Really? I loved X. XII was good too. Square-Enix has been lame recently, but you can't count out their biggest game just yet. If anything, I think the two XIII's will bring Square out of its slump. Versus is basically a guarantee when you consider the Nomura team is handling it.

I really think that the usual consumers of a JRPG worldwide have very similar taste for game as japanese gamers than "normal" western players, it's a niche in West, but a niche big enough to make a game be a million seller, so making JRPGS thinking in western gamers are really a bad idea because the western consumers for jRPG are "japanese" gamers too... and making it for other western gamer you make this group don't like and both "japanese" gamers, japanese gamers an western gamers won't like it...

I expect them to be fantastic. I don't know why anyone would expect anything else.

You know, if you just said "FFXIII is going to suck because it's coming out for the 360 too", you would have saved all of us a lot of time.

FFXII was an interesting game. The story was shallow (although Balthier is incredibly awesome), but the combat system was so good that every RPG needs to copy it. The emphasis on formulated tactics by essentially creating your own AI system as well as the fact that the game rewards you for using magic constantly as opposed to hording it was so revolutionary that every RPG needs to take note: IT IS NOT FUN TO LUG AROUND A WHITE MAGE AND A BLACK MAGE SOLELY TO HEAL/DAMAGE ON THE FINAL BOSS, AND HIT WITH STAVES THE REMAINING 99% OF THE TIME. IF YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE THE CLASSES AT ALL, MAKE THEM USEFUL ON ALMOST EVERY SINGLE FIGHT! I can't even play old-school RPGs anymore out of sheer boredom, and I was such a RPG nerd that I once spent the entire summer in my dumber, school boy days playing Final Fantasy 4 through 9.

Now if they could integrate an amazing story with FFXII's combat system, that would be the best RPG of all time. Yes, even better than Chrono Trigger/FF6/FF7/FFX/Xenogears/Valkyrie Profile/etc.

I agree with you on the battle system.  It took a lot of the tedium away from the average JRPG battle system.  Making your own A.I. also helped a lot.  Thought I am not exactly sure if I would call FFXII's story "shallow".

From my pocket.

FF7 was my favorite
FF8 was my last purchase FF game It went downhill from there

Every FF game that came after 7 didnt live up to my expectation and were let down.

I manage to play each game from 9 on up to see if i can still get in the game, but to me FF has lost its flavor.

My personal opinion is each FF game after 8 that came out got prettier and prettier and more complex, but the story to me felt lacking.

I thought FFX was a great game and certainly was the next step up after 9 retro-ed the series for the last time.

Also, FFX-2 was not an awful game, it was just an average game by Final Fantasy main series standards. If FFX-2 was renamed something else and had a different face slapped onto the characters, it would have easily been a 8+ out of 10 game. But people hated it because it was different and not expected.

I didn't love the game myself, but I wouldn't say it was crap.

Anyway, on topic, I think FF13 will be AAA but VS13 won't, but they'll both still sell immensely well. Why I am pessimistic about VS13? Well, word on the street is that it is like Kingdom Hearts, but what separates KH from being a cookie cutter hack and slash is that it's got a rather simple but compelling narrative and disney worlds, VS definitely doesn't have the disney, so if it doesn't have a compelling story (i.e reason to keep playing for most RPG fans), then it'll be just an average Hack and slash.

They've definitely worked hard on these titles so I really doubt they won't be AAA games. However, there are always sites that hate on popular games to get attention so it's possible.

Well now days JRPG's get bashed for being to repetitive and similar, or oudated visually (Tales of Symphonia:DoTNW reviews for example) yet FF will still get enormous amount of hype behind it, and it will look amazing so it will be reviewed well and it should make 90% range on Metacritic (but does it really matter? Im sick of how much people look upon reviewers)