forevercloud3000 said:
fordy said:
So sales now equal quality huh? Glad that you think Wii Sports is the best game ever, or that you've admitted Pokemon is better than any Final Fantasy.
Didn't say that sales are the end all be all determining factor of quality, but they are a good byproduct. Wii Sports IS a great game, and no amount of sarcasm will change that. I am not even a fan of the Wii and I liked it. Pokemon is also a phenomenal RPG(its just the SAME RPG over and over). Great sales is a sure sign that a game has some sentiments of quality to it, maybe not the best but its doing something right at least. And for a single entry in a long running series to show massive spike in them has to be a sign as well. Your point is moot.
People hear what they want to hear. Since I started Final Fantasy much earlier, I was surrounded my friends who have similar opinions to mine (some even find Final Fantasy 7 an insult to the series, but I don't go that far). Of course, reader polls are going to say that. FF7 was most likely the first Final Fantasy they ever played, and yes, that does become a point of bias. People WILL see the first one they played as better for the fact that they have memories of the first time they come across something that is common to all games. It's not always the case, but you cannot argue that it's of absolute total irrelevance.
Once again, assuming that everyone who loves FFVII simply because it was their first(even after some people in this thread prove this not to be true) yet completely ignoring the possibility(by the very same rules you portray) that those who say VI is better than VII can be due to the fact it was the last game before FF's departure from NIN or the fact they became accustomed to a certain style seeing as that is what they grew up with OR they are just Hipsters jumping on the bandwagon.
Games that "catch your eye" can only do so from a graphical perspective. If you're playing RPGs for the graphics, you're playing RPGs for all the wrong reasons. Let me ask you, if you have "watched" Final Fantasies before 7 and not taken a liking to them (just by looking at them, right?) would you consider yourself a Final Fantasy fan? Many of the FF fans that I know enjoyed the series from the very first one that they saw or played, it sounds like you're more of a visual allurance and not focusing on gameplay or story.
The first task any game must prove is to catch a gamer's attention enough to buy it. When I say "Eye Catching" it doesn't just mean graphical fidelity. I sat and watched the game be played, started taking note of the mechanics and was peaked by what was going on in FFVII. Did not happen when initially watching the earlier ones, and that is their fault. You don't have to play every game in the world to know you won't necessarily like it. Its fairly simple to study something like a videogame from the back seat and formulate interest from there.
I still enjoy 7 myself, I'd rate it in about the top 3 or 4 of the series at least. At the point of designing the game, Square still had their Nintendo mentality of quality (after all, it WAS meant for the N64, until the time of publish when they realise that it would be impossible to fit it on a cartridge). I often wonder, would FF7 still be the biggest seller (and the point of entry for so many) had it been released on the N64as intended? Would it have still "caught your eye"? It's interesting though, that a lot of FF7 fans agree the quality started to drp after 7, which is common to FF6 fans. The difference is, the earlier fans notice a drop in quality with FF7 upon release, a drop where those new to the genre at the time had nothing to guage against.
If FFVII had of been on SNES it might not have been anywhere near as popular.Remember, the main reason they put it on PS1 is because there was no way to fit all that they wanted to on Cartridge(and it was semi 3D). The game would have been a husk version of itself, probably missing a lot of it's original charm(and I don't mean graphically). Yet this holds no bearing on this argument. From where I stand the quality of the series did not dip after FFVII(well....sort of did with FFVIII). The series has always been rocky as far as appeal goes. FFI was ok by the very early standard, FFIII was barely acknowledged, FFIV well liked, FFV totally forgotten, FFVI highly praised, FFVII was the climax of the series, took a nose dive with FFVIII, did pretty well with IX, Started to peak again with X, Took a plunge forth with FFXIII.
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"And for a single entry in a long running series to show massive spike in them has to be a sign as well. Your point is moot."
Except for when bucketloads of money are spent by another copany to advertise the hell out of it in order to lure people to their system, demo discs produced everywhere (a friend of mine still has several that were attached to magazines at the time), the sudden explosion of the internet that previous FFs never got to experience in their time, the 5x install base of the PlayStation (and only selling 3x the amount of FF6, that sounds rather dismal sales, to be honest).
"Once again, assuming that everyone who loves FFVII simply because it was their first(even after some people in this thread prove this not to be true) yet completely ignoring the possibility(by the very same rules you portray) that those who say VI is better than VII can be due to the fact it was the last game before FF's departure from NIN or the fact they became accustomed to a certain style seeing as that is what they grew up with OR they are just Hipsters jumping on the bandwagon."
That can be reversed, and say FF7 fans are just sheep jumping on the bandwagon, right? Makes just as much validity as what you've mentioned. Besides, FF7 was slated to be an N64 game. In fact, the game was made to be on the N64, but the plug was pulled late into development because Square realised that they made something that would never fit on a cartridge. Some see the art of FF6 as visually superior compared to FF7, not because of what they grew up with, but purely because of the added detail to sprites as opposed to the lego-looking polygons of early 3D.
The first task any game must prove is to catch a gamer's attention enough to buy it. When I say "Eye Catching" it doesn't just mean graphical fidelity. I sat and watched the game be played, started taking note of the mechanics and was peaked by what was going on in FFVII. Did not happen when initially watching the earlier ones, and that is their fault. You don't have to play every game in the world to know you won't necessarily like it. Its fairly simple to study something like a videogame from the back seat and formulate interest from there.
So you looked at the mechanic (heavily borrowed from FF6, by the way) and, with no thought towards graphical capability whatsoever, you decided to jump into Final Fantasy at that point? I should really ask again: are you sure you're a Final Fantasy fan, or just a FF7 fan? Personally, I find that the animation time for attacking, summoning, etc rob of the gameplay, since it gives the user time to think, a complete contradiction of what the ATB system was made for. One could even say that FF7 battles were made easier, less "hardcore" if you will...
If FFVII had of been on SNES it might not have been anywhere near as popular.Remember, the main reason they put it on PS1 is because there was no way to fit all that they wanted to on Cartridge(and it was semi 3D). The game would have been a husk version of itself, probably missing a lot of it's original charm(and I don't mean graphically). Yet this holds no bearing on this argument.
Do I need to bring up Ocarina of Time (by your reasoning, a better game than FF7 because of the reader polls) to state that the N64 was more than capable of telling a good story for it's capabilities? (I said N64, not SNES. FF7 was developed for the N64 originally). Besides, limitations have never held back a game's story before. You want ambience? In my opinion, Super Metroid and Secret of Mana both beat FF7 for ambience and environment. The real accomplishment is that games like FF6 fit on 4MB of ROM. How many discs did FF7 need again?
