I highly recommend that if you get emotional about:
Final Fantasy as a franchise
Square Enix as a company
Final Fantasy XII and XIII as "games"
that you do not read this.
*note, the comments about "this forum" or "people have said" was directed at another forum, not this one.
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First I will start with a quote which I read on someone else’s review:
"The most important part of a RPG is the player feeling like they are taking the role of a character in a fully realised fantasy world. They can explore, visit various towns and places, talk to people, customise their character, collect various items, and defeat monsters. The story is not the focus of the experience and is only there to make the atmosphere of the fantasy world more interesting and engaging during the course of the game." ~ Yuji Horii (Creator of the JRPG genre/ Supervisor: Chrono Trigger)
Final Fantasy VII was an eye opener for me. I started playing games when I was 5 years old, and I have a great passion for them. Up until 1997 I thought the best games consisted of levels (like sonic), with 2D linear nature. The Playstation and FFVII changed all that.
From the first FMV and bombing mission to the end, my perceptions of what constituted a great game were forever changed. Until then I considered the likes of 2D Sonic and 2D Mario to be the greatest games of all time (they are still excellent). It never occurred to me that there could be anything else....I never knew what an RPG was...
After VII I was thrilled to see that VIII was being made, and that too ended up as a masterpiece. Then came IX, and although I didn't take to the story as much, the game was still a masterpiece. Then X for PS2, and that too was a masterpiece. I had become over confident; I thought Final Fantasy was a game series that simply could not be mediocre.
Then Sakaguchi parted company with Square, and Enix merged. Final Fantasy X-2 came along and, well, you can imagine what I thought there. I loaded it up, and could not believe what had happened. The game was a travesty. The characters had been butchered and it was obviously a pathetic cash in. I did not play any more than 2 hours. It was god awful (at least it's got reasonable gameplay though)
But blips happen, I thought...and maybe being a sequel they just made a mistake... XII was the next main game and surely that would be back to winning ways? WRONG.
And so now we come to the meat of it. We come to the problem that is blighting this series. Square Enix now has a monopoly over RPG franchise (or at least it has a massive stranglehold, especially in Japan). It has a fan base that has been growing since at least FFVI for some people. It no longer needs to make great games in order that it sells, and as a company its first duty is to sell. Let us not kid ourselves about that. But sadly, today it is ALL about cashing in and they know that if they slap "Final Fantasy" on the cover, most fans will buy it. There have already been numerous people on this very forum who have said:
"I have read the reviews, but I will still be buying it first day"
And I have seen comments all over forums like:
"From what I have read I will probably hate this one, but this is Final Fantasy"
As long as this approach to the franchise continues, the producers will not be kicked off their backsides into making great games. There seems to be a sizeable number here and elsewhere who see Final Fantasy XII and XIII as "great games". When we compare them to their predecessors, this simply is not the case.
What we had with XII was a rather crap pseudo-political story, masquerading as "deep" (and you will see that word everywhere when it is in fact just a fan trying to make the useless story hold weight). The character development was next to 0, and this isn't an opinion, it is a fact. That was my biggest gripe with it, but XII also was the first FF game to do away with the usual battle dynamics.
As much as some people try to protest otherwise, Gameplay is at least HALF a great Final Fantasy or RPG or ANY game. That is why it is called a GAME and not an INTERACTIVE MOVIE. Final Fantasy XII took away the player and added in AI. For the life of me, I cannot understand why some people still call the Gambit system "Great" - it isn't. It is a system that allowed you frequently, to add "cure if less than 80" and attack, then watch the computer slash away mindlessly. It was actually you doing the programmers job, and then watching the system play itself. Noughts and Crosses (tic-tac-toe) is more "deep".
In other words, the Gambit system was a dumbed down horror designed purely to fit in with the near MMORPG type game. Let us be clear here about 1 thing. The Gambit system was utterly flawed, dumbed down and took gameplay AWAY from a player.
Then we had the summons in XII, which were a liability. They took away your MP and you ended up running away hoping the summon would do a move before it was finished off. The summon again simply fought without any interaction (FFX's were a step in the correct direction, as they GAVE control to the player).
Treasure was relegated to being random with simple Gil amounts and other useless items; the side quests were...yes you guessed it- More tedious fighting! The whole game was a rather shoddy attempt, and most of the dynamics of what makes a great RPG were taken away in favour of "change".
You might be wondering what any of this has to do with XIII? Well, it has a lot to do with it. What X-2, XII and all these cash in sequels of VII have demonstrated is that Square Enix are concerned now ONLY about money and using graphical power as a substitute for a great story and gameplay. As stated, they now take the fan base for granted; maybe they are correct in that assumption because the fan base seems to be reasonably content with these poor excuses that they are churning out.
What really frustrates me is that like a bunch of sheep, the fan base as a whole has lapped it all up and accepted it as "moving on" or "change for the better" or a number of excuses. Let us be clear here again:
- Changing something for the worse is not a good thing
- Taking gameplay away from a game and placing it in the hands of AI or cheap dynamics is not a good thing
- Taking away from anything is not adding to it. This is a basic and fundamental law of mathematics.
