Has ff gone down hill since Square Enix

[Flying Arrow]

It's not really FF going downhill so much as it is that SE has been tumbling down a mudslide since the early 2000s.

[Loony BoB]

I hope they don't end the series, as to me that would mean they would finish off with a lot of things which I adore about the series - not to mention that EoFF would lose out entirely.

As for a lacking in personalities since FFIX, I disagree - I think FFXIII has the most fleshed out group of characters to date. Sure, there have been individuals prior to XIII which were fleshed out very well, but as a group of six characters? FFXIII is awesome. I loved it for that so much - it made the game ten times better than it already was for me.

I do wonder what people really want, though, sometimes. I'm sure S-E wonder this a lot, too. I'm fairly confident that they want to make epics, and that's what the're known for doing over the years. For a game to be an epic, it tends to need to be released on the latest console. They can't release an old-school game on the latest console, so they have to work on good graphics. This in turn means longer development times and notably more development time being spent on the graphics than other things. This means less time on the content etc. It is a downhill thing for all games as far as I'm concerned. Sure, FPS games are as good as ever - but that's because they don't need to have masses of content. Hours of storyline is thrown out in favour of online battles. As for Western developers leaving them behind - I disagree again. Oblivion may have had a lot of things to do, but it was no better than FFXII in that area and FFXII had better characters, ones you actually could gain an opinion of. Oblivion for me was just... boring after a while. Same thing, constantly. Even Morrowind was better. So that means other developers are also going downhill. I look forward to the day that the graphics simply can't get any better, and they can start spending more time on the things that matter.

But yeah, overall, I don't think they've gone that far downhill. I enjoyed FFV, VII, VIII and XIII the most out of the series. But that doesn't mean the others are crap. The old school FF's had a good storyline but if they were never released until today they wouldn't do well.

[black orb]

>>> After FF10, everything sucked...

[ShinGundam]

>>> After FF10, everything sucked...

Take off the nostalgia goggles

[black orb]

>>> FF10 is not exactly what i´d call a "nostalgia FF game"..

[Jessweeee♪]

It's been almost a decade though!

[Bolivar]

I hope they don't end the series, as to me that would mean they would finish off with a lot of things which I adore about the series - not to mention that EoFF would lose out entirely.

As for a lacking in personalities since FFIX, I disagree - I think FFXIII has the most fleshed out group of characters to date. Sure, there have been individuals prior to XIII which were fleshed out very well, but as a group of six characters? FFXIII is awesome. I loved it for that so much - it made the game ten times better than it already was for me.

I do wonder what people really want, though, sometimes. I'm sure S-E wonder this a lot, too. I'm fairly confident that they want to make epics, and that's what the're known for doing over the years. For a game to be an epic, it tends to need to be released on the latest console. They can't release an old-school game on the latest console, so they have to work on good graphics. This in turn means longer development times and notably more development time being spent on the graphics than other things. This means less time on the content etc. It is a downhill thing for all games as far as I'm concerned. Sure, FPS games are as good as ever - but that's because they don't need to have masses of content. Hours of storyline is thrown out in favour of online battles. As for Western developers leaving them behind - I disagree again. Oblivion may have had a lot of things to do, but it was no better than FFXII in that area and FFXII had better characters, ones you actually could gain an opinion of. Oblivion for me was just... boring after a while. Same thing, constantly. Even Morrowind was better. So that means other developers are also going downhill. I look forward to the day that the graphics simply can't get any better, and they can start spending more time on the things that matter.

But yeah, overall, I don't think they've gone that far downhill. I enjoyed FFV, VII, VIII and XIII the most out of the series. But that doesn't mean the others are crap. The old school FF's had a good storyline but if they were never released until today they wouldn't do well.

Man I love this post for so many reasons, I've refrained from discussing XIII yet since i haven't beat it, but I do come across a lot of side commentary (like in Depression Moon's thread about what game to buy) and I'm surprised at what extremes people actually hate this game, not to mention the specific things they hate it for, characters being one of them. I don't want to go into crazy detail before I've beaten the game but these are some of the realest and most realized characters to ever come out of a developing studio, let alone Final Fantasy.

ANYWAY

I don't think Square has gone downhill. But the nature of their company has changed. Before the merger, and absolutely in the PSOne era, they were very much a group of artists coming up with interesting ideas and implementing them in very creative ways. There were so many different products to choose from and many of them guaranteed you a long time of enjoyment with a creative artistic expression.

But now they're a business. They need to put out x amount of FF games a year, x amount of handheld games on the DS, PSP, and mobile phones in Japan, they need to represent on the Playstation Store and XBLA in order to have a digital presence and now make sure their studios from Eidos are meeting deadlines.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? No way, there's been tons of great products coming out from there like the Dragon Quest remakes, Dissidia, the World Ends with You, DQ VIII & IX (God VIII was unbelievably amazing). And FFXIII which I think is a great game, even if it's nowhere near what the older games used to stand for.

