Where has Square Enix gone wrong with the Final Fantasy series?

For as long as i can remember, everyone has been berating square enix and most people consider the last REAL QUALITY Final Fantasy title to be FFX (though Crisis Core is an exception for me). The majority of FF fans i've spoken with couldn't stand XII and have also criticised XIII. I can't really put my finger on where they've gone wrong but i have noticed a lack of quality in recent years. I thought XII and XIII were okay...not great games but not dreadful.

Perhaps the fanbase aren't allowing new titles to be as good as past ones because of nostalgia? Or perhaps Square are lacking in creativity? I don't know...these are all just suggestions. Personally, i think the merging of Square into Square Enix was the turning point because the titles which i've enjoyed since they've been Squenix (X-2, Crisis Core, FFVII: DOC) are all spin-offs...and spin-offs are easier to make then brand new titles.

What does everyone else thing with regards to why XII and XIII aren't up to standard in comparison to past titles?

For starters, I'll ask why people complain that XIII is linear, yet they call X a quality game when it was just as linear. Contradiction ftw. XII is awful, but I really enjoyed XIII. I don't care that it's linear, and I absolutely love the battle system. And about that, I think people bash it because it's different, and it's labeled Final Fantasy. Innovation is gold in the game world, yet this is frowned upon when it's an excellent solution. A matter of taste, of course.

what? this is all a matter of opinion, in my opinion final fantasy 7 is way overrated and I enjoy final fantasy 13 the only title that i thought was weak was 12 so ehh I don't think they have went wrong with anything and to for you to say their losing their creativity just blows my mind

For starters, I'll ask why people complain that XIII is linear, yet they call X a quality game when it was just as linear. Contradiction ftw. XII is awful, but I really enjoyed XIII. I don't care that it's linear, and I absolutely love the battle system. And about that, I think people bash it because it's different, and it's labeled Final Fantasy. Innovation is gold in the game world, yet this is frowned upon when it's an excellent solution. A matter of taste, of course.

Kaim91

They screwed up when they threw away Sakaguchi who WAS Final Fantasy. He's the creator and when he's no longer there to keep everyone in line, everything collapses. He's the only one who truly knows what Final Fantasy is. Director or Producer he knew how to keep the series good. And despite what the big shots and Square Enix says or think about the sales about the great sales of XIII, the only reason people, including myself, bought it, is because of the heritage.

For starters, I'll ask why people complain that XIII is linear, yet they call X a quality game when it was just as linear. Contradiction ftw. XII is awful, but I really enjoyed XIII. I don't care that it's linear, and I absolutely love the battle system. And about that, I think people bash it because it's different, and it's labeled Final Fantasy. Innovation is gold in the game world, yet this is frowned upon when it's an excellent solution. A matter of taste, of course.

Kaim91

Final Fantasy X was linear and was also the turning point of the downfall of the series. The moment they removed the explorable world map the series has been going down hill, I loved the series for years because it let you feel like you were exploring this world and finding things out about it, how much freedom you truly had was irrelevant because all that mattered is you felt less penned in.

The FF series is something different now from what I played when I was younger which is fair enough things change, I personally do not like what it has become though and it clearly has far less impact than games like FFVI and VII had in their day.

what? this is all a matter of opinion, in my opinion final fantasy 7 is way overrated and I enjoy final fantasy 13 the only title that i thought was weak was 12 so ehh I don't think they have went wrong with anything and to for you to say their losing their creativity just blows my mind

Chris_Williams

The problem Square Enix is listening too much to the few but load complainers that does not like the ideal that a game series with the fame of Final Fantasy and not be what they want to play.

[QUOTE="Kaim91"]

For starters, I'll ask why people complain that XIII is linear, yet they call X a quality game when it was just as linear. Contradiction ftw. XII is awful, but I really enjoyed XIII. I don't care that it's linear, and I absolutely love the battle system. And about that, I think people bash it because it's different, and it's labeled Final Fantasy. Innovation is gold in the game world, yet this is frowned upon when it's an excellent solution. A matter of taste, of course.

