What happened to Final Fantasy?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > What happened to Final Fantasy?

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

FFX is actually the best FF and it took me going through it again a couple years ago to really appreciate the plot of "kid is a terrible human being at the start because he idolized his drunk piece of garbage dad who eventually became a good person too late to fix anything"

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 01:20

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 11:37

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Also it had the most unique setting of any of the FFs and it juxtaposed the chillness of the Okinawan/Polynesian vibe with Spira being a world where death was just a daily fact of life and just an incredibly sad world to exist in.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 01:37

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

FFX was definitely the peak expression of "Final Fantasy" and every game afterwards has gone in wildly different directions with gameplay systems. You basically have to be a grog to think that FF6 or FF7 were the beginning of the end of the series.

FFT is just a Tactics Ogre sequel in anything but name so you can't really consider it an FF aside from FFTA lending its setting to FF12.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 05:05

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

OneEightHundred posted:

I meant to say the series' aesthetic, oops.

I don't just mean the character designs, but also the world design, which moved away from the relatively down-to-earth styles of FF6-FF8, which mixed modern themes and heavy industry with a high-fantasy world, and FF9's Victorian influences. Apparently they only kept things simple on PS1 because they had to, thanks to technical limitations. Once those started evaporating, they started making a point of throwing obscene amounts of decorative detail at practically everything, and it quickly turned into the series that gave us this:

... and this:

Now it's really easy to tell that you're looking at a Final Fantasy title because everything looks like it was stolen out of some monarch's private collection and all of the monsters are wearing chandeliers.

So what you're saying is that technology was the only thing saving us from Amano's designs?

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 05:38

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Bravely Default isn't a good game though so it's kind of a stretch to call it awesome

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 21:49

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

FF12 does have pretty great non-Vaan characters and the setting and visual design is awesome. Your appreciation of the plot is definitely dependent on how much you like the "our heroes are but tiny gnats stabbing the rear end cheeks of titanic empires clashing" style writing that Matsuno likes though.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2016 00:34

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

piL posted:

The environments showed me what's wrong with JRPGs: this poo poo is absurdly and nonsensical juvenile. How so? It's a high-school for mercenaries culminating in a prom where despite having a gun that is also a sword, you still feel like the lame dork you are in real life.

I said it before and I'll say it again, FFX has an awesome setting. Even Blitzball is cool because it's a dumb sport that exists to keep the people of Spira from dwelling on the fact that outside of it their world revolves around ever-present death.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2016 05:24

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Still never understood why DQ got "Heal" and "Cure" right and Final Fantasy didn't

# ¿ Nov 17, 2016 10:46

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

DeathSandwich posted:

I bounced off of 10 pretty quickly because I couldn't stand the voice acting and Titus. 12 I bounced off of because I specifically couldn't stand Vaan and turned the game off at the "I'M CAPTAIN BOSCH" section. 13 I played to completion but I can be hosed if I remember anything about it other than really liking Sazh's character arc and specifically his 'You think you just die?" speech.

Actually the best part about 10 is the meta enjoyment you can get of Yuna and Tidus' voice actors getting better at their roles as the game progresses. Meanwhile I swear John DiMaggio sometimes dips into his Bender voice by accident.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 01:04

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Taear posted:

13 annoyed me because characters had such ridiculous motivations. It also feels like it takes too long to actually begin. By that I mean you're 10 hours in your party still isn't united and it's still slowly rolling out new mechanics.
The game finally feels like it's started when you get to Pulse and by that point I was pretty much done.

I only played it really recently on the PC and I just suddenly stopped because it had annoyed me so much. I didn't hate Vanille or Fang or whatever like lots of other people do but I definitely hated Snow and his stupid smug insufferableness. And Hope hating Snow and coming along anyway felt like something from a tacky anime.

I played FF6 much later than the other games, on an emulator. I remember being around 15 and reading an article in a gaming magazine about it (when it was called Final Fantasy 3) but it being impossible to buy in the UK. I really disliked it. More than anything else the encounter rate felt ridiculously high to me and that annoyed me.
I had the same feeling with FF9 but not so much with 8 and 7.

Sure the world might have been interesting and having the world of ruin was cool but being constantly interrupted by fights was just too much for me.

FF13 was really bad but Hope was pretty cool so I gotta say this: did you miss the part where Hope says he's gonna get revenge on the guy who got his mother killed and then Lightning is like cool, and gives him a knife to stab him with? That's literally the reason why he tags along.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 03:21

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

thorsilver posted:

It never ceases to amaze me that so many people on this forum actually like FF XII. The story is sleep-inducing and derivative, the main character is pointless, the combat was automated away rather than made actually fun; I hated virtually everything about that game and still consider it one of the biggest disappointments in gaming. To be fair it looks gorgeous though.

It's doubly annoying to me given that the best FF game, Tactics, was set in the same world and Ivalice deserved a better game.

IMO there's a better question than the OP: why the gently caress aren't we getting more FFT games?! The last thing the world needs is another open-world RPG with bad combat mechanics IMO, we're definitely lacking for good SRPGs on consoles though.

12 was initially made by Matsuno before he left the company. He also made FFT and FFTA which you seem to adore but considering he doesn't work at Square anymore and he's pretty much The Guy Who Does Isometric Tactics RPGs, it's safe to say that the FF Tactics franchise is dead.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 08:10

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Matsuno also made Vagrant Story so we should all accept that him attempting to make a mainline FF game actually crushed his spirit and deprived us of his works to this very day

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 08:25

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Taear posted:

Because his mother died in a way he saw that wasn't directly to do with Snow at all. He's a kid and I expect him to not get that but everyone else? Come on.

The only person who knows that Snow is connected with Hope's mom's death aside from Hope himself is Vanille and she keeps trying to get him to talk to him. Everyone else, including Snow, is in the dark about it. In any case, it's mostly resolved with Hope deciding that he should not in fact, shank a dude (who is having a mental breakdown about how worthless he is as a human being) and grows a bit into not a turd.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2016 11:58

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

Panic! at Nabisco posted:

Also, Matsuno is working on another game. It's on Kickstarter. It's...it looks really bad.

To be more specific, he was supposed to be collaborating with a small indie dev in California to make a tactics RPG called Unsung Story, except Playdek somehow managed to squander 600k in Kickstarter money and no longer have the funds or timeline to continue development on the game but they'll totally get right back on it after they release some other shovelware to build more capital :thumbsup:

But hey, now he's working on a mobage with Cygames! http://www.siliconera.com/2016/08/21/cygames-announces-smartphone-strategy-game-lost-order-developed-platinum-games/

At least this game will come out... no word on an English translation though. Granblue Fantasy and Shadowverse are in English at least

# ¿ Nov 22, 2016 10:05

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 11:37

Eej: Jun 17, 2007; HEAVYARMS

The Crusher posted:

A story of greed, politics, power struggle, and hierarchy that has many pitiable enemies as well as loathsome allies.

My favourite thing in Tactics Ogre is when the random boss you just killed shows up in your lore book after the mission and it's like he was a renowned scholar with a loving wife and five children you murderer

# ¿ Nov 25, 2016 21:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > What happened to Final Fantasy?