What killed Final Fantasy? The IP is still incredibly as shown by all the licensed things selling out
>>727759375Square Enix
the souslop fever
>>727759375Why would you ask a question, while posting the answer?
>is incrediblydumb mexican
>>727759375shift from cool fantasy settings like xiii's planets to xv's and xvi's boring slop
>>727759375For a while FF was massive based largely on technical spectacle and polish. SE kept thinking that was all they needed and for the rest of the game they could keep doing random ass experimental mechanics each time rather than figuring out stuff that worked well even as games ran into diminishing graphical returns. I don't think its a mistake that the fall of FF and rise of Persona almost exactly coincide.
>>727759375FF13's long development time and mid reception is like half responsible for the death of the IP.
too many cooks
>>727759375they went from releasing a game every year to releasing a game every 8 years. when development cycles were short, they could experiment and iterate, and any shitty entries couldn't stink the place up for too long. now everything just gets stuck in the mud and is outdated before it even comes out
>>727760021they went from this, to 2006 XII2009 XIII2016 XV2023 XVIabsolute disaster.
>>727759375FF13 was shit, and then they went and made two fucking sequels to it>b-but they were goodA minority of people who played 13 could stomach more of it so I don't trust anyone who says it was good, it would be like watching a terrible movie and being told the sequel is good, yeah maybe, but I'm not wasting my time to find out
>>727760090Sounds like the problem was making sequels to games which only a minority of people finished, not actually making 13
>>727760069FFXII and XIII were successful.XII got a remaster (ZA Age). It got praised even by zoomers.The change to be something close to a souslop game is what doomed the franchise.
>>727760314the games aren't the issue, it's the fact that they come out every 8 years when they used to have one out every year
>>727759375Forcing men to work in an office of entirely men for 16h days until the only people in charge were raging homosexuals.
13 is where the problem became obvious but 12 had major development issues and frankly has a lot of issues, releasing a game once a decade now doesn't help either.
>>727760358the salaryman shuffle
>>727760314>The FF brand has been off kilter for nearly two decades>No, no it's the game that came out in 2023, that's the problem, that's why FF has lost it's prominencethe fuck is wrong with you
>>727760451>2023XV sucked dick
>>727760314>XIII>successfulIt sold a lot based on success of the games before it, this is similar to XV doing well because the series went so long without a main game
I still find it extremely odd that they chose to give the MMOs numbered titles.
>>727759375Reminder for all sales discussion discussion that the quality of a game will directly affect the sales of the next and that number inflation as the overall size of the gaming population goes up means you need to put products into scale.
>>727760587was probably a corporate vote or some soulless shit like that
>>727760587Why would it be odd? XI is better than everything that came after it, and most that predate it.
>>727759375>What killed Final Fantasy?Nothing, every jrpg franchise still wants to be the next FF, every jrpg fanbase wants their franchise to be the next FF. The series has been mediocre for years on end but at the same time no competetitor has stepped up to serve as replacement.
>>727760724I think if they put out a genuinely good game that stood on its own things would work out as word of mouth would give it momentum, but here we are relying on past success and a current fan base that is on average middle aged
FFXIII being the worst game they could have ever released in that timeframe where people shit on JRPGs and fans needed an FF7 tier comeback more than ever , all they got was some nonsense spiel about concepts the game doesn't explain to you and 2 FUCKING SEQUELS
>>727759375Do japs have the same reverence for FF that they do for dragon quest?
>>727760021People see this and disregard it because it is a video game company.It's every company. Absolute infested and controlled by retards. The collapse is inevitable and looming ever closer.
>>727760021It really is baffling, how did we go from that to what we have now.
>>727760867I don't understand why people hate 13, I recently got it, modded it to get 4k graphics and it's a absolute banger
>>727759375The number one reason, from where consequences like Final Fantasy falling out of the gaming zeitgeist stems, is that for the longest time Square Enix were an absolute unmitigated mess internally. For a while they had a CEO who took serious business advice from a fortuneteller. Their current CEO isn't much better and has been talking NFT and AI sales pitches to the company's investors for a few years now. The dev teams haven't fared that much better, while a dev's vision for a game often shifts and gets honed during development, SE teams often don't have the slightest clue what the finished product *could* look like, as you could immediately tell from the whole Fabula Nova Crystallis mess and what became of its individual parts. This leads to confused games (also cancelled games!) and long dev times which leads to customers caring less and less.