Chris_Williams

The result is that XIII feels like something pretty to look at, with a world to save that you never care about, while in X you deal with a world that just feels more alive. You want to save Spira because it's a world worth saving, while Cocoon... not so much. Square's biggest problem is that they forgot how to make people care about the world they created for the game, and this is because they've shifted their focus to making a flashy, cinematic experience at the expense of good writing, good localization, an engaging story, a world to enjoy, and characters that hold your interest. They took steps toward this with VII, but by XIII, it feels as though they may as well be making an interactive movie instead of a game. VII started it, IX moved it back in the right direction, X was when I seriously to get worried (first FF game that I had no interest in replaying), and XIII is where I say they've lost it.

VI is still my favorite game in the series, and until they remember what made it great, FF will continue to slide.

They haven't gone wrong. I enjoy FF titles now just as much as I did 10 years ago.

[QUOTE="Chris_Williams"][QUOTE="Kaim91"]

For starters, I'll ask why people complain that XIII is linear, yet they call X a quality game when it was just as linear. Contradiction ftw. XII is awful, but I really enjoyed XIII. I don't care that it's linear, and I absolutely love the battle system. And about that, I think people bash it because it's different, and it's labeled Final Fantasy. Innovation is gold in the game world, yet this is frowned upon when it's an excellent solution. A matter of taste, of course.

MAILER_DAEMON

The result is that XIII feels like something pretty to look at, with a world to save that you never care about, while in X you deal with a world that just feels more alive. You want to save Spira because it's a world worth saving, while Cocoon... not so much. Square's biggest problem is that they forgot how to make people care about the world they created for the game, and this is because they've shifted their focus to making a flashy, cinematic experience at the expense of good writing, good localization, an engaging story, a world to enjoy, and characters that hold your interest. They took steps toward this with VII, but by XIII, it feels as though they may as well be making an interactive movie instead of a game. VII started it, IX moved it back in the right direction, X was when I seriously to get worried (first FF game that I had no interest in replaying), and XIII is where I say they've lost it.

VI is still my favorite game in the series, and until they remember what made it great, FF will continue to slide.

exactly my friend, final fantasy 10 was SOOO linear in the beginning as is final fantasy 13 but of course people don't remember thatChris_Williams

The result is that XIII feels like something pretty to look at, with a world to save that you never care about, while in X you deal with a world that just feels more alive. You want to save Spira because it's a world worth saving, while Cocoon... not so much. Square's biggest problem is that they forgot how to make people care about the world they created for the game, and this is because they've shifted their focus to making a flashy, cinematic experience at the expense of good writing, good localization, an engaging story, a world to enjoy, and characters that hold your interest. They took steps toward this with VII, but by XIII, it feels as though they may as well be making an interactive movie instead of a game. VII started it, IX moved it back in the right direction, X was when I seriously to get worried (first FF game that I had no interest in replaying), and XIII is where I say they've lost it.

VI is still my favorite game in the series, and until they remember what made it great, FF will continue to slide.

This may not be as high on some peoples priority list but for me one of the biggest problems with them going heavy on the graphics is they no longer bother to give every character a theme tune which represents their personality in the game, in FF VI I related to the characters not by how they looked but initially by the theme tune which accompanied their presence. It was this interaction with the music that developed the character and drew me into the story.

By the way I haven't played FFXIII so my comments are not aimed at that personally in this instance, I have no idea if the characters have individual themes but I think they dropped them after the 9th installment?

This may not be as high on some peoples priority list but for me one of the biggest problems with them going heavy on the graphics is they no longer bother to give every character a theme tune which represents their personality in the game, in FF VI I related to the characters not by how they looked but initially by the theme tune which accompanied their presence. It was this interaction with the music that developed the character and drew me into the story.

By the way I haven't played FFXIII so my comments are not aimed at that personally in this instance, I have no idea if the characters have individual themes but I think they dropped them after the 9th installment?

