[Square-Soft] Call me Jaded but...

[HasteInTime]

There are a lot of reasons I felt SE fell off the bandwagon, it wasn't just one bad game, its really been a series of uninspiring titles and I felt overall, the company has become misguided by the direction of the franchise. I feel most of the talent has run away and what's left has largely been given too much leeway to mull over development hell pet projects or churn out quick sequels to games no one really gives a smurf about. I do agree abit that its also the industry, RPGs have fallen out of mainstream and have returned to niche markets that are supported solely by small devoted fanbases. There are Tales of Fans, there are Atelier Fans, there are Persona Fans, but I don't see much uniformity as RPG fans like you had back in the 90s. To me the Japanese industry is having a sort of revolt going on, with long time creators of the famous franchises jumping ship from their parent company and trying to go indie again.

I think, in order for Squenix to get back on top, they need to stop using their flagship series as a crutch, side games and spin-offs are fine but if you really look at the difference from the series before 2000 and after, the number of titles with FF in the main title has exploded (35 new titles between 01-13, not counting ports and remakes which would knock this number up to 72 entries as opposed to the 19 titles released between 87-00) and I feel many of these games were weak and have thus tarnished what the brand used to be.

The other real problem with SE is the lack of leadership. There is no one over there that seems to have a clear idea and goal for the franchise. Some have tried to assert a direction but the mixed reviews and fan backlash has SE now second guessing itself. I feel Kitase and Toriyama are a bit discouraged because their idea of making FF into a game that felt like a film did not go over so well with the fanbase. Nomura is too involved in his own projects to care about heading the main franchise (and I'm sure some of the backlash from his early career with the series has made him have second thoughts about taking the reins of the franchise) and people like Ito and Kawazu don't seem interested in taking over the franchise either.

I feel the company needs a strong creative leader to direct the franchise and I feel the company needs to change how they market the franchise and maybe do a rebranding. SE has pulled a Capcom and kind of ran their franchises into the ground in the last few years.

First I have one thing to say of Capcom, SE is not Capcom and vice-versa. While I believe Capcom takes its own time to adapt to the market/current-trends that are on going and it is Japanese based like SE. However, Capcom is uniquely suffering for different reasons entirely I feel than what you or the next may guess. I personally have more faith in their decisions than SE and they are currently restructuring their marketing and staff here in the US where they struggle. They currently think that digital sales trends are now supposed to be their focus since they are losing profit due to lack of extra content and are right to think so if you have been seeing Nintendo's worldwide data for the 3DS EShop vs retail and it's just gaining numbers like crazy for their Eshop having those games sold digitally and they at Nintendo also wish to bring DLC that matters to their customer base. (which Capcom also hopes to do as Nintendo suggests)

Other than the comparison you made poorly I might say, everything else about SE I feel you said is spot on. They need a leader of vision who is a Game Designer that can figure how to work out a team with powerful ideas and test them for Final Fantasy. I always believed that they need two different teams to handle FF as a "flagship" series so that we get the not just the okay stuff they have been grinding out but also the really great stuff and the best stuff possible on both the MoRPG and RPG on console front. Much like Betehsda does with Obsidian's games Elder-scrolls and Fallout (Yes the first Fallout 3 game was all of Beth together, although Obsidian is Beth too- its where their best and brightest are) on a bi-yearly basis by rotating them and having mostly separate teams that communicate with one another.

I feel that SE is using the handheld and Cell phone market as their safety net, where they are only catering to Japan itself instead of the world like Capcom or Ubisoft. The time of specific markets has long since passed, its pretty niche to only cater to one kind of crowd these days. I'm also not saying that they should try to cater to the casual either- no just focus on the core players of your audience and sprinkle refined ideas for the hardcore and casual players. Find a balance that works and stick with it. In Ubisoft's case they hire more Devs than they do Marketers and the same with Capcom. In SE's case I feel that there is too much Marketing focus and not enough on the Dev side.

Kingdom Hearts got bogged down with unnecessary games like Re:Coded and Chain of Memories, just so they could make some quick bucks off KH fans. 8 years later and there is still no KH3.

While I'll agree with you on coded, Chain of Memories is both very important to the overarching plot, as well as very "inspired", what with its interesting story concepts, an overhauled battle system, and one of the best written stories in the series. Actually, I think KH is an example of SE doing things right (aside from everything being released on a different console). Aside from coded, I think every entry is a great game.

