I occasionally hear that "Final Fantasy needs to return to jts roots" or "I'm so glad FF16 will be a return to roots" but has FF ever had roots to return to? Like do any of the entries ever tries to be the same?
Final fantasy roots
I occasionally hear that "Final Fantasy needs to return to jts roots" or "I'm so glad FF16 will be a return to roots" but has FF ever had roots to return to? Like do any of the entries ever tries to be the same?
they're all pretty different. non-fans will argue ff is all the same garbage, but if it was, there wouldn't be as much animosity and in-fighting in the fanbase.
that having been said, any 16tard that dares say 16 is "a return to roots" is a fricking idiot and should be chemically castrated asap
1-5 are pretty similar to each other
1-9 really, with 10 as a bonus.
People who don't see it are bad at pattern recognition.
But I guess if you're looking for "roots" then 1-5 makes sense.
What? 1 and 3 are similar but the other aren't.
2 is more like GB SaGa and 5 felt more like 6-7 but with more humour(which is normal because new devs enter in FF5, like xenogear couple, Nomura , Kitase and FF16 director)
4 is weird because it felt a FF2 reboot with soup opera. Ironically 4 is the more similar with 10, 13 and current(hallways that force you certain caracter, rough battle system with potential , weird character writing, trying too hard in the story) but people want to believe that snes FF and post merger FF are antithesis kek
It's just buzzwords and nonsense coming from bitter morons, FF has no roots whatsoever, it started off as another Ultima clone with a strong Wizardry core, except even more focused on ripping off D&D, FF2 tried to go the way of Dungeon Master mechanically, but with a stronger Ultima flavour, after that the original team disbanded and who was left in charge of FF just decided to keep copying whatever was popular at the moment, or rehash previous games by adding some more gimmicks.
The only "roots" FF has outside of aping or downright cloning better franchises, which is a thing it's still doing to this day, is being a character drama focused linear adventure, something that never changed since FF2, that's the only "roots" you can find and it's something FF never let go of for better or worse, anyone saying otherwise is a massive homosexual in denial pretending this series is more than what it actually is.
Tryhard
Coping and seething because his shitty wrpg garbage was never and will never be as popular as the JRPGs that """stole""" design from them.
warpiggy fans are so pathetic, yeah sure all jap companies just aped western companies and cloned their games, thats why all your western game companies died and the genre itself is dead and relegated to woke-shit by eurogays.
meanwhile japchads stay winning year after year.
t. non-racist enjoyer of all RPGs
They hated him because he spoke the truth. Look at all that homosexual salt.
Lying gets more reliable yous.
this.
FFXIV is one of their biggest hits in the past decade with specific praise for "giving fans what they want", and its a fricking blatant tab combat global cooldown WoW clone filled with "REMEMBER OLD GAM???" and moronic crossover shit. what does that say about FF?
When I say roots I mean 4-9
1-V are the roots. Those games are rock solid thematically and gameplaywise.
Ivalice is similar in themes, gimped by bad combat in some titles thanks to the later releases
VI is the middle ground and arguably similar enough but it's also the point where the gooch stepped away
XI is MMO tier
XIV is MMO theme park tier that tries to be everything and kinda works on some levels it's also a bad MMO and barely an RPG
VII, VIII, X, X-2, XIII, XIII-2, XIII RIGHTNING RETURNSOOO jk toriyama made a game on his third try lmao but how did he get three fricking tries?, XV are all just your generic moopie trash where they kept trying and trying and trying to force either VII's success again or making action combat work. Each and every game is a mess and works better as a visual/auditory experience. They are barely games and they are what a lot of the fanbase wants.
When people say they want XVI to return to it's roots.
They're either hoping for their big FF moments because they love their big flashy Kitase/Hashimoto games or they're expecting Yoshida to deliver a game somewhere along the lines of Ivalice, I-VI thematically with a decent story which XIV kinda, kinda hit wtith a lot, lot less nepotism as we saw in the Toriyama/Kitase/Hashimoto circlejerk that drove the franchise into the ground.
It's not really gonna be the 2nd one because almost anyone saying the 2nd one is guaranteed to be around 30-50 years old on average missing the big sellers that most of the "gaming community" that expresses their opinions grew up with.
