"Lost Potential"

[Pike]

Do you feel that any of the FF games really failed to live up to their potential? Like they could have been so much better, but just fizzled out for you?

Which game(s) do you feel fall under that category? What could they have done differently?

You all know my answer already It's FFXII if you didn't, could have been sooo much better IMO, I probably would've loved it with stronger characters and a different battle system

[Ayen]

I feel there are certain improvements that could have been made, but I don't know if I would say any failed to live up to their potential, with perhaps the obvious exception being FFXIII, but I'll let somebody else have that rant. As much as I love FFVIII I think it's a game that certainly could have benefited from more focus and what it wanted to be instead of trying so hard to one up Final Fantasy VII. I agree that XII could have been improved, but my problems with it are more based around the open world and all the blatant Star Wars rip offs, and I don't mean little references here and there, I'm talking about copying the cinematography of the films with the Airships. Had they played the Star Wars soundtrack over them it would have been right at home. Then near the end of the game the dungeons got so repetitive and became a chore. If the open world felt more engaging I would have enjoyed it more, but as it stands it just got in the way of the plot.

[VeloZer0]

Everything since the PS1 generation?

FF10
The best of the bunch, in all honesty if it wasn't for the subsequent entries I would probably just count it as a weaker title rather than part of the disappointing half of the series.

FF11
Argue all you want about how it is a game deserving if a numbered FF entry but it still should have been called FFOnline. I think FF Tactics is the best game in the series, and it was still correct to label it as a spin-off title.

FF12
The game to me speaks of horrible conceptual design decisions with fantastic implementation, which makes me disappointed with how good it could have been.
- Combat was exceedingly simple and easy (illustrated by the fact that a 10 line AI can beat the entire game for you easily.).
- The story took itself way to seriously for how bland and predictable it was (once again, simple story isn't bad, but it shouldn't seem like the developers think they are writing the next Game of Thrones entry).
- The character set up was weak, you couldn't see the grid to plan your characters, and it was mostly irrelevant because you just learned everything on everyone. Had they had some sort of way to limit the skills/spells you could have equipped at one time the set up aspect would have actually required some thought.

FF13
Almost the exact opposite problem of FF12, they started with some interesting concepts as delivered extremely poorly on them. If you make a game that strips out exploration to focus heavily on combat and story you better damn well make sure that you do a good job on both of those things. With some better writing and a slower and more involved battle system the linearity of the game would be working for it not against it.

FF14
See FF11.

[Vyk]

Everything since the PS1 generation

Yes ... In fact, VIII and IX fall into that for me as well. The only one that came close was probably FFXII. It had a more mature-oriented plot about politics and whatnot, with the most mature (age/personality-wise) cast since VII. It could have been a legitimately intriguing and interesting story for mature and intellectual gamers to run through. But no. Vaan and Penelo were there. Thanks to focus-testing. Hate focus groups...

[VeloZer0]

See people keep talking about FF12's mature political plot, but I personally found the thing dead simple. Just because it involved political entities doesn't really mean it was any more complicated plot wise than previous entries.

[MissH]

FFVIII started off well for me. I was excited about there being potential for a love story and Squall being a kinda messed-up character. I was looking forward to finding out about his past and what made him that way etc.

However, as time has gone on, I've gone from feeling mildy confused by the game to totally loathing it. I haven't finished it yet, but I will. Not because I want to finish it because of the story, because that bit is totally gone for me now. I wanna finish it because it'll annoy me that I got so far and didn't finish it.

I just think everything got far too confusing and just too much. Plus, there are too many areas that just make you want to kill yourself. Just tidious parts that just make you think- this could not be less enjoyable. Like bloody tonberry- I would rather feed greens to 10 billion chocobos than have to deal with the stupid tonberry malarchy again. Urgh.

