What's Final Fantasy?

[MeowyWowie]

Perhaps my view on this is a little biased. The reason I mentioned FFVII is because that is likely the game many fans started with. Yes, they still made great games after VII, in fact IX is one of my favorites, 2nd only to VI. X was meh, to me at least, and is where I started to notice the series really beginning to change for the worse. Though it was still much better than XII, imo.

My point is, once SE realized they can make visually stunning games with the introduction of VII, they slowly started to forget what made Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy. FFIX was sort of the last breath of life the series had. Now they seem more focused on graphics than what really matters (gameplay, lore, character uniqueness and so on.) I think XIV is a perfect example of this.

Don't get me wrong, I love good looking games. But graphics aren't everything. Call me biased, old-school, whatever, I still have a right to my opinion even if others don't agree. But for me, FF has changed a lot over the years, and lately it hasn't been for the better.

[ZephyrAM]

XIII is a hell of a lot more of a Final Fantasy than XII could ever wish to be, XIII has great characters love them or hate them (I'm looking at you Hope.)

Sadly, I wouldn't really know, as I played XII farther. Didn't quite beat it, but got close.

Much as I really, really want to explore the story and characters in XIII, I just can't get past that blasted battle system...


Edit: And now I'm more inclined to go back and replay older FF's for the umpteenth time then to play the newer ones I haven't completed. *sigh*

... And it doesn't show a spell check error on 'umpteenth' O_o

[SuzakuCMX]

Sadly, I wouldn't really know, as I played XII farther. Didn't quite beat it, but got close.

Much as I really, really want to explore the story and characters in XIII, I just can't get past that blasted battle system...

I couldn't get past the Crystarium and hallways.

At least XII was completely open to customization and had an open world :L

[Seif]

XIII is a bad soap opera that lasts for 30 hrs! Ok I can endure a bad plot but I can't endure feeling like I'm playing a tunnel shooter like Modern Warfare when I'm trying to explore a world. Good luck trying to find anything there's nothing to discover. Oh yeah XIV isn't innocent of this either. You can go everywhere but everywhere just happens to be the same place over and over again.

[ZephyrAM]

At least XII was completely open to customization and had an open world :L

^ this * 10

Mainly the open world point. I mean, I 'love' character customization, but I can handle the lack thereof in an RPG for the sake of character lore. FFIV and VI portray this quite well, as does IX, though it has a bit more freedom.

These were actually the two big downsides I found to FFX: lack of any open world(though the world you could explore was large enough, and more importantly 'free' enough, that it wasn't too bad), and entirely too much character development freedom. It was great that you could take any character any direction... up until you took 'every' character 'every' direction. A team of gods is only neat for a very short time .

[Scherwiz]

I couldn't get past the Crystarium and hallways.

At least XII was completely open to customization and had an open world :L

Indeed, it was a great open world. Too bad it has the worst characters and story in the series.

[Scherwiz]

XIII is a bad soap opera that lasts for 30 hrs! Ok I can endure a bad plot but I can't endure feeling like I'm playing a tunnel shooter like Modern Warfare when I'm trying to explore a world. Good luck trying to find anything there's nothing to discover. Oh yeah XIV isn't innocent of this either. You can go everywhere but everywhere just happens to be the same place over and over again.

XIII did have tunnels to be sure but that dosent make it bad. I mean look at Uncharted 2 which launched a few months before, just as linear and 10 times more overrated, possibly the most overrated game ever.

[Volsung]

XII was great if you ignored Vaan entirely. And XIII suffered hallway syndrome because people complained that in XII they were thrown into a too open area and couldn't remember what they were supposed to be doing storywise, which led to XIII being pointed in a single direction. I also enjoyed XIII, the characters either changed, or you got to see sides of them they usually wont show people.

[Seif]

XIII did have tunnels to be sure but that dosent make it bad. I mean look at Uncharted 2 which launched a few months before, just as linear and 10 times more overrated, possibly the most overrated game ever.

Did I say I like it when game designers pretend to be C-grade Hollywood director wannabes? Mass market does, I don't. Currently re-playing FFIII on DS and loving every second of it.

[Eldaena]

XII was great if you ignored Vaan entirely. And XIII suffered hallway syndrome because people complained that in XII they were thrown into a too open area and couldn't remember what they were supposed to be doing storywise, which led to XIII being pointed in a single direction. I also enjoyed XIII, the characters either changed, or you got to see sides of them they usually wont show people.

Vaan was definitely my least favorite character in that game. =p