>I occasionally hear that "Final Fantasy needs to return to jts roots" or "I'm so glad FF16 will be a return to roots" but has FF ever had roots to return to?
Four dudes in a row fighting.
Speaking of 16, how do you alk feel about it going for a more realistic art style?
Soundtrack by Uematsu
Character and monster design by Amano interpreted in spritework.
Aesthetics and story inspired by fairy tales, Star Wars, and mythology.
Mechanics influenced by Kawazu.
Nomura, Sakaguchi, etc.
The things that make 1-6 hang together creatively cannot and will not be re-produced because they were the result of a specific set of creative individuals expressing a sensibility rooted in their times. I don't care where the series goes from here because the last patch of creative coherence was in the 7-9 trio on Playstation and it's been pretty much all downhill since then. There have been a few titles which succeed on their own merits in the subsequent games, but they have no relationship to one another or the originals.
>Soundtrack by Uematsu
Years ago I'd have probably agreed with this and while FF has been shit for decades now Square did have one composer who's finally getting there.
Soken's doing well and he's hitting some of the themes, the only thing he's really, really missing is that raw prog influence that Nobuo put into his work where sometimes you'd here little phrases that'd be straight out of an emerson piece for The Nice, Gong or Egg. If you can get a second composer to work and fill those gaps then tbh I'd be okay with it.
He's "younger" which means he has that unfortunate set of influences like Ishiwatari did which means his rock stuff comes off at times as very one note compared to someone like Nobuo.
It's a kind of similar problem that ATLUS had with the SMT series where for years Meguro's one note rock style sunk like a brick when he really did have some great depth there (like the SJ score) until they had someone like Ryota Koduka to fill that gap and even when he couldn't quite hit those Tsuchiya/Masuka style notes? They still had Konishi there to fill it out and back him up.
I think is Square could manage to hire at least one if not another two composers then they could probably do alright. Would probably have to be an outside hire tho.
I don't know. Modern games all seem like they are composed by teams and committees.
>Sakaguchi
I know this board is assblasted by this guy, I know he relied on others for a lot, but it seems like a lot of the games he worked on had nameless quality that attracted me in a way that normal generic anime jrpgs didn't. Lost Odyssey also has this to an extent, if the game itself doesn't have the benefit of the prime Square talent. Watching the intro I am immediately drawn in, curious about the characters, setting, and story. Not a single post-Sakaguchi FF game attracted me in this way.
>I know this board is assblasted by this guy
Nobody but a bunch of stray cultists such as yourself cares about him, both in and outside of this board, which is another reason why all of his games bombed, not sure why you people keep trying to fabricate outrages about this.
>I know this board is assblasted by this guy
wut?
Maybe the VII+babs who are under 35
>know he relied on others for a lot
Idk, he seemed to be a pretty great director and as a producer he certainly got shit done.
If we compare him to modern times square then the closest we have is Naoki Yoshida who's only really worked on one XIV:ARR where Yoshida himself seems to admit he's not a creative but he's a producer and a very good producer that's able to get the best out of the people he works with.
>a lot of the games he worked on had nameless quality that attracted me in a way that normal generic anime jrpgs didn't.
I love I > V and I only kinda half consider V a gooch game but I think those games worked because they were just raw JRPG's and a lot of other raw JRPG's from that same period and in that same style work too.
Now. Don't get me wrong. That sounds like I hate the gooch but I love Lost Odyssey and I "didn't mind" Blue Dragon.
I agree with you about most of that honestly and if we include him as a producer then we're working all the way to IX & X and I actually really like Ivalice. I'm not a fan of the gameplay in XII, Revenant wings too but I think they're the best 2nd FF we have.
XIII & it's nova crystallis bullshit bombed yeah, XIV 1.0 bombed so maybe Kitase & Hashimoto were garbage replacements but Eorzea and XIV 2.0+? It's honestly not that bad. It's the closest FF has felt to it's core for me in years for theme and setting. I think a good producer/director can go a long way.
Sakaguchi isn't necessary. It's about removing the shit elements from Square who caused the rot within for years. They made popular games but they also doled out shit.
Not enough hate lobbed Towards Hashimoto & Kitase tbqhwy. You see more for Nomura (who was barely involved until recently) in the fandom.
