Darc Requiem said:
I never have been a fan of the OG FFVII. It was the most disappointing experience I've ever had with a video game. I literally beat the game twice because I couldn't accept the fact that it was a Square RPG that i didn't enjoy. I thought "I had to have missed something..." It was worse the second time around. Up until that point, Final Fantasy was my favorite RPG franchise and Squaresoft could do no wrong. I found FFVII to be incredibly mid. It was not a bad game but the gaming press presented it as this all time great RPG and it wasn't. It may be the wrong impression, but to me it felt like FFVII was a lot of people's first RPG. That would be the only thing that explained some of the praise it received. Phantasy Star killed off a party member in two entries, PS2 in 1989 and PS4 in 1993, by the time FFVII launched in 1997. Other disc based RPGs had FMVs and voice acting which FFVII lacked. Even it's graphically style, polygonal characters on prerendered backgrounds, had been done better by RE1 the year prior. |
Having played both FFVI and FFVIII in the last few(-ish) years and knowing the beginning of FFVII, I think I have my expectations calibrated appropriately for my next attempt. I was annoyed by some design decisions of FFVIII, and FFVI was a huge disappointment considering its reputation, mostly due to its barebones writing and terrible final hours (depressing aesthetic, poor navigation of the world). I already strongly suspected I'm in for a less refined experience than e.g. FFX, which is one of my all-time favourite games, or even FFXII, which is great in its own right but loses some of the magic found in many other games in the series.
At this point, I suspect either FFIX or FFX is where it gets really good, which is sad, considering how quick the fall from there is (or slow, considering the slow release pace of new titles after FFXII). It's sad because it seems like the series has a peak of one or two games despite people praising all three PS1 games, FFX, and even FFVI, and it sounds like FFIV and FFV are supposed to be quite solid. After FFVI, I have little faith in FFIV or FFV being top-tier games, since writing probably doesn't get that much better the further you go back in time. Regardless, I'm interest to eventually explore the older games of the series too, but my expectations have definitely changed from what they used to be.
