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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.
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.
but we already do...ffVI! ;)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.