I know a lot of people here are either fans of the Final Fantasy series or used to be once upon a time, but it seems Final Fantasy XIII in particular left a bad taste in a lot of mouths. XIII-2 is supposedly going to make up for XIII's original shortcomings, but is anybody actually willing to give it a try? Is there anybody here who particularly liked or disliked XIII?
I'll take it for a ride. If only for that bonus to have Omega in your party. I've never really passed up an opprotunity to play an FF game, no matter how bad.
Brief points: Liking the little touches I've been noticing around the hub - the way people will gather around you when you get Mog to use his/her anomaly power, Noel turning his hand over to feel the rain, or Serah sitting down against a wall while waiting for you to move. Also liking the "mog time" function that happens before you enter a battle, letting you either run away from enemies that appear or maneuver around to get the pre-emptive attack. Still not the biggest fan of the battle system itself though. The locale isn't too inspiring... the music is okay, some is decent and some is meh. The time travel part of the story seems interesting, characters not so much.
Catering to the shrinking Japanese market instead of the people that keep them in business. I think it is funny that when everyone said 'meh' that Square thought that meant people wanted more. Apparently this game had a very, very [sub-FFX-2] disappointing launch. How did the Enix side stay so good when the Squaresoft part went to shit?
I don't think they're catering to the Japanese market at all. All I wanted from Square was more of the same with a gradual evolution to keep up with changes in graphics and gameplay expectations. Instead, they have more or less abandoned the JRPG format entirely and shifted to adventure games. As for FFX-2. it had Yuna's ass, so, you know - sex appeal or something. Japan stuff. If they want to westernize their gameplay, maybe rather than botching it internally they should shop it out. Obsidian, the people who are for some reason REALLY GOOD at making sequels to other studios' games, are on the record saying they would love to make a Chrono game. Everyone who has ever played Chrono Trigger is on the record saying they want another Chrono game. Square Enix is on the record saying "fuck you, our only plans for the Chrono series are shitty DS remakes and you're going to fucking like it." On another note, what the fuck has Enix done lately, other than driving the Star Ocean series into the ground, forcing me to play The Second Story over and over and over again until the end of time just to get a decent Star Ocean hit? Or were you talking about Eidos?
DRAGON QUEST Side ponytail is basically a waifu for lonely Japanese men. Almost all of the characters are, male ones included. No Chrono sequel they make will make any of the Trigger fans happy. Edit: Eidos Montreal's contributions to the company have been the biggest this year, apparently.
I need to read through articles about Square's acquisition of Eidos to see what the fuck happened there because in retrospect it seems (1) impossible and (2) really stupid from Eidos' point of view as their successful games are probably now financing more rehashed adventure-RPG garbage from Square. Regarding Enix, Dragon Quest IX was a passable nostalgic romp but even you have conceded elsewhere that it didn't rise to anywhere near the level of DQVIII. Meanwhile, they FUCKING KILLED STAR OCEAN, ESKO Finally, I have no idea why you are talking about ponytails. I will say that Chrono Cross, although disappointing when I first played it, has aged like a fine wine in my heart and I now look back upon it with fondness and sadness that it represents the end. Even if Chrono fans are unhappy they will still be $60 poorer if Square goes through with it - just try to deny it.
Square really do need to get back-to-basics with their RPG formula. Less badly written anime-esque protagonists, enough with the futuristic fantasy setting now mined to death - try going a bit more traditional again. Even a pseudo steampunk fantasy world like FF6 and FF7. And for my money, develop the battle system in FF12. I think the ATB has been developed as far as it can go. No more fucking screen wipes.
Chrono Cross was awesome. I don't know that another Chrono game can fit the place that Chrono Cross left behind. Final Fantasy will continue its decline or change with FFXIII Versus (we'll see, on that one). The story will forever remain the same BS repeated time and time again. Characters were developed better in FFXIII, but the combat wasn't that great. Star Ocean was great. I loved it all the way up to...Star Ocean 3. I mean, seriously, what kind of twist was that? BTW GUYS, WE ALL LIVE IN A SIMULATION. Just dumb. I dislike the emo-tear-your-face-off-drama that is "A New Hope."
Star Ocean 3 is awesome. Not because of the story though, the story in all of the Star Ocean games is fucking garbage, really. It had the best battle system by far, so I ended up liking it quite a lot. I just skipped all of the cutscenes after my first playthrough. I thought FFXIII was kind of okay. I am actually gonna buy FFXIII-2, I even preordered it. My expectations aren't very high though.
Sketch I am not pleased that we vigorously agree on something. Although I disagree on the details - Square needs to abandon their attempts at epic and focus on charm. FFVII and FFX pulled off epic while maintaining the charm that has made the series so endearing. FFXII focused a lot on epic only to lose most gamers in nondescript, undifferentiated dungeon-hopping and towns (correction: cities) that came straight out of Elder Scrolls. I actually haven't played FFXIII and probably never will, but there isn't even the slightest hint of charm to be found in any of the trailers, reviews, or even the soundtrack. The story to Star Ocean 3 was meta as fuck and, at least as far as substantive themes go, was probably the strongest of the narratively challenged series. There were plenty of problems with it, but the most troublesome for me were the lack of an overworld, which means not only endless, long, boring trips back and fucking forth between towns but also removes any sense of discovery from the game, and the item creation system just did not compare to Star Ocean 2. Most of all, but also the most difficult to put my finger on, Star Ocean 3 and 4 both completely missed the mark on what I would, no doubt ignorantly, describe as the "provincial, distinctly Japanese charm" of the Second Story.
The Ivalice team are the only ones on the Square side that still know what they're doing. I prefer their games to the main team's work.
They were behind Tactics Advance 2 weren't they? To my complete and utter horror and disgust, by some cruel twist of fate I find myself agreeing with this for the most part (I can't recall much charm in FFX at all). To be fair the locales of FF12 did have their own flavour (strangley the most visually interesting parts of half of the dungeons came on second visits in previously unaccessible areas) but it's one weak point was definitely a lack of charm in the character writing. Balthier was a great character but when he's one of the very few bright spots in such an extended cast there's a problem; not to mention the few other appealing characters in Al-Cid Margrace and Reddas are basically extended cameos. But yeah I'd agree, of all the things the series has lost, charm is right up the top of the list. And as I'm slitting my wrists, I also agree that where they're getting it wrong is that they are thinking about western audiences a bit too much. Yes, we're a large share of the general market but what they need to understand is that they had a well worn successful niche in their distinctly Japanese flavour and that's what had them be so popular in the first place. We bought their games because they were different, they had that different background of culture, and everything that came with that thematically. To use a game by a different developer as an example, if I bought Persona 4 and the localization team butchered the translation by junking all the honourisms or even pretended it wasn't set in Japan, I'd riot to hell. I want that something different. I want to be immersed in something a bit alien, and I'm not talking aesthetically. Plus, we already have western adventure RPG games coming out from European and North American developers, we don't need them to xerox that formula when they had a tried and tested identity of their own - but I think all they're seeing is the cash these games are making in relation. I don't think SquareEnix x Eidos is a bad thing on paper actually. There's things SE could learn from Eidos and stuff Eidos could learn from SE. If they get the synergy right and harness the strengths of both sides, they'd have a license to print money.