And now 4 Heroes of Light is coming out which promises to be pretty great and may even shut up all you old school heads running your mouthes about what's happened!

In short, they've made A LOT of fun games over the last few years since the merger, but that artistic quality is gone, and there's nothing wrong with lamenting its absence.

edit: oh crap, the question is has FF gone downhill. Um, yes, arguably considerably, but XII and XIII are in no way, shape or form bad games.

[black orb]

It's been almost a decade though!

>>> Yeah, almost a decade of mediocre FF games..

I just hope they find a super genius like Sakaguchi soon enough or else the FF games will still suck no matter what..

[Wolf Kanno]

I agree with two different comments made on this thread. The first by VeloZer0 about the idea that the genre of JRPGs is what's truly been weakening in the last decade as many top tier franchises have either disappeared or their quality has diminished significantly. I'm still waiting for a real JRPG experience on the current generation of consoles and I'm feeling a weird sense of irony that I might finally experience it on the Wii of all consoles. Don't get me wrong, there have been some great JRPGs in the last decade but it feels like they are very few and far between. What I'm really seeing a lot of is melding of JRPGs with other genres creating something I really can't say is a JRPG but something else entirely.

To correlate this to SE, I feel I can safely say that SE no longer leads the genre, of anything I feel its trying to find a place for itself cause it is no longer the company that creates games that others follow and is quickly becoming irrelevant beyond the weight of their past efforts. XII was probably the last game that I felt took serious strides to add elements to the genre of JRPGs but with XIII, I feel SE has completely walked backwards and even into a completely different direction that only satisfies a small group of the fanbase. From a game design standpoint, the game is at such a level of reductionism that many reviewers jokingly said it wasn't a real RPG anymore and many angry fans have taken that joke as a serious question about the title.

The other comment I agree on is Bolivar's in concern that I felt 20 years ago and up until 10 years ago, the company was more of a collection of artist trying to create fun games and now has become more of a business. Like Bolivar, I agree its not a terrible change in terms of quantity of content but for me, the lack of artistic direction has made the quality of said quantity, a very mixed bag. I could probably list 4 games SE and Squaresoft have released in the last 10 years that are on par with the quality of content Squaresoft was producing in the 90s. That to me has been a disturbing trend.

Granted they have produced many good games but many of them are mix bags, the content is uneven for me. Many titles like TA2, Dissidia, and the KH2 are excellent in terms of gameplay but their story and characters are flat if not downright awful. I feel only the most hardened and jaded of VII fans appreciate the Compilation and fear for the eventual remake as its going to require the game to be rewritten to make sense with the Compilation. While The After Years is not bad in any significant way, I can't shake the nagging logic in my head that keeps telling me this game isn't necessary. I don't want this sequel cause its unnecessary for its artistic integrity and I was perfectly fine with how the game resolved itself. Its like these major sequels to 20 year old movies, just let sleeping dogs lie; don't even get me started on Revnant Wings. I've witnessed the death of one franchise I love (Mana) and watched the neglect and misguided restart of another (Front Mission) and all this as I watch the main FF series quickly transformed from a series that defined a generation and a genre of gaming, into a brand name whose title really shouldn't grace half the games its slapped onto.

In terms of FF, I feel that all the console games suffer the same problem, prioritizing one element over the others. X and XIII favored story over gameplay and world design (not surprising since its mostly the same team) and XII favored the direct opposite. The neglected elements are adequate at best but its hard not to see how they all come short to their true potential. I've lamented long on my issues with X so I'll save everyone's sanity.

In the case of XII, I feel it was a great game and one that really created a standard for future titles in terms of scale and world building, and I actually loved its story and its characters because it lacked the over the top melodrama that people mistake for real human interaction and emotion. The story is not as heavy handed as most of Matsuno's previous titles and sadly that's what was really missing from the game. XII is in my mind the best game SE had released in six years at that point with the rest either faltering badly or downright being terrible. Still, its hard not to shake the fact the game feels like a watered down Matsuno title. His usual depth and heavy handed philosophy removed for the sake of the targeted FF demographic who SE feels would not appreciate a more mature story that makes the player think. I had that theory but other laugh it off but Kitase proved me right. He says SE writes FF for teens to early 20 somethings, and that SE purposely makes choices not to lose the youngest demographic. Which to me sounds silly cause its us old farts that actually have disposable money.

In the case of XIII, from a game design standpoint, the title is absolutely terrible as it took everything X did wrong and made it even worse as it was pushed to an extreme. There is really no value in the gameplay beyond some silly visual appeal of watching the game do cool for itself while you sit there and babysit the A.I. you can barely control. In fact the combat system is pretty much a dumbed down and streamlined version of the Gambit system that calls on the player to control A.I. script sets as opposed to crafting an A.I. plan that works best for you. Despite that, I felt the combat is actually the best part of the game.

