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Role Playing (Games)

The Final Days of Final Fantasy 205

Posted by Zonk from the i-like-ffxi dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Could the Final Fantasy series have finally come to an end? About.com's Adrien-Luc Sanders thinks so in his article The Final Days of Final Fantasy. I'm sure many people here remember Final Fantasy VII and how it helped Sony win the console market away from Nintendo. The article contends that Final Fantasy's glory days are over, that with the release of Final Fantasy X-2, the underwhelming EverQuest clone Final Fantasy XI, and the much-delayed Final Fantasy XII (finally confirmed for a 2006 US release), we've effectively seen the end of Final Fantasy. Is it time for Square-Enix to give up on Final Fantasy?"
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The Final Days of Final Fantasy More

The Final Days of Final Fantasy

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  • Might not hurt... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by th3space ( 531154 ) <bradNO@SPAMbradfucious.com> on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:21PM (#12687355) Homepage
    I, like many others, I'm sure, have enjoyed many hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours of Final Fantasy over the years...replaying them time and time again. However - and this is barely arguable - it's all been downhill ever since FFVI. I would like to see SqareEnix branch out and truly deliver on the innovation that should have been bourne out of their union...but, as with the Star Wars franchise, I'm sure they will continue to go back to the little black box that gives them two dollars for ever quarter they put in.
    • As one who has likewise been playing Final Fantasy games for quite some time, might I make an observation? Although many are split on the quality of the games Squaresoft / Square-Enix has produced, can you deny that they have sold well? How many people who have played the games, can deny that they saw FF:The Spirits Within. Even if they didn't like it, many saw it anyway. These same people are likely drooling at the prospect of seeing Advent Children. I also don't really put much stock in death predicti
      • Thanks for that. As you seem to be new here, I might point out that there's a thread like this in every thread about Final Fantasy on /., almost without exception. It usually starts off with someone saying that "the series has gone downhill since (blank - usually VI)," and goes on from there.

        We need more comments like yours, IMHO. The series has its ups and downs, but as you've duly noted, people are still buying-- including some of these whiners, no doubt.

    • Re:Might not hurt... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RootsLINUX ( 854452 ) <rootslinux@gmail.cDEBIANom minus distro> on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:33PM (#12687509) Homepage
      However - and this is barely arguable - it's all been downhill ever since FFVI.

      I concur. In my opinion, FFVI and Chrono Trigger (among other notable SNES titles) were the apex of RPG gaming. Now it seems to me like game producers (especially at S-E) are putting less and less empathsis on the story and gameplay, instead opting to always try to be the RPG with the "next-generation" graphics in order to further capatilize on their already erroding franchise. I so appall this game design mentality that I starting creating my own RPG game akin to FFVI, what I still consider to be the best RPG ever. Sometimes you must take a few steps backwards in order to move forward again. I hope someone at S-E realizes this before it is too late to save Final Fantasy (or what remains of it).

    • Re:Might not hurt... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by b0r0din ( 304712 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:53PM (#12687704)
      I would disagree, and say that the series sucked ever since VII. I do remember all the playability of VII, how confused I was at first, then how interesting the system really was, the different choices you had, where they led, and the minigames involved. You didn't have to spend most of your time fighting one thing, you were free to run around and develop your skills, or run races, or experiment with chocobos, or a number of other things.

      That said, VII in many ways nailed the coffin shut. First off, it was so popular that Square followed a formula and all the rest have been pretty much the same. Am I the only person annoyed by the general hero, now little more than a thin, androgenous anime figure?

      FFX did it for me; I couldn't play the same hero character. I probably won't return to a FF title, if for no other reason than animation alone; I'm tired of playing anime games. But that's my own personal opinion and a large majority of gamers don't seem to mind this. So I'll stick to whatever else comes along.
      • "That said, VII in many ways nailed the coffin shut. First off, it was so popular that Square followed a formula and all the rest have been pretty much the same. Am I the only person annoyed by the general hero, now little more than a thin, androgenous anime figure?"

