It's funny how things have changed. These days Final Fantasy is a shitty game with fantastic graphics and they have milked us for 2 games in a row now. Normally I have a policy of never paying full price for a game and I almost never buy games when they are brand new so that the bugs can get worked out before I ever get involved. It doesn't bother me that I don't get to be the first to play something because I am an adult and that sort of crap doesn't factor into my life.
However, the glory days of Final Fantasy are behind us if you ask me. It seems as though the people over as Square-Enix are far too focused on being visually spectactular to bother actually making a fun game where the story actually makes sense.
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There was nothing special about these graphics, even for the SNES, but it was just a delight to play
I recall the very first Final Fantasy game I ever played, it was Final Fantasy II. I had never heard of the franchise before and I was probably 12 year old or so. We didn't have the internet yet and mostly you just picked up boxes or display cards at your local store and read the back of them and determined if they would interest you. I liked how FF2 sounded on the box, but the graphic previews on the box weren't doing much for me. I figured I would give it a try anyway with my hard-earned dishwasher at a restaurant money.
It turned out to be one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life.
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The game box wasn't lying, the graphics were not anything special and I am, in retrospect, very thankful for them not attempting to be deceptive in their box art. Instead of being lying cretins that we see so much of today in game advertising, they put realistic images of actual gameplay on the box and if you were down with what they were selling, you'd buy it.
Turns out a lot of people were down with what they are selling because over the years it has become one of the most famous game franchises of all time and likely the most well-known RPG of all time.
However, today the games just piss me off with how Squenix has all but completely substituted playability and story with cutting-edge graphics to dazzle the E3 peeps.
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Just the way in which Final Fantasy 15 began with the opening credits made me upset. Royalty breaks down in their car and are pushing it down the street. Sure, seems to me like exactly what royalty would be doing.
Then, the fact that this car becomes an essential part of your getting around and you have to senselessly sit and wait for the car to actually arrive at the destinations even though during the day there is ZERO chance of a battle encounter happening on the road. Fuel is also introduced and in order to purchase more fuel you are forced to sit through cutscenes, every single fucking time you buy gas.
There are also loads of stupid twists in the game such as when you end up facing Leviathan and suddenly have gained the ability to fly out of nowhere (of course this ability disappears after the fight because it wouldn't be fair!)
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This fight is so painstakingly easy that I am convinced that I could order a pizza, then answer the door to get the pizza, calmly prepare a few slices in the kitchen, then sit down and eat one of them, all without pausing the game at all and still not lose. It isn't a tough battle, it is just a senselessly LONG battle. As a matter of fact, there are very few boss battles in FF15, including and especially the final one, that I would consider challenging at all.
The story isn't just not engaging, it is stupid. This becomes apparent in the last 1/3 of the game where it appears as though Squenix was aware that they can not fix this, but have to get it out to market and basically just breeze through massive parts of both the story and map.
FF15 essentially sucked, and critics, who are obviously afraid to upset Square, wouldn't call them out on it. When FF7 remake was announced I was willing to give them another chance because I was thinking that one of the main things that was bad about FF15 was the story, and the story in FF7 has long-since been established as one of the best Final Fantasy stories in existence. How can they possibly fuck that up?
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Well they can, and they did fuck it up. This game is boring and once again is so focused on graphics that functionality and the game actually being any fun was kind of bypassed. Instead we have constant load times, shadow load times that they try to hide as "crawling behind something" animations, stupid and time consuming puzzles, side quests that are both tedious and unrewarding, and a story that deviates from the original. The worst part about this all is that they didn't even release the entire story in one game. That's right, they tried to turn the remake of a game into 2 or perhaps even 3 releases. They are trying to Hobbit us!
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When the footage was released, I was excited about the prospect of motorcycle battles but they are all stupid and almost impossible to lose.
It was impossible to grind for more levels and sometimes you simply found yourself underpowered at points and well, fuck you i guess.