No, I don't like the cast and I feel that most of them are over dramatic caricatures at best. Sazh is probably the only major exception in the story but everyone else pretty much sticks to one personality trait until the middle of the game when they get their magic epiphany and change to a new one that is a slight variation of the old one with one exception. After these epiphanies the cast become mostly a non-entity while the games plot takes center stage which was mostly ignored from the get go and introduces a villain that was not only predictable but poorly fleshed out and unable to escape being a generic evil. The non playable characters are even more poorly utilized and I would have to say that (SPOILER)Cid joins Judge Drace and other interesting FF characters who are so badly used in the story you have to wonder why they were even there to begin with if the writers weren't going to use them.

The pacing of the story is off, forcing the player to deal with 4-6 hours of tedious exposition that could fit onto a note card and does. only to have the main conflict emerge and have to sit through all the worst traits of each of the characters increases ten fold until the 20 hour mark (Chapter 7 and 8) when it all comes together to actually make the player feel like it wasn't all a waste but you know what? It is. Especially when that character growth disappears after wards and the stories terrible plot takes over, which never bothers to take real chances and add more depth to the great character growth we saw a few chapters earlier and is not only plagued with some of the worst writing but terrible execution. The games Datalog tells the story better than the cutscenes and eventually starts giving you important information that wasn't even discussed only so the game can turn around and give you some terrible plot twists. The games plot starts off rocky and eventually pays off after a heavy toll only to go crashing down afterwards. It has two Deus ex Machinas at the end purely cause the writer wanted a specific kind of ending (which most players will see coming) but obviously wrote himself into a corner.

XIII could have gone into so many different directions in its story and many times even gives the player the impression its going that route but always steers away from it and instead chooses to go towards the lowest common denominator of fan expectations. It trades a major story on social commentary about propaganda and group mentality and trades it in for a battle against a menacing evil. A theme of dealing with eventual death and coming to terms with it is instead traded with all the characters sticking to some other personal grudge or issue and mostly ignoring the situation only to cop out later by saying their grudge was just there way of coming to terms and once they realize that, they are all cool with it and its never really brought up again after only taking two minutes to say that cause them fretting over their own issues was suppose to be symbolic when it was really just pretentious. The design of the game makes the player completely apathetic to the characters cause, why should we save Cocoon? The game spends no time to allow the player to grow attached to the world because the world never goes beyond the six characters. I constantly had to ask myself why I gave a damn about what the characters wanted because there goals had no impact for me cause of the games glaring disconnect with the player.

There is almost no value whatsoever in XIII and yes, it is probably the worst game in the series in term of overall bad design and execution. FFI might be boring compared to today's standards but it was solidly design and is more fun because it asks more from the player and doesn't try to be more than it is. XIII is nothing more than the director masturbating to how good he thinks he is by writing a terribly pretentious story with the skill of a high school student and then proceeds to lobotomize the game design so he can force the player to focus on his awful story and then proceeds to throw a hissy fit when people complain they don't like it.

Yes, the FF series has gone down hill but I blame it on the mismanagement of talent, many of the important players are either quitting or working in positions or projects outside of the main series. Daisuke Watanabe is probably one of the best writers working for SE as well as many of the writers for the handheld entries in the KH series and none of them have been tapped to write an FF title? The company lacks a true visionary and while Nomura has been trying to step up to the cause he rubs people the wrong way and tends to put flash over substance though recent years have shown he may be changing his way. Despite that Nomura has already said Versus will be the last FF he will be working on extensively, hell I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to finish KH in the next few years and quit SE to form his own company. Time will tell but I definetly feel the the FF series has truly reached the bottom at this point.

[Del Murder]

I'm not really sure I got your point, WK. Could you please elaborate?

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm sorry Del, I was in a hurry and had to give you the Reader's Digest version of this speech, but don't worry, my book on the topic ad hand will be covered in the novel version titled "Long and Pointless Ramblings by a Jaded Game Snob Vol 3" only $19.95 and will be available in paperback in time for the holidays.

So I don't come off as a total downer. I feel the FF series and the franchise its become has started to go down hill, mostly because it is becoming a franchise... but SE is not completely out of it. I feel SE has been doing rather well with KH even if KH2 was awful, but 358/2 and Birth By Sleep are both excellent titles even as stand alone games. It is also nice to see SE becoming more aggressive about releasing Dragon Quest out here and while I was not nearly as impressed with VIII as Bolivar, I do feel the series as a whole deserves more love outside of Japan.