SapSacPrime

There's no discernable drop in quality; in fact, I think you'd have trouble making a case for either game being poor beyond saying that you, personally, did not care for it. Final Fantasy XII is an excellent game; there's the usual Final Fantasy standard of polished graphics, a massive content, a gameplay system that offers a great deal of depth, a storyline with the strongest writing in the series to date and Shakespearian pacing. I think the problem that the game has is that it demands that you have a very broad set of tastes. It draws from Matsuno's past works, JRPGs, Final Fantasy conventions and MMORPGs. Essentially, if you have specialized tastes at all in role-playing games, SOMETHING in Final Fantasy XII is going to rub you the wrong way. It's such a strange hybrid of different conventions that it becomes difficult to get a feel for what tradition, exactly, Final Fantasy XII is following in. The answer is... all of them. None of them. You have to take it on its own terms, or the product as a whole makes little sense. Final Fantasy XIII might be a little too fast for its own good. The battles are set-up in such a way that if you're fighting for more than fifteen seconds at a time, you're playing too long. I think a lot of players don't have a sense of being in control with a battle system that rapid, and the pacing of the story is as quick as its gameplay. It violates all the good feelings you may have acquired from past Final Fantasy games about exploring every little niche, and it doesn't really give you a lot of time to engage in long-term planning (you basically just upgrade your characters as you go, whenever you can). It's not a drop in quality, it's a problem with not fulfilling the expectations that fans have come. You've essentially got a number of fans demanding the game be more like VI, or more like VII, or maybe X, and then smaller camps who prefer IV, or VIII, or V... At the same time, Square seems to be more interested in continuing to go in new directions with the series with each installment. I think it's just inevitable at this point that people are going to be disappointed if they expect ANYTHING from a Final Fantasy game beyond it being a role-playing game of some sort and being very pretty and polished. Which is probably why I like more Final Fantasy titles than your average Final Fantasy fan; I don't particularly care what sort of game the next Final Fantasy game is except that it is excellent. And I haven't been disappointed since Final Fantasy VII.Oilers99

[QUOTE="SapSacPrime"]

This may not be as high on some peoples priority list but for me one of the biggest problems with them going heavy on the graphics is they no longer bother to give every character a theme tune which represents their personality in the game, in FF VI I related to the characters not by how they looked but initially by the theme tune which accompanied their presence. It was this interaction with the music that developed the character and drew me into the story.

By the way I haven't played FFXIII so my comments are not aimed at that personally in this instance, I have no idea if the characters have individual themes but I think they dropped them after the 9th installment?

Oilers99

I just looked into it and I think XIII has themes for each character so I may have been wrong about that then, maybe they just don't have the same impact these days (more ambient perhaps, not always a bad thing). I may try to find the time to replay 10 and 12 again, try and get a feel for what I think is missing :).

[QUOTE="SapSacPrime"]

This may not be as high on some peoples priority list but for me one of the biggest problems with them going heavy on the graphics is they no longer bother to give every character a theme tune which represents their personality in the game, in FF VI I related to the characters not by how they looked but initially by the theme tune which accompanied their presence. It was this interaction with the music that developed the character and drew me into the story.

By the way I haven't played FFXIII so my comments are not aimed at that personally in this instance, I have no idea if the characters have individual themes but I think they dropped them after the 9th installment?

