Oh,  hope more than anything that's what Final Fantasy Haeresis XIII will be.

Really, this isn't so bad. They can farm out Dragon Quest to Level-5 and Final Fantasy to Mistwalker while Wada has them making whatever crazy shit he wants in-house. Everybody wins!

Yoichi Wada is going to run the company into the ground if he has his way.

Spelling doom usually is a sure fire way of being wrong, but I'm speaking on a personal level as well.

I hope the next one is still an RPG and it goes back to its roots *** cough**** Nintendo Sistems **** Cough****

>Final Fantasy

>If it ain't broke, don't fix it

It's a bit too late for that

The last main series FF game that had the gameplay of a traditional JRPG (FF10) was the second most successful in the series after FF7 and is still loved by the fans (especially in Japan). Ever since then, Squeenix have fiddled with the formula that was still working as well as it ever was, and the FF series has gone downhill. The fans have reacted badly and sales have gone down. Far more people are leaving the franchise than joining it. It seems that Squeenix's answer to this it too change it even more.

I really think they should just give up on RPGs; it's clear that they no longer want to make them. Perhaps Squeenix should start making proper action games instead of awful hybrids. They might actually do that well.

I'm not sure why Squeenix (or JRPG makers in general) have been doing this recently. Do they think that because the tools now exist to make party-based games with stat and experience level systems that they have to use them? It's like thinking that a painter has to use every colour paint he owns when doing a painting, or that because we have films we should no longer watch plays. Developers need to realise that even though JRPGs may have been made in days when the game mechanics they use where necessary because of technological constraints, those game mechanics are now well loved by fans, many of whom (a great many, if sales are anything to go by) prefer them to the alternative. The game mechanics that were borne out of 8-bit limitations actually make for excellent gameplay, and the fact that they are no longer necessary does not mean that they are no longer wanted.

I think the next FF that will be announced is FF Haeresis XIII.

The series hasn't had a really traditionalist approach since... like.... FF4. Final Fantasy changes from game to game more tha any other series, and that's not a new development.

You should have been around for the backlash when people saw mechs in the FF6 previews

Hoo boy

you SHOULD have mentioned ff6 instead of ff7 x]

Well, there are changes and there are big changes. It's true that each of the FFs has it's own quirks, but the gameplay changes from FF10 to FF12 are of a different order of magnitude. Going from turn based combat to real time combat (I assume that's the right terminology...) changes the gameplay in a much bigger way than, say, getting rid of jobs in FF7, or using GFs in FF8, or using the Sphere Grid in FF10. So is releasing the other party members from the player's control unless they are pre-programmed by the player to fight in a certain way. I thought that playing FF10 was more similar to playing FF1 than playing FF12; that's how big I found the changes to be, and that's why the recent changes are different from the changes in the FF series before the Square-Enix merger.

I'd also like to have seen the bitching from mechs being in FF6 (oh noes!) I'm sure it was hilarious.

Here's the thing, though, that's exactly the size of the combat change that took place in going from IX to X. The series hadn't had turn-based combat since the NES days, and XII was just a return to the ATB system with programmable actions to make things go faster. Turn off gambits an it plays like every other Final Fantasy from IV to IX.

And I'd argue that using the Sphere Grid - getting rid of the leveling up system - is as enormous as anything in any Final Fantasy, on par with the Gambit System

Meh, tomato tomato (that doesn't work when you type it ). ATB and turn based combat are a very similar experience (especially to those of us who used to turn "wait" on); you can't compare the change from ATB to strict turn based to the change from either of those to the system in the newer FF games in terms of the player's qualitative experience. Even with the gambits turned off, I found FF12 to be a very different kind of game to the first 10 in the main series. Having to run around with three or four different characters in a battle isn't anything like playing the games from 4 to 9.