Let's have a mature, well-thought and moderate discussion on when and why Final Fantasy go wrong.
Was when Sakaguchi left?
Was after the MMOs got released?
Was after abandoning turn-based combat?
Was after abandoning traditional settings for more modern ones?
Discuss!
From FF1
/thread
Fpbp
How's that possible
it's a slow board
For you.
Fippy bippy
Crystal Chronicles. Requiring GBAs for multiplayer was unforgivable. Without that gimmick, the game would be a beloved classic.
FFCC was made in collaboration with Nintendo as a way to mend the bad blood they had in the late 90s. Square got funding and resources from Nintendo directly via a program Nintendo had to fund Gamecube exclusives. The GBA gimmick was probably something Nintendo wanted so they could sell people more hardware bullshit. The only other games to be funded by this program was the Pokemon Orre games, which are also RPGs with GBA connectivity.
Cool. It's a shame, because it's a beautiful, unique little game with tons of personality and atmosphere. Soulful.
Poorgay detected.
crystal chronicles is one of my all time favorite games. me and my wife play it often with gba's. it's easy, just get a wife who loves playing games with you and use your boyhood gba's, link cables, GameCube and copy of crystal chronicles and play it with her and it's a timeless masterpiece.
Requiring GBA to know what the goal of the stage was is unforgiveable. Just means playing it without was hard mode. The entire chalice thing is why multiplayer was going to be fricked, but who cares about multiplayer?
every week we do this
one week more could be good
Probably X-2, definitely by XIII
>when
Started with FF10, though I still like that one
>and why Final Fantasy go wrong
Movie games.
Right:
The game I thought it went to shit.
Wrong:
The games you thought it went to shit.
Eternallywrong:
MUHFFXIRUINEDTHESERIESREEEEEEEEEEEE
They won't necessarily be in release order. Now frick off.
FF11 was the death sentence. FF IX was the warning shot.
Luckily, Sakaguchi's cancer is being fully washed-away now. The MMO devs will "resign" and Nomura and Kitase will finally lead FF where it should have gone after FF7, FF8 and FF 10.
My opinion is that it never went wrong. There's something to love in everh mainline Final Fantasy, even the ones considered weaker entries like XIII. The series as a whole has gone from boilerplate to unique and innovative to trend chasing, which is where we are right now (with XV and XVI and even VII R) but there's always something endearing about each of them.
For me, the FF series jumped the shark with 7.
The switch to techno-fantasy and pseudo-modern setting were big enough leaps, but then the 'defend the planet' subtext seemed like it brought out the worst in the writers.
As exemplified by the "too deep 4 u" tone of Square's response to fan complaints about the ending having no character epilogues, just a timeskip scene with the Planet reclaiming the cities--"The Planet is more important than any individual characters." What a cop-out.
FF6 and FF12 are the major demarcation points.
FF6 was when the series began moving away from its roots as simulations of exploring a Final Fantasy world, and began turning into completely linear moviegame experience. The world map is ostensibly still there but there is little to actually explore. FF10 removing the world map was a formality and an acknowledgement of how the series was actually played. However, FF6 through 10 still feel like the same series. Zany fantasy worlds and aesthetic, Uematsu soundtracks, likeable characters, command based combat with dramatic camera compositions and characters posing, etc. FF12 is the first Final Fantasy game that does not feel like FF at all, neither classic FF nor FF6 through FF10 FF. The zany world/aesthetics are gone, the likeable main cast is gone, Uematsu's music is gone, you now get boring RTWP combat that is very unexciting to watch, etc.
>For me, the FF series jumped the shark with 7.
>The switch to techno-fantasy and pseudo-modern setting were big enough leaps
They were big leaps but the diselpunk dystopia of Midgar only constituted the first disc of a four disc game. You still get 3 more discs of zany fantasy world. Same thing with FF8 where only the first disc is conspicously modern/subdued and the rest is your usual zany Final Fantasy. FF12 and FF13 are the first not to feel like Final Fantasy at all, being completely absent of zany fantasy world, FF12 being too subdued all the way through and FF13 having futuristic sci-fi aesthetics all the way through.
I always thought having new settings was refreshing and a strength of the series.
>FF12 is the first Final Fantasy game that does not feel like FF at all, neither classic FF nor FF6 through FF10 FF. The zany world/aesthetics are gone, the likeable main cast is gone, Uematsu's music is gone, you now get boring RTWP combat that is very unexciting to watch, etc.
The moronic brain dead FF9 gay has entered the thread, conveniently leaving out the fact that his favorite game has
>Terribly written story
>Awful shitty mini game bloat
>Gimmick fight and sequence after gimmick fight and sequences
>Boring predictable safe call backs to the original games
Where as FF12
>Extremely experimental and influential combat system
>Groundbreaking narrative for FF
>Kino art and character designs
>Beautiful graphics
Of fricking course a manchild Sakaguchi cultist like you was filtered by it
Stellagay? That you?
Based, inbred chibi weebs and e-girlgays must die so that anime enjoyers may once again flourish.
Id say Ff6 is pretty big on exploration still, though. In ff7 is where the derailing truly happened. There was nothing of value to be found any longer through exploration in that game
>vincent
>knights of the round
>yuffie
>wutai
bruh
all dogshit derivative trash
FF7 was the real turning point even though FF7 itself is more conservative than it's given credit for as far as maintaining the core gameplay elements of the franchise. 8 and especially 9 is where the gameplay and exploration feels like obligatory baggage to the story.
>Deep sea research
>a ton of side stories and npc stories that get updated throughout the game depending on where you go and at what time
>a ton of hidden bosses
>FF8
bruh
I dunno why you Black folk who haven't played these games have to seethe so foolishly kek
Is FFXII Zodiac Age worth 20 bucks?
I would say 4 is way more linear than 6 despite me loving 4.
No, XII is trash. Not even worth negative dollars
I would happily buy it for negative twenty dollars
Yes
Filtered
I'll give it a shot
>Filtered
this is the ultimate "I have no argument" response
You presented no argument to begin with, only seethe
Play the original PS2 version. It looks better anyway if you are emulating.
I know X HD is scuffed to hell, but zodiac age is alright and has speed hacks.
The so-called PS4 remaster of FF12 washed out the textures when they threw them into an AI upscaler. Shit remaster.
Looks alright on PC.
I notice they had trouble explaining how certain characters come back to life or survive since there are spells or magic that can resurrect characters. I have FFIII & FFVII: Remake.