Oilers99

[QUOTE="Oilers99"]There's no discernable drop in quality; in fact, I think you'd have trouble making a case for either game being poor beyond saying that you, personally, did not care for it. Final Fantasy XII is an excellent game; there's the usual Final Fantasy standard of polished graphics, a massive content, a gameplay system that offers a great deal of depth, a storyline with the strongest writing in the series to date and Shakespearian pacing. I think the problem that the game has is that it demands that you have a very broad set of tastes. It draws from Matsuno's past works, JRPGs, Final Fantasy conventions and MMORPGs. Essentially, if you have specialized tastes at all in role-playing games, SOMETHING in Final Fantasy XII is going to rub you the wrong way. It's such a strange hybrid of different conventions that it becomes difficult to get a feel for what tradition, exactly, Final Fantasy XII is following in. The answer is... all of them. None of them. You have to take it on its own terms, or the product as a whole makes little sense. Final Fantasy XIII might be a little too fast for its own good. The battles are set-up in such a way that if you're fighting for more than fifteen seconds at a time, you're playing too long. I think a lot of players don't have a sense of being in control with a battle system that rapid, and the pacing of the story is as quick as its gameplay. It violates all the good feelings you may have acquired from past Final Fantasy games about exploring every little niche, and it doesn't really give you a lot of time to engage in long-term planning (you basically just upgrade your characters as you go, whenever you can). It's not a drop in quality, it's a problem with not fulfilling the expectations that fans have come. You've essentially got a number of fans demanding the game be more like VI, or more like VII, or maybe X, and then smaller camps who prefer IV, or VIII, or V... At the same time, Square seems to be more interested in continuing to go in new directions with the series with each installment. I think it's just inevitable at this point that people are going to be disappointed if they expect ANYTHING from a Final Fantasy game beyond it being a role-playing game of some sort and being very pretty and polished. Which is probably why I like more Final Fantasy titles than your average Final Fantasy fan; I don't particularly care what sort of game the next Final Fantasy game is except that it is excellent. And I haven't been disappointed since Final Fantasy VII.texasgoldrush

I notice that the story does not have as much. Now they seam to have one or two many focus. Like Final Fantasy XIII seam to be mainly a chase. The older games had some mystery, comedy, romance, action, chase and maybe a little horror. Final Fantasy VII was a chase mainly but they broke it up with some odd moments.

I found that Final Fantasy XIII is much better with the rich enemies than Final Fantasy XII and meet the same level as the oolder Final Fantasy games.

[QUOTE="Oilers99"]There's no discernable drop in quality; in fact, I think you'd have trouble making a case for either game being poor beyond saying that you, personally, did not care for it. Final Fantasy XII is an excellent game; there's the usual Final Fantasy standard of polished graphics, a massive content, a gameplay system that offers a great deal of depth, a storyline with the strongest writing in the series to date and Shakespearian pacing. I think the problem that the game has is that it demands that you have a very broad set of tastes. It draws from Matsuno's past works, JRPGs, Final Fantasy conventions and MMORPGs. Essentially, if you have specialized tastes at all in role-playing games, SOMETHING in Final Fantasy XII is going to rub you the wrong way. It's such a strange hybrid of different conventions that it becomes difficult to get a feel for what tradition, exactly, Final Fantasy XII is following in. The answer is... all of them. None of them. You have to take it on its own terms, or the product as a whole makes little sense. Final Fantasy XIII might be a little too fast for its own good. The battles are set-up in such a way that if you're fighting for more than fifteen seconds at a time, you're playing too long. I think a lot of players don't have a sense of being in control with a battle system that rapid, and the pacing of the story is as quick as its gameplay. It violates all the good feelings you may have acquired from past Final Fantasy games about exploring every little niche, and it doesn't really give you a lot of time to engage in long-term planning (you basically just upgrade your characters as you go, whenever you can). It's not a drop in quality, it's a problem with not fulfilling the expectations that fans have come. You've essentially got a number of fans demanding the game be more like VI, or more like VII, or maybe X, and then smaller camps who prefer IV, or VIII, or V... At the same time, Square seems to be more interested in continuing to go in new directions with the series with each installment. I think it's just inevitable at this point that people are going to be disappointed if they expect ANYTHING from a Final Fantasy game beyond it being a role-playing game of some sort and being very pretty and polished. Which is probably why I like more Final Fantasy titles than your average Final Fantasy fan; I don't particularly care what sort of game the next Final Fantasy game is except that it is excellent. And I haven't been disappointed since Final Fantasy VII.texasgoldrush

I will also say that I can't comment too much on Final Fantasy XIII's plot; I'm too early to make too many judgments about the story, specifically, though I do like its breakneck speed, which is refreshing for a series that has generally employed ponderous pacing.Oilers99

It's a decent enough plot i think, worthy of FF but clearly it's not one of the top titles like VII and X. That's not a bad thing though, it's a decent enough FF game i'd say.DarthJohnova

I have to say no FF as let me down yet.(spinoffs dont count talking about main ones) 10 might be my less fav so far. As for FFXIII I found it to be great its in fact one of my favs behind FFVII, and FFVIII when it comes to story. FFXIII went more away from the world to more about the characters and gave them more life.

