How to make the perfect Final Fantasy

Play this:

Start with the two most important things core gameplay and story.

Remove all the glitz, flash, and fancy animated skills, all the unnecessary content and padding distracting players from the base most repetitive, frequent part of the game. Make that Fun.

Start with one character, flesh him/her out fully, build a story and characters around that character. Revise it, Revise it again, start from scratch,  first draft it.

good

Add some cameos.

Get a game play trailer, show it off no more than 1.5 year of release, no delays

Release an alpha demo at E3

Listen to the fans, Ignore them

Release a beta Demo at start of the fall

Listen to the fans again, this time tweak based on suggestions

Wait till January

Release in Febuary

FFIX's setting, narrative and characters, blended with Final Fantasy Tactics' larger cast and job system/customizability. Really, I liked the combat found in FFIX.

A linear campaign is alright so long as it's split into many parts, allowing exploration with plenty of optionals and Easter eggs in between. Stick to the older looks for the characters rather than this gloomy, spikey haired silliness we've had off and on for two decades now.

I also wouldn't mind just chuckling voice acting out the window as it's generally terrible. Even more modern installments like VII-IX did just fine without it. Less cut scenes or, at the very least, allowing the player to skip them would be great.... Don't need to watch Tidus and Yuna engaging in some awkward PG romantic swim-dancing with terrible japanese pop music playing in the background for ten minutes... It felt that long at least, don't really know how long it took.

That reminds me, the music. Again I think IX had the most great pieces of music, but others had great music as well. Tactics, X, VIII, VI... Really, the music is always great.

As for villains, it's hard to beat Kefka or Sephiroth. I thought Sin was actually a cool new enemy as something that lacked personality and dialogue, but rather was simply a tragic, inevitable, impending doom; it was a bit like the Borg. Something different and clever like that might be nice.

If a game met just a few of those I'd live it.

you may need to wait to complete the next Star Wars trilogy in order to get inspiration of those leading characters. just kiddin'.

FF2 leveling system :)

fixed.  

1. Several diverse and interesting characters that can all be controlled.
2. Party of at least 3, but preferably more.
3. Each character has specific job and unique abilities, not job system. (many would disagree but I tend to not like it nearly as much)
4. Intricate story with twist and turns.
5. Lot of weapons/armor/accessories/items from chests and looted. No complex upgrading.
6. Many summons that show up, do their thing and go away. Might be around for a few turns but just don't make them useless like they have been in a few games. Must be very very strong. (Preferably a summoner calls them not equipped or 1 per person)
7. Prefer gain skills via level up, maybe grid. No gaining all abilities from summons or from enemies.
8. Prefer intricate turn based but live action can be ok, just not crazy about the gambit system.
9. I do like stories where you can't use each character for the whole game b/c of plot but it's not a big deal.
10. Open world if can do it right with current graphics. If not, just do linear as long as we can go back to places we have been before.

I guess that's more than enough.

Incase you were wondering FF4 was my favorite.

same characters? i love to see Serah and Lightning and all the cast as playable characters and fixing that XIII story. but i know SE already moved on and got the money from us. 

I have two schools of thought on this. For a light hearted FF game (but with a serious story) I'd make something similar to FF9 in terms of story design, dialogue and variety of characters, but with a touch of Nomura in terms of realism without any excess of stupid clothing or over the top hair cuts. I'd give it the option of ATB FF7 or FFX turnbased style with FF8 item/ability manipulation mechanics (card game, turning monsters into cards, turning items into other items or magic etc.).

On the other hand regarding the story and characters, I'd love to have something as ambitious and mindblowing as Xenogears.

i like the cast of ffxiii. compared to the cast of ffx and ffxii, which imo were the low point in the mainline ff series, it's a step up in the right direction. but no ff is perfect so copy and pasting one wouldn't result in a perfect game for sure. there are various things that other jrpgs do better. for example story and characters xeno series and gameplay star ocean or grandia series. but if SE really should copy and paste one, which they most likely won't do, i'd rather have a copy of ffxiii than ffx or ffxii.