12 having an obviously failed production after the mainline numbered mmorpg thing most people skipped was really damaging and set the stage for people to have no mercy for 13
>When did all go wrong?
FF has always been a rotten egg that subsisted on copying popular things and its fans aren't particularly intelligent or honest about why they play the series.
>Was when Sakaguchi left?
Nope because not only did he make the worst FF, his stupid fricking movie and his dumbass Hawaiian studio prevented Xenogears 2 from being made and also FF12, one of the best FFs was made afterwards meaning he contributed nothing. Classic FFs were good because of people like Kawazu and Chrono Trigger was good because of Masato Kato, Dream team was a stupid ass marketing ploy, which reminds me that modern DQ games exposed Horii for being a b***hass hack just like Sakaguchi
>Chrono Trigger was good because of Masato Kato
I was with you until there. Kato is only good when he has an iron hand holding him in check, which was probably Yuji Horii. Kato unleashed gets us messy bullshit with a half-dozen drafts all merging together like Chrono Cross.
This doesn't preclude Horii going downhill later, but Kato 100% needs a powerful editor to stay inside the lines.
>Kato is only good when he has an iron hand holding him in check, which was probably Yuji Horii. Kato unleashed gets us messy bullshit with a half-dozen drafts all merging together like Chrono Cross.
Meh, I really don't think Cross is as bad as people say so I can't fully agree with this, but I just wanted to point out that Masato Kato was one of the biggest contributions to Trigger but was also a newbie so he couldn't be featured in "le dream team". Which is a really an over hyped meme that people still mindlessly believe in despite how much of a team effort was put in outside of those big names. Besides Another Eden as far as mobage gacha shit is really decent and more people would probably take it seriously if Kato wasn't forced to make it profitable and was able to make a real game instead.
Slightly off topic anyway but I just wanted people to stop attributing so much to fricking Sakaguchi
>really don't think Cross is as bad as people say
Opinion discarded.
You were filtered HARD
>FF12 is one of the best Final Fantasys
Thank the maker, someone on this board has a brain
>quintessential gaijinslop series
It was never good to begin with.
>When did all go wrong?
Either never or from the 3rd game. Square never kept the same influential talent for more then a few games in Mainline so the entire series varies wildly in quality and design. Whether this is a good thing I can't really say.
the series was fricking doomed from the second
>FINAL fantasy
>TWO
creatively bankrupt and chasing money from the outset
Considering there isn't a single good Final Fantasy game after FFXII then I would say after that. FFXIII was such a huge departure and set a terrible precedent going forwards even if, ironically, it's still somehow more of a JRPG than the following games. FFXIV isn't even a Final Fantasy game nor a good MMO or game. FFXV is a joke and I haven't played FFXVI myself due to not owning a PS5 but it looks like more of the same. I have however played FFVII-R and it's too similar to FFXV with "style over substance". There's also the fact that Squeenix lied about what it was going to be. It's a decisively mediocre game which sums up Square Enix as a company and Final Fantasy as a series nowadays. It's nothing special and they fell behind.
>When did final fantasy go bad
Whenever you stopped liking the games.
New Final Fantasy games stopped being a big event in the 2010s for a few reasons:
>Influx of post-2007 casuals who don't give a frick about any RPGs besides Skyrim, Witcher 3 or Persona
>Massive anti-JRPG bias by western media starting in the mid-2000s; Final Fantasy took the brunt of it
>Mismanagement behind the scenes (Crystal Tools fiasco, fricking over Versus XIII, etc.)
>XIII, XIV 1.0, and XV all ranging from bad to terrible
Gen Z and beyond will never know a world where FF was actually an important franchise, and it's not even entirely Square's fault.
>FF was actually an important franchise
It is now once again
>Crystal tools
Gotta refresh my memory on that, was it a game engine or a planned series?
T'was a vidya engine. Fabula Nova Crystallis was a planned series with Agito/Type-0, 13 and Versus 13.
Thanks. I'll try to look up a vid for more information.
Crystal Tools was the engine Square made for the XIII trilogy and XIV 1.0. It was a nightmare to make games for and led to constant delays. It's the reason why XIII was a hallway with no towns, why XIV 1.0 had to be shut down and rebooted from scratch, and why Versus XIII went into development hell for so long. They spent a lot of time and money on it and the only game that still used it past 2013 is Dragon Quest X.
Good lord it really was disasterous, fricking changed their fate
The saddest part is that the developers had finally figured out how to use the engine by the time they made Lightning Returns, but it was already too late. LR is basically the game XIII could have been if Square's management hadn't lost their minds somewhere around 2007.
FF7R has been great, but it's also too late. The damage has been done. An IP can't shit the bed as hard as Final Fantasy did for over a decade and emerge from it unscathed.
They stumbled for quite some long ass time, but have now produced a few good games again. Perhaps the next one will prove they weren't just flukes.
>Massive anti-JRPG bias by western media starting in the mid-2000s; Final Fantasy took the brunt of it
Did they ever say why they hated JRPGs? The story focus, the combat, the character designs? I read somewhere that this led to Versus 13 being a simplified entry with a simplified combat system compared to what Nomura wanted, until it became 15 and briefly sold very well with the target market that well didn't like RPGs
FF12 is good but the production was obviously super fricked up and the rot completely contaminated 13, 14, and 15. XIV 2.0 is an adequate if somewhat soulless game and 16 looks similar (haven't played due to no ps5)
7R gameplay-wise should be the template for these games for a few years, like how FF4 was the template for FF5-9.
Between 7 and 8.
It was around the time Square started abandoning their other RPG projects to focus on Final Fantasy that their fate was sealed.
Profit minded, growth focused to the detriment of creative expression. They hedged it all on a new growth model.
FF10 was the last official hurrah and while successful, also marked the departure of major creative figures.
FF12 was one last remaining death rattle from a cherished creative mind (who left because he saw the writing on the wall.)
FF13-16 represent the results of SE's new development and design mentality.
>left because he saw the writing on the wall
That's a funny way of saying Matsuno had a mental breakdown then wallowed in self pity for 17 years releasing only 2 games, 3 scenarios for other games (2 for an MMO w/ Ivalice), a kickstarter scam and a cancelled shatinum games live service mobage.
One of the 2 released titles being Crimson Shroud.
If Matsuno saw any writing on a wall, it was his own brown & red stained chicken scratch predicting his epic downfall as imposter syndrome took hold.
