We have totally different tastes lol, I loved 12 and thought 8 was kinda ass. I hope you find what you're looking for with future games!
Personally, I'd love to see another game set in Rabanastre. If 17 was set there, it would be a must-buy for me. Another bonus would be bringing back the license system.
I don’t really care for them anymore. I think they’re still very well crafted games from a passionate team, but I haven’t really felt great about a FF game since 10. Ignoring the MMOs:
12 was decent but the story was pretty dry in the first half and Vaan was just not a compelling protagonist at all.
13 was reasonably fun to play after finding the “rhythm” I think they intended from the combat, but I never loved the story or any of the characters aside from Sazh.
15 had a lot of potential in the story, I actually liked the “dudes on a road trip” concept, but that awful sword hanging mechanic was always so unreliable that it eventually killed my progress in its tracks.
After that, I skipped 16 entirely.
The 7 sequel was actually really good, but everything I liked about it came directly from the original or built on top of it in a transparent way. The spooky ghosts and action combat were changes I strongly disliked and endured just to see the extended original story, but I thought they were huge steps back. It was a very good game that constantly had me wishing they just stuck to expanding the original story which is plenty convoluted on its own.
I still haven’t played the 7 sequel part 2, but I expect I’ll feel pretty much the same - in awe of the world and expanded story but constantly annoyed by spooky ghosts and mediocre action combat.
I really think the 7 sequels show that the Final Fantasy franchise has a place in the modern JRPG scene, but they would benefit from a return to form. I’d love to see the next FF game sporting a fast paced Persona-style turn based combat system combined with maybe an Akira-style dystopian techno-futuristic setting. All the parts are in there somewhere, they just need to figure out how to put them together in the right order.
I’ve played 7, 8, 7 Remake and Rebirth, and 16. I love each and every one of them.
16 can be tough sometimes just with how much cruelty exists in the world that the game is set in. Otherwise I find it quite excellent. The combat is really fun and varied, music is really good, characters are deep and complicated, visual design and graphics are really really good.
7 Remake and Rebirth are outstanding. I just put 150 hours into Rebirth since it launched recently on PC. I played the original back in the day and loved it back then, the nostalgia that remake and rebirth give me is like a highly refined illicit drug and it’s great. Nanaki and Cosmo Canyon are some of my most beloved gaming memories ever.
I barely remember 8 but I played it a ton as a teenager, still have a bunch of music from it (great salt lake music still sends chills down my spine!)
You lost me at XII wasn’t great and saying XIII had an OK story. The writing on XIII is one of the most atrocious I’ve experienced, it hits like a korean dramedy. The combat was OK but had the depth of a puddle. A realm reborn has a steep climb to 60 but it’s worth it for the great story and impactful world events (granted the fetch quests get boring, the community makes up for it). XV was not great, the world-building prior to release was exciting but the hit from the game was lacking. They tried to make it better with episodes and extended content but by then I didn’t feel like coming back. The combat was a sore disappointment, long gone were the puzzles of the prior games. The story was OK enough but it didn’t carry the game. XVI suffers from the same problem as XV. The story is pretty fitting in a fantasy setting, the set piece moments are absolutely sublime, but the pacing and combat are off. Not enough depth. It feels, much like XV, as a final fantasy for dummies (and the performance and technical aspects of the game leave a lot to be desired) XII is a goddamn masterpiece.
Realistically, as you mentioned with FF XIV ARR now being a classic but also being a pain to get into is true for any other older FF, many people simply have rose tinted glasses to keep them from seeing all the flaws present in those prior entries.
I also started with FF VII, but 25 years after its release, and let me tell you that it did not age well (at all) imo.
Had I not picked up FF XVI, I probably wouldn’t have given the series another chance.
I now played both FF VII remakes to date and absolutely loved them, especially Rebirth, and am going through FF VI, which I also think is a masterpiece tbh.
FF IV didn’t work out for me, but that’s fine.
All that to say, video game series evolve, ARPGs have been quite popular for a while and FF went that route - for now. That doesn’t make for bad games, and the series will keep evolving.
Half of the early FF games weren’t released in the West until later on. FF1 was, but 2 and 3 were not. So when 4 released outside of Japan, publishers thought it would be weird to have the numbering go from 1 to 4, so 4 released internationally as FF2. And then 5 got skipped over as well, so when 6 released internationally, it was released as FF3. However, they wanted to standardize the numbering starting with FF7, because FF7 was a Big Deal™, so for players outside of Japan, the series numbering suddenly jumped from FF3 to FF7. And the skipped games were later released internationally, so the numbering is now consistent across regions, with the initial Western numbering now largely forgotten.