        Heh. Actually, no, that didn't bug me. I bought a PS for FFVII. I was so in love with FFIII (US Version) that I thought I'd be in for more. Sadly, it just didn't do it for me. I discovered that walking around randomly fighting monsters wa
    • However - and this is barely arguable - it's all been downhill ever since FFVI.

      "Barely arguable" if you let nostalgia cloud your judgement on what has been done well with the series. It's clear that FF VI is one the high points of series(My personal favorites would be something like FF VI,VII,X), but to say that the series has been downhill since VI is overgeneralizing.

      There has been quite a lot good things done with the series since VI: the addition of CGI did much to potray the worlds of FF; Many fun m
      • "There has been quite a lot good things done with the series since VI: the addition of CGI did much to potray the worlds of FF"

        that's what imagination is for.

        granted i know 99.9% of the gaming population has none but come on, you have to develop it sooner or later...

        and god, how the mini-games suck. i want to play the game, not a game in the game that is time consuming, boring and frankly a waste of development time.

        hell even FF 6 partly sucked because they started making it into a digital soap opera bu
    • I concur as well. From what I've experienced, most FFVII extreme fans where the people who were either two young for 8-16bit RPG's or those who didn't have any interest in RPG's until Sony spent booku bucks hyping up FFVII. When all was said and done, FFVII was a decent game, but it was lead astray in too many ways and lost many of the core values and themes that the series had held since its early days. The only true FF game after VI was IX.

      FFVI, along with Panzer Dragoon Saga, represent the pinacle of
  • Final Fantasy can not realy end , its non sequential and the games are just difrent RPGs with a commen evolving system.
    I am not a major FF fan but i do enjoy the games , honestly its just a small dip which hapens to anything long running .

    I never take Death reports/predictions in the Tech industry to seriously.

  • Give this man the John Dvorak award! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KDR_11k ( 778916 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:26PM (#12687407)
    Throwing around pointless doom-and-gloom predictions when the next sequel to the franchise is still highly anticipated deserves an anti-award.

    Even if SE completely abandons offline games they will still paste the Final Fantasy name on their games, though I expect to see a Dragon Warrior MMO before the next MMO FF.

  • End of Final Fantasy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CYDVicious ( 834329 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:29PM (#12687460) Homepage
    That's like saying that the end is near for Nintendo's Mario/Zelda/Metroid, or Polyphany's Gran Turismo. It doesn't matter whether the quality dips or rises across the series or console generations... In marketing class if I learned anything, if your product is in "Cash Cow" corner, you hold on to it. As long as people keep paying for Mortal Kombat, Midway is going to keep turning the crank and popping them out.

  • the answer is no (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rayde ( 738949 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:33PM (#12687508) Homepage
    Is it time for Square-Enix to give up on Final Fantasy?

    the answer is a resounding no. However, they need to go back to what made it so special in the past. That is, back off of the convoluted plot, the rediculous looking and uninteresting characters, and the complicated and boring skills systems. Instead, bring back the spirit of adventure. Those that have played it will remember the magic of getting to finally pilot the air ship in FFIV, where you could FINALLY go over mountains and such, and visit those remote places in the overworld. It was the gameplay, the original and loveable characters (even characters we may idolize to some extent... it'd be nice to be as cool as Locke) that makes FFIV and FFVI the best in the series for so many of us.

    SquareEnix needs to take a step back and return to its roots. FFIX was a step in the right direction, if you ask me. FFX was a supreme dissapointment, and FFXII looks to be much of the same. A gorgeous soundtrack will only take you so far.

    • Ridiculous looking characters? Perhaps you weren't aware, but they've always been that crazy looking, it was just harder to get the design to fit properly in a 16x16 (or 8x8) sprite.

      You remember Kefka (sprites) [ffcompendium.com], right? Take a look at some of the original concept art [ffcompendium.com] and the resultant FMV interpretation [ffcompendium.com].

      On the rest of it, I'll agree with you in FFIX good, FFX meh.

    • However, they need to go back to what made it so special in the past. That is, back off of the convoluted plot, the rediculous looking and uninteresting characters, and the complicated and boring skills systems. Instead, bring back the spirit of adventure.