>Matsuno had a mental breakdown
Not the first time I read that Matsuno had a melty. Is this real or just a rumor?
It's real. Gonna preface this with how big a project XII was, I know certain FF fans like to shit on it a lot but the gambit system & programming were huge hurdles for that team to overcome.
There was a lot of drama in it but ultimately stress got to him.
You had the early production issues, gooch formed MW and some of the staff left to join. Matsuno refusing to go to the office for a month, a real shitshow.
That led to Sakaguchi refusing to play the game because he was upset that Matsuno had left the project since they were good friends, it wasn't a stance against Kawazu/Ito.
Sakaguchis stance has led to additional speculation that Matsuno was unhappy with Kitase & Hashimoto's management. After Matsuno left other creatives on the team walked away, joined other units or went independent, the quest team got scattered to the wind, after Ivalice project you only really see Minagawa & Yoshida work together.
SE was a disaster at the time on the FF side, XII was delayed, they're showing previews for a VII remake before it launches, then develop XIII (which had it's own hell), XIII Versus' development & XIV 1.0.
Sakaguchi's stance was an overreaction and fanboys have taken it as a way to shit on XII that's it's not a real FF and all the usual bullshit but the game was still saved & rushed out the door by Ito and Kawazu producing. Saved again in IZJS and the eventual remaster.
Shit like that bums me out, it's so much wasted potential and efficiency. Nowadays people celebrate failures, devs leaving, studios having trouble and all that.
That just often means worse games, not "if they fail they realize they need to make better games"
Why did Matsuno have this meltdown in the first place? Betraying a friend and the fans by leaving the project seems like a massive overreaction.
It was a total shakeup in the Square culture. Even Nomura felt something was off but Matsuno was at Sakaguchi's side for a long time.
Matsuno is also very sickly in general. It might have been too early for him to step up if he wasn't going to stay healthy
Work stress can turn you into a cynical butthole incapable of empathy. It also quickly spirals out of control as things like sleep deprivation or shitty nutrition reduce your performance, so you get more stress from falling behind, so pull more unhealthy shit, etc.
Calling quits is absolutely the right call because no company will thank you for ruining your life to save their asses.
I think the mmos are master class despite their flaws and the thing that is holding the series back is not iterating on a battle system. 16 should have used ATB like FF7R did. Iterating on a battle system is how we discovered blue magic, summoning, gunblades lot of the cool shit the franchise is now known for
Perhaps iterating on 16's system produces something, who knows
FF7R iterated on LR's combat (hybrid system with a stagger bar).
Idk, I like X because I like water, the music and Wakka and Auron.
After tanaka left
Though it might be more accurate to say the starting point was when yoshida was put in charge of xiv, that was the exact moment the company doomed the series.
> on when and why Final Fantasy go wrong.
When:
Immediately after FFX.
Why:
1) Shifting from: "same structure, changing stories" (i.e.: constantly different settings and stories but always with the same general gameplay and mechanics) to: "same stories, changing structure" (i.e.: constant rehearse of the same stories, while constantly trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of gameplay).
2) Obsession over chasing technical realism at all costs.
3) Obsession over removing important game elements for absolutely no conceivable reason
(ff12: story removed; ff13: exploration removed; ff15: half game removed; ff16: party removed).
4) Obsession over pandering to casuals and westeners.
How to fix this:
1) STOP remasters
2) STOP remakes
3) STOP DLCs
4) STOP sequels
5) STOP prequels
6) Focus ALL efforts on making NEW MAINLINE GAMES (FF17, FF18, FF19, etc...)
7) Focus on style and atmosphere instead of mere graphics.
8) Think long and hard about 1 gameplay structure that could be up to modern standards without deviating too much from the classical FF formula (FF7Rebirth might be a good candidate), and STICK TO IT for 3 or 4 games at the very least.
9) STOP removing stuff.
10) STOP pandering to the west.
11) STOP pandering to casuals.
Good post. Sadly nothing of this will happen and instead more remakes will ensue. Don't be surprised if they start to remake FFVI soon.
People keep asking for remakes. VII Remake was an old wish finally granted.
I doubt there will be any remakes besides 7 since there are so many people who played that one first as kids and didn't play any before or after it, none of the other games seem to be anywhere near it in popularity.
7,8, and 10 are around the same in terms of popularity.
People have been asking and been teased with a VII remake for decades.
Yes, that's a different question altogether. If an VIII or X remake was teased the response would be similar in the audience. Journalists would not respond as favorably however
VII was overall an excellent game and a story, but graphics were already worse than later PS1 games, so naturally with PS2 people started dreaming about realistic visuals and voice acting.
VIII remake could be interesting, if it doesn't take 15 years to make. FF X is playable/presentable even today.
10 maybe since that was a lot of peoples' first Final Fantasy too, but no one really loves 8 that much besides that autistic moron who's been spamming this board and Ganker and /vr/ for months about it.
Not sure if too young or just hypnotized by group-think tbh
Nah. 7 is way ahead of the other two and is most popular by a long shot.
Between 10 and 8, I'd say 10 is more popular on its own merits.
8 got bonus sales and attention for being the first FF released after 7.
VIII does have style and certain 90s charm, so a remake could be interesting and kind of fresh. Especially when many disliked the original for its mechanics.
This is true. The real gripe people have with Draw is how labourious it was. But with the active combat of Remake or XV it plays really well into the concept of the draw system. You could have drawn a channelled ability by one party member that fills up everyone's stacks. If all the party does it you'd cap out pretty quickly, if you encounter something that you're already full of you just switch to attack. Though you could argue that just learning the spell and using MP would be better anyway.
you're naive if you don't think they're going to remake X
>8 on the same level as 7/10
not even close
The constant remake shit isn't a FF or even gaming specific problem. It's a symptom of a much larger problem, the lack of or rather disregard for novelty and creativity. At the risk of sounding melodramatic we're living in an end times and lots of the higher ups in businesses know it.
Video games are entertainment products for the masses, not some high form of art.
Way to miss the point, dumbass.
Did I?
>It's a symptom of a much larger problem, the lack of or rather disregard for novelty and creativity
Tim Rogers did a good bit on FF7 being remade in his first solo video after Kotaku.
IIRC he talks about all the requests and demands for an FF7 remake up to the point where that PS3 tech demo was shown, that due to the internal problems on XII's development was shown before its release and the requests from fans when XII released for an FF7 remake while they just got a whole ass monster of a game in XII.
