Quote Originally Posted by Nalien View Post
Ultima Weapon in XIV is clearly based off the same model as VII, I don't think anyone can possibly dispute that.
Knights of the Round originated from, and are largely famous because of, VII. The fight in XIV even references VIIs screen shatter effect, and largely kept to the order and attacks of the Knights.
Same with Hades, his first appearance in Final Fantasy was in VII; IX and XI came after VII so that's obvious. While V obviously came before VII, Hades never appeared in the original release of V, he was an optional boss of an entirely new secret dungeon in the Advanced release of V, which came out after VII.

Hades is arguably the weakest link, since he was an entirely forgettable summon in VII, and his later appearances in IX and XI are far more noteworthy, but still. I'd like to think this is intentional, given Yoshida has said VII was his favorite title in the franchise, and his premier to XIV was very VII based with Project Meteor and Nael van Darnus... Heck, to this day our MSQ quest marker is essentially the VII Meteor logo... While Stormblood broke the trend with Shinryu, it was still very VII based in its references towards the end... We had a (totally-not) Mako Cannon, the Resonant Project pods were very reminiscent of VIIs SOLDIER pods, the first boss of Ala Mhigo is the first boss of VII, Aulus might as well be Hojo, heck Zenos might as well be Sephiroth at this point (Garlemalds ultimate soldier forged from human experimentation, has a thing for Nippon Steel, long hair, died but didn't stay dead...), and technically he was the one piloting Shinryu in the finale of Stormblood...
This is probably the fairest response to my post IMO. And I think people are mistake if they think I am in any way complaining about the bosses themselves, every expansion (maybe not ARR) has had a brilliant, epic ending, and all of the fights and bosses themselves are really well done. I guess the thing that irked me this time around was how little sense it made. Ultima Weapon was a huge plot point throughout the latter half of ARR, and made total sense and by it's reputation alone was very nostalgic, KOTR was a perfect fit for Thordan and his knights, and was a very clever way to fit the reference into a unique set of characters, and Shinryu, while an obvious reference was a known threat since 3.55. The final boss of Shadowbringers is Emet-Selch, that is how we know him, and that is what he should have stayed. The Hades reveal to me shows that the development team cannot have a final boss be an original character, and it just felt shoehorned.

The worst part about the Hades reveal is that VII isn't the only final fantasy, and it feels like it is focused on. FFX has very little representation, and FF8 didn't either until the Eden raid (and still doesn't given that the only connection to 8 is the music and Eden itself). Hell, the main antagonist of FFX is Sin, why wasn't that used in connection to the Sin eaters? It would have probably fit much better in the same way that KotR were a natural fit into Heavensward.