Square: They're the Good Guys

by Matt Blackie

The title is a statement that I believe most people hold as truth. However, within the folds of the RPG community, I know that there are a number of people who dislike, and may even hate, the company that brought us the Final Fantasy series. Their dislike is certainly their own opinion, and they are entitlted to it, but I also find that the reasons for hating Square don't hold a lot of water.

There are a few facts that one needs to know here. SquareSoft is a company. A company, by definition, is a group of people united in an enterprise to achieve a goal. The goal of most companies is to make money. Also, I'm pretty sure that Square has a copyright to the Final Fantasy series. Square owns those games (and not the individual CDs or cartridges, the game itself), and thus is free to do with them as they please. That having been said, let's tackle some of the reasons that Square is hated.

The first reason is the most ridiculous, so I'll go ahead and get done with it right away. "They screwed up the game because Aeris died in Final Fantasy 7 and you couldn't revive her." Pardon me, but who screwed up whose game? If what I said before still stands, then Square has a right to put what events they feel like into their games. If something happens that you don't like, the best you can do is not play the game. A company shouldn't be attacked for putting their own ideas into their own creations.

The second reason has a little more validity, but when you look at it long enough, it comes out as childish and ungrateful. "When they gave us Final Fantasy IV, they watered it down and made an Americanized version that sucked compared to the real version." At first, it may appear that Square was insulting us Americans by tossing us a childish remake of the "real version." You might wonder why they did it in the first place. There is a reason.

Final Fantasy IV was released almost eight years ago. Way back then, RPGs were far from mainstream. I remember being laughed at for playing RPGs. That was back when most of America thought that fighting games were God's gift to humanity. Square had no reason to think that an RPG of Final Fantasy IV's depth and maturity would be well recieved over here, so they made it how they thought it would liked best.

To complain because we did not recieve the full version of FF4 is ungrateful, as well. Square was taking a chance with releasing the game in America, for the same reason as stated before. The RPG market was not very large back then. Square could have decided to simply not release the game at all, as they did with the second and third games, and as they eventually did with the fifth installment. What many people laud to be the greatest FF game ever may have never reached these shores.

"They didn't release Final Fantasy V over here." I've seen this complaint over and over again. But again, why hate Square because of it? At the time that it was released in Japan, the RPG market was still not very good, and obviously, FF4 had not yet made enough of an impact to influence them to release FF5 in America. We blame Square for past mistakes under today's standards (with the RPG market being quite large), and that's not right at all.

Many complaints circulate because of FF7. "The story sucked. The characters were underdeveloped. The writing was awful. The ending was too open-ended. Blah blah blah." To all of these complaints, I say bunk. I believe that the reason for all of these complaints is nothing more than an abnormally high standard. Having high standards is fine, but when one takes it upon themself to pass off as garbage a piece of work that took years to create, they are being nothing but ungrateful.

The most those people can or should do is simply not play the game. Remember, we pay money to buy these games. We put in sixty hours to finish them. If you don't like the game, fine. But if that's the case, forget about it and go find something else. Complaining will not change a finished product, and will probably not change Square's ways.