| jman8 said: I highly disagree with your assessment of FFXII. It received a ton of critical acclaim and I think most would agree with the reviews. I think there's a vocal minority who didn't like it. I do think Square has lost its touch compared to the PS1 days. Back then, whatever they touched was gold and they had no problem creating a ton of projects simultaneously and releasing them in a timely manner. After FFX, something seems to have gone wrong. |
Well, I think it's a matter of personal opinion but most of the hardcore FFXII fans I know both online and offline didn't like the game.
It was inferior to the previous FF games in almost every department.
- The music, a key element in FF games, was nowhere near the quality of the previous titles.
- A very simple and linear story with poor character development.
- The summons, another key element, were almost completely useless.
- The battle system was not tactical in any sense compared to the previous PS2 and PS1 FF games.
- It was designed by a team with no thorough experience with 3D games. The original director left the company after working on the game for a considerable amount of time.
- The visuals were stunning, that much is true and it got good reviews, but so did Halo 3.
In a sense, Final Fantasy is the victim of its own success. The game has always set new standards and set the bar too high for the RPG games to come. This one, however, offered no significant improvement over the other RPG games on the market. I liked Shadow Hearts 2 more, and I'm sure should the developers had more funds and backing from larger companies, they would've gotten more popular and we know popularity often changes the critics' minds.
| Torillian said: I was thinking about it. And I wonder if Atlus would be possible and a good idea. Persona seems to have picked up some steam as of late and it may be a good idea to pick them up. They make some fantastic games in the SMT series. They don't get good sales, but they're also never advertised to my knowledge. With a bit of corporate backing they might see some real growth in sales. |
Atlus is a good RPG company but it is considerably larger than Level-5. It is a public company, so buying such a company may prove to be a headache and Sony is in no position to buy a large company now. Level-5, which is still private, is also expanding and is hiring more devs. They also started publishing their own games in Japan. It is one ambitious studio. So it is now or never for Sony.
Remember, there was a time that Yahoo! could easily acquire Google, now Yahoo! turns to Google for help. Who knows, maybe Level-5 becomes the next RPG champion and dethrones Square Enix one day (it may never become larger than Square though).