      I agree with this. Now that they're partnered up with Enix, its time to let the company coast on the other franchises it has, and retool Final Fantasy. They've got to give it a breather like Toho did with Godzilla, and then bring it back.

      I'm not likin
    • "That is, back off of the convoluted plot, the rediculous looking and uninteresting characters, and the complicated and boring skills systems. Instead, bring back the spirit of adventure."

      What the hell is "the spirit of adventure?". Leave it to human beings to be nice and vague without thinking something through. For 80-90% of the game you are fighting and collecting goodies and playing mini-games with FMV intermissions along the way. RPG battle systems used to be important until the populace started go
    • Final Fantasy IX wasn't a step in the right direction for anything. It was a pointless nostalgia fest: most of the characters were ill-defined ciphers (Amarant, Eiko, Quina), and those that weren't were basically archetypes with nothing unique to distinguish them (Freya, Steiner). The villain, too, never seemed to have any real motivation for anything. Even the "remote places" you mention were quite often little more than nostalgic rehashes of former locations in the series (Gulug Volcano, for instance). An
  • We have a long running series, the next release, while late, is still highly anticipated by fans, the last release is still played by hundreds of thousands of people around the world and it makes Square-Enix a ton of money.

    Yep, its time to call Final Fantasy dead.
  • Final Fantasy VII came out when I was in high school, back when the only exposure that I had to video games (due to a sheltered life and a technophobic parental unit) was an extremely old SuperNintendo system with Mario 2that I got when I was...five, maybe?

    Sorta off topic, but... wow. I'm wondering if he meant NES or SNES... The game and age make me think NES, though.

    The pinnacle of Final Fantasy was when all of the development was focused on the main lineage and the occasional Tactics or Crystal Chr
  • Square-Enix declares that About.com's Adrien-Luc Sanders' days are about over.

    Sounds just about as plausible, which is to say not at all
    But then again, chances are About.com or at least Mr Sanders will be gone long before Final Fantasy is.

  • Nonsense article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) * on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:40PM (#12687581) Journal
    There's an interesting debate to be had about the future of the franchise, but sadly, this won't be the article to spark it off.

    The author's main problem is that he didn't like FFXI or FFX-2. As far as I'm concerned, that's his problem. Far from being a failure, FFXI still has a commanding position in terms of the size of its user-base. Last I saw, it was only behind WoW and the Korean MMORPGs (for which figures should be treated with a degree of caution due to the methodology used to count players there). Indeed, before the release of WoW, it had been the biggest MMORPG played outside of Korea for quite a while. User figures have been steady for a long time, with the release of WoW not making any significant dent. In the highly competative, dog-eat-dog world of MMORPG publishing, I'd call that a resounding success, rather than a harbinger of doom.

    FFX-2 has always been contraversial among Final Fantasy fans. I'll admit that it's never been my favorite installment in the series (this would be FFX - and yes, I've played the whole "main" series, including FF6). However, this isn't to say it's without merit. In many ways, it's a return to more traditional gameplay, with a much steeper difficulty curve than other recent games in the series and a job-based character system. If you approach it without expecting it to be "more of the same" from FFX, then it's actually a very good RPG. A lot of tormented, gothy Final Fantasy fans felt they had to dislike FFX-2 out of principle, because it's actually quite upbeat. Personally, I'm secure enough that I can play a game like this without it making me "doubt my masculinity" (author's words).

    The most significant issue the author raises, in my view, is the wait for FFXII. This has certainly been longer than I expected. However, I think this is largely a reflection of the fact that development times and costs have risen, to match customer expectations. When you completely rework your graphical engine, combat system and game world for each installment of your series, you can't be expected to stick to a Madden-style production schedule. At any rate, I'll reserve judgement on FFXII until I can actually play it.
    • I've never understood the hatred for FFX, really. It has one of the best storylines of all the FF games, turning the usual RPG conventions on their heads - not only does the hero -not- get the girl in the end, he doesn't even get to live. Pretty damn original, imho.

