SE to churn out a FF title/year?!

[Mushy]

It has been taking them longer because they aim for near simultaneous world wide release with voice acting to boot

[viion]

This is life now....

Car manufacturers make a new model every like 3 months.
Browsers have a new release every 6 weeks.
Movie sequels every 2yrs(ish)

Games are almost yearly, with Cod being the major one, Assassins Creed i think was every 2yr. Uncharted 2yr.

Trend!

This is a good move on SE. ff8-11 was yearly and imo some of the best.

[Icecylee]

Sometimes it's very difficult to tell if a group of people complaining is actually the majority, or just a very vocal minority for what it's worth. It's sort of strange for me anytime I see people on the internet talking about how awful FF13 was, because in the community I hang out in it's the only one just about everyone can agree on as being good, while we're highly polarized on most others.

I personally would rank it as the best of the numbered series in terms of both story and gameplay, but obviously different people look for and like different things in their games. Strangely enough, 13's the one where I feel like my actions in a fight has the the most meaning - positive and negative status effects felt useful, there were good reasons to do more than just spam on the basic attack as fast as possible and casting cure as needed (which is honestly all I ever did or needed to do in 1-9). Acting giving half a crap about all my abilities, especially the buffs/debuffs, as a really refreshing change of pace. It was less about micromanaging ever single action and more about controlling the flow and pace of the fight, which I found extreme satisfying.

Story wise - well it depends on how well you're able to connect with the characters, since it's far more about them than it is some grandiose overarching plot, but I can sort of understand that not really being everyone's thing. Especially since not all of them are designed to be likeable by everyone, but I always thought it was kind of neat to see how the characters I didn't care much for made the ones I did like behave. I'm pretty comfortable saying that the end of Chapter 8 was probably my favorite point in the entire series. There's a lot of stuff to like in the game for those of us that like watching characters interact with one another more than we care about defeating the next Ultimate Evil Overload.

[Mushy]

Seriously, who wants a new final fantasy EVERY year? THEY USE ROMAN NUMERALS FOR CHRISTS SAKE, and its already at XIV. 3-6 years is too long sure, but 3-4 years should be fine. It makes the release a big deal, and you know you are getting a Triple A title. The name already feels over saturated with all the spin offs. They should be making NEW IPs.

[Betelgeuzah]

Story wise - well it depends on how well you're able to connect with the characters, since it's far more about them than it is some grandiose overarching plot, but I can sort of understand that not really being everyone's thing. Especially since not all of them are designed to be likeable by everyone, but I always thought it was kind of neat to see how the characters I didn't care much for made the ones I did like behave. I'm pretty comfortable saying that the end of Chapter 8 was probably my favorite point in the entire series. There's a lot of stuff to like in the game for those of us that like watching characters interact with one another more than we care about defeating the next Ultimate Evil Overload.

Toriyama is not a good storyteller, and the directing was not stellar half the time (you had to make use of the datalog to figure out some of the story bits that were not told via the cutscenes). Even then it is weird to compare the story with games where directing was hardly necessary outside of CGI. The characters were bunch of blocks, there was no voice acting and usually the camera was isometric and fixed in place.

Still, from what I've seen and heard the teens of 2009 liked the story for what it was. It appealed to the demographic it was designed for, even if the "FF expert critics" in their 20's or even 30's (who seem to be the most vocal demographic) harshly criticized it. You played a game made for teens, is it a wonder that it was perhaps too simple for your tastes? I don't think so.

[AdvancedWind]

Inb4lock.
Also, there's something posted here I really agree with:

While I was a teenager, my tastes were different and the FF series' story (made for my demographic) was compelling. Naturally my tastes have changed since then, just like yours, so the FF series and especially it's story (still made for the same demographic) most likely wouldn't have the same effect on you than it did back then.

Hopefully needless to say, the now-pre/teens enjoy playing FFXIII for its story, while the grumpy old men that played the previous entries are not as compelled by it yet still cling to the franchise anyway.

As much as I agree this is true, specially the bolded part, I also think that all of "us grumpy old men" should also know when to quit instead of spoiling the new generation's fun and complain about every single new thing SE does nowadays.

If there's something I really hate about the FF fanbase is that trying to actually discuss the series quickly devolves into a discussion about which game was the 'last good Final Fantasy' and other such nonsense. People cling too much to the "old days" instead of either embracing the new era or just plainly quit it and let the new fans enjoy their games.

We all should learn to move on instead of being the grumpy old guy declaring the death of the series on each and every new iteration of it. Specially since, as it has been mentioned already, "we" aren't the target demographic anyways.

[Icecylee]

They definitely could have done a better job with the game and entirely too much of the story was left out, yes. I'm certainly not going to argue that. I'm just saying for what we got, it wasn't nearly as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. It's not like there've been many FFs that were actually fully completed before they had to get shipped out anyways. >_>

I will argue there were at least a few of us in our mid twenties that did enjoy it, though. On the other hand the point you were making does have some merit, however I wouldn't say the series hasn't been trying to grow up little by little and doesn't still have some appeal to it's older fan base (even if they do get kind of silly with their nostalgia sometimes, but then again that's something SE feeds into with constant remakes of the earlier games in the series.)

[OMEGA_HACK]

While I respect the early games I believe that nostalgia plays a very big role in the "over-hyping" and "grandeur" attitude that grows with them.

Honestly, look at VII for example, most everyone will say its one of the best, if not the best. I challenge you to go back and play that game, remove yourself from EVERYTHING you thought about it prior to this replaying of it. Notice it chalk full of VERY bad translations, overly obvious arc-type characters with absolutely no growth to them (mind you some of the characters in XIII grew in a sense they were not stoic character personalities...actually they all matured, differently from each other though). Glitches galore, game break abilities that made the game pathetically easy to beat (hell in VII you could kill the final boss, hell any boss, in one move if you set up your character correctly).

From a completely critical side of viewing all the FF titles I will have to say without a doubt that in terms of character development X had the most flushed out and growing characters (as a whole) with XIII and ?VI? following behind it. (If my memory doesn't lie to me VI had good character growth, but I would need to replay it as its one of the few I haven't replayed recently due to the CD being damaged and not being able to find a good copy T_T )

[Picoman]

So...
FFXIII-2 (2012)
FFvsXIII (2013)
FFXIII-3 (2014)
FFXV (2015) (PS4)
how about that?

[OMEGA_HACK]

You missed FFXHD...

FFXIII-2
FFXHD
FFvsXIII
FFType0
FFXV
oh and Tomb Raider!