In this review i'm going to compare this FF to previous FF's mostly that terrible offline MMORPG FF12.
Environments:,
.. are beautiful and each one has it's own flavor and unique design. Kinda like FFX but better. As for being compared to FF psone titles the paths are more linear and dont match the creativity of the painted backgrounds that those games had. I'm talking about ladders, houses, ect. People say this game is extremely linear, but I found that the environments were a godsend when compared to 12's boring and though they looked good (texture wise), criss crossing hallways, with no detail, save for a fountain or a bunch of NPC's. In 12, I got tired of the environments in that game after 10 hours. There is no comparison here. I dont understand how the bland hallways of 12 can come close to this game. As for exploration there are no towns and barely any NPC's. That is a definite minus for this game, but one I can overlook. No random treasures to be found here, just rare drops from monsters, and the one open space to be found in this game on pulse is fantastic, I'd rather have ONE than an endless supply of barren wasteland that just puts me to sleep.
Battle System:
This is going to be short. I wanted more abilities for my characters in this game per class, maybe if I could have set a certain number on a character in the menu before battle began (because theres limited space on the screen, it would have been more fun. I'm finally used to the gambit system so having control over one character didn't seem so bad, but I really wish that I could program my AI allies or switch between them during battle while the AI takres over the leader. That would have made the battles more dynamic. I dont get why people say this game is easy, its not. Auto battle is only good for the first 5 hours of the game; enter in your own commands, so you can interrupt enemy attacks and attack faster by cutting the ATB bar shorter. The one thing the battle system gets right is the flow and pacing of combat. It's very fast and should not be slowed down for the next FF. It add's an action game feel while remaining semi turn based.
X factors:
There are no mini games, except side missions towards the end of the game, changing the weather for a short period of time on one map, and also for a very brief period of time piloting a tractor mech to clear a path and defeat soldiers. The soundtrack, though good in most places, is not traditional final fantasy, but it definitely fits the game, all except for the j-pop song through the forest. (What were they thinking?).
Story:
Where's my convoluted japanese plot line?? A hallmark of the early ff series it seems they simplified the plot and chose instead to keep repeating things over and over. Oh no we are L'cie what do we do? It gets old fast. Thats not to say that the story doesn't pull you along and make you want to play the game more, it certainly does do that, I'm just looking for alot more twists and turns ala Final Fantasy Tactics, FFVII and FFVIII. While the overarching story may be kinda lame, it definetely gave me incentive to keep playing. Maybe its because this is 2010, not 1997 where most of the story was delivered through text you had to READ as opposed to watch. Less reading, more cutscenes: = simpler story because I guess squeenix wants it to be cinematic. Give me some text here and there from NPC's in realtime, not some lame datalog that seems so artificial in this game.
Closing comments:
Lastly, people are saying this is an attempt to mainstream final fantasy. Final fantasy has been mainstream for more than a decade. With FFVII selling over 9 million world wide, do you think it was RPG fundamentals that sold the game?
No. It was the never before seen graphics. I knew people back then that only played sports games, and because they saw 3 minutes of FMV on TV they bought the game. I'm not saying graphics make the game, they dont, at least not for me. (/rant)
Bottom line it goes like this:
FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, FFXIII, FFIX, and I'm not even going to list 12. The end.