>>727760809JRPG's as a whole are their deathbed, the popularity of the genre is nothing like it used to beSouls is not a jrpg either so let's not go there
>>727761005It wasn't what people expected or wanted from a mainline final fantasy title. If it were a spinoff and didn't grind the mainline games to a halt it would get a better reception.
>>727761005I fell asleep playing it, the gameplay was that dull
>>727761014Wasn't it Matsuda who was obsessed with the nft stuff? I think the new guy's plan for a smaller more focused output doesn't hurt. That endless barrage of AA games with zero marketing didn't do much good when only 1 of them ended up as a success story.
>>727759560popular*This MTG card sells for 139.99
>>727759375XIII unironically started the downfall. Hype for the game was insane, and then on release it was just totally unlike anything in series before, with incredibly railroady intro and world where you had to read ingame encyclopedia to understand it.Now don't get me wrong, previous games in series did not have super open-ended intros either, but they did give illusion of freedom. And you could get pretty good idea of the games' settings just by playing them and talking to NPCs.
>>727760551XV is the worst game ever created, by a large margin. None of the other contenders have the audacity to pull all the bullshit it does for 60+ hours.
>>727759375XII,nobody liked itVersus XIII could have saved the franchise but instead we got XIII and 2 more XIII sequels which people didnt like aswellX was perfect they should have just done that again
>>727761341I'm extremely disappointed we didn't get 2 more PS2 entries like FF10 before moving on to the next gen.
>>727761005People didn't play games for story zoomer. Story is fucking cancer to games. People played games to explore a world.
>>727759375Square lost faith in JRPGs and haven't been found a better fit, losing old fans while failing to bring in new ones. They tripled down on Lightning and lost that gamble. 15 was a mess due to troubled development. Continued mediocrity/poor games has tarnished the prestige of the FF series, no one cares about the series outside of already committed fans. Also, 7R has become this insane vanity project that should've ended years ago.
>>727761274>smaller more focused output doesn't hurt.Fewer, not smaller. The plan is to focus on the giant trashfires like FF7 movie game and completely stop the small side projects that occasionally produced something worthwhile.
>>727759375>What killed Final Fantasy?
>>727761463I agree with your sentiment but in my opinion world of 13 is pretty fucking cool. First thing I saw was underground city, people from above ground trying to abduct me, it looks great so far. >>727761615Reminds me of this. I guess Square devs had faith in FF at least in 2010. Then again Square was suffering from massive incompetence during PS4/one gen, remember how they went about releasing DX:MD?
>>727761737What is this schizo shit? The plot of FF7 or just the remaster?
>>727761641Right, I think a quality over quantity approach isn't bad though. On paper anyway, I don't have a whole lot of faith in what that looks like in practice for SE.
>>727761005In a vacuum it's an okay game. The combat has an appeal and it's extremely pretty with some novel story concepts. Outside of that vacuum it really isn't hard to see why it got the reaction it did though
>>727759375What killed it is the lack of identity since FF10. That is the last game that felt like an actual Final Fantasy game. Since then they have been trying to "innovate" and it feels like they're making Final Fantasy games out of obligation and not because they have unique ideas. It's like 12, 13, 15, and 16 are all bad in different ways but they do have one commonality: They abandoned the old gameplay to try something new 4 times and all 4 times it flopped hard. If you could FF7 remake, then it has been 5-6 times they've tried it and failed.
XII taking so long and being pretty unnoteworthy.XIII was supposed to be the big 7th gen Goty but.. no. So after early 2000s they just kinda pissed the IP away, same as Bioware not really doing anything good after DA/ME wrapped up or Bethesda after FO4.
>>727759375There unironically should have just stuck to turn based.