They went there own ways and each had a reason what they are doing, so you get more time with each one and care about them. Other FF there are characters I never used unless I had to, and didn't give a **** about. FFXIII you see each characters emotion and see how they feel with the things going on around them.

The moment they removed the explorable world map the series has been going down hillSapSacPrime

I can't agree with that. I actually picked up Resonance of Fate right after beating FF13, as it got a great review here, (you'd think I had learned my lesson after the Suikoden 3 fiasco) and I despised it. The gun-fu battle system was neat for about ten minutes, and the world map was actually the deal breaker. Sure it has a world map, but it was a boring pain to deal with. Especially in this game as it had a really lame grid based one. I don't miss world maps a bit. I did miss explorable towns and sidequests all throughout the game, but on the whole, I thought FF13 was a stellar game. Easily my favorite JRPG of this console generation.

IMO the only thing Square-Enix have done wrong was to have a slight miss with core fans in their recent innovations. They have always changed their games and, IMO, from X onwards this vision has been expanded to try and capture non tradional RPG gamers.This obviously increases their sales and keeps them a market leader for RPG innovation. What it does wrong is thatitdamages the brand, offers no fan service and will eventually prove toodetrimental tothe series.

One of the best things about FF series was the constant innovation and variance. They've always been one of the first to take a series and turn it upside down. The most obvious instances are 7, 10, 11 (MMO) and 13. Also remember all the innovative stuff like the class system in FF5, Materia/Limit system in 7 and levelling up systems for X onwards?

Story wise I have loved them all except for 12 (it just lost me). I thought 13 had an awesome story although I did feel that it was rushed. Then again the whole game was meant to be a fast paced RPG so it suited the style. My favorite storylines were 7 and 4 followed closely by 9, Crisis Coreand 13 (4 is probably a nostalgia thing as it's not exactly a brilliant story).

The one thing that has really confused me regarding the FF series was why they've thrown two MMOs into the main series. IMO they should have a branch series like Legends, Tactics,or Crystal Chronicles or something. Don't throw a completely unique game type into the middle of an established series.

Anyway, that's all just opinion. If I had my way they'd all still be like FF4 but prettier and I'd never have experienced some of the great things they've done.

I don't think there's anything wrong. The only FF game I think is actually bad is FFX-2. I wasn't crazy about FFXII, but I thought it was still an alright game, thanks to the optional stuff you could do. I thought FFXIII was pretty good, not one of the best FF, not one of the worst FF.

Where has Square Enix gone wrong...

DarthJohnova

I can't tell if they legitimately feel that they're telling good stories with FF or if they're just developing pretty nonsense because they think they have to pander to children. Square needs to work on their storytelling. It's what they've lost most of all.

After FFX, I grew tired of the series for these reasons:

1. Can't explore - you go down a path, it's like your character runs into an invisible brick wall.

2. Linear - some don't care, but there never is a "new game", really just a "restart" or a "rehash" same-old, same-old.

They have changed too many things. I'm exactly the same as others you mentioned in your original post, loved FFX and couldn't stand FFXII and am really not interested in FFXIII at all. My issues with these games? The battle system for one. God forbid I make an actual choice. I know a lot of people really went off the whole turn based thing with a whole list of things to choose from, but that was my favourite part. I love turn based. The latest games have been more like action battles, but not even like Kingdom Hearts of Star Ocean. It's been somewhere inbetween that just didn't work for me. If you're going to make it real time action, just give me a sword and a button to assign a spell to it and leave it at that. Don't even get me started on the whole 'Auto battle' thing in FFXIII

They have also been making some really unlikeable characters, or characters that I just don't care about. I haven't really liked a single FF character since X. I just can't make myself care about anything of them.

I'd like to think that Final Fantasy was a good series and had a good run. Unfortunately, with games like VIII, XI and XII and now XIII, I'm no longer confident with the series.

