Is it just me or is Final Fantasy getting lame

Characters and story are both opinionated, so no comment on that. In technical speaking, FFX could easily be one of the best Final Fantasies. The Sphere Grid allows the player to choose what magic, stats, and special abilities to learn. Most gamers like freedom and choice. The battle system does not have those annoying time bars that had you waiting just to select an action from the menu. Many gamers hated those. In all fairness, SE has to implement new ideas into their games, just to keep the series fresh.

The battle system is starting to suck. But I would put down the story lines, because they have been *******great no matter what you say lol. I love them. But the earlier games were better in some waysAmnesiac23

FFXII is great, the battle system is better as well if you don't like FF any more than don't buy any more gamesomega235

[QUOTE="omega235"]FFXII is great, the battle system is better as well if you don't like FF any more than don't buy any more gamesDaveGamer_05

[QUOTE="DaveGamer_05"][QUOTE="omega235"]FFXII is great, the battle system is better as well if you don't like FF any more than don't buy any more gamesThe1andOnlyMG

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

FFVII - for the most part, lame, but has some saving graces. 3 good characters. Good story
FFVIII - very, very lame. Not a good game at all
FFIX - shows hope for the series. Fantastic game
FFX - some stuff that is lame, but it is counterbalanced by some cool stuff. Good game. Not a great one
FFX-2 - Not as bad as VIII, but it tries to be. Battle system is fun. Can't say much else positive about it
FFXI - WTF? Online only FF part of the main series? Very lame indeed
FFXII - Holy mother of Christ this game rules.
fs_metal

how can you possibly claim that FFXII has an inferior battle system.  It's different, I'll give you that, but I've been waiting for Square to finally update the crusty old 8-bit formula of random battles for a long time. 

I personally adore the new system, the enemies you fight are now an integrated part of the game world, and you enter and exit combat seamlessly.

Much better than the old system in which you are ripped from reality to fight magically appearing monsters in a space that is seperate and distinct from the gameworld.

Random battles made sense when you had 8/16 bit sprites that were not to scale with the rest of the world.  Back then your character was a representation of your point on a map, not an image of your character as he actually exists in the game world.  Thus it made sense to suddenly zoom in on the map in order to have a battle with some random monsters.

But now that you are already actually looking at your character in the world instead of a representation on an out of scale map, it takes away from some of the immersion when your suddenly sucked into an alternate reality to fight monsters that weren't there a moment ago.

just giving you a hard time omega ;) this topic can be debated every which way, and everyone for the most part is right... go figure :)The1andOnlyMG

Square is slowly realizing what needed to be changed just they are sort of fumbling the ball as they do it. The turn based gameplay was getting lame, not many RPGs use it anymore, SE almost got to go real time but the FFXII's combat was still clinging to the hope that waiting for your action to happen is still cool. At least Versus is going all real time. Another problem which was rather new was the cutscene amount, only brought about by X's love of not letting you play ever. Worst part was IMO I didn't like most of the story or characters so I wasn't interested in the massive amount of time spent developing them. They tried fixing that with XII having as few cutscenes as possible, they messed that up for me by making a plot I was interested in then they took so long for it to unfold with almost no cutscenes that it was very underdeveloped and got dry in some parts since it left you with either nothing for development or dramatic important seeming scenes that always felt rushed and should have been longer more involved scenes,_Zodiac_

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

DRUNK_CANADIAN

[QUOTE="_Zodiac_"]Square is slowly realizing what needed to be changed just they are sort of fumbling the ball as they do it. The turn based gameplay was getting lame, not many RPGs use it anymore, SE almost got to go real time but the FFXII's combat was still clinging to the hope that waiting for your action to happen is still cool. At least Versus is going all real time. Another problem which was rather new was the cutscene amount, only brought about by X's love of not letting you play ever. Worst part was IMO I didn't like most of the story or characters so I wasn't interested in the massive amount of time spent developing them. They tried fixing that with XII having as few cutscenes as possible, they messed that up for me by making a plot I was interested in then they took so long for it to unfold with almost no cutscenes that it was very underdeveloped and got dry in some parts since it left you with either nothing for development or dramatic important seeming scenes that always felt rushed and should have been longer more involved scenes,lordsettra12

[QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

lordsettra12

[QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="_Zodiac_"]Square is slowly realizing what needed to be changed just they are sort of fumbling the ball as they do it. The turn based gameplay was getting lame, not many RPGs use it anymore, SE almost got to go real time but the FFXII's combat was still clinging to the hope that waiting for your action to happen is still cool. At least Versus is going all real time. Another problem which was rather new was the cutscene amount, only brought about by X's love of not letting you play ever. Worst part was IMO I didn't like most of the story or characters so I wasn't interested in the massive amount of time spent developing them. They tried fixing that with XII having as few cutscenes as possible, they messed that up for me by making a plot I was interested in then they took so long for it to unfold with almost no cutscenes that it was very underdeveloped and got dry in some parts since it left you with either nothing for development or dramatic important seeming scenes that always felt rushed and should have been longer more involved scenes,omega235

[QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

omega235

[QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

lordsettra12

[QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

iron_zealot7531

[QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

iron_zealot7531

Wait....  What's going on?  Final Fantasy games are getting lame?!  WHAT?!?!!1  When did this happen?!  I have to let the reviewers know so they change all the high scores they gave them!  Oh wait....  Making a sarcastic appeal to reviewers would be a bad idea since no one believes them despite being on a...  Game news/review site....

Anyway, who said that the older Final Fantasy (NES/SNES) games were better than the newer ones?  FFVI I'll give you as being on the same level sure because its a great game (As are all Final Fantasy when stacked against the average game), but I was recently replaying FFIV and its plotline has so many things that are cliches now.  Characters surviving horrible accidents, mind control, evil twin brothers, the redeemed character.  I like FFIV sure, but the storyline has much more retro/nostalgic appeal than actual lasting appeal.  And don't even try to say the combat was better in that one, because it wasn't.  More intense, yes, better, no.

Oh, we were talking more recent games weren't we...  Okay, FFXII, I must admit, does seem to have large patches where nothing is happening (Or maybe thats just because I run off and kill things?) and the plotline is taking a LONG while to get interesting (Again this is also because I'm running around killing stuff, so sue me) but then again X took a good while to get really interesting and I ended up liking that story AND the characters (Yes, I like the characters.  They aren't my favorite, but they're different from your run of the mill RPG characters)  Also the worlds in the games are fascinating in my opinion (And the worlds are one of the main draws to the Final Fantasy games in my opinion).  Anyway....  Oh, combat.  The combat XII is incredibly user friendly.  All I have to do is wander around, sometimes select a command for my leader (Or the whole party if the enemy has an element weakness to exploit) and it kills stuff thanks to the Gambit system.  Sure there are more battles, but I can conclude 2 or 3 battles in the time it takes for the scene transition, selection of commands, resulting animation (Repeat till victory) and the victory combat screen (Which, while I enjoy it, does take a good speck of time that doesn't even factor in in XII).  Also, did someone criticize the waiting?  I enjoy the waiting, it creates tension.  If I could just keep attacking non stop then it would feel too action-esque.  If I want that then I'll play Dynasty Warriors or Kingdom Hearts.  And the spells definitely need time to charge, thats just obvious.  Also, people do understand that games don't need to be based on reality right?  They aren't constrained by the same rules of time a space that we are?  They can stand there for 2 hours doing nothing and thats cool for them.  Or shall we take away all pause features from games so that way your character can die if the phone rings?  Really, people who complain about lack of realism in games get on my nerves, go out and slay a cow with your claymore if you want realism.  Also I know its not Final Fantasy, but Gears of War is an awesome game, not because its got realistic tactics or any crap like that that games like Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon have, but because it takes things that are similar to those things and make them fun and interesting.  I probably forgot some points I was going to make but I'll leave it at this for now.

Finally, I like the Japanese melodrama!  I need steady dosage of it or I get the shakes.

Oh, Cloud beats Vaan...  Always.

[QUOTE="iron_zealot7531"][QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

lordsettra12

[QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="iron_zealot7531"][QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

omega235

[QUOTE="omega235"][QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="iron_zealot7531"][QUOTE="lordsettra12"][QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]

its you

FFVII I'll agree was epic and yes Balthier was just added to be kool, and yes FFXII thinks it is a MMORPG :P .....but all in all the same FF basis and selling point is still there, the leveling system, the summons and most importantly the story......also you liked FFIX ...no offense but in my opinion that game was The Sh!ttiest Final Fantasy EVER!!!

lordsettra12

I like the older games better than the newer ones, and they are better.  Well.... it actually depends where you started the series believe it or not.  You will not appreciate the NES-SNES games as much if you start playing the PS1-PS2 games.  Ive been playing them since FF1.  The older ones had more of a story line, sure Final Fantasy IV line is cliche, but when i WATCH Final Fantasy X i feel like im watching a movie with bad actors. There really isn't a story to it.  Of course i admit that people surviving impossible situation is rather stupid, but they only did that so you would have a choise of characters to go to the final boss with.  I never ended up using those characters ne way im fine with Cecil, Rosa, Rydia, Kane & Edge.Cocololap