Some of those people were always going to get filtered by the combat but the remake and graphics and prestige cinematic squads were wound up in a spiral of hype by that engine demo and ultimately they don't care about the games trying new things or innovating and SE at the time were still trying internally to push combat beyond just ATB with gimmick tacked on; that whole mess led to XIII's FNC quintology experimentation with combat.
>Tim Rogers
Still waiting for him to do a video on FF VI
Get in line, FF IV's first............
...See you in 2049
Maybe it was IV he promised, and I just misremembered. Anyways, it would be nice to get some new content from him.
when trying to do that Fabula Nova Crystalis thing for the PS3
and fricking Nomura over so he couldn't work on VersusXIII
How different would the fandom have been if VersusXIII came out?
VSXIII would have just been the same exact moron shit.
doubt it.
Seemed like there was some good ideas for the story and gameplay that Tabata threw out the window
>Seemed like there was some good ideas
GOOD IDEAS are pointless. This is actually the major problem with Final Fantasy. Every game always wants to circle around some IDEA. The creators get the big moments, ideas, twists and set pieces in their head but there's no thought about what anything really means or how it connects. It's pointless.
we won't know because Tabata took those ideas Nomura had and threw them away
>When did all go wrong?
when FF stopped being it's own thing and you could basically interchange the parts and nothing would be different
FF15 and forward
>giant mass of water
>immediate surrounding area is arid steppes
But to be fair, there's a place on earth where you have a desert surrounded on all sides by water and tropical rainforest 90 miles to the south. La Guajira desert is at the same latitude as Nicaraguan rainforest.
*AVGN voice* What were they THINKING?
WHAT were they THEENKEENG?!
It went wrong when they didnt make a FFVI remake with 2.5D graphics just like Octopath traveler, its been 30 years and we got a motherfricking FFVI remake before a FFVI remake
PD: Terra best girl
>he didn't play the pixel demaster and "enjoy" the 2.5D opera scene
LMAOing @ ur life bozo
Whenever they decided that FF13 would be the winning format going forward. Every game since has been using 13 as a base and I have no fricking idea why. They had Kingdom Hearts as the popular action jrpg, why cannibalize that with your FF series?
>Whenever they decided that FF13 would be the winning format going forward.
>Every game since has been using 13 as a base and I have no fricking idea why.
I get what you're saying but this focus on innovating & evolving has been a core concept of the series and the first battle overhaul they tried was ATB on IV.
Some players don't notice it because it seems slow until VII with LB, then VIII wanted to try something new. X had the party size reduced to 3 with the swap system so it would feel faster paced, X-2 brought us back to jobs and XII went further beyond with the gambit system, bringing programming into the equasion.
XIII's paradigm shift is extremely flawed but it's building on trying to evolve ATB. It's focus was to- well-
>I have no fricking idea why.
The second reason they wanted to focus on this was because of Advent Children, it was a huge influence on XIII, Versus, LR & eventually VII R. The fights were supposed to feel flashy and big like you saw on the bi- small screen.
XIII Versus > XV being the title that was striving for this the most.
Was it a good decision? Ehhhhh, I see what they were going for, where they ended up. The VII fans they seemed to want eventually kinda got it but yeah I certainly come from that camp too. I'm perfectly content to sit in the chaos of max battle speed V.
I haven't played XVI yet, I'm hopeful because of Suzuki but I'll see.
My take isn't going to be popular but in retrospect and as someone who played the first game as a kid I'll say FF2.
I think I would prefer if the series had gone on in that direction and resembled a super high quality crystal project at this point.
I get that most of the fanbase loves cinematics and story, but I loved the sense of adventure 1 and to a lesser extent 3 had.
>I think I would prefer if the series had gone on in that direction and resembled a super high quality crystal project at this point.
it did, just under a different name: Sa•Ga
The saga games are legitimately terrible. This hipster moronation needs to be squashed right now.
>The saga games are legitimately terrible
Nope, they're actually good if you're not of the opinion that all JRPGs need to be cinematic railroaded movie game like experiences
>This hipster moronation needs to be squashed right now.
Cope
>Nope, they're actually good if you're not of the opinion that all JRPGs need to be cinematic railroaded movie game like experiences
No they're terrible and it's impossible to fall into the trap of playing them unless you're a moron that exclusively plays square games. The first rpg I EVER played was the very first saga game. It's not a good series, it's a shallow shitty mess of gimmicky barely explored mechanics that people mistake for depth, like a sting game.
You were filtered hard anon, I don't know what to tell you. It's a good series that gets new installments for a reason
>trap of playing them unless you're a moron that exclusively plays square games
Demonstrably wrong, most FF gays want nothing to do with this series because it doesn't appeal to their sensibilities of what a JRPG should play like. They're the ones constantly b***hing about how it gets quality remasters while FF gets dogshit. The point is, SaGa is basically the series for people who are fed up with typical square shit and want something meaty to sink their teeth into
>It's a good series that gets new installments for a reason
It didn't start churning out new games at a brisk pace until square starting porting the old games to phones. Guess who's enjoying saga games? Saga is not an alternative to square games, it's sinking even deeper into the square shit pit of meaningless spectacle and fart huffing.
>it's sinking even deeper into the square shit pit of meaningless spectacle and fart huffing.
You sound like a bitter butthurt homosexual. Nothing about the direction of the series suggests this at all.
>Nothing about the direction of the series suggests this at all.
Look at the latest game releasing lmao, saga has produced nothing of value. I'd rather watch paint dry than play another saga game.
In my opinion it started at FF7 with a tonal shift towards a more shonen/manga style of storytelling. But since the game was actually pretty good and extremely popular nobody really cared.
Then VIII came along and was simply a style over substance clusterfrick. It had no redeeming qualities outside ''looking cool'' and even then only towards a certain demographic. Story was bad, unfocused and character where uninteresting.
IX tried to reverse course but was badly received due to its cartoony and childish art direction. From then on they went full moron. X was only good because it was the first PS2 release, but it solidified the stylish but empty direction the games took from then on. It did have good gameplay features, but only in the very beginning.
From a gameplay perspective they gradualy hollowed the ressource management from older game and left the boring four dudes in a row combat style. Combat increasingly became something you went trough rather than an incremental drain on your limited ressource, giving each fight no matter what it was a bit of tension. But it wasnt that obvious in the beginning since this phenomenon was compensated by a shift towards cinematic and stylish use of abilites/magic spells, limit breaks etc. Then they made every character interchangable statsticks with a different gardrobes. As such each character as narrative elements more or less became disjointed from their use as gameplay elements.
