Soleron said:
Funny, because when I look at the timeline: 1999 VIII and yet 2006 XII Three times as slow is "quantity over quality"? |
But you're not listing "all" the Final Fantasy games. They haven't been spending all their sources funding just the main games in the series. Sequels to the main series, spinoffs, etc. There have been a ton of games with the Final Fantasy branding. Not including the Chocobo games or any remakes, I've compiled more complete list. I may be missing some, but whatever. It's good enough. The only year where there isn't a Final Fantasy game was in 2005, and that was when the worst FF4 port to date was released, the GBA version, so there was still a game in the series released every year.
So yeah. Square Enix has definitely been quantity over quality lately. That's not to say they haven't had quality releases. I like Tactics, Tactics A2, Crisis Core, Dissidia, the final chapter in the After Years(the rest of the game sucks but the final chapter was worth playing through,) and Dirge of Cerberus(I thought this was a pretty fun third person shooter.) I'm saying that they've really been milking the series and the quality has been lacking compared to when the series was at its best.
1999 VIII
2000 IX
2001 X
2002 XI
2003 X-2
2003 Crystal Chronicles
2003 Tactics Advance
2004 Before Crisis
2006 Dirge of Cerberus
2006 XII
2007 XII Revenant Wings
2007 Tactics Advance 2
2007 Crisis Core
2007 Crystal Chronicles Rings of Fate
2008 Crystal Chronicles My Life as King
2008 IV The After Years
2008 Dissidia
2009 Crystal Chronicles Echoes of Time
2009 Crystal Chronicles My Life as a Darklord
2009 Crystal Chronicles the Crystal Bearers
2009 Four Heroes of Light
2009 XIII
2010 XIV
2010 Dimensions
2011 Dissidia Duodecim
2011 XIII-2
2011 Type-0
2012 Brigade
2012 Theatrythm
2012 XIV A Realm Reborn
As for the series. It used to be such an amazing series and Squaresoft was easily one of my favorite developers back in the day. My first RPG was Dragon Warrior, but the original Final Fantasy is what got me to fall in love with RPGs. Since then I've owned every one of their games released to the US until the noticeable drop in quality. I no longer make an effort to purchase their games any longer. Final Fantasy 13 being a main series title that wasn't online was one I was really hopeful for. Unfortunately the game is complete trash. To this day, other than duplicates that I've bought and sold to make money, Finial Fantasy 13 is the only one in the series I've sold off. I have no plan to ever purchase Final Fantasy 13 again, and after playing the demo of FF13-2, I have no plan to buy any of the sequels.
Now. I was disappointed with 12, but it's not difficult to see how much of a masterpiece they tried to make this game, which I'll get into. On FF12 I like to control all the characters, and while it's possible, it's like they sabotaged it to be an annoyance for those that wanted to. I want to like the game and I'm eventually going to give it another chance, but my first time playing it, the gameplay was the main problem, but let me get to what I loved about the game. Everything else. The story, the characters, the world, the amount of gameplay offered in the game, etc. This game easily has/had the potential to be a favorite in any Final Fantasy fans eyes, but most people that don't like it all usually agree that the lack of control was the problem with the game. Sakaguchi may have not been there, but Matsuno was the director for awhile until he stepped down it, so that's probably the reason it's as good as it is. Final Fantasy 13 had none of what made Final Fantasy 12 a potential masterpiece. Where Final Fantasy 12 only had one problem, everything was a problem on Final Fantasy 13. I didn't like the characters, the world, the story, and the battle system.
I don't have high expectations for Versus 13. I'm not even interested in it to be honest. But being a Final Fantasy fan, I'll eventually play it, and I can only hope it's a good game. If it's not, then there's really no hope for the future of the series unless they go through some major changes or sell the franchise to a developer who actually cares about making the brand name mean something again.
