 million copies (VGChartz Source).

C) The sequels have everything to do with it. They show that Final Fantasy XIII was over-hyped, and that's why it sold. There was a ton of advertising, the graphics looked phenomenal, and it was the first Final Fantasy game to come out on the Playstation 3. The same thing happened with Final Fantasy X. It had phenomenal graphics (at the time), they did massive advertising for it, and it was the first Final Fantasy game to come out on the Playstation 2. But Final Fantasy X still has more of a Final Fantasy feel than Final Fantasy XIII. If Final Fantasy XIII was hailed as one of the greatest games of the new generation do you think that the sales for Final Fantasy X-2 would have been so poor? Really? You said it yourself. "XIII had bad word-of-mouth..."

arcaneguyver said:

Not too surprising - if you don't like MMO gameplay or FF13, the last gen and a half has been nothing but disappointment. It has for me, at least. I'm sort of keeping an eye of 15, but I don't understand what the hype is all about to be honest. Besides the free-roaming aspect, I've seen nothing to make me believe the story will be told better or the characters will be more interesting than in 13.

I know how you feel man. I'm going to see what they do with Final Fantasy XV, but my love for Final Fantasy/SquareEnix has dwindled.



 

Darc Requiem on 03 February 2015
IFireflyl said:
Darc Requiem said:

Final Fantasy VII had a prendered backdrop/polygonal character graphical style that was predated by Resident Evil. In addition to doing it first, Resident Evil just did it better. Resident Evil released in 1996. Unlike FFVII, the character models in Resident Evil were actually good for the time. FFVII had "Popeye" armed monstronsities on the overworld. The battle scenes only ran at 15fps and featured models that lacked texture maps and were merely gourad shaded or flat shaded.

How can a game that launched a year after Resident Evil with half the frame rate and less detailed models have "insanely good" graphics for the time? FFVII had substandard graphics and sound for the time. The MIDI audio files on FFVII, despite being on 3 CDs, had a lower sample quality than the MIDI audio of FFVI. FFVI was on a 3MB cartridge. That's 1/600th of the capacity of 3 CDs. 

One, it was still better than most games at that time. No,it wasn't and that's not what you initially stated.

Two, the graphics exceeded the graphics of previous Final Fantasy games. A 32-bit 1.8 GB 5th Gen game should look better than a 16-bit 3MB 4th Gen game. 

Three, Final Fantasy VII is a bigger world than Resident Evil, meaning they are trying to fit a lot more into the game than Resident Evil was. The fastest Final Fantasy VII speedrun was approximately 8 hours, and the fastest speedrun with 100% completion was approximately 24 hours and 17 minutes. Compare this to Resident Evil where the fastest speedrun was under one hour, and the fastest speedrun with 100% completion was approximately 4 hours. Has nothing to do with a discussion about graphical fidelity. JRPGs in general take longer to complete than Survival Horror games.

For the size and scope of this game they were damn good graphics. I'll  agree to disagree.
 

I miss when FInal Fantasy games weren't about the graphics. They were better games when they relied on the story telling, character development, and gameplay. 



IFireflyl on 03 February 2015
Darc Requiem said:
IFireflyl said:
Darc Requiem said:

Final Fantasy VII had a prendered backdrop/polygonal character graphical style that was predated by Resident Evil. In addition to doing it first, Resident Evil just did it better. Resident Evil released in 1996. Unlike FFVII, the character models in Resident Evil were actually good for the time. FFVII had "Popeye" armed monstronsities on the overworld. The battle scenes only ran at 15fps and featured models that lacked texture maps and were merely gourad shaded or flat shaded.

How can a game that launched a year after Resident Evil with half the frame rate and less detailed models have "insanely good" graphics for the time? FFVII had substandard graphics and sound for the time. The MIDI audio files on FFVII, despite being on 3 CDs, had a lower sample quality than the MIDI audio of FFVI. FFVI was on a 3MB cartridge. That's 1/600th of the capacity of 3 CDs. 

One, it was still better than most games at that time. No,it wasn't and that's not what you initially stated.

Two, the graphics exceeded the graphics of previous Final Fantasy games. A 32-bit 1.8 GB 5th Gen game should look better than a 16-bit 3MB 4th Gen game. 

Three, Final Fantasy VII is a bigger world than Resident Evil, meaning they are trying to fit a lot more into the game than Resident Evil was. The fastest Final Fantasy VII speedrun was approximately 8 hours, and the fastest speedrun with 100% completion was approximately 24 hours and 17 minutes. Compare this to Resident Evil where the fastest speedrun was under one hour, and the fastest speedrun with 100% completion was approximately 4 hours. Has nothing to do with a discussion about graphical fidelity. JRPGs in general take longer to complete than Survival Horror games.

For the size and scope of this game they were damn good graphics. I'll  agree to disagree.
 

I miss when FInal Fantasy games weren't about the graphics. They were better games when they relied on the story telling, character development, and gameplay. 

One:

IFireflyl said:
Materia-Blade said:

FF7 graphics weren't even close to the best of videogame history at the time.

Yes they were. Final Fantasy VII was released in January of 1997. The graphics were insanely good for its time for a game that size. I don't know if it can be said, empirically, that it had the best graphics of its time... but if it didn't have the best graphics, it was close.

I never said it had the best graphics, and I don't think I'm wrong when there weren't many games that had better graphics (that I can recall). Also this game was huge. It wasn't a Mario game that just played left to right through a stage. The scope of this game was impressive. They had to fit everything in, and graphics were a big thing.

Two: My point is still valid.

Three: It has everything to do with graphics. This was early CD era. They had to compress everything they could onto Compact Discs. If the game was as small as Resident Evil they would have easily been able to put Resident Evil graphics in there. But they couldn't, because this game was way larger than Resident Evil. The entire game of Resident Evil was 277 MB. Final Fantasy VII was 1,181 MB. You really don't think that makes a difference? It would have been much larger with Resident Evil graphics.

That said, I also wish Final Fantasy would go back to fixing their characters and storyline, and worry just a tad less about the graphics. Just a tad less, though.



 

Riverstyx on 03 February 2015

But Final Fantasy Type 0 is amazing.



 

Darc Requiem on 03 February 2015

IFireflyI, I'm not going to go quote pyramid crazy. I disagree with you. You said that the graphics were "insanely good" and "if it didn't have the best graphics, it was close". Neither of those things are accurate. The whole point of using pre-rendered backdrops was to allow for detailed polygonal models. FFVII had the backdrops but the character models weren't detailed.

The scope of FFVII wasn't anything beyond it's two predecessors nor it's competitors of the time. Despite the unskippable summons cut scenes. I finished FFVII in 35 hours on my first play through and 50 hours to 100% the game. It took me longer to finish FFVI and FFVI on my first run.

A great deal of FFVII's 1181MB was redundant data. The overworld, towns, music, etc had to be on all three discs. Angel Studios port of RE2 to N64 was originally going to be FFVII. Square Enix turned them down. RE2 on N64 was on a 64MB cartridge. CDs, Dreamcast excluded, held about 600 to 650MB. FFVII had over 600MB of unused spaced available on the 3 CDs it shipped on.