I'm not just saying this cause I'm a KH fan but Nomura gets alot of undeserved hate and misinformation.
>Idk, he seemed to be a pretty great director and as a producer he certainly got shit done.
then why has everything he's made since leaving square been a forgettable flop?
it's obvious at this point who was doing the actual work and who was narcisisstically taking all the credit for it.
Yeah. He was a good producer.
>Soundtrack by Uematsu
Uematsu has been mogged by Soken, Hamauzu and Mizuta since FF11. His only good work since FF10 was his 7Remake tracks
>he seemed to be a pretty great director and as a producer he certainly got shit done.
He wasn't sadly.
If you read other devs interviews he was like nomura level of autism , he left FF1 development early because he was working in another game and Ishii worked on it alone.
He was against amano being the character designer of FF1 and fight wada because he wanted FF11 to be a FF11 and not a spin off.
He also left FF11 development early only giving the producer a note about what he liked about mmo, and force part of FF9 team to made Chocobo dungeon in hawaii instead focus in FF9.
Is a cool guy, but in today world , his style wouldn't work.
Shit taste in music
Also perfect example of gossip-autist who doesn't know anything about real game development but loves to spread rumors.
How are real interviews about the guys who worked and created the games gossip and make spread rumors?
If anything 00s/early 10s internet was the one who gossip and spread rumors to make people pretent that the inafune, Sakaguchi and Yu suzuki were genious producers and get mad if anyone said that they weren't kek
if by roots they mean the NES games, frick that shit. But if they mean going back to a more traditional turn-based JRPG then frick yes.
Ever since XI they have moved further and further away from "the roots" of the series with each new game. XI was a MMO, XII wasn't turned based (an MMO style combat), XIII was cancer, XIV was a MMO again, and XV was fricken devil may cry
Only 4 of the mainline FFs were turn-based.
wrong
ATB is not turn-based you moron
It still operates on turns, bro. If you input Barrett's action, then Clouds action, but the boss gets his turn in between those the turn order is Barrett, Boss, Cloud. It still a turn based system there's just a dynamic element to it.
>It still a turn based system there's just a dynamic element to it.
that's why it's called ATB, rather than having to explain the difference every single time you have to describe the system, you just use the term for it
because it's different
And? Just because it handles its turn order in it's own way doesn't mean it's not a turn based system.
ATB is turn-based with one minor gimmick that punishes hesitation when deciding what to you on your turn, and has a few other minor consequences to how battles flow vs pure CTB.
Everything is organized around turns. Turns come up one at a time and a unit selects an action, which goes into the action queue for sequential execution*. Enemies can skip ahead of you in line if you are a slacker inputting commands, and some abilities have a delay between input time and execution.
So it's "imperfect" turn-based, but to say it's not turn-based is to be an autistic, binary-brained tard.
* Note for any turbo autists who think that something like RTwP is also turn-based because there's logic preventing absolute simultaneous execution of abilities, you are also wrong. The queues in ATB are transparently turn queues and action queues. It's not some kind of subtle technicality. In Baldur's Gate, the difference between 5 fireballs exploding simultaneously and 5 fireballs exploding in an imperceptibly ordered sequence is meaningless. Meanwhile in Final Fantasy, every action gets its turn to be animated and have its consequences rendered and the players are fully aware of this sequence.
Everyone will define its root differently, but I think people think about the gestalt of what is final fantasy, especially pre full capitalization of the license / international recogniton, that happens circa the end of the PS1 era.
I'm afraid it will be hard to go back to what most feel like its root, because like the first album of a good artist, it was the niche enthusiast that allow sufficient authenticity. Where after recognition it's all about chasing that goose that lays golden eggs.
>it was the niche enthusiast that allow sufficient authenticity.
Considering FF was literally born to chase the goose that layed the golden egg, AKA Dragon Quest, that only means it was never "authentic" to begin with.
And still outside Japan most play FF and not DQ, it's wildly different experience.
Everyone copy what's work (Minecraft to Dwarf Fortress), it's what you bring to the table that matter.
No, it's the same experience but dumbed down for the lowest common denominator and embellished with pretty visuals, which was the reason why it eventually sold more in the first place.