      Blitzball was pure evil though. :D
    • FFX-2 has always been contraversial among Final Fantasy fans. I'll admit that it's never been my favorite installment in the series (this would be FFX - and yes, I've played the whole "main" series, including FF6). However, this isn't to say it's without merit. In many ways, it's a return to more traditional gameplay, with a much steeper difficulty curve than other recent games in the series and a job-based character system. If you approach it without expecting it to be "more of the same" from FFX, then it'

  • gamers grow up... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Audigy ( 552883 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:46PM (#12687633) Homepage Journal
    Bleh... this guy didn't grow up with Final Fantasy like I did. I remember sitting in my 4th grade classroom, reading the Nintendo Power Final Fantasy strategy guide for silent reading time, then trading my Super GameBoy and some games to a classmate in 8th grade so I could get my hands on the coveted Final Fantasy III (6j) since none of the rental stores carried it.

    I remember saving allowance money for months to afford Dragon Warrior IV, with its hefty 59.99 price tag from Toys R Us...

    I played the heck out of these games, and cannot say the same about the 'next gen' iterations (Dragon Warrior VII as an exception, but just because the game is so damn long, and seemed to hold my attention)

    I don't think the problem is that Square-Enix is stagnating... I think it's getting increasingly more difficult to hold the gamer's attention who grew up with these games. I remember crying when Celes lept off the cliff in FFIII (FF6), but the famous 'death of Aerith' in FFVII completely failed to evoke the same reaction. It was too predicted, and scripted... though the music was tear-jerking.

    Anyway, I don't think the games are going anywhere. Square-Enix needs to reach harder into the younger market though, and bring in new fans to the series.

  • My apologies to FF fans... (Score:4, Funny)

    by SetupWeasel ( 54062 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @04:53PM (#12687708) Homepage
    But I'm just glad this isn't another "Nintendo is doomed" stories.
  • I'm one of the RPG curmudgeons that learned early on what an RPG is supposed to be, so think that anything that doesn't fit that mold is automatically junk. I'd love to see them take a step back and create a newer prettier FFI, but I realize that perhaps the more sophisticated gamers of today might not want that. My hope is they do both.
    • newer prettier FFI

      You can try Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls, but be warned... it has been severely nerfed.
      • Alternatively, there's Final Fantasy Origins, which is actually prettier (the PlayStation having a higher resolution than the GBA). Plus, most of the obnoxious gameplay changes are optional. None of the bonus dungeons, though....
  • His whole argument is that he didn't like Final Fantasy X-2, and therefore Final Fantasy Is Dead.

    And golly gosh, what is the reason? It must be Enix because the merger happened around the time that FFX-2 sucked. You want some real evidence? Come on, he's busy trying to make a point here!

    But maybe this is just the current state of affairs for Video Game Op-Ed.

  • This is where I stopped reading: (Score:3, Funny)

    by pnice ( 753704 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @05:26PM (#12688108)
    "Final Fantasy, in fact, was what got me into computer animation and sent me haring off to art school; Final Fantasy VII came out when I was in high school, back when the only exposure that I had to video games (due to a sheltered life and a technophobic parental unit) was an extremely old SuperNintendo system with Mario 2 that I got when I was...five, maybe?"

    He had the same video game system from the time he was five until high school (what? 9 years at the least) and in that 9+ years he can't even get the name of the game or the system he owned correct? Was it Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo or was it Super Mario 2 for the NES? I'm being anal but that was enough to make him sound like my mother or father do when they describe every video game system I own as a Nintendo.
    • He had Final Fantasy VII (a '97 release) in high school. Which puts him class of what, '99? It had him haring off to art school in '99, graduating '02 or '03.

      Wow. Two, possibly three whole years of industry experience? We must listen to this wise and sagely old one. He likely even remembers back to the days when monitors weren't even flat, hard drives only came in tens of gigabytes and you were lucky if your PC had 512mb of ram!

      Seriously, the next article is going to be:
      "AOL message board reports: W177 W

  • One big reply.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 ) on Tuesday May 31, 2005 @05:28PM (#12688123)
    The answer is No. In fact, the quality is remaining quite high. Like it or not, the lowest points in the series are from a LONG time ago.

    The thing is, that the FF team are VERY ambitious when it comes to what they do. They make very wide changes for every game. Trying new things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So I don't blame them for the misses. The harder you throw the more you can miss. But for the misses...and most of them were oh so close....