I've gone on a Final Fantasy rant before so I'll call it off here. The point I am trying to make is that before Square-Enix got so damn focused on making all of their games look like movies they actually had fantastic games. Now that everything they do probably takes a month of animation work for a cutscene that I am probably not wanting to see anyway followed by a couple hours of focusing on whether or not the part of the game you control is actually any good or not.
The Final Fantasy guys have already tried their hands at making movies and it doesn't work for them. How about we instead be a videogame company and focus on making a videogame that is fun... you know, the way that Final Fantasy used to be?
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If you played the game, you know who this is... and you hate him and everything about him
The next release in the Final Fantasy saga, and I don't know when that is happening, is going to be the first game that they have released that I am NOT going to purchase. Square-Enix is no longer the company it once was - they seem to have lost their way. The last 3 Final Fantasy games and the Final Fantasy MMO are not good games. I've been burned thrice... and it isn't going to happen again even when the paid shills that are game reviewers are fawning all over how fantastic it is.
It's been my opinion for some time now that Square-Enix has no idea what they are going anymore. It's almost as though they need a focus group of fans involved in the creative process to give them a slap every time they come up with some stupid idea that literally nobody wants.
A change in demographic probably made them change direction. The old players from the early days have switched or the overwhelming new fan base got more say on the revenue. I just think their marketing team and vision wants to accommodate new generations of players. The recent remake and FF15 will be someone else's childhood so maybe we're going to get the same sentiment from this new generation decades from now.
Another part that brought up some changes are the creative team behind the old works. Some work for a different company now and some were replaced for younger blood vision. My first Final Fantasy was IX and then played the game version backwards until FF7. Couldn't find a physical copy of the old versions so I'm just going to have them on emulator in the future. I probably wouldn't get the same feels due to being sensitized with the new graphics but still curious about the play experience.
I like FF for the stories rather than the gameplay. And yes, FF15 story disappointed me a lot.
I remember hearing a story about when FF13 was ill received by just about everyone that the developers publicly admitted that they were focusing totally on graphics and not on really anything else about the game when they were making it. This is the wrong approach if you ask me and in your last sentence, it appears as though you agree with this sentiment.
FF13 story wise had a lot of plot holes and it goes the same for FF15. I do agree with you on how small story loop holes ruin the game as a whole. I think the whole player experience can be divided into two categories, those who are playing for the story, and those for the gameplay/challenge. What made some of the games bearable is how well the characters are written, their dialogues, and how the stories intertwine. That goes for me as playing for the story. But my friends wouldn't bother being near the game as soon as they see the retro graphics and will just stick to their cool flashy animation fight mechanics of the new age.
To be fair my opinion about the majesty of the older FF games is based a lot on my memories of it and I think that in many ways that those experiences from 20 some odd years ago are much better left in the past. I have, on occasion attempted to go back and play some of my childhood favorites only to quickly get bored - good story or not. I think one of the major reasons that I could never return to play the early FF games would be because of the RNG oriented battle encounters that would happen all the way through the game.
This has been the bane of my gameplay back then.
Anyway, the biggest factor I could think of why old games of our childhood were damn good is how our expectations weren't that high yet. Everything is a new experience and those come with emotions tied to the game experience. We got used to the magic over the years and our bars become higher each time.
Someone's childhood will be FFXV and they're going to think it's the best game in the world during their childhood days and that's fine.
I remember spending hours and hours being engaged in the story of FF3 way back in the day. You had to read it all as well. There were also these hidden passageways that you couldn't even see in any way on the map so I would constantly be pressing into the walls in every room. A friend of mine later discovered you actually can see these if you turn the brightness on your TV way up.
The FF15 story was stupid, I can't really even say what it was and it looks like they didn't really know over at Square either. This has happened to them before, with their MMO where they actually apologized for making such a terrible game as it was universally hated. People keep giving them money though, so as long as we continue to reward this behavior, it will continue.
Apparently it was about a K-pop band roaming the countryside in their Audi looking for noodles and staying at campsites despite the fact that one of the people in the car is a member of a Royal Family that presumably has a ton of money.