[Vyk]

See people keep talking about FF12's mature political plot, but I personally found the thing dead simple. Just because it involved political entities doesn't really mean it was any more complicated plot wise than previous entries.
I'm not saying it was well done or anything. Or even very deep or complicated. I honestly have no opinion on that stuff, because I've probably never put more than 10 hours into the game. It's just the taste that I got while I did play the game. Just felt like there were more politics than your average Final Fantasy, and that's easier for most adults to swallow than some ancient evil dark that laid in rest for thousands of years is suddenly resurrected, and out of all the people on the planet, you get to be the dopey little 12 year old that somehow manages to best it. Overdone, and rarely well these days. I'll take a lame attempt at politics over cliche rehashing. Which is kinda sad, when I think about it. This is what Japan has done to me by reusing tropes they don't even know how to properly use anymore half the time x_x

[Bolivar]

Definitely Final Fantasy XII. I can't even imagine how amazing that would have been if Yatsumi Matsuno had directed it from start to finish.

What we got was pretty fantastic, though.

[Egami]

Agree with Bolivar. It would have been great if Matsuno had remained on the director's chair all the way through. But damn if XII isn't an amazing game still (one of my top three FF for sure).

On the same note, I've been feeling for some years that Ivalice could well have been Square Enix's Tamriel (Elder's Scrolls world) and Matsuno the Todd Howard of sorts in the company. I think a separate numbered series with each title taking place in a different area of Ivalice would have been amazing specially if they combined the battle system and gameplay of XII with the strategic concept of Tactics so that some grander scale battles play out like Tactics while other battles play out like XII (for example).

[Mirage]

FF13 and FF14. FF11 too, although that was a bit of a product of its time.

[Pike]

On the same note, I've been feeling for some years that Ivalice could well have been Square Enix's Tamriel (Elder's Scrolls world) and Matsuno the Todd Howard of sorts in the company. I think a separate numbered series with each title taking place in a different area of Ivalice would have been amazing specially if they combined the battle system and gameplay of XII with the strategic concept of Tactics so that some grander scale battles play out like Tactics while other battles play out like XII (for example).

I can certainly see Ivalice as being a sort of Tamriel-lite ("lite" becuase so far as I can tell it lacks the crazy space lore, weird alternate realities and heavily philosophical background of Tamriel), however I have yet to see a game that executes it well. Even the FFTA games, which I love, aren't really about Ivalice, they just happen to be set there.

FFXII probably comes the closest, but because I can't stand the FFXII gameplay I can't manage to force myself through it.

I definitely want a more fleshed-out Ivalice, preferably with a battle system that is much improved over FFXII's.

[Bolivar]

As someone who's played a ton of Ivalice games and The Elder Scrolls, I have to strongly disagree with Pike. If you've never gotten far in XII, you're not exactly at liberty to say how far the lore goes. The Advance games were not developed by the core team, they were intentionally created so as not to interfere with the canon of the main entries. While they might not deal with space or alternate dimensions, that actually forms a very small subset of TES' in-game lore and intersects with almost none of the gameplay. Philosophically, it's not even close, Ivalice absolutely destroys TES. I would say Ivalice surpasses TES to the extent they not only explore a different region in each game, they also experiment with a fundamentally different gameplay system.

You should probably give XII's combat another shot. It's the WRPG "Real Time with Pause" system but executed 100x better, with Gambits preserving all the strategy of a turn based game.

[Pike]

I actually played a lot of XII. I just didn't beat it because I didn't like the combat, and thought the game itself was boring :tongue:

I don't have a problem with the Ivalice world. I want to see it in more games.

[Madame Adequate]

I think the only Ivalice game Pike hasn't played is Vagrant Story, and admittedly that's the best Ivalice game, but it's pretty separate from the FF ones.

Also, Ivalice has better lore than TES. This is a thing someone said in Space Year Fifteen. The mind reels.

[Bolivar]

Also, Ivalice has better lore than TES. This is a thing someone said in Space Year Fifteen. The mind reels.