X is around the time FF lost it’s main architect, Sakaguchi (technically sooner , but dev times I imagine it overlapped). Guys a class act that was with them since the beginning, but he started his own company after a falling out with the direction SE brass wanted to take things. He was the one pushing to always have life and death as main themes and kept certain other producers in line.
I always recall an anecdote on FF7, as him, Kitase and Nomura were working out story. Sakaguchi required a meaningful death in the plot. Kitase (who we can thank for FF6s second half) suggested the whole cast die except one who the player chooses. Nomura talked them down from that. FF7 was his baby (so much so that he’s the character designer and artist), hence why he’s so present on the remake. That said, they kept each other in check and Nomura gets really weird ideas (KHs being his lead, for example).
After Sakaguchi departure, 11 was modeled after EverQuest and had a newish team, 12 was written most by FFT scenario team but had a change mid devolpment midway (the SE brass wanted a plucky young protag, Vaan was late development), 13 was so overbudget that they had to make sequels to recoup costs, 14 1.0 was mostly old guard 11 people with no idea about optimization, 14 2.0 was Yoshida learning from WoW success (flaws and all) but adding “FF theme park” plus a great writing staff, 15… similar to 12 in changes mid production, but iirc it was the SE brass shoehorning bad ideas and plot required DLC, and 16 is Yoshida and his core team making a pretty solid ARPG but with some tedium due to his MMO roots (and if you like 7R you’d probably be ok with 16).
Anyone can like or dislike a game, so I’m just giving you the long range of production issues that are objectively damaging the experience. It’s ok to like flawed games. I know an unhealthy amount of video game industry lore, and the biggest thing I can’t even say because of an NDA. lol
(Bonus fun fact, FF6 was meant to end at the halfway point but was so ahead of schedule and funds they went ahead and created the second half. It’s my favorite FF lol)
13-3 and 14 1.0 are complete trash imo. And some of that era leaked into 15, sending it into development hell. But aside from that, no. They’re held to a higher standard so a FF that’s only a B+ is seen as a complete failure and the internet spends a decade hateposting about it.
14 is going down hill. I have played it for many years and cleared a lot of the harder content. It’s a lot of rinse, wash, repeat. 15 had some beautiful graphics but it dropped the ball in the open world. 16s battle system was fun. The story was good. Had a decent Gothic roots of fantasy in there.
While I’m sure it could be a great game, it’ll never happen. WB just canceled a Wonder Woman game and shut down its developer. If they don’t have faith on a game based on one of their most well known characters, there’s no way they’d even green light a game based on a lower tier hero. A detective game based on the Question would be great too, but since he’s not one of DC’s top heroes it’ll never happen.
FF games are like pizza. They’re all a round, baked dish, but you can have them so many ways and everyone will have their opinions. For example
I thought 10 was linear and boring and only played it once
I really liked 10-2 and the entire dress sphere concept as well as being open to go where you wanted.
I absolutely loved 12, as it had amazing lore and call backs to literally every other FF game in the series. A lot of people hated on the battle system but the magic of the strategy was figuring out the best gambit combinations
13 had a beautiful story and graphics, but was way too linear and then suddenly opened up in the end game. Would have made a better movie or visual novel
13-2 is one of my all time favorites in how it was non-linear, expanded on what happened with the 13 cast, who I liked, and also had secret endings
13-3 is good, but it becomes one massive fetch quest. However it has New Game+ which is perfect for curb stomping baddies
15 was one I thought I wasn’t going to like (an FF with cell phones?!) but oddly they pulled it off well and it wasn’t too bad. The villain was frankly one of the best in any FF series. Voice acting was top notch and the DLC really fleshed it out (you could argue it should have been part of the core)
Playing 16 right now, and hopes it was Square returning to its roots, but frankly…… it’s not an FF. The pacing is all over the place, and they randomly throw in an FF theme or name in a way like it’s saying “see! We’re a final fantasy game!” This is the first game that I really thought they lost their way on
I haven’t played 11 and 14 but I figured that’s my $0.02 when everyone has their own favorite toppings.
Because Warner Brothers owns the rights to all DC games right now and nobody at Warner has any idea how to actually produce good video games. The Arkham games were good because they came out before loot boxes and online-only games were a thing. Now if a game doesn’t earn a billion dollars in the first year, the game is considered a failure.
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