    2J:A very clumsy level up system. Just didn't work at all. The biggest miss.

    6:Yes, you heard me right. A wonderful game that fell apart for the second half of the game. The fact that the game is so wonderful for the rest of it makes it even more painful.

    8:A broken combat system made most of the game a timewasting chore. (You can convert Tents to Curegas which you can junction for a near invincible amount of HP through most of the game)

    X-2:A wonderful combat system, and the episodic nature of it..but yet...

    Ok I'll be frank. The tone of the game was wrong. It tried to be light and airy, but frankly, it was just painful. It was too depressing. After playing through X, (best story of any of the games), watching the hidden depression of Yuna was WAY too much. way way WAY too much.

    But I liked that X played like a pilgramage. It worked for that game. It felt way more personal than any other game in the series. As well, I liked the micro-level ups.
  • And theres Advent Children due out in september, a FF7 sidestory game for psp and one for ps2. FF is far from dead.
  • Nah...

    While I may not like its incarnations after FFVII (the best was FFVI), I find the games innovating and charming. They always put some weirdo new magic system, and they always have some convoluted history. This, together with great graphics in new consoles, will keep it alive.

    The problem I see, is that FFVIII, FFX and FFX-2 have been love histories above anything else, which may have alienated their core fan base. Same thing with FFXI, which wasn't everybody's coup of tea. But FFXII is being develope
    • FFX isn't a love story. It's a story of revenge. Tidus is not the main character. The story is from his point of view, but the story revolves around Auron.

      Auron's plan the entire story is to manipulate Tidus and Yuna, to make them fall into love, so that Yuna would be incapable of sacrificing Tidus for the greater good, destroying the church of Yevon and getting his revenge on Yunalesca, and fufilling Jecht's last wish.

      The actual story is about the "fall" of Yuna, and how her rejection of her religion sav
      • Still sounds like a love story to me.
      • What a wonderfully deep story ... wouldn't it be nice if it had a similar quality of acting to go with it? It's SO bad, it makes Hayden Christiansen look like James Earl Jones. Seriously, I wish I could get these games in Japanese with English subtitles just so that the horrid voice acting would at least not be so damned obvious and grating.

        Of course I'd probably get subtitles on the order of the previous FF games, which didn't exactly contend for nobel prizes in literature either.
  • I would expect that as the Game industry moves toward being more like teh movie industry that a new DIRECTOR will pick up the franchise and remake all the games with a different slant on the story. Perhaps darker or more developed in story. Perhaps a new fresh take on the series will be a refreshing trend in gaming. Mods are popular as you can take an existing game engine and modify it, why not take the game as a whole and remake it? I'll be more then happy to take wither Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy and
    • Already been done. Sakaguchi earned a resignation-demotion for the failure of the movie; and, in fact, in addition to the changes after that FF12 is being done by the team that used to comprise Quest and has gone on to do FFT, FFTA, and Vagrant Story at Square, with direction by Matsuno as part and parcel.
    • Erm... the series hasn't been helmed by a single director since Final Fantasy VI (the first game not directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi). Even the names most commonly associated with the franchise (Yoshitaka Amano, Nobuo Uematsu, Sakaguchi himself) haven't worked on all the games (and all three are no longer working for Square Enix).

      As someone else said, the Final Fantasy "series" isn't a series in the sense you take it to mean. It's a franchise, or a brand. More specifically, it's a showcase flagship for Squa
  • The current generation of gamers views Final Fantasy the way many geeks view star wars. They played them when they were little and view with nostalgia everything about the past games giving the series no room to evolve.

    Personally, I liked a lot of the games in different ways. I loved the skill system and difficulty of FF5. The freedom to choose characters in FF1 added diversity and replayability. FF6's system allowed both customizability and uniqueness to each character. FF8 had the worst ability syst
  • How do you kill an idea? How do you kill a name? There's no connection between (most) Final Fantasy games and what came before them, plot or mechanics wise, so how can newer ones be dragged down by older ones? The developers of any new Final Fantasy games are totally free to rock or suck on their own terms.

