Done With Final Fantasy

[thelalaby]

IFireflyl said:

I'm not saying it'll be disappointing because it's different. You have no idea how excited I was for Final Fantasy XIII to come out. I went to the midnight release, I had the Collector's Edition strategy guide, the whole nine yards. The gameplay and storyline really let me down. The big difference between Squall and Lightning is that you could see the text of what Squall was thinking before he said rude/harsh/etc things. Lightning was just a mean, uncaring person which made her immediately unlikeable (the third Final Fantasy main character who I hated, with the first two being Yuna from Final Fantasy X-2, and Vaan from Final Fantasy XII). The world (as discussed) was excruciatingly linear, the battle system let you only control one of your party members (another reason I didn't like Final Fantasy XII), you were prevented from level grinding (Crystarium expands only after completing certain events), the Summons were Transformers that truly served no purpose (not that they served a purpose in Final Fantasy IX either), Hope was worse than Lightning, and you had so many chapters of him acting like the little kid he was (which was annoying), and the storyline was way more confusing than it needed to be. My issue with Final Fantasy XV is that it was originally Final Fantasy Versus XIII, so I kind of expect it to follow suit. I'm not saying it for sure will, but SquareEnix has released several Final Fantasy games in a row that have been an epic disappointment, and I'd honestly be shocked if I wasn't dubious as to how Final Fantasy XV will turn out.

I also found the Crystarium and story to be disappointing in XIII, and I can understand why you'd have a gripe with being able to control only character... but there are many games out there who have done this mechanic right, so XIII's screw-ups might not make it to XV. Now, we haven't seen enough of XV to have a proper judgment... but I am feeling optimistic about it due to the new director (who is very open and enthusiastic about the project) and the fact that they have learned from many of the XIII mistakes (they have eliminated linearity and have promised to have a lot of optional content available, such as the already-confirmed cooking and fishing) so it does seem like Square Enix are listening to their fans while also continuing to progress forward.

I agree that FF titles within the last 10 years haven't been up-to-par, but frankly that wasn't always SE's fault... like XII had its director leave halfway through development, and you can see the effect of that on how the story just collapses near the end of the game. I enjoyed it a lot and I thought it introduced some solid gameplay mechanics to the franchise (such as the gambits which I believe brought innovation of the entire genre) but still I see its shortcomings and I understand why some fans dismiss it. I think SE's only fuck-ups were XIII and the original XIV, but seeing how they worked really to relaunch XIV and make it up to fans, and their dedication and openness to the development of XV makes me want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

You will probably remain skeptical about the game (as you should, considering that XIII was the last major single-player FF released)... I'm only having this argument because I see a lot of entitlement from FF fans (not you) who want the franchise to be a certain way, denying the very core of the franchise; its ability to reinvent itself. I just wanted to point out that the franchise's golden era was also full of transformations and reinventions.