It was clear from XII onwards that they had no idea on where the serie should go. Each games had to check a variety of ''traditional'' FF gameplay and narrative elements such as crystals, espers/summons, Cids, etc with an increasingly superficial reasons for them to be in the game in the first place outside the meta ''they have to be there for it to be an FF''.
The result of all of this is an hollow, boring experience. And once the visualy impressive aspect of the experience wore off there was not much left to it.
>when and why Final Fantasy go wrong.
Final Fantasy never went in the first place.
What do you think happens to a franchise that never has a stable direction and lives hand to mouth by constantly copying other games rather than trying to sell something with an actual, unique identity that you can't find anywhere else?
The second game was already too different from the first because nobody had any plan for a long running franchise, nobody expected FF1 to sell much so they just went with the flow and tried something completely different to see if it sticked, then the original team disbanded because of critical disagreements on the franchise's future so effectively, Final Fantasy as a franchise was born stillborn and never recovered from that.
Compare it to all the other running franchises and you'll see it very clearly, DQ never compromised on its core identity, you can start with DQ11 or 9 and then go directly back to DQ1 or the NES games in general and it will still feel very much like DQ, you can play SMT4 and go back to SMT1 or even the earlier games like Majin Tensei or Devil Summoner and you can still easily tell that yes, you are playing a SMT.
You can't say the same about FF, FF1 is so far removed from the rest of the series in basically anything but the crystals that it has more elements in common with the SaGa games than it has with modern FF games, FF5 has nothing in common with something like FF13 or 16, or hell even FF8 outside of some names and mascots.
The thing that went wrong outside of that simple fact is the userbase itself, which is horrendously fractured and insular, precisely because the series itself is like that, the FF fandom is just a collection of small, self segregated communities that at best like a select handful of games, mostly because they grew up with them, then you have the various subcommunities that grew around some figures like the Sakaguchi, Yoshida, Matsuno or Nomura cultists, and all of these hate each others.
>Sakaguchi, Yoshida, Matsuno or Nomura cultists, and all of these hate each others.
Sakaguchi cult is at mostly boogeyman.
>"Sakaguchi cultist!"
>"Who?"
>"The executive producer of Final Fantasy in the 90s"
>"Oh yeah I like those games"
>"Sakaguchi was a no-talent hack who profited off other peropls worka nd took all the credit he never did a single good thing in his entire worthless life why do you put him on such a pedastal"
>"Whatever, oh yeah I like Crono Trigger too did he do that one also?"
><autistic screeching continues>
>>"Whatever, oh yeah I like Crono Trigger too did he do that one also?"
That's me.
Someone being too deep into internet community bullshit is a red flag.
Yup. I don’t even know who any of them are except Nomura as the goofball who made kingdom hearts and is ruining ff7
>ruining ff7
So you don't know then, Nojima is to blame
>too deep into internet community bullshit
They're not even e-celebs or some shit, just the people who worked on the games you enjoy. I guess if you aren't on the autistic spectrum or are just a normal gay you might not understand that people tend to want to know about the people who worked on things they liked and what they did, becoming fans of their work.
>They're not even e-celebs or some shit
The issue isn't who the producers are.
The issue is the hater (or the fanboy) becoming obsessed, reading and reading into way too much industry gossip from other morons at the rumor mill, weaving narratives in your head about these people and their careers and getting mad and hostile (or fawning excessively) as a consequence.
The reality is that there's only a very tiny number of obsessed haters and even fewer dedicated fanboys. The obsessed haters hallucinate large cults of fans surrounding the objects of their hatred. So, they lash out constantly and anyone who bothers to challenge or contradict their ridiculous assertions are perceived as part of the enemy cult. These people have severe mental issues.
Ultimately though, 3415868 is just a giant writhing baitball, full of mostly stupid and incorrect comments clearly tailored to deliver maximum offense to Final Fantasy fans.
Yeah, this. Pretty much any internet community has these "devoted" individuals.
You made me read their post and the second half is entirely correct.
>The issue is the hater (or the fanboy) becoming obsessed, reading and reading into way too much industry gossip from other morons at the rumor mill
Oh yeah right, my bad. It's not like it's very clearly documented and interviews that plainly layout the intention of various people who work on a game. It was just all rumors, which is not a convenient way to dismiss all criticism that producers and developers get from people who are invested enough to want to learn more
Obsession and delusion. Interviews don't reveal as much as you imagine
>Obsession and delusion
Neither of these apply and are meaningless deflections of actual criticism. The only reason people get really passionate about it are because people who are actually deluded and obsessed will bend over backwards to defend their favorite.
Give me an example and I will explain. Until then you're just a gasbag and have posted exactly zero "actual criticism."
Example, people hate the fact that Spirits Within nearly bankrupted Square and ended up canning a lot of interesting projects, as well as the massive waste of money the Hawaiian studio was. This is not a rumor but well known that this happened and unfortunately though he isn't solely to blame, Sakaguchi had a hand in this massive failure
Why is that Yoshi dude hated? All I know is he turned XIV from a complete failure to the most played MMO. So what gives?
People who seethe about MMOs first and foremost. Secondly is that he has a cult like following with insufferable fans.
> All I know is he turned XIV from a complete failure to the most played MMO. So what gives?
He's also disliked by a small subset of XIV players for repeatedly trying to streamline the game, shit design decisions, technical problems and lazy copy pasting that have come to their peak at 6.0/Endwalker.
He really does not like RPG elements, builds or player expression so the gameplay at EW is mostly a case of learn your rotation for single target & multi target then rinse & repeat unless you're playing black mage.
The rest of combat is just older mechanics stacked on top of others so fights get more stale as you go on and outside of Savage/Ultimate are mostly a case of a rehearsed dance where you move to a spot and stand.
Difficulty has gotten easier too, midcore content has dried up this expansion so you've got babymode content or savage then ultimate.
Rest of the gameplay?
Dumbing down extended to dungeons too, they reworked all the main story dungeons to be beatable with AI companions. You'd usually expect MMO seethe about turning a multiplayer game into singleplayer right? Opposite case here.
The dungeons now follow the tried and true copy paste formula where you have a hallway with 2 packs of mobs, a wall, 2 packs, a wall a boss and repeat until the final boss. A lot of the janky ARR dungeons got reworked into this which made sense but now almost every boss is ShB/EW style with limited mechanics that repeat as they walk back to the centre, turn north and cast an attack.
