Has ff gone down hill since Square Enix

[Jessweeee♪]

The problem isn't simply just the lack of game content, its also the fact the story isn't that good. At least for me, I played through the Xenosaga series and I actually like Episode 2 which is designed similar to XIII in the fact its just constant rails and corridors, little customization, and very minor sidequests that don't really open up until the end of the game or usually in small windows of opportunity. The game design is terrible but I still like the game cause I like the story, even if it was the weakest in the bunch.

Yes, this is what I meant

The more a game has to offer outside of the plot, the easier it is to enjoy a game with a plot you happen to dislike. It becomes a problem when you do not like the plot and there's not much else to experience. I enjoyed FFXIII's plot, and now it is one of my favorite games. If you do not like the plot of Hotel Dusk, you stop playing. I'm not saying that this in itself means that being purely story driven is a bad thing, what I am saying is that it is simply going to appeal to fewer people.

[Flying Arrow]

The problem isn't simply just the lack of game content, its also the fact the story isn't that good.

Bingo. It's got some solid back story, but other than that it's just awful. I'd go so far as to say it's objectively terrible. That is, that one can't defend how poorly told it is (the Datalog contradicting the cutscenes is damning in and of itself) and how shallow the characters are. The entire endgame was near gibberish.

FF is an RPG and for the most part until the recent generation and part of the last console generation, RPGs have tended to have several gameplay options. Transforming FF into a visual novel with a battle system after years as an RPG was not really the best of design choices. I don't think I've ever known a genre of gaming to work better by reducing the amount of options. With the better technology that systems have, you think developers would be doing everything in there power to use it to its fullest by allowing the player to have greater options and depth of game. XIII is an incredibly underwhelming RPG in that regard, hell even FFX was able to to throw out a few new tricks and show off what the PS2 could do back in the day and that should be saying something coming from me.

This is my big issue, too. I feel as if the vast majority of JRPGs that have come out since the release of the PS2 have actually managed to make themselves feel smaller than their PS1 siblings, FF included (minus XII). XIII tried to be a "Western" game or "FPS" or whatever the excuse was - this is ridiculous. There is a huge market for big games. Oblivion, Fallout, Dragon Age, and GTA should be the competition for FF, not Uncharted and Call of Duty. My experience with RPGs is that, first and foremost, I played them for the sense of high adventure and discovery, and not simply the plot or convoluted battle mechanics. Creating a shallow gameworld with nothing else to see or do outside of what is on the screen at that moment is basically gutting an RPG.

[Jessweeee♪]

FFXIII tried to be FPS? the smurf.

[Depression Moon]

“We are aiming for a vibe while playing that is similar to the experience of an FPS style game, where the player rapidly progresses through a series of dramatic events and experiences one after the other on an imposing and atmospheric battlefield.”

[Jessweeee♪]

Oh, I see. Out of context it sounded weird.

[kotora]

Well they smurfing failed at it. Unless they had those retarded on-rails shooters in mind when they said FPS (which are probably more popular in Japan than here).

[VeloZer0]

That was my first impression when I played it. On-rails RPG. New genre

[Wolf Kanno]

On the contrary, while a number of people didn't like the plot (mostly the ending, it should be noted, rather than the entire plot) and certainly many criticised the lack of things to do in the game, the lack of typical towns, the lack of interaction... the characters were arguably the most praised aspect of the game.

I'll take the "arguably" aspect of your quote and mention how there are several dedicated "why is this character a putz?" threads in the XIII forums that still have been getting activity lately for four out of the six cast members.

Hope alone has joined the ranks of Squall, Quina, and Cloud as Love/Hate with both sides of the debate being very passionate about how they feel about him and those debates have been going on since before the game even came out. The one thing some people have agreed is that even though the character development is good, the pacing leading up to it was terrible and the focus on the characters is mostly dropped after Chapter 9 in favor of the games cringe worthy plot.

Even in reviews, I've seen the plot and cast have been heavily criticized half of the time by the reviewers. So I would not agree that the cast is common ground for agreement and consensus.

Pacing is something that was both good and bad for me in the game. It was good in how they paced the story but it would have been better if there were other things to do besides story/battle. But the way the story moved forward for me was pretty damned good. Although I suppose you could say the pacing of the supposed "tutorial" was pretty horrific.

I generally hated the games pacing, despite starting off with some action, I felt the first three Chapters dragged on and took forever to get to the bloody point. This was made more excruciating cause if you've read a short synopsis of the game, the first three chapters can be easily summarized in two paragraphs but instead expanded to several hours of mind numbing time wasters trying to masquerade as character development.