That has always been the modus operandi of this franchise down to FFXVI being a DMC ripoff, talking about some supposed "authenticity" while ignoring how the series never was about being authentic in the first place is just pretentious bullshit with no foundation in reality.
Sakaguchi himself said multiple times they were directly competing with Dragon Quest back in the days, which is, for the records, also why the other key people who actually created the franchise left the original team early on.
Later on he also started the trend of buying other teams to make clones of existing IPs and slapping the FF name on it, like FFT, because FF is just that, a l"uxury" brand, something you buy because of the label, not the contents.
Kitase said that there never was some strong identity to the franchise besides "doing the coolest thing you can do at the time", other people involved with the series also said similar things, Kawazu for instance, who laid the entire mechanical and structural foundations the series still follows to this very day, said FF is a series that is about doing things "the right way", as in the most commonly accepted, popular and lucrative way to do games, so again, by copying what's popular, sticking to the beaten path and not taking risks with your formula, because you gotta sustain a whole company through it.
This has nothing to do with niche or authenticity and no "but the sales numbers!!!" will change that, anyone who says that FF needs to return to its "roots" is goddamn delusional because not once did it stray from what FF1 started.
>ATB is turn based because only one actor does their thing at a time
>RTwP isn't turn based because the concept of concurrent turns is too much for my brain to handle
You're mentally impaired.
>I don't understand what turns are
Not my problem.
ff16 doesnt look like a return to its roots. wheres muh 4 homies in a line? i dont care about anything else.
I feel 1-7+9 are all pretty similar in their overall game structure. The later ones just have more intricate intros before you get to the same kind of midpoints where the plot drag you around the world to explore and have fun.
8, 10 and 12 feel like some kind of midpoint between that and the later cutscenes interspersed with corridors and fujo-focused stories.
I-IX maintain mostly a pretty consistent structure and sense of adventure. VIII is the outlier, that game is much more character-based than all the others. VII also had a strong character focus on Cloud, moreso than VI ever did, but even then it wasn't that prevalent as it is in VIII where the grand adventure is almost given a backseat compared to the importance Of "Resolving A Character's Conflict", which is more the focus of VIII and XIII and to a lesser extent X.
XII, meanwhile, diverges by bringing the tone to being more low gritty comparatively speaking and political, as is Matsuno's wont.
>Like do any of the entries ever tries to be the same?
1-5 had a ton of reoccurring themes and ideas.
>"I'm so glad FF16 will be a return to roots"
That game looks like it's trying to be XIV and XV
Seems like the classic feel people miss is basically dark fantasy with crystals. There was always some amount of sci-fi, but 7 and 8 ramped it up a lot.
I also think people don't really know what they want though and the fact that we get a new mainline FF game every 7 years or so means each one becomes too big of a deal.
I always miss the speed at which games used to come out. FF1-7 all came out in a ten year period.
1 through 10 had fundamentally similar gameplay and then after that they started doing a bunch of totally different things.
Is ATB just Grandia combat but bad? I'm semi-interested in FF but I hate stupid real-time elements in my turn-based games. Which FF should I start with? Eyeing 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 as my starting point.
Why did you omit 4?
If you want to know understand the essence of ATB as it was originally conceived, IV is the game to play. It has elements like spells with differing cast times that were dropped from ("streamlined out of") later entries and the last of the Final Fantasy games to use the D&D-style "multiple attacks per turn" attack formula.
It's a linear affair that can be 99%'d in 20 hours.
Returning to your roots is just an empty marketing slogan as much for games as it is for music.
At most it just means they're going back to pre-modern fantasy trappings instead of advanced magi-tech.
final fantasy's "roots" ARE the science-fantasy stuff that redditsoys complain about.
>pure 2d sprites, no HD-2D garbage
>turn based kino
>high fantasy setting with a sciency mix
>no cast full of pretty boys, more older people
>tone similar to FF5
simple as
that would never sell and would kill the series
Yes the problem isn't just that modern Square-enix has abandoned their roots. They couldn't go back even if they wanted to, because they lack soul and their audience is swine who wouldn't appreciate it anyway.
>but has FF ever had roots to return to?
Its job system.
1-5 - dungeons and dragons era
6 - Transition
7-10 & 12 - gnostic era
13 & 15 - weeb era
MMOs excluded