You know what, I dont care anymore.

You want to win then you win.

I appolgise for wasting your time. I no longer have any interest in the FF13 project or this thread.

If I as a fan of this franchise for the last 11 years is ready to walk away from this is series, then yeah Square Enix won. They abused my loyalty with their bullshit!

Congratulations! You won!

You don't have my permission to leave. Your punishment must be more severe. 

 1) I said you misquoted Yoichi because you tried to bag the two individual statements about the two games together. In order to create the impression that the "greatly damaged Final Fantasy brand" (quote about XIV) was somehow linked to XIII you tossed together the 2010 statement about XIII "some are not very happy with it."

 2) The full quote "Some value it highly and some are not very happy with it." is a very diplomatic position and when you say, verbatim: "my personal opinion is that he thinks FF13 has damaged the franchise" , you are deliberately misrepresenting his position. And when your game sells 5 mil in the first 4 months, you don't do damage control.

3) The fact that XIII's gameplay had mixed reception is irrelevant to the reason why XIII-2 was made. They would not have made a sequel to an unsuccessful game. For the first time a numbered FF was basically an rpg / action hybrid, of course it would cause mixed reactions. In your desperate attempt to discredit the whole game, with sales and reviews strongly disagreeing with you, you tried to present XIII-2 as an apologetic attempt to fix the "damaged brand " (FF XIV quote). You were wrong. XIII-2 was made in response to XIII's success and to an extent because they had invested a lot in the Crystal Engine to let it go to waste.

4) XIII-2's design. XIII-2 is a new game and not XIII v2.0 like you want to make it appear. Of course the question matters. Toriyama responded to the trend in the rpg market set by Diablo and Skyrim and how XIII-2 would be relevant. He does say, as you quoted, that the whole concept of the game is changed and not just details or touch ups. What you are ignoring is the completely different approach in terms of development. XIII came at a high cost of time and money, and that what they focused on fixing with XIII-2, they leaved large-scale internal development and story based milestones (XIII-2 is not story driven). So instead of having the extremely expensive luxury of passing through 40 hours worth of highly detailed locations (created by 180 artists at its peak) only once, they made far better use of the same locations which you had to visit over and over in order to be more cost effective. [1]
 
 5) Once again you try to discover incompetent developers by calling a hand full of FF titles sub par and now apparently you found about Dirge of Cerberus. Bad news is that noone cares about that game. At the end you are grossly misrepresenting their opinions taking things out of context and you give us your opinion about what you think they meant ! Motomu Toriyama has defended XIII, he stated the lower-than-expected review scores were as a result of reviewers approaching the game with a Western point-of-view, and that reviewers were used to games in which the player was given an open world to explore; he noted this expectation contrasted with the development team's vision in that it "becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when you're given that much freedom".

6) The japanese gaming industry has taken a huge blow. That is an overall observation of this gaming generation and you are looking the other way. Especially rpgs. Mentioning Pokemon is not helping your case.

Darth that can't happen, it just makes too much sense for it to happen.

1. I havent misquoted Yochi Wada. I have linked you to the articles where he says those things. How can I misrepresenting his position when he has made it clear 'some people are not very happy with it'. Which is irrelevent, I know he said that the FF brand has been greatly damaged at the press event for FF14 (or some event like that); but as far as I'm concerned Yochi Wada knows FF13 has greatly damaged the franchise.

Why would he not say the words "Final Fantasy 14 has greatly damaged the franchise". Why has he not been specific? When it comes down to it, you CANNOT prove what Yochi Wada thinks. And the evidence as I has presented it is irrefutable, since it is the words of the developers themselves.

It is damage control for Yochi Wada to try and blame everything on FF14, when he knows FF13 did more damage to the series. Thats what I think, if you dont like it thats not my problem. The following evidence suggests that FF13 has indeed greatly damaged the franchise.

Things like this are damage control: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/5892/square_enix_in_2010_president_.php

"Should Final Fantasy become a new type of the game or should Final Fantasy not become a new type of game? The customers have different opinions. It’s very difficult to determine which way it should go."

I dont know what Wada is trying to say here, it seems more coperate damage control bullshit.

It is damage control for Toriyama to blame western review scores for FF13, before the game is even released, lol!

2. I think FF13-2 was planned before FF13 was even finished, but thats neither here nor there. Toriyama and Kitase claim that it was a result of overwheaming success of FF13. I only have one question if FF13-2 was created because of the 'unprecdented' demand for FF13, why did sell less copies than FF13?

3. If FF13-2 was made in response to FF13's 'success', why did they change the fomula to attone for the shortcomings in what Toriyama deems mixed reviews? Why didnt they make it exactly like FF13?

4. I dont understand what you point is at number 4. I'm just going to leave you with this:

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/final_fantasy_xiii-2/b/ps3/archive/2011/11/23/creators-talk-time-travel-sequel-development-amp-more.aspx

"We feel that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a project that’s really been able to take in the fans’ feedback and incorporate those changes in a timely manner. Yes, we do feel like this project’s importance has shifted, but in a good way. We’re setting the example."

Based on Toriyama's comment, and now Kitase's one, they claim that FF13-2 was desgined to accomodate for the mixed reception of FF13. I'm not sure what your trying to prove here.

5. As far as I'm concerned Yoshinori Kitase and Momotu Toriyama are incompitent. They shouldnt have allowed Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 to inspire FF13, they shouldnt have allowed Lost (that awful tv show) to influence FF13. They shouldnt have failed the Parasite Eve reboot.

6. "Here's what you did, you got cocky and without thinking spewed out": "The Japanese game industry is slowly dying"

This seems ridiculous to me. This is a sales site, check the sales of Japanese software and hardware, their gaming division is certaintly not dying. And even if the Japanese industry was dying (which it is not), how would this impact the sales of FF13-2 here in the west. Or is the western gaming divison also dying, lol!

Are you trying to say that the Japanese game industry is in a state of 'collapse' and that the Japanese game industry is to blame for the sales of FF13/FF13-2. I'm afraid that the Japanese games industry is dominated by... thats right: GAMES. If the Japanese games market is dying as you claim, then is that not a result of Japanese GAMES not meeting expectations, lol. Case in point Final Fantasy! I find your market analysis contradictory and laughable.

Having just finished my first play through of Final Fantasy Theatrhythm i have to agree with you.

Getting to the end final fantasy XI, XII and XIII all seemed to have less memorable soundtracks than the others.

I am a huge fan of the final fantasy series up until final fantasy XIII and i hope they go back and remember what made their series so memorable in the first place and bring it up to current gaming standards.

XIII was a terrible game for a Final Fantasy game. The only thing it had going for it was the battle system. Everything else was just horrible. Terrible story with no sidequests (a hunt this monster, collect something once doesn't constitute side quests). FF XIII did not resemble a FF game at all. When the game reached the point of getting off cocoon I was furious after finding out what seemed to be the game opening up to be more linear. The hunting quests was the first taste of what should have been a diverse side quest environment only to anger me even more that it was the only thing to do outside of the main story. It's only saving grace was the battle system.

Half way through that game I guessed the ending. At the ending I though it was the halfway point. FF XIII was a piece of crap that was a slap in the face to anyone who enjoyed previous entries in the franchise.

You said Final Fantasy XII's music sucked, therefore your opinion is invalid. I thought it was easily one of the most emotional of the entire series. very atmospheric.

It's not really related but I don't think music is related to the topic either. I just had to post something like this.

What about the card game and the sidequests? Items? Characters? The world? I thought those were all great.