Quote Originally Posted by VeloZer0 View Post
I just miss the fanfare/theme, I don't think it makes the game significantly worse.

What makes Final Fantasy 'Final Fantasy'? The makers. Nothing else.
The design team probably looks absolutely nothing like the one that worked on the original FF. If you consider FF to be a legacy series (something that will go on for generations, with new teams picking up after old ones) then the only thing that ties it together is the continuity of stuff like chocobos, common musical elements, ect...
And yes, some stuff has been added after the series progresses. As a matter of fact, I don't have any objection to new traditions being established as of now. What I do have a problem is that the old traditions (the only things that really mark a game as a 'final fantasy') are seen as things to be put in out of convenience. If that is the logic then they should make the game the best they can, and decide after if they should call it an FF title.
When I play a numbered FF title I like to feel like I am playing the thirteenth installment in the franchise, not some JRPG they decided to slap the FF label on to sell more copies.

That wasn't very coherent except the last sentence, so I'll try to do better after you rip it apart.
When I say "The makers" I mean the company, not the individuals.

In all honesty, I can't for the life of me imagine how you would consider FFXII to be a Final Fantasy game. I imagine that fans of FFI through FFVI would have been pretty stunned when they found out that anyone can use white magic from the start of the game through to the end of it in FFVII. Old traditions may not be kept in every game. In every major Final Fantasy since the very beginning, things have been thrown out and things have been thrown in.

There are a buttload of previous FF's, FFXI and FFXII being "the big one" of note to me, that were far less "feeling like Final Fantasy" than FFXIII was to me. I still feel like it's a Final Fantasy game for all of the above despite that, though. There is more to a game than a victory tune. A massive amount. I like to know that I can cast Fira and Firaga. I like to know that I can ride a chocobo. I like to know that at some point, there will be a large round enemy ready to self destruct in my face. I like to know that I will enter battles at random when walking over certain areas. I like to know that when I do enter a battle, that it will be in ATB style. I like traversable world maps. I like the victory fanfare used in most of the FF's, too.

A large number of these things are not in every FF. But a lot of them are. So I consider each FF to be a variation, and I accept that composers will change as will the music. As Lightening also pointed out, the tune wouldn't have felt "in character" with the rest of the game. It doesn't mean it's not a Final Fantasy title, but it does mean that it's of a different style, a style that I personally welcomed as a movement away from that of X and XII, which I felt weren't up to scratch like this one is.

There is not, and probably never will be, any major common theme between all of the Final Fantasy games. FFI and FFVII were so far apart in style that it's insane. FFVII and FFXII likewise. Hell, even FFXII and FFXIII are so incredibly different from each other that I'd consider most RPG's in this world to be closer to one or the other than either of them are to each other. But they're both undoubtedly FF games.

Is it named to push copies? Yes. Absolutely. But you know that you're going to be dealing with a game that will have more than a few things in common with the rest of the game. They could call every FF game something different, but they don't. Likewise, a lot of other games out there that have "4" or "IV" after the title will have little to do with the original title in their series. Final Fantasy has never, ever been a series of games linked intrinsically to each other. Just a series of games made with a title that they know is going to allow it to sell well. Duh, of course that's the case.