Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
Final Fantasy games should never be designed with a sequel in mind.

Also: Jumping. This would actually satisfy me when it comes to interactive environments - if you could jump up onto boxes and so forth, that would be half the battle when it comes to being able to do more.
I agree with the first point so strongly I can't express it sufficiently in one sentence.

I know it has gone completely out of vogue, but I really liked the traditional pre-rendered background/omniscient camera (or whatever that camera angle is called) compared to the now standard fully rendered/third person.

I remember playing Tales of Legendia for the PS2 (fully rendered game) , which I would say is definitely not to be held up as an example of high quality terrain and character models. However, despite the fact that all the areas were fully rendered it had a traditional camera. And all I was thinking as I was running through the games largely uninspired dungeons was how good the game looked. There was nothing on the field screen. Another example is WoW, in which I can't understate how amazed I always am at how much better the game looks if I hide the UI. (Impossible to play, but looks several times more impressive.)

Whenever I play a 'modern' camera styled game I am always completely underwhelmed by the scenery. I blame this on the other stuff cluttering up the field screen. The mini-map is the worst of all. In FFXII I probably spent more time looking at the mini-map than the actual map. Way to waste the developers months/years of efforts modeling terrain textures when I miss half of them because I navigate with the mini-map.