|
In my opinion, the Final Fantasy series started as a classic, and continued its reign over RPGs for over 20 years - and it stopped right after FF9.
Let's go through each Final Fantasy game before I get to my point...
Final Fantasy 1, the original, the classic, the fantasy. This game started it all, and it was pretty damn good. Not much to be said about it, but it was pure amazing.
Final Fantasy 2, right after the first with not too many changes, another classic.
Final Fantasy 3, one of my favourites. The introduction to traditions such as Moogles, Chocobos, and the Job such as BlackWiz, WhiteWiz, RedWiz, Dragoon, Sage, Ninja, etc.
I still play and I still really like FF3, and I think this was around the time the series began to make a big impact upon the RPG Industry - Too bad it never made it to the US.
Final Fantasy 4 was the first FF game I played, and it Introduced me to the series as FFII. It was the first game with the characters having personality, and, well, the first FF with acctual characters you didn't make. This game completely formed the games ahead of it, and is another classic. I really enjoyed this one, and it was a great success.
Final Fantasy 5 was known as the worst FF game of it's time - But it's not that bad. I for one enjoyed some of it, some other parts were just stupid, and why is Butz/Bartz the only male character besides Galuf who *SPOILER*?
Final Fantasy 6, Known not only as the best FF of time, but the best RPG - Well, it was a close tie with Chrono Trigger as well - but anyway. This continued the traditions, but it was the start of a more futuristic version of fantasy. People hated FF5, but without it, FF6 wouldn't have taken form, like the WoR was inspired by the Third World, the Espers were in FF5 as well. Anyway, it's also the first game with a proper Evil villain who acctually DOES something to the heroes, geez!
Final Fantasy 7, this was probably inspired by the touch of future/darkness from FF6. I think it was pretty gloomy, angsty, and the setting of Midgar for the first part of the game wasn't very cheerful. Later in the game it gets better, and I think they tried making Sephiroth as a pretty-boy version of Kefka, but I don't personally think he was as good an evil villain.
Final Fantasy 8, I absolutely hated. This was when the series went for a bad turn that I thought would end my Final Fantasy craze. But then came along...
Final Fantasy 9, PURE GENIUS. Most people would say no, and the people who do are usually Non-FF Veterans/People who Don't Appreciate Old school. This brought back so many memories, not to mention they had noticable cameos from the other games (Kain's Lance, King Ed's Plains). It had a unique storyline (Maybe not as good as FF6 or 7, though), The characters had a strong personality, and I really enjoyed playing through it - It was like playing a REAL Final Fantasy, in a modern way.
And I'll stop there. Final Fantasy 10 is supposedly good also, but it's the next ones I have a problem with.
Final Fantasy X-2, hm? Ha-ha-ha. Firstly, there are about nine other good Final Fantasies that are acctually WORTH making a sequel to. My friend brought something to my attention - She called me up one day, and she told me she really wanted to play X-2. I told her, No, it looks horrible and is probably a disgrace to Final Fantasy. She told me I was just jealous that the main character was a girl.
Yeah, X-2 had three girls in it as the characters. I frankly did not care about this. I didn't mind playing as Terra and Celes for most of FF6, and Bartz was the only Male character of FF5, or countless other games. But really, FFX-2 is just (To Quote Brian, 8BT) "Pretty-princess dress-me-up."
Then there was FFXI. I had been looking forward to it after my dissapointment with X and X-2. Then I found out it was NOT like our good OL' final fantasy, it's going to be online. I didn't mind this, (anything's better after the nightmare called X-2) but I was starting to terribly miss the old Final Fantasy games, and wondering if ever they would be back.
Square-Enix's solution to that is to re-make the old classics and hand them out on PSX or GBA, which not only do I think is a mistake - I think it's also, well, an idiotic thing to do to make us buy and play the other FFs over again, when we can just enjoy our 8-Bit glory!
Uh, Anyway back to FFXI - Online FF? I could've imagined it would happen eventually, but to make it official - Final Fantasy 11? It doesn't even go with the series! Maybe If they made a seperate FF like "Final Fantasy Online" Or something, It would be better! But No, just so they could be greedy and make a profit, they added in to make FFXI, so It would sell. Now - It costs $140 for the game, Plus anything else you may need (Like an $80 Graphic card), and you must pay $15 to play each month, which is way too much! Greedy, much, Square? If I thought the problem would be further remedied by FFXII, boy was I mistaken.
Reading a gaming magazine, and as much information as I can on the Internet, FFXII will be taking place in Ivalice, and the system will be totally re-done to fix in with Final Fantasy Tactics! That is unfair for all us FF-veterans out there! Now what - I'm going to wait for FFXIII to hope I'm presented with old-school glory? Possible - but not likely.
A lot of people are liking these new games - No doubt, I bet they are fun to play - But, it saddens me to see how a series like Final Fantasy could take a turn like this. It's not the new games that anger me, It's the series and how it used to be, compared to how it is now.
Another friend of mine brought up another point - They can't keep making games with the same base, it'll be boring and won't sell. Well, I see your point - gamer's don't want to be playing the same thing over and over - But that doesn't mean Square has to make a complete Rehash. But in these cases, they're completely remaking the games, destroying the Final Fantasy just to make money! A lot of people think I'm busy living in the past, they think I don't appreciate the new gaming technology and that rehashes only lead to less money-making.
Well, It's true that continuing games with the same everything will get boring, but take FF6 and FF7 - They were both amazingly succesful, and kept the FF glory. It went like This: Classic, Classic, Classic, Classic, Futuristic, Futuristic, Futuristic, Classic, Completely New, Dress-me up, Online, Strategy.
Why don't the last four fit in? And, they made tons of FF Spin-offs for your enjoyment, if you want to take a break from the real game! But now the series is becoming it's own spin-off, and that is just... not right!
I've given this way too much thought.
Anyway, as a Conclusion: I say that old school games do beat these new odd games, and one more mistake could make it impossible to bring back the old thing I liked to call "classic."
|
RSS feed
iTunes