Chapter 4-6 is good for set up but once again I felt the chapters are far too long and the story and events too simple to be stretched out as long as they were. These were also the chapters that made me start to hate Vanille, Lightning, and Hope. 7 and 8 are probably the best chapters in the game but at the same time, that's not saying much cause the previous six chapters I felt were not so great and half of the content was unnecessary for both plot and character development, just characters rambling on about the same stuff from a previous chapter like a damn broken record. The plot begins and dies in Chapter 9 with a terrible plot twist and then the rest of the games story was mostly a waste of time that added nothing for the characters, world, or story.

I'm not even going into the games terrible gameplay pacing which was frankly much worse than the story aspect.

XIII's characters were no more cliché than any of the previous FF's. The only reason they might feel cliché on some level is if someone were to point out that "but we've already seen this before". But the same could be said for characters in every recent FF. That's because of course you've seen them before. Every character can be boxed up into a personality type these days. Tough male, tough female, wussy male, wussy female, intellectual male, intellectual female, etc. So long as there are personalities, they will to some extent be considered cliché by someone who has played a large number of games because by that point you've seen so many characters that it's easy to pigeon-hole them.

However, I actually thought XIII's characters broke the mold pretty well. They added far more male characteristics to both Lightning and Fang than they did to any of the males. The characters developed very well, and for the most part were multi-layered, which for me made them, well, much more believable I suppose. They seemed to react to their situation far more realistically than any group of characters had before.

I agree that 99% of all game characters are cliche and because of that its easy to pigeon hole them, but what I would like to point out is that there is a difference between cliche and archetype when I use the words. Archetypes are the mold that all game characters borrow from, the "tough guy, wussy guy" as you put it. They are stock traits created to give a sense of familiarity but the most important thing about them is they are starting points for an author to use and expand upon so he can make the archetypes into more individual beings. The point being that they are suppose to grow beyond the archetype.

A cliche, in the sense of how I use the word to describe characters. word nazi tangent, feel free to skip(Before the language nazi's drop in and give me the correct Webster definition of Cliche I know what is actually means but its a nice easy word with a good dose of negativity imbued into that its easier to change the meaning of the word rather than to look up a more colorful and accurate word to describe, so smurf you and your Dictionary, I don't give a smurf and this is how language changes in human history so get off you high horse and shut the smurf up) is a character that never moves beyond that archetype and can be interchangeable with anyone who follows said archetype. They lack good development and never become anything more than started. I don't mind archetypes, I can't really stand cliches, because they make the story very predictable and they simply regurgitate what you've already known and experienced.

Vanille starts the game as the kooky girl with a dark secret just like Yuffie and Rikku and she ends the game like that. She never stops in the story and realizes that maybe acting like ditz is not appropriate and thus changes to show maturity, she basically acts like a nutjob, (SPOILER)reveals she caused all the problems for the rest of the party, cries a few times and then goes back to being a kooky nutjob. Its hard not feel like her "growth" is shallow at best. Especially since you could swipe her with Yuffie and Rikku and get the same result. The situations are different but the character never diverts.

Lightning is Squall with a vagina, dealing with a similar problem and sadly the extent of her growth is similar in that it involved a very awkward 180 degree turn that sorta steals the characters mojo afterwards. Lightning's revelation that she's been an angry bitch and a bad mentor to Hope, not only comes out of nowhere for her character but her motherly nature afterwards is uneasy and downright creepy. Much like Squall's rather awkward lovey-dovey feelings towards Rinoa in VIII. The only good that came of her growth afterwards is that she was nicer to Snow but looking at the anti-Snow threads I would say some fans feel that would be a negative thing. There is change but I kind feel like there really isn't much to Lightning. She shuts herself off and becomes the soldier type shutting out her sister and then later realizes she's been a bitch

I don't feel Fang really has any character growth, she's basically Paine out of her goth stage and smiles more but unlike Paine, Fang doesn't really change. she's overprotective of Vanille and she hates the l'Cie and that never really changes through the whole story, sure she says she hates Cocoon and puts up a front but I feel its way too obvious that she's putting on a front and the game proved me right. Even seeing her village a wasteland doesn't garner a real emotional response from her and her one major moment in the ending felt more like a desperate ploy to garner sympathy from the player than as a real test of character development.

Hope... well I've made my rants on Hope but I would like to point out that despite him being a rip off of another character, that's not what bothers me about him. Its the fact he's a crappy rip-off of another character that bugs me. He's overly whiny and emotional til chapter 5 and then becomes poster child of optimism. He's got the most extreme emotional changes out of the whole cast which just feels far fetched. Its like the kids being pumped up with uppers and downers between chapters and I haven't seen such a grossly improportioned display of angst since the Real World on MTV. Yes, he has the most extreme circumstances but I don't feel his reaction was accurate to his circumstances. Maybe its just 5 wasted years on a Psychology degree that went no where but I felt half the time he was being too emotional and the other half of the time he wasn't being emotional enough.

