I finished the main story/campaign for FFVII Remake Intergrade yesterday on Steam.
Doing Intermission DLC right now, halfway done - overall 54 hours in and loving it.
First game I've played at 4K 120 FPS as well so I'm hooked.
Its gonna be tough to play this game at lower frame rates but I'm fine with it - will get Remake, Rebirth and the third game on Switch when they go on sale and heavy on discounts.
A lot of the reasons why people didnt move on to Rebirth or get into XVI imo is....
1. VII Remake was heavily marketed and hyped up to be a remake of the greatest and most popular FF game, people went into the game fully hyped but came out deflated due to how different the game was - the genre was more action based, the storyline was for the most part completely different/technically a follow up to the original FF7 and that there will be multiple parts to the game, so this ticked off a sizable amount of the fanbase that they dropped the game completely.
2. XV was successful sale number wise (due to how often the game went on sale) but critically it was a flop due to the genre and gameplay changes, the DLC situation, the poorly written main story, high influence of western gaming aspects and themes (Open world, heavy on side quests, etc which were radically different to previous FF games).
3. Square Enix's bizarre release plans (drip feed releases across multiple platforms, literally takes 3-5 years for a game to come out on every platform - i.e. FF Pixel Remasters coming to mobile/PC and years later on other platforms, Kingdom Hearts) and the pricing of the games not going as low as they did in the past again due to the re-releases made sales suffer.
I believe these factors affected people's decision to hold off on major purchases - FFVII Rebirth suffered a lot because a lot of people dropped Remake and didnt have as much expectations as they did with Remake. FFXVI suffered due in point because of XV and its changes. People lost faith in the series.
For me personally - aside from their bizarre release plans which didnt affect me that much (aside from the pricing) - I actually enjoyed FFXV and FFVII Remake. I only played through the demo of FFXVI on my PS5 but I plan to play the complete edition on Steam in the future.
Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, XV, XVI Demo, and FFVII Remake Intergrade - I'm fully hyped for the next mainline FF game along with any other spinoffs and the third part of the FFVII Remake trilogy.