New dungeons in EW: Variant mechanics have to be done solo so it's even more basic without stacks.
The only difficulty slider they have now is faster firing AOE attacks & mechanics which their servers can't keep up with.
Adored by XIV fans to the point of worship, but obsessed with copying what works & streamlining. He's a producer, not a director.
I see, thanks for explaining. So he is blamed for the game's flaws. Where do these fans and cults operate?
> Where do these fans and cults operate?
Wrong board
>>>/vg/
>>>/SE'sXIVforums
The general XIV fanbase dislikes criticism or negative feedback, the cultish behaviour usually refers to the toxic casualism & positivity in response to it. Criticism in XIV goes in a bit of a cycle, there'll be some backlash to something and then when casual players decide they're fed up of hearing about it the response is to shout down the people.
It seems cultish because when it gets to that later cycle it devolves into telling the person that they don't personally experience the issue and to play another game; a line Yoshida used in the past but twisted out of context.
This happened in EW a bunch over the games difficulty, lack of midcore content or the relic quests being changed from long, drawn out things you work on during downtime to a currency dump tied to a piece of side story content that can be completed in <2h. So when people complain about things like the relic process or not having enough multiplayer patch content to do they're told to play other games instead. Those people are ultimately airing their feedback because they want to play the game and have things to do, to be engaged, but the fanbase has issues seeing it as that.
There's a lot of gatekeeping involved and defending thy maidens honour.
> So he is blamed for the game's flaws.
Yeah and that's the way he wants it too.
He doesn't want people calling out the raid designers who designed the fights (except in the case of EW where he repeatedly mentioned the alliance raid team were new which backfired into criticism being directed at them).
It's admirable to take that on as a frontman, it's charismatic and even endearing so it's easy to like him. He's a decent producer who can get some exceptional stuff out of the talent working under him.
Some people really like to criticize, and some people really don't want to dwell on it. These people don't mix well.
>He really does not like RPG elements, builds or player expression so the gameplay at EW is mostly a case of learn your rotation for single target & multi target then rinse & repeat
Jesus Christ people actually play this shit?
NTA but for me it's a combination of sunk cost fallacy, and there being a dearth of any other new games on the market that appeal to me.
I own a house and spent several hours having to meticulous place decorations and glitch stuff up. But you lose your house if you don't walk into it at least once every 45 days, and you don't get refunded for the cost of buying the house. I don't want to unsub and then have to buy a house again and spend lots of time glitching those decorations back into their right place. Also, there has been a massive housing shortage for the past 5 years. Hundreds of people bidding on a darn small plot, and the lotteries are once every 2 weeks. If I were to unsub and lose my house, the chances of me getting another house again are minute.
Lastly, when it comes to high production value fantasy games, my choices are extremely limited. There is just WoW, GW2, FF14, and the annual Trails game, and then maybe once every 3 years you get the one off JRPG like a Xenoblade or Monochrome Mobius or Granblue Fantasy Relink. No other new games coming out appeal to me, and I've already played most of the old JRPGs that interest me (Final Fantasy, Suikoden, Sakura Wars, Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword, etc). As bad as FFXIV is when it comes to meaningful gameplay, I do at least do like the aesthetics, like the soundtrack (I think it's grossly overrated and pales in comparison to Falcom OSTs but I like it enough to have spent $300 buying the albums).
NTA - XIV suffers from several things:
>1. An ageing player base in an ageing game.
>2. Being tied to an older business model.
>3. Being an outlier of the MMO lifecycle.
Issue one isn't complex. People get older, have lives to tend to and dislike change once they are comfy. The game itself is also getting on in years and MMOs aren't as simple to revamp as other games due to how they work. Also you need to understand that new players aren't drawn to older games because the market has so many more newer offerings competing for new player attention.
Issue 2 is a bit more complex. The original mmo business model was built around wasting people's time so they keep paying for longer. This changed when games like wow shifted the focus into a gear treadmill; so the focus of that time wasting became on challenging players to get better rewards to see more content to waste more time to get better rewards etc. However casual players got upset so this evolved into getting rewards to players quicker - the fastest way being to sell time efficiency to get said rewards. This leads to simplification of game content because the more complex stuff the longer it takes, which makes players leave for "faster" games. FF can't afford to lose players like this (due to above) and therefore dumbs down each expansion.
Finally ARR is a freak of nature in terms of MMOs. By all accounts it shouldn't have succeeded - few if any players are patient enough to hang around in a good game for a month, let alone years in a crappy game like XIV originally was. That ARR managed to pull off it's 180 is insane for any game, but an outright miracle for the MMO genre. The sad thing is it's instilled this dumbass belief that FF can't die because they'll just pull another miracle out the bag if it ever gets close to doing so again and that's just moronic because it's highly unlikely they'll get away with it again because they don't even know how they did it the first time.
This is correct tbh. And all of the KINO appreciators enjoy only VII, VIII, X, XIII, XV, and the VII Remakes.
The rest are MMO-troons
>still seething about MMOs
They really live rent free huh.
>MMO-troon proving the statement yet again
many such cases!
The fall came with 13.
Truly, the answer is 9. Self-consciously making a "call back" heavy game ruined the series by turning moogles and such into bonafide mascots.
I actually want to say Kingdom Hearts. After Kingdom Hearts it feels like the series stopped being about heroic adventures and fantasy to a bunch of mall goths posing around being angry with stupid convoluted plots that don't make sense. Yeah every other game will generally have some moronic plot twist but I swear some of these games are a special kind of moronic. It's like the whole series went from a fantasy painting to some scene kids live journal.
>Cultists get tangentially called out for their bullshit
>Right after their usual thread dies
>Immediately swarm the thread to defend themselves and their masters with poorly disguised apologism
Once they switched to high resolution graphics, the jig was up. Until FFX they were able to shit out core and spinoff games like nothing. The rising costs of graphixx meant not only longer production schedules, but they also had to shift into ways to recoup as much of the costs as possible. Hence the rapid rise of remakes, sequels, etc. to reuse as many assets as possible to spread costs ou as well as more and more trying to appeal to the broadest audience possiblet. I guess this can be traced to the PSX era where the games made noise for their prerendered cutscenes which were mind blowing for the time and pushed the company into the graphix over everything direction, culminating in the Spirits Within movie giga flopping and being forced to merge with Enix over it. But that time period set the tone for what to expect from the franchise and it has only handfcuffed them more and more as graphix gets higher and higher res and more and more expensive.