I feel only Sahz is the most realistic character but sadly he's mostly background comic relief outside of the two chapter about him. Which is a shame but to be fair the whole cast gets the shaft after Chapter 9 as their personal feelings and struggles are no longer important to the games story. Most of the character development is dropped except for a few terrible and irrelevant ones for Vanille and Fang.

In regards to most of the cast, I felt the Datalog told their story better than they conveyed in the cutscenes and often I would ask myself after reading the Datalog summary for a chapter if it was for the same game, as I felt many of the greater emotional growth the characters reportedly had according to the Datalogs was annoyingly absent and poorly shown in the scenes. The fact the Datalog gave the player information the cutscenes didn't feel were important enough to talk about was a terrible oversight by the author.

However, I actually thought XIII's characters broke the mold pretty well. They added far more male characteristics to both Lightning and Fang than they did to any of the males. The characters developed very well, and for the most part were multi-layered, which for me made them, well, much more believable I suppose. They seemed to react to their situation far more realistically than any group of characters had before.

I would disagree as stated above.

Your criticisms don't seem to be on par with most of the more universal criticisms I noted during the XIII backlash. Perhaps this is due to the sheer number of games you've played making you see things differently to most people - particularly with things that are to do with characters and story. When you "read" video game stories over, more often than not they are the same as something that's been done before. So it's only the first time you play one of those types of stories that they are interesting. Sadly, making completely new storylines with no similarities to previous stories in hundreds of RPGs is something that is very difficult to do, likewise for characters. I think XIII did a decent enough job.

As I stated above, I don't feel the story/character situation is not as positive as you think it is.

As for your other point, to get back to my point about archetypes and cliches. I don't mind archetypes, I don't mind stock characters, as long as a I see meaningful and satisfactory growth. Fang and Vanille are cliches but I would agree that Hope, Snow, and Lightning had growth and grew slightly out of their archetpyes but for them I felt it was poor development cause they don't stray too far and I never felt it was satisfactory. Lightning does some badass stunts but I never felt she grew to be a likable character, the same goes for Snow. Hope is sort of an oddity, he's a much more likable character by then end of the game but that's because anything was better than his mopey and whiny attitude in the beginning so anything was going to be an improvement so while obnoxious to less obnoxious is good growth it still doesn't jump the hurtle of making him a a likable and relate able character.

Yet I would point to Persona 3 as a title that borrows heavily from the cliches and archetypes seen in high school themed anime shows and despite every character falling into a very predictable and overused archetype, in the course of the game, they all grow and become something close to human by the end, they all have meaningful growth, and if The Answer was proof of anything its that the events of P3 had a profound effect on their lives. Something I don't feel I can say the same of XIII's cast.

I also felt P3 handled the revelation of impending death and inescapable fate more realistically than XIII's cast. The game structure itself allowed for the player to feel it as well, once again, XIII tried to tackle something that's been done before but where I feel it really fails is not in its lack of novelty but its lack of creating its own spin on the subject and being overshadowed by Persona 3, RG Veda, and X/1999. Its the stories inability execute its point well that is the main problem. I never really felt so bad for their situation nor could I feel the conflict with their Focus. Their personal stories have their moments but I often felt the growth wasn't on par with the fantastic situation they found themselves in. I was expecting some more soul searching and evaluation and less blind optimism.

[P4ine]

no

[Del Murder]

A more appropriate reply to one WK's rants I've never seen.

[Loony BoB]

Summed up my thoughts pretty well, actually. I just outright disagree with a lot of the assessments being made. Where you see clichés, I see what you call archetypes. Where you see shallow development, I see deep development. I would personally find someone going from one extreme to the other to be annoying - something you associated with Hope, and on him I'll agree. I feel that, despite him being by far the best "wussy character" I've seen in the FF series nearer the start, that at the end he was annoying when he suddenly decided to be all "Hi, I'm that kid who everyone will say is the future President, I make lots of speeches and whatnot". That to me is too much development, and too typical. I prefer the more subtle developments that we see in Vanille. I don't feel she gets too little development. I feel she got it just right. Sure, she goes back to being what she was like at the start - but only in personality traits. To have her be a completely different person would be to betray reality - reality to me says that when a person grows up in a way that she did with regards to running away from everything and hiding everything through to being an open and more courageous person, she doesn't need to change her personality while she's at it. I've grown up a lot over the years and have learned a lot of lessons but I don't think that means I need to be a completely different personality. I can still laugh despite having downtimes, etc. This is good development, this is realistic (unlike Hope). I feel the others have similarly good development going for them (again, exception being Hope from chapter 11 onwards).

