Agree with you on the fact that the older FFs tend to focus more evenly on characters. But I think I prefer more development on some characters than equal but less development on all characters. Personal thing.

Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
My point comes back to the difference between the Celes scene and the Cloud/Tifa scene is that the player is given more responsibility to understand the content and context of the moment in the Celes scene, whereas the scene in VII leaves little to the players imagination cause it repetitively verbalizes what the characters are thinking and feeling. The scene in VI is the player taking the role of Celes, whereas the scene with Cloud and Tifa is the player watching them. Both have their strengths and weakness as medium for story telling, but I have to be bias towards VI in this because the scene asks more from the player whereas VII's scene is pretty straightforward about what the characters are trying to convey and leaves little for the player to think about. You just take it for face value, you never really stop to think what the characters are thinking cause they already told you. I feel this is the difference between watching a story and experiencing it, cause part of what makes the story special is what you bring to it.
But I am going to argue that you are putting your own perspective on a story, adding additional meaning that was not intended or accurately portrayed in the older stories. Basically, you are fitting a meaning that you want to evidence that is ambiguous. Of course, I just found out that the SNES translations of FF games are appalling, so I'd probably have to play the GBA versions to more accurately comment on what is what.

Gameplay is a bit of an iffy one. I find that the dungeons in all FFs can get very tedious except for XIII because I spend half my time recovering after a fight and worrying about items etc (or in XII, waiting for my MP to recover). Because of this, many ordinary battles were just a grind of attack etc, which becomes very dull, especially as you cannot avoid them (and that is not a technology thing - Chrono Trigger). XIII was less of a slog because enemies were more challenging (as you automatically recovered after battle) and you were unrestrained in using abilities (because there was no MP). However, it definitely pulled the balance to something too simple, and definitely needs to be more intricate going forward. And it also got tiring near the end to continually stagger enemy, maul them, etc etc.

Anyway, my point is that FF's gameplay has always had its issues. I find that the older ones had more grinding than the newer ones as well, and I HATE grinding. If I want to battle enemies, I will battle enemies. But don't force me too.

EDIT: I think there is still a market for fixed focus, 2D-ish titles. But that isn't really 16-bit. If Square are going to do it, they could at least have detailed scenery etc, because nobody wants to play through a world that is visually so repetitive as VI (and yes, I know it is varied and awesome for its generation, but it's not 1991 anymore). As I said, there are games that combine the old-school with new-school graphics and design style and do it very well. That is something I would like Square to do, but perhaps in a new IP.