It's pretty obvious when you think about it for 5 seconds that it all went wrong when men who enjoy spending 16 hours per day around other men end up in charge of the company.
AI is going to replace these former jrpg companies soon enough thank frick.
FFX was decent but didn't feel like a FF game and FFX-2 killed the magic of the series for good.
I feel like X was really where they committed to their own kind of personal insanity rather than the series vibe.
>But all final fantasies are different
Shut up. They were but if you really looked you could see some really obvious connecting threads. But no we need to get into moron town starting with Isekai footballer from the future who's also a dream maybe?
>But no we need to get into moron town starting with Isekai footballer from the future who's also a dream maybe?
Well yes, actually. There's 100 sword man games, it's good to have one waterball sword bro.
Yes you may prefer traditional/familiar stuff for good reason, but let's not demand everything to be like that.
>FFX-2 killed the magic of the series for good.
>the game that embraced the closest to FF's traditional gameplay and broke away from Kitase's style over substance formula "killed the magic"
literally turn ur brain off bro
forget the nojimbo slop writing and imagine you're a bunch of cute androgynous men wearing tight and loose clothing out to save the world wif crystals
problem solved
FF X-2 is quite literally the 8th best FF title and would place higher than non ATB/non job system games if only it wasn't a spinoff of middling Nojima & Kitase title with zero effort put into the story or world lmao
DE's a good game if you know what you're getting into but SE should still fire the marketing exec who put that FF message in the marketing into the sun. It sold a few more copies due to that but what the frick were they thinking.
He did make 2 mobile games that got hit by the classic SE EOS that I've been wanting to play since DE got released but no major projects.
You'd think it makes sense to have him and Tokita create games together in CBU II right? Nah, he's chained away in CBU IV.
This guy can't even write properly yet he pretends he has anything worth of saying.
Well this is a stupid question because Final Fantasy isn’t really a series anymore. It’s an anthology. Each game/series spawned from it is so radically different that trying to be a fan of the entire thread of them is a futile existence. By now, developers just make whatever they want and slap FF onto it for brand recognition more than anything. Theres no connecting thread of even a battle system after FF9, so there’s no point in trying to decide when the series “fell off” and instead you should just play what you like and not what you don’t like. Instead of making this entirely pointless fricking thread you moron.
I love FF3 🙂
Ito is responsible for all the good games Squaresoft made. Now he's stuck in the basement making Dungeon Travellers.
The last good Final Fantasy is FF7. FF9 was good as it tried to go back to an earlier formula, but it could not redeem the series.
The Bravely Default series appears to be the spiritual successor to the older style FF games (improving upon the FFV Job system, which is a great mechanic). There are plenty of job/ability combinations to choose from.
Also the male characters don't look androgynous Calvin Klein models, I never understood the appeal of this modern character design. The Bravely series goes back to the chibi/medieval style used in older FF games. The music is not as good as Uematsu's work though.
>The Bravely Default series appears to be the spiritual successor to the older style FF games (improving upon the FFV Job system, which is a great mechanic). There are plenty of job/ability combinations to choose from.
the problem comes with Bravely Second where bosses will counter like 90% of your moves so your freedom of jobs is very limited
You also have no way to check in-game what their counters are unless you play the fight at slow speed and write down their counters as they appear at the start of the fight
FF10 is better than FF9, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not.
>where did it all go wrong?
Enix Merger
The answer has and always will be "when you think square began believing they were good at story telling."
For me this was FFX-2. Turning zanarkand into a theme park was so incredibly insulting I don't think I ever got over the butt hurt it inflicted.
IV
i consider 4 a one-off fluke of square trying to emulate what made dq4 so lauded, and failing miserably, they really didn't return to that absolutely railroaded style of absolute dogshit until 7
Also moron, probably same idiot as
It never did, ff was never bad
ff was one of the best series in gaming until the crystal bullshit project that was ff13. always trying new shit meant a few bad attempts here or there, but it had always at least been fresh. with ff13 they were planning to make a whole series of games in the same setting, they were planning to do away with the anthology aspect of the series. THAT is what led to stagnation and killed the series outright. 14 and 15 began life as part of that same bullshit. 16 was made by the guy who came in to try and make 14 mass marketable. the series is in corporate hell and it wont escape. the one way they could fix it would be to market the ff license out for cheap to smaller indie teams. we would have a boatload of frick, but also get some genuinely good little jrpg's again. it wont happen though.
hey buddy
compilation of VII called and said to stop ripping off his idea
wait what's that ah
i see i c
my bad didn't realise kitase and hashimoto had given you the green light for this one, you say that hashimoto approved it so long as it doesn't cut into nomuras other work and take over again on a third game, haha as if that'll happen tabatas got his hands full on the PSP version right?
good luck man, wishing your fabula nova crystalis project well
oh hey wada my dude what's happening ah you wanna see toriyama and the guys go right on in!
>market the ff license out for cheap
That would just dilute the IP further, which is what they did starting in the 2000s with all sorts of spin-offs and sequels.
are you referring to the golden age of ff? the PS2 era
I'm referring to the spin-offs and sequels on various platforms
Dumb misuse of the term golden age, even if you like the PS2 games better.
nope, just using correct and proper english metaphor friend.
nes era was rough but they were still figuring shit out
snes era made strides in storytelling and gameplay
ps1 era went crazy with presentations and weird ideas
ps2 was the peak of visuals, gameplay, storylines and the rest
everything past it was rot, nothing before it is as good. PS2 era ff was the peak of the franchise. and i have already explained how to return to that summit.
>ps2 era ff was the peak
FF X, FF X-2, FF XII, Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII for the PS2. Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII for mobile, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for PSP, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles for Gamecube, and FF XII: Revenant Wings for Nintendo DS.
Two good FF games in that era.
>two good games
i assume you mean x and x2, but xii is also good as was crisis core and crystal chronicles to lesser extents of course
>cherry picking out ffxi, the literal best game in the series
>inb4 muh mmo
you were not even alive when i started playing rpgs anon
>cherry picking out tactics advance
>cherry picking out kingdom hearts games
sure thing dummy
let me guess you idolize ps1 cutscene hell or think ffv on the gba is the peak of the series because you played it on the bus to elementary?
even worse i suppose, you could be a nes zoomer
>let me guess
Please, no more asinine assumptions and defensiveness from you.