So we now come to XIII. After XII, I thought, "XIII is the franchise's last chance for me. I don't want to see graphics over substance. I want to see a decent RPG, and it can't possibly be worse than XII"
Well guess what…it is. When I found out that the Summons turn into vehicles and serve little purpose in battle, I feared the worst. Then I saw some of the animations, I knew it was going to be a "Graphics over substance" fiasco. The problem is, we have now given 50GB blu-ray discs to companies who have no responsibility and know that they can use this space to pump up useless and overly long cut scenes to please the average Joe. The new power of the PS3 has allowed them to go further than ever before at turning an RPG into a movie, and guess what Kitase studied to be?
The criticisms of XIII have been endless and it is like a ball of wool that when you hold one end and let it go down a hill, it just keeps unravelling until there is nothing left (except the Emperor’s new clothes). XII was a piss poor effort by the Sakaguchi standard, but XIII takes the biscuit and is imho one of the worst games ever made.
Why is that? BECAUSE IT ISN'T A GAME. It now has:
- 2 characters you cannot control AT ALL.
- Cut scenes, and too many of them with little to do in between
- Shops at a save point and these shops don’t serve the same necessity as usual
- Dumbed down inventory
- Very few towns and those that there are, are not at all the same as the old kind where you explored them (their shops etc), whilst talking to people who made the adventure feel more real.
- A paradigm system, where you basically shift job options as fast as you can and watch your character mindlessly attack.
- An auto battle function that works for the most part and so leaves you doing nothing except again watching the computer do it all for you.
- A corridor for 20+ hours, that has this format: Poor battle - Walk - cut scene - walk poor battle - cut scene - boss There is very little deviation or time to stop and explore like in old FF's. You are forced forwards.
- Literally linear. Let us not get bogged down with misdirection’s such as "Final Fantasy has always been linear", when I say linear I mean, this game is literally 1 line for a lot of the game with no purpose but to bring you to the next cut scene. Final Fantasy X allowed you to go back to all game areas (and this sometimes served a purpose such as minigames or hunting or locating extra stuff), and it allowed you to explore. This game has precious little of this. To claim this game is as linear as X is simply inaccurate. Fact.
- No minigames because it was "too difficult in HD" [1]
- Side quests again very often relegated to more battles
- NPC are few, and not interactive like old. Now they just spout generic phrases as you walk on by. The excuse to this is "It is part of the story, that's why" - No it isn't. The reason there are no real NPC is because it was a design choice in the same fashion as taking away traditional towns was. Traditional towns were abandoned because "It was too difficult to do in HD" [1] i.e. laziness and spending obscene amounts of time/money on cut scenes. (One worker told a gamesite that she was working on 1 rock for 3 days and another said this is normal for their team [2]). No amount of pathetic excuses are going to change that.
What is it about the above that is "progress"? If you take away things and don't add anything to replace it, how can that be progress? It isn't. Some come back to this list of faults saying, "I like the game without those things". Whilst this is their choice, they are denying me the right to enjoy these things and at the same time are accepting a watered down product for the same price. I am sure some people enjoy their whole holidays tied to a beach, it doesn't mean *I* wanna be on a beach the whole smurfin' time. The idea is that we have A CHOICE and that we have as much diversity and SUBSTANCE in a product as possible.
Final fantasy XIII isn't it and it isn't close.
If this "game" didn't have the "Final Fantasy" tag, those reviews you saw by the likes of Gamespot would be a 5 or 6, and this "game" would not be cherished at all but widely seen as a complete failure. Let us get over this idea that Final Fantasy is a franchise that can't do wrong. It has done. It has veered off the tracks and it did so after X. It is now PURELY a money spinner; it has now been designed to appeal to a mass market and not to the core of RPG fans as you know them. All that matters now is sales, and they will churn out remakes, rehashes, sequels, prequels, and multiple games of the same title to sell as much as is possible.
Unfortunately there is another fundamental law here- when you have too much quantity you have too little quality; this is also what is happening here with the franchise and company.
So until this change reverses, I will be getting an Xbox and jumping onto Sakaguchi's ship, starting with Lost Odyssey. I don't suppose this little rant has actually swung anyone's opinion one way or another sadly, but that is ok, as long as I am not forced to pay for this rubbish.
I learned my lesson after X-2 and XII, and I made damn sure to watch 100's of vids and read reviews before buying this game, and that is why I know it isn't any good without having to play it. The only thing I can't review for you is the story, but from what I can gather it is nothing special and I am afraid story can't save this Titanic.
Daniel
Sources:
[1]
Gamasutra - News - GDC: FF XIII Director - Production Drove Content Decisions, Elements Will Return[2]
http://ps3.nowgamer.com/reviews/ps3/8864/final-fantasy-xiiiFor further reading about this game, I suggest you read the following reviews, especially the first:
For further reading about this game, I suggest you read the following reviews, especially the first:
GZay2Stay's reader review of Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3http://apps.metacritic.com//games/usercomments.jsp?id_string=6917:wNB9DoNf$XWgKpHz4rvTWQ**
NorwegianPrince's reader review of Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3jaymrobinson's reader review of Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 35107h's reader review of Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3havenwood87's reader review of Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3TheMammoth731's reader review of Final Fantasy XIII for PlayStation 3