Excuse me? I simply pointed out that claiming Ivalice isn't "fleshed out" or philosophically lacking is a pretty indefensible position... which it is. Especially coming from someone who hasn't seen how these things were wrapped up at the end of each game.

If you're going to single me out for something I never said, you could at least provide a rationale outside of how mind-reeling it is.

[Loony BoB]

FFXII could have been more involved with the other races in particular. They had this massive multi-race world and barely touched on it, every main character bar Fran was human. Huge letdown.

FFXIII is probably the strongest candidate for not living up to potential. The concepts had potential pretty much bleeding out of the game. But then they failed to do anything 'dangerous' with the characters and that let it down a lot.

The others I feel all did what they wanted to do and were capable of doing at the time, and while I don't like some of them as much as XII/XIII, I appreciate that there are others that do and that is largely because they realised their potential in various ways.

[Del Murder]

I agree with you Pike. I feel like FFXII had a lot more potential and, even though it was fun, it could have been a lot grander. It's a shame that they didn't build on XII at all and instead went a completely different route with XIII.

[Egami]

It's a shame that they didn't build on XII at all and instead went a completely different route with XIII.

Yeah, XIII as a follow up to XII doesn't makes any sense to me. I think it was a huge misstep on SE's part and by the looks of it and how they are apparently back-pedalling on what they did with XIII, they realise it too.

[Loony BoB]

Honestly I think XIII was largely a reaction - perhaps knee-jerk - to the criticism they got from a lot of fans when XII was released. If you go back and read the threads that were around the time of XII's release, you'll find a lot of people were not happy with it (as always with an FF release), including people who criticised relatively dull characters (say what you like about XIII's characters, I feel they are far from dull), the size of the maps, the political nature of the world, the micro management required for the gambit system, things like that. You can kind of look at XIII as almost an opposite to XII, and I suspect that XV will take all the criticisms XIII received and potentially be extreme reactions to those criticisms. Personally I don't mind either but I would prefer they find that beautiful middle ground instead of jumping from one end of a spectrum to the other. What I did like is that we had a couple of sequels between XIII and XV in which SE could really gauge just what works. Unfortunately people who very much disliked XIII were never going to go out of their way to enjoy XIII-2 or LR, so it's hard to say if they'll get the feedback they required from those games, but I'm hoping they did and that XV will benefit from that.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not endorsing any of the criticisms mentioned, just stating that they existed.

[Bolivar]

There were some things in XIII that were nearly inexcusable, though, like going back to having a separate battle screen and not giving any kind of way to control your party members. It felt like it had less features than a game that was half a decade old on a previous generation of hardware.

[Loony BoB]

There was a pretty notable dislike for the loss of random battles (something I personally don't care to see the return of) at the time of FFXII, if I recall correctly, and I actually feel FFXIII does it better than most. You could argue for or against having a separate 'field' for battles, but I think that with the design of FFXIII's fields it worked decently in the end. SE were trying to find that middle ground between random battles and FFXII's MMO-like style, and I seem to recall people going on about how it was managed to avoid random battles while still allowing a battle field to be generated in a Chrono game and I believe that FFXIII ended up doing just that. In the end, I feel SE are damned if they do, damned if they don't when it comes to a lot of things and battle random battles (I-X) vs. fixed battle fields (XIII) vs. MMO-like battles (XII). I can see the merits of all three options, personally, and the downsides. I don't know which I like best, but it's probably something between FFX's style and that of FFXIII.

[VeloZer0]

Actually I though the constraint of having all your field maps be able to accommodate battles had a devastating effect on FF12's dungeon design. I was very glad to see the separate battle screen return.

It isn't so much a technical limitations as a function limitation, if you have battles one the field then you must make all field areas more or less the same dimensions for a minimum.

[Egami]

Actually I though the constraint of having all your field maps be able to accommodate battles had a devastating effect on FF12's dungeon design. I was very glad to see the separate battle screen return.

