Final Fantasy has experimented, which I don't think is a bad thing. The results aren't all stellar, but I mean, rarely is the battle system the thing that ruins the experience. If the games at least had good stories no one would care. For example, FF XIII would not have been saved with the glory of an old battle system because the story was bad. FFXII would not have been saved if they had just adopted random encounters instead of the weird crap hybrid system they used because the story was still bad. FFX was crap despite having the more classic combat system because the story was garbage. I'm sure you're seeing the common theme here. I think X-2 is the only one that has managed to maintain a passable (but still crap) story as well as a praised battle system that edged a lot closer to an active system than XII ultimately did.

As well, you have to consider that these two games appeal to largely different fan bases. Final Fantasy attempts to broadly appeal to RPG fans, whereas Pokemon only has to appeal to Nintendo fans. Nintendo fans are the last ones I want setting a standard for how games should be made, as some Nintendo series like Pokemon have shown the least amount of gameplay or story growth in 20+ years than I thought possible. All because people are content with more of the same doesn't mean more of the same is fun. It just means people think it would be less bad than changing anything.

I can get this 20 year old game on Vimm.net, right now, for free.

No, I mean just self contained exploration, self contained battles. I don't want to wander around a world and see enemies in front of me, I won't want to only control 1 character. I want to walk around an area and suddenly the screen wipes blury and my party are against enemies and we are taking turns to hit each other based on the ATB.

Yeah, and it still sells and people still love it. Big games in game series do not change their basic gameplay, Tekken, SF, Pokemon, FIFA, CoD, they are all basically the same in basic gameplay, even if some extra characters or abilities. Heck look at the latest Doom trailer, it looks like Doom just with amped up graphics.

I'm not quite sure why SquEnix think some tradition is a bad thing.

I guess I'll give this one a shot.

I am definitely re-playing old style FFVII before the remake gets released.  This will work perfect for me.  Might even get it day one assuming I am finished with FFX/X-2 remaster by that time (currently 70 hours into FFX and have only just gotten to Seymour Flux).

Here's a bonus video.

Here's hoping that new translation rumor is true. A few less "This guy are sick" moments would be nice.

Might try this. I already got the PSN version on the PS3 but trophy support is a nice feature.

Here are some more FFVII bonus goodies:

You say that like platinuming FFXIII was hard. It's just time-consuming, but it can be done in sixty hours.

You should be glad you played it in English:

http://tmblr.co/ZqM2IvmvRCL0

Here are some bits of information taken from a Spanish forum:

There are some minor mistakes, such as mistaking "Well" for "Rueda" (Wheel) or "Hurry" for "Hurra" (Hooray) but there are others which completely destroy the dialogue. The most remarkable examples are:

-Every time that someone talks about Aerith, Yuffie, Tifa or any other female character from the game, they will be referred as if they were male, as some words in English ("the", "a", almost every adjective... etc.) are used for both males and females, but not in Spanish where most of them vary depending on the gender ("un/una", "el/la"...).

-The word "You" in English is both singular and plural, but in Spanish there are two words for that, "Tú" for singular, and "Vosotros" for plural. The word "Vosotros" is never used in the game.

-The word "Miss" is translated as "Merma" (literally "Decreases").

-One of the worst translated parts is the Gold Saucer, with sentences that don't make any sense, such as "Allévoy" (something like "Hericome" instead of "Allá voy", which means "Here I come") or "¿Quién participaré?" (literally "Who will I participate?").

-The word "Party" is used in every wrong way possible. Sometimes it says "Haz un partido de tres", which means "Make a political party of three", but the most known mistake is in Kalm's Inn, where the inn's owner says "Su fiesta le espera en el piso de arriba" ("fiesta" here meaning cheerful celebration).

Here is a testament to the game's bad translation on TV Tropes:

And if you think the English translation is bad, the Spanish translation is a Blind Idiot Translation of the English Blind Idiot Translation. Highlights include Aerith and Yuffie being referred to as men at times, Aerith's mother having two names, "techno" translated as a substantive rather than as a prefix/adjective, in a way that in every case it appears it sounds like they're talking about the musical genre (someone in Corel calls Barrett a "monstruo del tecno", which makes it sound like he's a really badass DJ), and "well" somehow being once translated as "rueda" ("Wheel"), among lots of other "marvels". A Spanish Let's Play concluded Aerith was a hermaphrodite.