I actually made an error. I was talking about Re:Chain of Memories. I always get those two confused.

Anyway, IMO, the only really good KH games were 1, 2, and the original CoM. 358/2 Days got immensely boring because you took on the same types of missions over and over in the same locations. There were a lot of playable characters other than Roxas, but since there was no story for any of them other than him, it didn't really matter. It's good as a portable game, but fails as a KH game.

Re:Coded was Squenix spitting in the fans' faces. You could actually tell it was originally meant for mobile phones. It's so lackluster and bereft of focus that you end up wondering if they could make a decent KH game after that.

Re:Chain of Memories looked good, but wasn't really necessary.

Birth by Sleep was decent, until you realized that the story is essentially the same for all three characters. In a fairly (read: very loosely) similar manner to 358, you went through almost exactly the same story with all three characters. The battle system was pretty good, though, but the game was too short and too easy to really get much fun out of it.

KH3D was a good game, ruined by the stupid Drop mechanic. It can sometimes totally take you out of the experience. I never did like timers in games, so maybe that's just me. I loved the Flowmotion feature though.

I have to disagree about the entire industry falling off as well. Squenix has done it worse than most. Look at Mistwalker. They're still around making great RPGs. While Namco Bandai pumps out a new Tales game pretty much every year, they're still pretty damn good, and I'd venture to say they get better with each new game (at least.....after Tales of Destiny 2 came out, anyway, which is IMO the best Tales game). Gust hit a rough spot with some of their games, like Ar tonelico and some of the less-awesome Atelier games (looking at you Rorona!), but have since recovered and are back to making excellent games.

Hell, even Nintendo/Intelligent Systems are still making great RPGs, and Ninty as a whole isn't known for RPGs. But play games like Fire Emblem Awakening and Bowser's Inside Story, and they're some of the most top-notch games you'll find. Meanwhile, Square digs itself deeper into mediocrity. They ruined the Mana series with Children of Mana, pretty much said screw it to the Saga games (although Saga 3 on DS was quite good), have milked Kingdom Hearts for all it's worth with crazy gimmicks, and are now making Final Fantasy into a Fisher-Price pop-up book. They even kind of screwed over Dragon Quest by making it more like FFXII! And let's not get started on their iOS stuff. All The Bravest alone is enough to make any former Square fan puke. It's no wonder that most fans just prefer to play their older games.

ALL the Bravest was my utter last straw with everything else SE in-house, on that note I agree. SE has gone down a dark path and I want to hold out hope for them. It's just that as I said though- not enough Dev power and not enough focus on fans like us and/or a Core audience. RPG's are still widely popular, cause series such as Elderscrolls and Fallout sells well for Bethesda. There is room for them to still do RPG's as long as they focus on the "meat of gaming" being a Core player audience instead and get superb collaborative teams of writers, devs, and artists behind each one (series or game). DQ though has its very own creative leader but SE keeps giving him the "shaft" and cold-shoulder as it were. That only happens cause of the mistakes SE keeps dumping its money into, such as All the Bravest instead of another great DQ game. If SE feels that it doesn't have the writers it needs, maybe they should call Funimation up and ask for a great scriptwriter that they can hire for their project, they have all of the best tools in their own nation's backyard. I suggest that they start using them effectively. As Anime is widely popular still and should no longer be considered niche.

Alternatively, if I could I might lead SE myself into a happier direction with solid 1st party RPGs, Shooters, and One Strategy type, cause they can take big teams to do. With the MoRPG FF idea still running. Its a big task and not easy to do a MoRPG, I would hope that they found that balance with FF14RR. In my opinion it might be healthy to avoid a new FF of any kind on the market for about 3 years outside of the FF14RR MoRPG. Giving focus to FF in a good way and adding support where it will be needed, on the side all the while working on a team and FF that would be for the consoles as a basic FF RPG w/good solid DLC/Expansions planned. Spacing the FF game releases while adding new content expansions allow for the games like 10-X2 to be put in the same world setting and add new areas, characters and dialog. This can become a good use if they focus on full expansions being apart of the FF experience and add back in "world exploration" which would be key to the experience and DLC expansion additions. They would need a flexible but really powerful engine built for this and should update often as it's needed for the games to evolve and become better, I do not wish for a FF game series to become like CoD has in any regard, outside of successful.

Edit:
Maybe SE just aims too high market wise?