Your final Final Fantasy

[Flying Arrow]

Don't mince words, Wolf - what do you really think?

I quite like your answer, though. As you said, XII really is a guest entry in the series, especially now that XIII has left its stain. XII is also probably the only SE-developed game in the last, oh, decade, that meets the quality set by their SNES and PS1 efforts. Moreover, XII captures perfectly the adventurous spirit of Final Fantasy for the post-PS1 generation. Forget the hugely different battle system or the bland-ish plot, XII's grandeur is what the series should have been when the series made the leap to new technology.

But the thing is, I can forgive X. It was ill-conceived, but it was only a stumbling block into the new generation. It didn't really work out, but it's hard to get angry about it, I think. But I do find your observation on X's reputation in the shadow of XIII interesting. See, I originally looked at X the way I look at VIII - a series of badly-designed elements that probably could have worked out with enough tweaking. Such is the price of creativity and experimentation, right? VIII, I think, is a pretty good game despite its numerous flaws, and I even admire old Squaresoft for attempting such a radical design shift after the ludicrously successful VII. They could have kept going with nearly-identical clones of VII (see: Fallout: New Vegas) but they didn't.

XIII is where things get hairy, though, and where my understanding of Square (or whatever is left of it) ends. XIII is nine years older than X. Nine. That means, there's been more time between the logical evolutionary steps in the series (XII being an anomaly, remember) than there was between the releases of IV and IX - the meat of the series, essentially. Final Fantasy is smurfing old, man. I find it embarrassing that XIII should even exist at this point. Imagine if IX was a basic 2D JRPG a la FFIV? It was an homage, and that's it. It put its own twist on things instead of outright aping its inspirations. In a way, it capped off a decade-long burst of RPG creativity by Square. Now, here we sit with XIII, a game which had an astronomical budget and a half-decade development time, and all that we get is, battle system not-withstanding, a knock-off of a dated and poorly-conceived first generation PS2 RPG. In my opinion, the worst thing that Square could have done was put single-player numbered FFs on hold for as long as it did. Ignoring arguments of X's quality, without a quick response or evolution of X in the same way that each game had been a response or evolution to its immediate predecessor (entries had been almost annual at this point), the series effectively stopped.

My point, I guess, is that the unique point in time during which Final Fantasy was leading the pack (the mid to late-90s) is long over. The franchise, at this juncture, is not just obsolete and stale, but kind of an attempt at a revival of a chunk of time in which the original series existed. (I guess this explains the incessant remakes and teasers of remakes.) The revival of single player FFs with XII is really the beginning of a new series, I think. A new take on what was done in the last decade. FF couldn't last forever, and it probably would have been best if the creators recognized this and bookended it properly (although this is seemingly what IX tried to be, which is much to its credit) instead of letting it continue to rear its head from time to time and blather its way into oblivion like a regretful, drunken old fart who spends his time reminiscing to people who don't give a smurf.

Moving on, however. I'm still interested in seeing answers to my original question. As a student and lover of literature, one thing I'm fascinated by is responses to works of fiction by different generations over time, and how once-revered things can fall out of favor while previously under-appreciated stuff can suddenly strike a chord after a while and become celebrated. I know this thread is probably reading pretty silly and hoighty-toighty to a lot of posters, but I still want to know what everyone's hindsight end to the series is, or how they think any of it fits together coherently. On that note, the more nostalgia-laden the answer, the better!

Keep 'em coming!