Someone said it right - storytelling and writing definitely took a backseat, but a lot more elements took a backseat, such as gameplay. Really important there! In fact, you know what it is all about with Square these days? Pushing the envelope with the game consoles and trying to make these games look like some of the best out there visually.

That's not a good thing.

I'm one of those smaller camps that REALLY enjoyed the games for what they were until VII. Nothing wrong with VII, but it is NOT THE BEST. Unfortunately, VII is so overrated that many people consider it the best Final Fantasy or heck, the best RPG out there since the beginning. That's strictly their opinion, but this is also my opinion - it's not. I liked the story and cast, but it just wasn't as good as...say, Final Fantasy IV or VI's story or cast. In fact, VII's story mainly had you chase Seph all over the planet while trying to find backstory, etc. It just wasn't fun - sure, the story touched on some great issues, but it just wasn't the best plot. And no matter what ANYONE tells me, Sephiroth is NOT the best Final Fantasy villian. Just because you carry a gigantic sword and have omnimous music doesn't make you a badass, OK?

The honor belongs to Kefka, of Final Fantasy VI, That, my friends, is what a true villain is all about. Someone that doesn't care about anyone or anything except for himself and is willing to go at great lengths to acheive power, even if it means tipping the scales of balance or poisiong innocent people.The only other villain that I consider to be right up there with Kefka is Luca Blight of Suikoden II fame.

That said, FFVIII is where it really started for me, in terms of my anger regarding the series. Drawing spells? No level-ups? No treasure chests? The JUNCTION system? All of these ideas made Final Fantasy VIII the black sheep of the family. It should have NOT existed. The only good thing that came out of Final Fantasy VIII was the soundtrack - surperb in many tracks. But the story was not only forgettable, but downright idiotic. That killed my faith in the series for a long time.

Then Final Fantasy IX came and revived - it is what a Final Fantasy should be now. Instead, Square turned all of that away for something that's no longer Final Fantasy. Let's face it folks - Final Fantasy XI should have been called Final Fantasy Online and FFXII became nothing more but an offline Final Fantasy XI! Hell, I even hear that, if you do it right, you could walk away from your television set while your party is fighting the monsters and then two hours later - you're all leveled up and ready to go! WTF is that?

And now here's FFXIII. Someone was telling me that it is Final Fantasy. But the more I played it, only one or two elements remain. The rest is no longer there and thanks to XIII, my faith in the series is once again killed. I won't even bother with FFXIV, which should really be called Final Fantasy Online 2 or something like that. The only memorable aspect about FFXIII is the soundtrack - very memorable.

So yeah...in other words.

Good = FFI, FFII, FFIII, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, FFVII, FFIX, FFX,
Bad = FFVIII, FFX-2, FFXI, FFXII, and now FFXIII.

One more thing to note - the one thing about FF that I am proud of is that at least every game is different. No game is ever the same in the series and that's something I can be positive about.

I can't tell if they legitimately feel that they're telling good stories with FF or if they're just developing pretty nonsense because they think they have to pander to children. Square needs to work on their storytelling. It's what they've lost most of all.

hakanakumono

I didn't get 12 so I can't fairly call that a bad game, but everything I saw about it before and since the game was released looked horrible (according to my personal taste I mean - I'm aware loads of people loved it). Besides that, although I enjoyed X (which since it's getting compared to XIII, for me X was better than XIII because it had towns which helped immerse you into the game world, and a great mini-game to break things up, plus I personally enjoyed X's storyline, characters and overall world more than XIII) I felt X was where I started enjoying the series slightly less.

Possibly a combination of removing the world map, the introduction of voice acting (which I hate in most RPGs because of the cheesy nature of the dialogue and setting) and just the fact that they were able to make the games more cinematic etc led to the series going in a direction which might be cool for some (or most), but not for me. When I first got into 7 (I'm nervous the guy a few posts above might hit me for saying this, but it's still my favourite from what I've played :P) it felt more like a book that I played along with and explored the world etc, and 8, 9 and 6 which I played afterwards were the same, whereas from X onwards it felt a bit more like watching a film. Granted that's probably not gonna be one of the more common reasons for people, but it's probably one of the main ones for me.