    The fact that the comment thread is all about past Final Fantasies rather than future ones says a lot about how discussion worthy the original news post was. 'Death of Final Fantasy Predicted, Intern
  • Web journalist ____

    a.-Picks up "hyped" product and dislikes it after playing it for 3 seconds. and since He is not sept off his feet and has a HUGE opinion about himself as a gamer this spells doom for any item. (regardless is a world wide top seller)

    b.-Notices someone didnt bought it in the first attempt, considering geeks should be killing each other, over X item this spells "D O O M" for the product.

    c.-Teen relative drops a acid/derrogatory remark on the product. Teen angst: the undeniable sign of do
  • Yes, definitely the end of Final Fantasy. You can tell because of the raging popularity. Other factors include all "Final Fantasy" titles being developed, such as the myriad of sidestories, minigames, and sequels to FFVII, in addition to the years of long development of FFXII.

    Let's not forget FFXI of course which has its 3rd expansion pack under development, record subscription rate, and high popularity.

    Not to mention promise of Final Fantasy on every major next-generation platform and handheld.

    So d

  • The biggest problem I have with enjoying a series with as much content as the FF series is the rampant fanboy-ism and doomsaying. Lets face it folk,s FFXI isn't a failure - look at the recent Vanadiel censuses. There are a whole lotta people playing that game (myself included.)

    Square(and SE) have consistantly tried something new. 8 was not 7, 9 was an old school title, X was defining, and X-2 was fanservice. Beelieve it or not, I know a number of people who LOVE X-2 (and hate every other game made by SE.)

    • First, I have to say that I've played every FF I've been able to find, except X-2 and XI.

      I really do appreciate and enjoy Square's history of making each FF game different from the game before, but I don't play online games (I have a family) and I can't buy fanservice games (I have a wife ;-P)

      (Actually, the thing I don't think I could stand is my son making comments while I'm trying to find just the right outfit to wear into battle...)

      Anyway, FF isn't a series, like LOTR or Star Wars, it's a brand, like
  • Don't get me wrong, I love the series. But Final Fantasy 8 really made me think it's time for it to take a Star Trek-esque nap for a while. Every time I hear Squeenix pipe up about a new Final Fantasy game now, I'm no longer intrigued and rushing out to find out all the information I can about it. I cringe at the thought of another by-the-numbers game featuring the same old combat dynamic, regurgitated storyline and societal overdesign.
  • Could the Final Fantasy series have finally come to an end?

    But... with Final Fantasy gone, what game series will continue to define "dead horse" oh so well??
  • I was like many of you: sick of Final Fantasy, after FFX (which, admittedly was better than what I consider the worst in the series, VIII). So much so that I decided not to pay attention to the hyped surrounding FFXII (as an MMO, XI didn't appeal to me anyway). I did, however, enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (my loss of interest in FF helped me find more tactical RPGS, a la FFTA, Disgaea, and others).

    And then the info on FFXII started coming out. Set in the same world as FFTA it has moogles, airship
    • The problem with FFTA was that so much of it was just too easy: 90% of the missions you could complete without thinking. I enjoyed the game, but there wasn't much in the way of tactics for so many of the battles.
  • To me, and to most of my friends who have similarly been playing since before most of us agree it went "mass market," Final Fantasy was done some years ago. But with their impressive visuals and trashy teen romance plotlines, Squenix is well aware that if they make a Final Fantasy game, ridiculous amounts of people will buy it. Many of today's gamers consider FF one of the defining standards of RPGs, if not the entire industry.

    And if there's money, they'll make it. An ironic twist of fate I think consid
  • The reason online game play sucked in FF11 is that its a new genre. Give it 10-30 years and online play will be so sickenly addictive it will be used in methodone clinics.
  • FFX-2 may not have been what people would have expected from a Final Fantasy game, but it's a fun game. It has a good battle system, a pretty cool job system, and a lot of variety in gameplay.

    It addresses a few shortcomings in FFX .. it uses the traditional Active Time Battle system, as opposed to FFX's turn-based system, and it's extremely non-linear .. about as far from FFX's linear progression as you can get. (I think they went too far here ... I like my games to be at least somewhat linear. Actually

  • Of spinoffs and game quality. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mandoric ( 55703 ) <mandoric@sover.net> on Wednesday June 01, 2005 @12:08AM (#12691120) Homepage
    Spinoffs aren't a damn thing new.