I like the older games better than the newer ones, and they are better. Well.... it actually depends where you started the series believe it or not. You will not appreciate the NES-SNES games as much if you start playing the PS1-PS2 games. Ive been playing them since FF1. The older ones had more of a story line, sure Final Fantasy IV line is cliche, but when i WATCH Final Fantasy X i feel like im watching a movie with bad actors. There really isn't a story to it. Of course i admit that people surviving impossible situation is rather stupid, but they only did that so you would have a choise of characters to go to the final boss with. I never ended up using those characters ne way im fine with Cecil, Rosa, Rydia, Kane & Edge.Cocololap

I think the dude who made this forum is a troll? but why are we feeding him?DRUNK_CANADIAN

[QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]I think the dude who made this forum is a troll? but why are we feeding him?Amnesiac23

[QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]I think the dude who made this forum is a troll? but why are we feeding him?Amnesiac23

[QUOTE="Amnesiac23"][QUOTE="DRUNK_CANADIAN"]I think the dude who made this forum is a troll? but why are we feeding him?lordsettra12

I like the older games better than the newer ones, and they are better.  Well.... it actually depends where you started the series believe it or not.  You will not appreciate the NES-SNES games as much if you start playing the PS1-PS2 games.  Ive been playing them since FF1.  The older ones had more of a story line, sure Final Fantasy IV line is cliche, but when i WATCH Final Fantasy X i feel like im watching a movie with bad actors. There really isn't a story to it.  Of course i admit that people surviving impossible situation is rather stupid, but they only did that so you would have a choise of characters to go to the final boss with.  I never ended up using those characters ne way im fine with Cecil, Rosa, Rydia, Kane & Edge.Cocololap

I started on FF1 too.  Admittedly the very first one I saw was FFVI I think, and also FFIV back at a friends house when they were on the SNES, but the first one I played was FF1 (Which hopefully no one will try and argue was superior to more recent versions?).  Don't assume someone hasn't played the older ones just because they support the newer ones.

Anyway, since when do movies not have storylines?  If you couldn't pick up the story of FFX then you weren't paying enough attention because there's definitely a story to it and I think a pretty good one.  A story of a lie filled religion and a shocking truth of existence, also the love story on the side.  Maybe you're more of a reader than a movie watcher?  Not a criticism, just an observation.  Also I never said cliches were stupid, I think that someone surviving an impossible crash is a perfectly fine plot element, I simply stated that the story line was cliched and thus has more nostalgic value than lasting story value.  That doesn't mean it has no lasting story value, but I wouldn't put it higher than VI or VII's story, but that really has to do with the limitations of the dialogue which, if done today, could have been much better done.  Honestly, when I was playing FFIV a few months ago I was thinking "If they did a remake of this, I hope they redo the dialogue so that there's more, because there just isn't enough here to match a modern game."  Because there isn't, and a lot of it seemed edited to gear towards a younger audience than the more recent ones. 

Also, I really liked the characters in IV, those last five you mentioned anyway (Well, maybe not Edge quite so much, but he was amusing).  I'd say that those four characters (Rydia, Cecil, Rosa, and Kain) I like more than....  Most other casts of characters.  Not more than VII, but most of the others....  Maybe not VI, maybe on the same level as VI since the average number and quality of characters I like in VI evens out to IV I think.  VIII's cast was too human for me, if you know what I mean, they looked like regular people (Good story, but their appearance was too normal for me).  Then IX went the other extreme and made them too cartoonish for my taste (Steiner still looks like Buzz Lightyear).  X has a good aesthetic to its characters as does XII (Though I liked X's character designs better, something about the eyes in XII keeps irking me).  Though if you were to go simply based on personalities of the characters....  I'd have to think a good deal harder and that would probably require playing through some games again since thats based more on their overall interaction in the story and not on their appearance and summary personality.  But I guess I'm prattling now aren't I?

I still think its funny that people talk about this or that Final Fantasy game being bad, but its still better than a good majority of games in general.

*Shrug*  Ever since they started moving away from quests revolving around world stablizing crystals being stolen I haven't really seen anything that I would call a standard for Final Fantasy story telling.  Really the only consistant element that I know of is that the stories always involve some form of ancient power, generally locked in crystal form but there are others such as the Fayth in FFX.  You see this in the Magicite of VI, the Materia of VII, the GFs of VIII (Though, that one I'm less sure of, I ned to play VIII again), the Fayth in X, and the Nethicite and various other crytals of XII.  Though....  Well, maybe I should make a topic about what makes a Final Fantasy story?  I think I will.

Anyway, I guess a definitive answer to the topic question on my part would be "No, Final Fantasy games are not getting lame.  Your face is though, oh snap!"  :P