Does ff series falling?

[Lain]

Lots of people says that ff is falling. The newest ff aren't as good as older parts. Story isn't so involve and climat is more and more weaker. Almost evryone like the most either ff7 or ff8, not many people think 9 or 10 or 10-2 are better (I don't know how with ff11 cause I'm from Europe). What do you thinking? Does ff series falling?

[Mo-Nercy]

If you asked around, you'd find a lot of varying opinions. Although there is a general feeling that 6 and 7 are more liked than the others, there are still a lot of people like me who like those that have been deemed the "lesser" FFs like FF8.

I'm pretty sure Square is aware that the FF series can't last forever. Think about it, in recent years, Square has been trying to expand upon it's target market and increase sales by:
- going back to Nintendo
- leeching FF7 for all it's worth (Advent Children, Before Crisis etc.)
- merging with Enix
etc.

It is difficult to tell when it'll die. In my case, I think I've still got a few good years left for a few more installments of Final Fantasy.

[Polaris]

Well They're ahviong a little probelms with the imagination but it will recorver it soon! FF series can and will last forever!

[Chris]

Hmm...this is a tough question.
I've played some of the more recent FF games like FFX and FFX-2 and they're not as good as some of the previous ones.
In my opinion the best FF period range from V-VII, simply because of their unique characters, mind blowing music and impeccable storylines.

I thank god everyday that I own them :)
To this day, I still haven't played a game that can match the likes of Final Fantas V, VI and Final Fantasy VII.

Let's just be grateful for the games we've been giving
When bad times are rollin' through...we can always go back to FFVII.

[escobert]

I agree with the above post.

[aeris2001x2]

they can survive one bad ff game. ffII was awful, yet they came back and soon delivered ffVI and ffVII. ffVIII was widely hated (unjustly), yet they came back with ffIX and ffX. and ffXII will bring ff back up after the crap of ffX-2.

* NOTICE how this is a very unique opinion? there are so many opinions, ffVIII loved/ffVIII hated, ff declining/ff getting better etc it just comes down 2 personal taste. its not falling...its just CHANGING.

[Trumpet Thief]

chaos: I love noth the new and the old really...

Rubedo: But I do think that Square's idea's are getting a little rusty...

[Xander]

No, I don't think they are falling, or getting worse or whatever. They are bringing in new ideas and stuff, but I think that can only be a good thing, and personally I throughly enjoyed FFX and X-2.

[Demerwen Owns]

Yes it is, for example FF1-6 were widely praised by hardcore gamers, while the new interactive movie ff7+ types only attracted the attention of our generations surplus of ADD freaks.

[aeris2001x2]

so your saying that EVERYONE who likes FF past VI is an ADD freak? how dis-illusioned u r.

ppl who like ff after VI like it becauses its GOOD. no other reason. that is what dertimines if i like a game.

and its a silly point anyway cause ffVI is definitly an epic interactive movie as much as the ones after it are.

[DJZen]

I'm going to say what I've always said. I'm coming from the angle of having been really into FF before FFVII came out. This means when someone says "the series isn't as good as it used to be" I think of FF I-IV. When FFVII came out, I vivdly remember the frustration of FF fans (I'm not gonna lie, a LOT of them also loved it, but there were definitely those that didn't like it), and it was declared several times that Square in general wasn't as good as it used to be, and the FF series was going to end. In fact, it was said quite often that Square had betrayed their fan base, and was going to completely collapse. That this was the END of Square. Since that time, we've had 4 more installments of the main series, 4 spinoff series games, and an expansion pack. Upcoming we have another main series game and another expansion, and that's just in the forseeable future for the US alone. We've also had the re-releases of FFI, II, IV, V and VI. Mind you this is only taking the Final Fantasy series into consideration. They've also had their hands full with Bushido Blade, Ehrgeiz, Brave Fencer Musashi, Vagrant Story, Xenogears, Einhander, Parasite Eve, SaGa, and tons of other games I'm not remembering off the top of my head. If you think this is the downfall of Square, I say let them fall. They seem to make good games while in downfall.

[Demerwen Owns]

There's nothing good about the new FF's. All previous ones had some sort of challenge factor to them while FF7+ were made so that a retarded monkey could easily beat the game by pressing the correct sequence of buttons.

FF1- If you didn't spend at least a bit of time leveling before the Marsh cave, chances are you're gonna die over and over. Same with Ice cave. Also, if you didn't pick a fighter, the challenge rating increases exponentially.

FF2- One of the most challenging FF's, you can walk thru a dungeon without problems and get knocked off your ass by the boss (thinking Ice Cave) also, you have to build your characters properly in order to ensure their survival.

FF3/5- If you pick a bad combination of classes, you're gonna lose until you build up good ones.

FF4- No challenge in bastardized easytype, hardtype requires MANY outside the box strategies such as using WALL on Asura, Slow on Evilwall, WALL for bahamuts megaflare, etc. Very well implemented, imo.

FF6- This is when FF started degenerating into an interactive movie, I can't recall a single point in this game when leveling/stat-building is REQUIRED.

FF7+ - You're given the tools you need when you need them to surpass any difficulty, no ingenuity or outside the box thinking is needed. At this point, Square seems to have deviated from making story-based games for the involved gamer, to making aesthetic games for the casual, fanboy gamer. (LIEK OMG TIDUS SI SOOO SEXAI!!!!111oneoneoneshfiftyfive)

Back in my day you spent at least two hours leveling in between each event, and that was if you didnt die and lose half your gold and get sent back to that bastard king who was all like "Thou art dead so I shalt reviveth thou for half thine riches even though thou art saving my kingdom from an abyss of peril".