But oh well. You see things very differently to me. I'm not sure why that is but everyone will always have an opinion. I will say though that while you point out that there are a few threads criticising characters in the forums, that happens for every game, regardless of how good it is. What I noticed though, particularly after recently finishing the game and therefore being more able to actively discuss it, is that people were constantly posting about how well done the characters were, which is not something I remember happening for X or XII when I was at a similar stage of actively posting in those forums. I feel that people really enjoyed these characters. Sure, something like 50% will dislike them, as is standard - but those that did like them seemed to think it was a significantly better job than most previously liked sets of characters before this game. During my time posting in the forum I guess I felt that it was the most commonly praised area of the game. What area did you feel was praised more?

[Wolf Kanno]

I disagree with Vanille, not so much on the point she needed to have a personality change as I agree its not always necessary to show great strides of maturity but I also felt like she never really learned anything.

(SPOILER)After confronting Sazh about her involvement in everything and how she was a coward for running away, she speaks afterwards about how she won't lie to people anymore and won't run away from her fears and problems but just a few chapters later we have her being called out on lying to Fang because of her fears "she wasn't going to run away from anymore" so that to me tells me she didn't grow at all since we're dealing with the same problem as before.Even in the ending when Fang is being tortured, she pretty much just stands there doing nothing when this could have been a moment of meaningful growth which instead is squandered for an 11th hour sympathy ploy by the writers. I just don't see any growth in her, just a kooky girl who occasionally gets melancholic cause she's the source of all of your parties problems. I'm not asking for her to grow up and act mature, I just find it counter productive for her to say she learned her lesson and she turns around and does it again or just blindly sitting there when a great opportunity for her to finally show the party and the player she's no longer going to sit around and let everyone take care of her.

As for what I felt was most praised when the game first came out, I would say its the battle system. Most people really liked it until several hours in when it finally sets in that this is it. I myself would say the battle system is the best part of the game even if I felt it left much to be desired as I found it to be a more streamlined (and generally dumbed down version) of XII's system except with a majority of its customization and player control stripped from it. It was an interesting take on tactical fighting and it was entertaining but I simply wanted more. In a way, I felt like XII and XIII should have changed because XIII's system felt more like the missing link between X and XII rather than being the evolution of XII's system. Course this all should be taken with a grain of salt cause its not like XII's combat was universally loved either.

Overall, I felt XIII's reaction was mostly mixed, some liked the battle system and hated everything else, some liked certain characters while others reviled them, plot is kinda up in the air as their hasn't really been a real thread about the story since it came out but that has more to do with XIII being character driven (or at least th good part of the plot). Most people hated the dungeon/world design except a few who genuinely never care for that part of the game. Really, I felt the fan reaction on the forum was much more mixed than definitive on anything, much the same as the reaction of XII four years ago.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I'll revive a dead thread, and add my .02 cents from the quiet person.

I think JRPGs have become victims of advancements in technology. What I've realized about myself, and probably some of the other older gamers is that we grew up with less is more. I'm a big reader. I'll almost always enjoy the book more than the movie.

The older rpgs were a perfect blend of a book and a movie to me. An interactive book. There were no voice overs, so the voices were the ones I created in my head. I was never distracted by a voice that I found annoying or one that I wouldn't have used. They didn't really have the ability to create lengthy in game movie sequences, so we created them ourselves. Now if the voices or music or cut scene isn't quite what I would have expected, instead of drawing me in, it pushed me out. I remember I'm only playing a game, and I loose that immersion.

As gaming systems progress, and become more powerful, they're assuming a dominant role in the rpgs. I feel less like I'm helping create the characters and the story in the new games, and more like I'm watching a movie. An interactive movie.

Since they started adopting more automated battle systems, longer cut scenes, and things of that nature, I don't thing it's absolutely a bad thing because they have to keep things fresh. I think it's just taken the games in a direction where I feel less like part of the story and more of an observer. The stories and characters have always been similar from game to game. It's just that we as gamers filled in the story details and fleshed out the characters more with our own personalities and experiences. That made the games more personal. Now that many of those things are being handled by the game itself, if they don't happen to coincide with what we would have done, it's harder to feel as involved with the experience.

I think I enjoyed the older ones more 1) due to nostalgia but, 2) because I felt more involved.

On a side note, I think the music for the games peaked during the snes, ps1 era and has at best maintained. With a few exceptions, the music from the old games seemed to draw me in more.

[Wolf Kanno]

Not to beat a dead horse but this was an amusing article I found...

Square-Enix On RDR: "Oh No, We Can't Compete With That" - PS3 News

Apparently sandbox games intimidate Squenix... isn't that adorable...

[kotora]

Maybe it's just too hard to make an open world in HD??