I didn't get 12 so I can't fairly call that a bad game, but everything I saw about it before and since the game was released looked horrible (according to my personal taste I mean - I'm aware loads of people loved it). Besides that, although I enjoyed X (which since it's getting compared to XIII, for me X was better than XIII because it had towns which helped immerse you into the game world, and a great mini-game to break things up, plus I personally enjoyed X's storyline, characters and overall world more than XIII) I felt X was where I started enjoying the series slightly less.

midisurfmind

FFXIII did one thing that FFXII also did - it split the community. Some people loved it, other people hated it. Same thing goes for FFVIII as well.

6 & 7 along with Tactics, were IMO the peak of the franchise. 8 & 9 were very good games. I feel that X was the worst. As others have stated, very linear. I felt it had Flat Characters (except the black mage) and a boring story. Got to the end of 2nd disc and just stopped playing because it was a waste of time. 11 stole a year of my life (stupid online games) and 12 was enjoyable story/characterwise. Enjoyable, but not great. I also felt the combat very similiar to 11. I've only played a few hours into 13. Beautiful graphics, but does feel linear. The combat in 13 feels like a button masher to me, which is a turn off and i stopped playing it, but plan to give it another try.

6 & 7 along with Tactics, were IMO the peak of the franchise. 8 & 9 were very good games. I feel that X was the worst. As others have stated, very linear. I felt it had Flat Characters (except the black mage) and a boring story. Got to the end of 2nd disc and just stopped playing because it was a waste of time. 11 stole a year of my life (stupid online games) and 12 was enjoyable story/characterwise. Enjoyable, but not great. I also felt the combat very similiar to 11. I've only played a few hours into 13. Beautiful graphics, but does feel linear. The combat in 13 feels like a button masher to me, which is a turn off and i stopped playing it, but plan to give it another try.

dagreenfish

To be fair though, just about every FF is linear. Most of the games, however, had a couple of distractions or side-quests that you could do before beating the game.

X wasn't just linear - it was also too easy. As long as you kept up with everyone attacking or doing something at least once in every battle, then you wuold be able to keep up with the sphere grid and increase their stats in time to face some of the tougher bosses in the game and even they were a piece of cake.

[QUOTE="dagreenfish"]

6 & 7 along with Tactics, were IMO the peak of the franchise. 8 & 9 were very good games. I feel that X was the worst. As others have stated, very linear. I felt it had Flat Characters (except the black mage) and a boring story. Got to the end of 2nd disc and just stopped playing because it was a waste of time. 11 stole a year of my life (stupid online games) and 12 was enjoyable story/characterwise. Enjoyable, but not great. I also felt the combat very similiar to 11. I've only played a few hours into 13. Beautiful graphics, but does feel linear. The combat in 13 feels like a button masher to me, which is a turn off and i stopped playing it, but plan to give it another try.

Metamania

To be fair though, just about every FF is linear. Most of the games, however, had a couple of distractions or side-quests that you could do before beating the game.

X wasn't just linear - it was also too easy. As long as you kept up with everyone attacking or doing something at least once in every battle, then you wuold be able to keep up with the sphere grid and increase their stats in time to face some of the tougher bosses in the game and even they were a piece of cake.

True, all games are linear to an extent. But from what i remember of X, there wasn't much to do other than the main quest. Been awhile, but I also seem to remember a cursor on the map telling you exactly where to zone next. To me, it felt like they really discourage exploration in that one.

True, FF X is linear. But, when you do something, the world and the people in it will react to it. And it is entirely possible to visit the past towns. Whereas, in FF XIII backtracking is basically impossible and and world will never actually change.

True, FF X is linear. But, when you do something, the world and the people in it will react to it. And it is entirely possible to visit the past towns. Whereas, in FF XIII backtracking is basically impossible and and world will never actually change.

seanehawk

Exactly. FFXIII relies on the face-pace storytelling and admittedly excellent visuals to give gamers a reason to keep going, but after that...there really isn't much left to do unless you're hunting for trophies or achievements that you missed out on in your previous playthrough.