Yes theyve fallen. And they may never rise back up again

Pristine... nowadays, who do you think would be the closest thing to the Square we knew from the SNES/PS1 days?

It's funny that people mention something like Chrono Cross as one of the "greats" considering that there were people swearing that Square 'went downhill' starting with the PS1 era and spend all their time trashing that game in particular.

I've gotten used to the trend of a sect of people claiming Square/Enix 'went down' at a specific point and time and can chalk up at least 4 examples that are driven into the ground. What I'm interested in is seeing all these people come together and how they'd react to/discuss the situation seeing as hey all have wildly varying opinions on when SE 'went downhill.'

No company comes to mind. Atlus is my current favorite company but they are yet to move on to nex-gen gaming. Their SMT series is still full of win regardless of gen though.

They are two different series; most people prefer DQ stays the way it is. The Japanese freaked when they tried to change the turn-based battle system. Personally, I'm looking forward to DQIX as much as FFXIII (I'm skeptical of how that'll turn out, though I'm sure XIIIv will be fine). It's just a different gaming experience.

Anyway, I think the Squaresoft --> Square Enix decline theory is confusing cause and effect. Look at the games just before the merger, and you notice the quality isn't much different than what they're putting out now. People complain about FFX-2 (I personally enjoyed it), but that was all Square, the merge was done during the localization of the game. Before the merger, Sakaguchi (FF guy) left, the Xenogears team left, and probably more I don't know about.

@ClaudeLv250: I personally was disappointed by Chrono Cross (a bit insulted, since Trigger is one of my all time favs), but I'd say their PS1 efforts were just fine. If we were to go by preference, it's true anyone could have an opinion on when the decline started. However, if we go by sales, it's a fact they went downhill during the PS2 era.

I hear a lot of people claiming chrono trigger was better but I've never played it so I don't know. I do know that chrono cross was the first agme I saw get a 10/10 from gamespot though and that used to be my review site of choice.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps/rpg/chronocross/index.html?tag=result;title;0

I agree with this, Atlus has been releasing a lot of great games in the last years, and we still haven't seen Persona 4

Well that makes no sense at all.

Enix is a company that has always gotten its talent from the outside. It's not possible for them to "slow down" Square when they have nothing to slow them down with. It's also been quite awhile since Square has resembled anything that "keeps pumping one amazing game after another, reinventing itself, setting new standars with every game."

If anything Square is holding back Enix. They had a much more versatile library with awesome games like Actraiser, Soul Blazer and EVO. After the merger, you don't see anything like that anymore. All the originality has given way to FF remakes and ports, and now Square is dipping into other franchises for remakes and ports. When their lineup is intersperesed with Final Fatasy remakes, ports and spinoffs and the acting CEO is from Square, I think it's quite ludicrous to suggest that Enix is behind some diabolical plot.

I want Actraiser 3, not FFX-3.

PE1&2, Xenogears and Vagrant Story are great games, that sadly never sold enough to justify their goodness. These days, multiplayer is dominant and mostl huge hardcore sellers achieve such sales thanks to their online mode.

Poor sales of such gems and the big flop of FF: Spirits Within led to the inevitable buyout and merger with Enix. Their time as huge developer/publisher is over because the kind of games they are making are not that popular enough since the late ps1 days. Otherwise these 4 games would have sold much more in the West, especially during a time when they were partners with EA.


Have you people played the snes era DQs? If you haven´t then you don´t know what you´re talking about. Enix has always been a good developer and an even better publisher and , heck, without them Chrono Trigger would have never happened.

Actually, Atlus as a publisher releases lots of crap from their own third-tier teams and other small developers. But they have some people that always made amazing games for 20 years now.

No, I'm not accusing Enix of slowing them down intentionally, but seriously, the merge hasn't done Square any good (except financially, which no one of us cares). As you perfectly said, Enix's only important property of its own is DQ, which for me sucks, but if we want to be polite we can say that it's not renowned for its innovativeness. So if we compare the Square of before and the Square of now, they've lost Sakaguchi, the Xeno team (which went to create the excellent Xenosaga series), now they've lost Matsuno too. And what have they gained? A guy that I'd wish that he never made a game again like Yuuji Horii and his team, and the Tri-Ace IPs, which are great, but would be great anyways with or without Square or Enix. For me it's undeniable that Square lost a lot since say 2000 (the time by which Square was a company that "keeped pumping one amazing game after another, reinventing itself, setting new standars with every game.")