You could probably elaborate on what you are referring to but XIII had only mostly straight narrow corridors for it's dungeons and it brought back the (imo) outdated and immersion breaking separate battle screen.



It isn't so much a technical limitations as a function limitation, if you have battles one the field then you must make all field areas more or less the same dimensions for a minimum.

Again, not sure what you are referring to but I don't really see a problem with it in XII or other games that do this like Demon's / Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age or even good old Chrono Trigger.

[Fox]

XII is definitely the biggest missed potential for me. I think far more so than XIII because I think you would have had to change so much of XIII to make it great that it wouldn't be the same game any more.

XII on the other hand actually completely lived up to its promise, in my view, for about the first half of the game, but just couldn't stick the landing. If they'd focussed more on the politics, more on some of the side characters, more on freaking Judge Drace seriously​ then it would have been the best game in the series.

[Del Murder]

Honestly I think XIII was largely a reaction - perhaps knee-jerk - to the criticism they got from a lot of fans when XII was released. If you go back and read the threads that were around the time of XII's release, you'll find a lot of people were not happy with it (as always with an FF release), including people who criticised relatively dull characters (say what you like about XIII's characters, I feel they are far from dull), the size of the maps, the political nature of the world, the micro management required for the gambit system, things like that. You can kind of look at XIII as almost an opposite to XII, and I suspect that XV will take all the criticisms XIII received and potentially be extreme reactions to those criticisms. Personally I don't mind either but I would prefer they find that beautiful middle ground instead of jumping from one end of a spectrum to the other. What I did like is that we had a couple of sequels between XIII and XV in which SE could really gauge just what works. Unfortunately people who very much disliked XIII were never going to go out of their way to enjoy XIII-2 or LR, so it's hard to say if they'll get the feedback they required from those games, but I'm hoping they did and that XV will benefit from that.
Totally agreed. The shame I was referring to is that they went way too far to address fan concerns directly rather than using those complaints as guidance to making an overall polished FF experience. It's something I always tell my staff: give the customer what they actually want, not what they specifically ask for. The feedback loop at SE is archaic and devoid of critical thinking. I would even prefer the old approach of them just making the game they want to make rather than micromanaging these specific concerns. How much fan feedback was incorporated into FFs II-X? Probably close to none. Listening to fan reaction is not always a good thing.

[VeloZer0]

Actually I though the constraint of having all your field maps be able to accommodate battles had a devastating effect on FF12's dungeon design. I was very glad to see the separate battle screen return.

You could probably elaborate on what you are referring to but XIII had only mostly straight narrow corridors for it's dungeons and it brought back the (imo) outdated and immersion breaking separate battle screen.
I'm saying that having fights on the field map forces you to only make field map layouts in a certain way. If you have separate screens for battles you have the freedom to do it however you want, if that freedom is utilized well or poorly is up to the designer.

[Bolivar]

Actually I though the constraint of having all your field maps be able to accommodate battles had a devastating effect on FF12's dungeon design. I was very glad to see the separate battle screen return.

You could probably elaborate on what you are referring to but XIII had only mostly straight narrow corridors for it's dungeons and it brought back the (imo) outdated and immersion breaking separate battle screen.
I'm saying that having fights on the field map forces you to only make field map layouts in a certain way. If you have separate screens for battles you have the freedom to do it however you want, if that freedom is utilized well or poorly is up to the designer.

While it certainly influenced the way they created dungeons, calling it a "devastating effect" is a bit much. It forced their indoor spaces to be a bit on the larger side but, as Egami pointed out, I really can't say XII's dungeons look all that different from other games. If anything, it contributed to the epic sense of scale that attenuated the game's plot and themes.

[VeloZer0]

Personally I found it to lead to a situation where all the physical layouts felt exactly the same. Though I will admit that the camera plays it's role in that as well.