My issues stem from SE being really flip flop about titles. TA2 and Dissidia are both really great games with hours of customization and several different ways to approach them but they both fall flat in terms of story. Half of Crisis Core is a well written story and he other half is complete . and you have to deal with both, like watching a movie with a great plot being portrayed by terrible actors. SE has been doing much to promote their new licenses acquired from Eidos and also build up DQ but its sad to see how they utterly bungled the marketing for other series like Mana, Front Mission, and Saga. All three might have stood a chance if SE gave them half the attention they give FF, KH, and DQ. They have talent within the company but most are working on KH or small side projects.

I'd be more excited for Versus XIII if it was not written by Nojima but I have to say Nomura has changed my mind about him through his interviews. He really comes across as one of the few directors at SE who actually understands what a game should be. The difference between his discussions about Versus and Toriyama's on XIII is that for four years Toriyama lamented on the world and the plot and the characters and how everything was going to look so cool when you saw it in motion but never spoke of gameplay until the game was nearly out. In contrast, we know more about Versus' game design and what Nomura is trying for than we know about the plot and characters which hasn't really been expanded on since the very first trailer was released. I feel this comparison is a decent indicator of where their priorities are/were on their projects.

I feel SE still makes great games but they are few and far between and the majority can either be passed or rented for minor enjoyment. They have some good candidates to make great games again but as long as Wada keeps trying to find ways to stifle the creativity by figuring out a way to market the games in a way that makes more money and Kitase is there to make sure the development teams stick to making interactive movies over actual games then SE will stay in decline.

[Bolivar]

I'm not really sure I got your point, WK. Could you please elaborate?

LOLWTF Post of the mothersmurfing year!!!

Not to say I don't take WK's points seriously, I read the whole post and I (kinda) agree with most of it.

I'll post my full thoughts on XIII at a later date, but one of the main things that struck me is how ahead of its time FFXII appears in comparison. Having fully fleshed out towns with near-HD quality (actually i think there's an HD option in the menu for FFXII), filled with hundreds of citizens, many of which you can interact with, and Gran Pulse size areas you can meaningfully explore shows all the excuses Kitase and Toriyama made mean nothing. It really makes you think they hired the wrong team for the (HD) job. Not to mention the Paradigm system is so many steps down from the Gambit system and there isn't even seamless transitions to battles, you can wonder what the hell happened. In a lot of ways it actually took the worst of its PS2 brethren of X and XII yet none of the elements that countered them and made them great games in the end (although i know X's not a great game, Wolf ).

BUT I really can't bring myself to say it's a bad game. It's easy to extrapolate on the faults, but it overall it is a nice entertainment package. Hell, I wanna finish my homework so I can go back to playing it right now. While I'm shaking in restraining myself to fully dive into the prolonged, unnecessary, yet inevitable debate on why FFXIII is actually very good, I'll just say - it wasn't all bad, and much of it is forgivable on SE's part because this was their first game in an incredibly challenging generation of game consoles. While we have the potential for an FF game to really shoot for the stars, and this falls incredibly below that, I would say they made it out of this mess pretty well.

ANYWAY I can't say this is really rock bottom, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. But the company does need a massive restructuring, and arguably a President or other corporate head with a strong vision for them to lead in interactive entertainment again. And for a new, full, console game to come out these days to really restore their ethos, it would take literally years of production so it seems we're all stuck in a rough spot for the next few years. Which is why I would hope they could maybe make some handheld classics on PSP/DS/3DS until we get there to really wow us again, and even though it's a remake, I think Tactics Ogre is a great way to set that off! 8)

[kotora]

FF12's graphics are far from 'HD" dude. Not that it matters, because the whole "HD towns" thing was a ty excuse from the beginning. So is saying that it's okay for the game to suck because making games for current consoles is so incredibly hard, because it's not, and even if it was, it wouldn't explain why the storyline sucks.

[Loony BoB]

Which storyline? I enjoyed that of XII and XIII, even if they were patchy in some places the general plot was good enough for me. XII's real issue was that there was so much to do that you forgot the storyline on occasion, while in XIII it was the opposite - everything was story. Perhaps pacing is the real issue, rather than storyline. Storyline itself... that's more just some didn't like it than all didn't like it. Which can be said for a large number of Final Fantasy games.

[Bolivar]

FF12's graphics are far from 'HD" dude. Not that it matters, because the whole "HD towns" thing was a ty excuse from the beginning. So is saying that it's okay for the game to suck because making games for current consoles is so incredibly hard, because it's not, and even if it was, it wouldn't explain why the storyline sucks.

I still disagree. FFXII was incredibly detailed, I think it wouldn't have taken that much more to build such detailed environments in high def (maybe lighting or whatever would make it harder, I'm not a developer).

And I never said it's ok for a game to suck because making current gen games is hard. If you want to see games that have really crashed and burned this generation, play Damnation or Terminator: Salvation. FFXIII, whether you like the merits of its story or combat, is still a coherent and competent game that looks and runs beautifully.

As for story, I think Loony BoB summed it up nicely.