    Mario, who's often brought up, has been appearing in sports games for longer than some people on this site have been alive---yet no one gripes about NES Open, even when they bring up (GC or GBA) Mario Golf. Even beyond that, things like Dr. Mario or the truly wretched edutainment titles for the SNES featuring him are ignored by people hoping to improve their retro street cred at the expense of reality.

    For that matter, -three seperate- unrelated properties have appeared under the Final Fantasy name in various places; the first SaGa series -and- Seiken Densetsu were marketed as such in the US, while the first SD also was marketed as "FF Side Story" in Japan; and then there's FF: Mystic Quest. All of these back in the idolized 8- and 16-bit eras.

    Hell, Dragon Quest 8, in its Japanese release last year, managed to sell about 1 copy for every 30 Japanese citizens---this from a series with only one other entry since the SNES, but a huge pile of spinoffs ranging from top-down action games to monster-trading Pokemon clones to graphical takeoffs on Nethack during that period.

    As for FF11, in particular...
    Even ignoring the fact that the average pretender "oldschool" gamer's complaint is "WTF, why's it so hard, take so long to play, need play sessions so long, and have a loose mission structure? I want the old FFs back, where there was actually a challenge, a good amout of playtime, long dungeons without savepoints all over ruining the challenge, and it wasn't so cinematic!", the fact remains that over the past year, S-E's grossed about $90 million directly from it---that's more money than changes hands directly to retail stores, never mind their lower wholesale price, of a 1.5 million seller. Love it or hate it, you can't complain that it's harming the odds of putting more money into more FF titles.
  • I hope Final Fantasy 13 is some sort of psychological Silent Hill-esque thriller with a creepy soundtrack.

    I'm not holding my breath.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Anyone actually look at this guy's experience before flying off the handle?

    Since 2002 he has been designing websites for various clients, often utilizing animated interfaces in Flash and Shockwave or creating branded 3D-animated logos. He is also currently working on several small indepenent animation projects.

    Not exactly an expert or valued opinion in my book. Scary that one independent animators opinion on a few games he didn't like would spark everyone so much. Got a bad feeling this is the future o

  • I'd really like to see FFVII remade for the PS3. The graphics would be amazing and the gameplay of FFVII has yet to be bettered.
  • ....but I may be the only person who reads /. and has never played or "gotten" FF. I have no issues with the games, but I never quite understood the story or even the concept, unlike, for example, Zelda, which is basically the same characters in different stories. I got the impression that each story was different and had its own characters and situations (a la Silent Hill) but shared a common theme.

    So at the risk of being flamebait, I ask: What is the gist of FF that is so compelling that the games are gr
  • I've had a similar conversation with dozens of people of all ages. The question? What's the best spaghetti sauce you've ever had?

    Many talk about various restaurants they've been to as having the second best. But the best is always the sauce their Mom made. Why?

    Because it was the first they encountered, and it defined what spaghetti sauce was for them. All others fell short in one way or another.

    FF fans are like that. "FFn is the best FF. After that, they series fell apart. FFn+1 and FFn+2 were cr
  • Final Fantasy is Squenix's flagship product. Why would they ditch it?

    At the moment they're milking the FF7 cash cow. That's not necessarily a good thing in itself, but it proves that FF is definitely still popular and profitable, and they're not going to drop it any time soon. Based on FF7 we now have Advent Children, Before Crisis, Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus in development... that's 1 movie and 3 games right there. Then of course you have FF12 coming, and initial indications show that it might'
  • ...is that the series has been going downhill since FFX, and that this somehow means that FF is heading for imminent doom. Hey, buddy, don't you think you're being a bit quick on the draw here?

    Really, though, he might be right that FF's glory days are over. But not because the recent games are bad (which is debatable; even he admits that he dislikes FFX-2 despite its gameplay).

    We have the first sequel in a series of games that was never supposed to have sequels. We have a bunch of compilation discs whe

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