It's the era where the name Final Fantasy could be found in a bargain bin, and not just major, quality releases.
you enjoy bargain bin era? 3ds and ps3 era ff? ok moron
>Verification not required.
>making more things up
I stopped paying attention to FF around the 2000s
you despise the games you never played?
What exactly makes you assume that, you delusional moron
you literally just said you stopped playing them in a time period before they released anon
Please, go on. That doesn't explain the conclusion you jumped to.
Embarrassing oldtroon post.
No ps1 was the peak on every metric except absurdly over the top spectacle and convoluted gameplay systems. Was also peak fame. PS2 started the decline.
There's nothing convoluted about PS1 FF systems, they're as barebones as it gets, much like the rest of the series.
FF7 Rebirth is the first great FF since 12 IMO. 15 was actually kind of cool except the overly simplefied combat made it really boring
>except the overly simplefied combat made it really boring
yeah, the casual pandering gameplay was so bad I never got the DLCs
It went downhill after IX. XII was the last decent one. Shrimple as that.
>When did all go wrong?
13
12 wasnt good in story but it finally had great exploration, cool opional stuff and a nice world. gameplay was getting stale quickly but games before 12 were even worse in that regard. I dont get why so many people dislike 12
Weird that people keep pointing to 13 just because they got filtered. The real point of no return was XV. All the mainline games prior at least used some form of turn based system, even 13. After XV it looks like FF will never make another turn based game again, they seem pretty dedicated to arpg slop because thats what popular today.
>because they got filtered
not an argument
>ffxiii is the turning point because i didnt like it!!
Is not an argument. There was no major departure in style or play with 13. 15 on the other hand has very little in common with all 14 games before it. It has more in common with games like dragons dogma and Zelda than any of the previous 14 final fantasy games.
The previous games are all derivative of pop culture, not each other. What in the hell are you talking about? What does FF7 have in common with its predecessors? Nothing, that's what, and yet for many people that's when the series starts. It's almost like FF has always been shit.
If you cant tell what ff1 has in common with ff7 then you are too dumb to be posting in the rpg board. Go to v or reddit or something.
They are completely different. If not for the title no one would even know they were supposed to be the same series, and Final Fantasy is the most reddit jrpg series ever made.
>t-t-they just are different ok!!!!!!!
Literal moron lmfao
>If you cant tell what ff1 has in common with ff7 then you are too dumb to be posting in the rpg board.
You must be new to /vrpg/. Simple tasks like distinguishing between things that are different and identifying similarities between things that are similar are far beyond the capacity of the average poster here.
you're right, because they have absofrickinglutely nothing in common whatsoever
moron
>filtered by real time combat
Filtered.
Why do people obsess over squareshit when there's so many good JRPGs? Wild Arms 3, Skies of Arcadia, Valkyrie Profile, Ys 8, Grandia, Phantasy Star 4, Growlanser, etc. There are so many interesting games to choose from.
>Whines about Squareshit, i.e FF because he doesn't actually play videogames
>Brings up the same exact type of moviegame trash but made by other devs, with some hipster picks for e-cred
The only decent games in that list are VP, which is just okay, and the Growlanser series, which has more bad games than good games, you're not fooling anyone, falcomcuck
>Brings up the same exact type of moviegame trash
How is wild arms 3 movie game
It just is okay????? Shut up shut up shut up
>e-cred
Isn't this just admitting he's correct and complaining he doesn't play shit games like you? I see bethesturds pull the same tactic all the time.
>I consume garbage so everyone else must do so as well
You’re talking about yourself in the third person again, like we don’t immediately know it’s you.
Actually I'm the wiener mongler.
People who hunt for e-cred are fundamentally posers who are the same exact type of shit eater as the average FF fan, doubly so if some moron mentions shovelware like Skies of Arcadia, quintessential behaviour of the pretentious b***h with no standards and a burning inferiority complex.
You can't be taken seriously when you whine about FF but prop up failed competitors like Phantasy Star and games that aren't even RPGs like Ys.
>People who hunt for e-cred are fundamentally posers who are the same exact type of shit eater as the average FF fan, doubly so if some moron mentions shovelware like Skies of Arcadia
Skies of Arcadia is a much better game than any final fantasy, what do you mean
went wrong after 12
I wasnt a big fan of 10 and I don't play online or multiplayer games, but everything after 12 is garbage
ive played 1 to completion (the gba version, so not the real one), played 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 a little bit but dont like them
I like 7, 8, and 9 a lot; 9 is my favorite followed by 12
12 felt like they almost perfected the gameplay, but the characters/dialogue/story ranged from bland to bad
also it takes them like 5 years to make a new one
the last great one was 10 and the last good one was 12
I have only played the 13 trilogy and 15 and hated all of them. Are there any other entries in the series I should attempt or would I hate them all?
I don't believe you.
this is my collection on steam. i have not played 7 or 8 which is why i have them installed but modding them to be playable on pc seems like effort.
X is the quintessential FF
Play Ever Crisis, it's an updated version of VII
4/5/6/7/Tactics/8/10
>Are there any other entries in the series I should attempt or would I hate them all?
anything else because you played 4 of the worst games
Is ff 12 good or is it as bad as everybody says?
Nothing is ever as bad as people say
It's worse, I dropped it pretty quickly. Give it a try and see for yourself if you want
Do I dew it?
>paying a cancerous company for worse versions of roms
No that's moronic, why would you ever do that
Yes
why are xiv fans so bad
they seem chill to other FF fans I have seen. like with 15's fans
shut the frick up xiever
most 14 fans are just jaded fricks that have been playing for years and can't seem to quit. they hate everything that squenix does but they are still invested in squenix products and consume and constantly complain. final fantasy is a lifeless dead husk though so i don't blame them but they should just quit and move on already.
>final fantasy is a lifeless dead husk
Just came out with a GOTY, you moron
>Just came out with a GOTY
Huh
is 8 worth replaying or should I just erase it from my memory forever until squenix remakes it?
8 is the best FF
You don't sound like an open minded individual so going in with the preconception that you feel the urge to "erase it from my memory forever" means you're probably not ready to give it another try. That sort of bias rarely ends well.
If you are serious you should ask yourself "have I forgotten enough that I can experience the game with a fresh mindset?", if the answer is 'yes' then I say go for it.
It went wrong when they tried to turn every game into it's own fricking multimedia project instead of just letting them exist as their own work.
ff7 is where ff went wrong
it had a brief reprieve from being wrong with ff8 though, then went back to being just plain wrong ever since
/thread