Final Fantasy - What Went Wrong!!

[kaneada]

dunno001 said:

c0rd said:

dunno001 said:
Yes, FF needs to return to its roots. It's being hit-and-miss on games since about FF8, but staying to ones base can result in a strong and loyal fanbase; look at their own Dragon Quest series as an example. Regarding FF13, to FF standards, it's a miss. FF13 will be the worst selling mainline FF in Japan since FF4! The verdict on worldwide is still out, but it looks to definitely be in the lower half of sales in the Playstation era.

Not really fair to blame the game itself entirely for its sales, you need to consider the platform it's on. Even if the game were a "hit," it'd have trouble selling.

*kicks computer* I was typing up a nice long reply to this when it decided to hang, so I don't feel like redoing it all. I'll sum it up, though.

Look at the Japanese sales of system launch FF games to the system's install bases in Japan, and you will find ratios well over 50%. (This is true with FF4, 7, and 10.) Then look at FF13. It's going to struggle to reach that 50%, if it even does. It's not selling nearly as well even on an install base ratio. The difference between PS1 (the highest console install number) at FF7 launch and PS3 at FF13 launch is less than 1 million. So why, then, does it look like FF13 will be about a million behind FF10, and considerably more behind FF7. It can only mean that it is not selling as well, and this is irregardless of the system. Unless you're trying to say it would have sold better on the Wii, which I would dispute, because it was the PS era that made the game all about graphics and FMVs, something that the PS3 could do better, and the current targeted fanbase would expect.

Numbers aside, I do think that story telling is the biggest part of what makes FF...well FF. It has been increasingly large part of the series since FFIV and tbh I think what killed XIII for me was the lack of character development and actual story. There was a good premise, but it didn't use the characters to its advantage. The gameplay in XIII is fine, but I do hate the tunnel vision maps in the game. You can make a game linear, but keep the dungeons open. XII and XIII were polar opposites of each other, one had heavy emphasis on large explorable maps (most of which had pointless areas) the other suffered from lack of openess.

There are many things wrong with the last two installments of FF and its namely because they are experimenting too much with things that don't need to be experimented with. I love the combat in XIII, but one should never sacrifice story...that's what engages the player.