>>727762131Currently my main problem with the game is the combat, does it get better? I'm just fighting mooks using auto battle without any problems and it's incredibly boring
>>72776128719.99*No one cares about pringles
>>727759375They kept making them after 11The Lightning games is where the fan drop off really began
>make japanese rpg>the west loves it because it is japanese>make it western>it flopsgeee how could this happen?
>>727761932You have no agency to explore it. You're stuck looking at it from a tour bus.
>>727759375>What killed Final FantasyVII being a moviegame gave them a false sense of what the series should be moving foward.
>>727759375They missed the whole turn based JRPG revival craze that has been hitting the zoomers since P5 because they keep trying to reinvent the wheel to outsell COD. What's the last FF that is turn based? XIII-2? That game is almost 15 years old.
>>727763270That's fine with me, after playing more and more RPGs I've come to understand that freestyle exploration isn't necessarily a good thing if it comes at the expense of everything else.
>>727759375The fact it by it's very existence went from>Our companies "goodbye" gameto>Our companies LIFE SUPPORT / CASH COW^Especially when the fanbase is retarded enough to continue supporting this, DECADES after "when do you think the series went to shit" was already a worn out memet. NEVER played anything other than 13 (for about that many hours) and none of the other games.Keep eating out the anus you call ENIX.
>>727763654You dont even explore the cities in 13. Theyre one time visit dungeons. Its rubbish.
>>727759375>lighting's armpits: deniedI don't give a FUCK about you vanille
>>727760867Using terms like fal'cie, l'cie, and cie'th was one of the worst things about the game. It all just fucking blends together and makes an otherwise simple plot mind-numbing to follow
>>727764808>I don't give a FUCK about you vanillewtf
>>727767419Imagine being so fucking retarded that your brain melts because of 3 neologisms.
>>727768861It wasn't just that. On top of uninteresting characters, a segmented world, and fucking awful combat. The game as a whole went in one ear and out the other
SE doesn't actually know what they want to do with it anymore everyone says it should go back to being turn based but i dont even think that would actually help it, for the longest time it just feels like they are just throwing shit around to see what sticks but all of the stuff that does is fucking horrible
>11: MMO>12: MMO (offline)>13: LOIS VOUITTON BAGS???
>>72776100595% of the game is going in a straight line
>>727759375it's stuck in '09. all the wow factor is long gone. it's a pretty lame IP. square need new stuff not this boring crap that a few geezers care about.
>>727769713Hard cucked
>>72776028613 is horrible all by itself.14 was horrible on launch and is an mmo.15 is horrible.16 gives up on even being a final fantasy game and is just the ff14 team trying to make dmc.
>>727759375Vanille my beloved!
>>727759375FF's appeal was always that it was babby's first RPG with a lot of polish. Think BG3, except with even shallower mechanics. That served as a great gateway to RPG's generally, and the next FF.By now, everyone has heard of RPG's and JPRG's are even mainstream. There's dozens of indie and sub-AAA JRPG's the launch every month on Steam. It's a crowded genre.Ditto with the polish. Compare 15 or 16 to the recent TLoU games. Other studios can do the polish better.>But why did Square-Enix fall off NOW?The answer is cancer: MMO's. 11 and 14 (eventually) became huge money printers. As a company, you invest in the things making you money, and for SE that was 11 and 14. Traditional mainline single-player entries just less focus, money, and most importantly less attention. SE could release 4 crappy mainline games (12, 13, 15 and 16), but they didn't start panicking until 14 shit the bed. They just don't care about the mainline series, as if making a GoT-inspired FF didn't make that loud and clear already.
final fantasy shits in my breeches and farts on my balls every time
>>727760021They also released a bunch of other epic RPGs in the 90s as well.
15 did more damage to the brand than 13 did.Prove me wrong.
>>727760069Pretty much this you created a dud and it took you 7 years to release the sequel that looked so promising and it ended up even worse.Create consistently solid games with a 3-4 year old release schedule and you have solved it.
>>727775069it did. it was bundled with ps4s, so it was millions of people's first FF game, and it was so shit they'll never play another.
>>727761005imo it doesn't really matter which one did more damage. the XIII trilogy started turning fans away from the series and instead of focusing on what made FF what it is, they spent the next 15+ years chasing after people who didn't care about the series.
