| Gballzack said: They took a big chance with FF8 and it sucked in terms of characters, story and world but was still a fun game to play and my favorite FF in mechanics and sidequests. Unfortunately this sent them running back to the traditional style with FF9 (still a decent game) only to fail and then just continued onward ignoring the failure of FF8's visual appeal to make every game afterwards done in the same visual style of FF8. Essentially every game since FF8 (excluding FF9) has been the Emo/Goth: "I buy my clothes from Hot Topic / makes 13 year old girl's squeel" drama whoring formula. FFX was a great game, and its visual similarity to FF8's art style could have been ignored given their starkly different worlds and stories if only it hadn't been the beginning of this wretched trend in FF visual style. FF9 = Retro Fantasy |
Final Fantasy XII = emo/goth? You've lost me. Final Fantasy XII seemed like a tropical game, in my opinion. Are you just talking about Vaan's design? If that's the case, that's a flawed way of looking at the game as the story is event driven (as opposed to character driven). And it's arguable whether Vaan is the main character.
I thought Final Fantasy XII was great, one of the best games they've made since... ever! Seamless transition from exploration to battle was a great addition. While the gambit system was hated by many, I felt it added a lot to the game and I certainly hope next-gen RPG's use a more advanced form of the system. The license grid is excellent in that you were allowed to develop your characters how you wanted them. In a lot of other games, you have little to no input into how the developed, you just earn the exp. I also enjoyed the political story and am very happy they didn't focus on character development as much.
I think SE took a good number of risks with Final Fantasy XII, which is part of why I like the game so much. I believe this is because the game was (originally) developed by Yasumi Matsuno, who is an excellent game developer (he did Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics, too). He's no longer with Square Enix.
I hope Mystwalker forces Square Enix out of stagnation this generation. For the genre's sake. I was hoping Atlus would be able to break into the RPG mainstream last gen and give SE a run for their money, but they simply weren't big enough. They're definitely good enough, though, but unfortunately, being good enough simply isn't enough. If it was, Square Enix would have (literally) blown up the day SMT: Nocturne was released.
