I say we send Realm back to the past with old and very old ff games aplenty. I'm sure some people won't miss him here.
This game was too much like a Final Fantasy game for my liking. Yasumi Matsuno's style is completely different to the FF series and trying to mesh the two together is kind of like Titus Andronicus being raped by The OC. Honestly, if Matsuno had just done his own thing like he did in Tactics the whole project would have been so much better.
Not that I think the game is overly bad mind you. FFXII is probably the biggest step forward that the genre has seen in years.
Definately agree on some of this, but you gotta remember that Matsuno was taken off the project and replaced as Exec Producer by the guy who directed FFII (probably why there's so many allusions to that game), plus the scenario writer was an assistant writer for FFX, alot of the graphical designers also worked on that game, one of the co-directors who replaced Matsuno has worked on almost every Final Fantasy since the first one (including game design for Tactics).
Point taken. Replace "...if Matsuno had just done things his own way..." with "...if Square had let Matsuno do things his own way instead of pissing him off until he mysteriously 'fell in' and left...".
(SPOILER)waha made you highlight