>>727762830it goes from that to just swapping party setup while using autobattle to juggle enemies until they die
>>727759375What licensed things selling out?Square Enix's own store is fully stocked with FF merch and even has a selection of items on sale.
>>727775930I could shit on XIII for hours but at least its complete game. Compare that to the trend chase half baked open world meme garbage that is FFXV
>>72777506913 is pretty beloved, don't think anyone talks about a mainline title after it positively (not counting 14)
>>72777506913's reception was the reason 15 was the way it was.
>>727762281>If you could FF7 remakeyou can say FF7R failed at a lot of things but the gameplay is not one of them
>>727776364>13 is pretty beloved, Maybe in Japan but here in europe we hated it.There are some regional variations such as FFVIII being bigger than VII in EU.
>>727776364Who the fuck says that?
Okay hear me out.Final Fantasy Origins 2, but this time it's a reinterpretation of Final Fantasy V.
>>727761005First 40 hours is a tutorial in one corridor.
>>727776441They believed the problem with 13 was that it was a tube with no side quests, so they gave you a plain with shitty side quests.Everything else was too much like 13. Simplistic auto-battle action combat, the most significant plot and character-building happening almost entirely off-screen, shallow teen melodrama and a focus on flashy action instead of world-building. Once you get out of Duscae, they even throw you back in the cutscene tube for most of the game. They also tried making non-linear FF13 already with 13-2 and it sold abysmally, then again with Lightning Returns and it performed even worse.
>>727776503>PC name screen pops up at the start >think you're playing as bartz the whole game>you're actually galuf
>>727761287I thought people hated lightning.
>>727776503I'd prefer a reinterpretation of the story for II or III. Though Exdeath does have the biggest room for story motive improvements beyond just evil tree. And no I'm not talking sympathy bullshit backstory shit.
>>727777248Lightning Returns was a Valkyrie Profile game with the Valkyrie Profile name and characters filed off, that's probably the "cancelled" tri-Ace game people were talking about being re-appropriated for it.
>>727776467If the gameplay was enjoyable at all I would have still played part 2 instead of dropping that shit altogether.
>>727759375The mergerThey have an entire FF committee and it's full of guys who should've been fired decades ago.FF isn't made by people who want to make a good game, it's made by suits whose ideas are read off from a checklist.>The IP is still incredibly as shown by all the licensed things selling outWant to guess what sells well? The stuff from games before the merger.SE/FF purely lives because of the legacy of +20 year old gamesNone of the SE games were nearly as influential as one of the Square FF gamesThey've been trying to turn into a universe/franchsie since then.First Compilation of FF7, good idea but terrible writing. Feels like fanficThen we had FF13 with the whole roses fabula crystallis thing.By the time they cancelled that, renamed one of those titles to XV, they also announced FF7 remake.Which is just fabula nova crystallis AGAIN but this time they just take an entire old game and turn it into that>>727760314>The change to be something close to a souslop game is what doomed the franchise.No, you fucking retard.SE always wanted to go down the action route but were too scared to commit.You can see it with XII and it just becomes more apparent.It stopped being a turn based game, it wasn't five niggas in a row anymoreWhich is fine because some games like Crisis Core got positive receptionFF has been shit for like 20 years>It got praised even by zoomers.That's telling more about the current state of FF than anything else.The game had some retarded ideas introduced by SE suits.People don't care that much about XII as they do about the other games
>>727776251I'm not trying to say which one is worse than the other, just that if SE could have earned a lot of confidence back in people if they even once stopped making brain dead decisions in the series during that time. it just feels like minor things next to two decades of waiting for something that resembles a FF game.
>>727777609Yeah, you notice this immediately when the literal valkyrie is sent down by God to collect human souls. Tri-Ace was definitely trying to make Valkyrie Profile. From Square's perspective, it was still FF13 asset reuse to try and recoup the ballooned dev costs. It also went open world and turned into a full action game because FF13 was called out for linearity and playing itself. It didn't work, and then it didn't work again in FF15.