[aeris2001x2]

so the only reason there crap is difficulty level? just because ff1-5 are hard and after that they r alot easier, does not mean the new ones suck. that is such a lame reason. and even then these easy ff games r not that easy enough for a retarded monkey 2 beat, except maybe ffX-2 since its button bashing nonsense.

i judge a game on character development, plot, music, battle systerm etc...IMPORTANT STUFF...

and even then i,m not sure since before ffVII they only had 3 super bosses.Warmech sucked. Omega and Shinryu from V are very hard but there has been only 3.

these new easy ff games make up 4 it with super boss challenges. plus ffX has the 5 hardest super bosses in ff history, including that little guy in my sig. challenge is still very much in ff. Penance was well harder then anything ffI-V had to offer.

[Chris]

I agree with Aeris. Just because pre-FFVII games were alot harder and slighty more difficult than Final Fantasy VII, doesn't automatically makes the post FFVI games any less challenging. You have to understand that the word "difficult" can be sought in many different perspectives, for example I found FFVII to be alot more difficlut than VI when it comes to the story. In FFVI you pretty much understood everything, leaving no speculations at the end, while FVII had such a great and complex plot, that it left one wondering what really happened. My point is that you can't base a game on its difficult level, as the word "difficult" can be quite deceiving ;)

[PhoenixAsh]

Plus let's face it, levelling up isn't actually HARD it's just time consuming. "Oh no I've just learned something new and need to move on to find out the next part of this exciting story, wait first lets do some 'challenging' walking round in circles pressing attack repeatedly for a couple of hours."
FFVII was easy when you knew how to play it, so was VIII, that's because they took knowledge of the game to be really good at them. Sure they weren't exactly that hard first time through, but without knowing a few tricks they weren't painfully easy if you didn't want to spend ages wandering around levelling or sitting watching summon animations. Then of course they had the element that if you were new to FF or not very good you could just take longer by doing all that and still get through the game without breaking the controller in half.

I do think IX and X were a step down from earlier FFs, but thats just my opinion. Actually X was an interactive movie with annoying characters and mini-games that were designed purely as an experiment in what people will put up with to complete a game, but that's not the point.

[aeris2001x2]

lol, well it seems they must put up with alot, considering the stuiped number of mini games in ffX-2 :p

The only thing i find hard about ff games is super bosses and beating the game without training to a high level. i dont play ff for challenges...i play it for characters and story.

[Demerwen Owns]

What I'm trying to get across here is that if Square didn't waste so much disc memory on graphics we would have a truly epic 8/16 bit RPG by now.

[aeris2001x2]

but we already do...ffVI! ;)

[Demerwen Owns]

FFVI was good but SNES carts could only hold about 4MB of data during their peak just before N64 came out, FF4 was only 1MB in size. Now imagine using the potential of the PS2 or Gamecube now, each disc holding hundreds of MBs and even GBs, most of which is diverted towards maintaining some useless PoS utility like "Streaming Media Real Audio Shadow Mesh Blending" or some other utterly inane crap like that which adjusts your gamma by 2 points when you enter dimly lit zones. I for one would rather they use a relatively simple, sprite-based platform and expand on the length and depth of the actual game by veritably epic proportions, considering they have one thousand times their former limit.

[PhoenixAsh]

Okay that's really not like your initial point at all, but anyway... Yes possibly games would be longer and bigger but that's just like saying let's focus completely on graphics and have the game really short and unfun, which yes to a large extent they did with X, but thats about the only one (and I'm really not a IX fan so that's saying quite a bit).
Having the graphics improve helps the storytelling, it allows more complex emotions to be expressed that can't be done with words. It allows the designer to make the gamer have a lot more of their own emotions to surroundings aswell, you can enter a town and think wow this is pretty, or wow this is huge, or man this is a dump, and actually get a feel for the world.
The graphics are also a tool to make everything feel more real so you can immerse yourself into the game. Now I'm happy enough with low quality graphics, and they produce a certain style of game, and whilst I do not suggest X is the way to go, I don't think graphics should be thrown away for the sake of making a thousand hour long game.

[Chris]

I'd have to say that I was just as invovled in FFV as I was in FFIX, despite of FFV respective graphics. I don't need cutting-edge graphics to feel for the characters, not at all...not at all.

[Del Murder]

Perhaps it is not Square that is changing, it's us. As we get older we won't like some of the same things we used to. I found X and X-2 fun games, but not nearly as magical as IV, VI, VII. Same with V and IX, ones that I found quite enjoyable and some of the best in the series, but since I played them for the first time much later than the other three I was not able to get that epic feel from them. There are plenty of kids who will tell you FFX is the best thing since sliced bread. This is a business for a young generation and we all aren't young forever.

[Giga Guess]

Maybe I've just been brainwashed by Squenix, but I've touroughly enjoyed all of 'em (Except FFXI, but that's just because it's too damn EXPENSIVE to buy, let alone play extensively. Diablo had the right idea. Make the multiplayer server free! Then your demand will increase at least). Everyone calls down FFX-2 because it's shallow, but I found it refreshing after FFX's super dire overtone. And I guess I was kind of attracted to the cheese factor.And as for FF7 on being less enjoyable because ytou're missing out on hours of levelling up, I enjoyed 'em more because of it. I meanI play a game because I wanna progress. A challenge is great, but once I spend ages levelling up, I become more and more prone to just say :love::love::love::love: it. But then maybe I'm just defeatist, but I tend to get frustrated. And these new games compensate for this difficulty void with uber bosses, which IMO work for me. Just my opinion.

[Rye]

I think it's because Square is changing. Some people say that Square is completely about graphics now and are repeating storylines with a little bit of change to them.

In my opinion, the older stuff (and by older stuff I mean like FFVII and FFVIII because I haven't played any thing before FFVII, besides the new FF1 and FF2.) is good and FFX is good. I didn't like FFX-2 all that much, but it's still good.