Since FF XIII, the industry is telling Square what a Final Fantasy is

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
FF XIII vs Lost Oddyssey. Lost Oddyssey is often considered the real Final Fantasy XIII.

FF XV vs Dragon Quest XI and FF VII:Remake. The more traditional Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (the series which inspired Final Fantasy and stuck to its roots) are more popular.

FF XVI vs Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Once again a Final Fantasy inspired game is more Final Fantasy than FF XVI.

At this point, Square should get the clue on what the fans want.
 
They have been doing it since forever. Think back to FF VIII, FF XI, and FFXII. Never releasing Final Fantasy Versus XIII is still some bullshit though.
 
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SQEX's biggest problem with FF is listening to what the fans want. FFXIII was the last game they made where they put their own creativity and vision first, and it shows. The art design, characters and setting still stands up to this day.
  • XIV they tried to copy WoW, thinking that's what fans want. It was a pale imitation of XI.
  • XV they listened to fans and tried to make it open world. Game ran into a ton of problems, but was still at least a bit interesting.
  • XVI they cynically tried to copy almost everything; DMC, DBZ, Game of Thrones. There's barely a unique identity left.
  • VII:R is the biggest example though. For a decade fans hounded them about how this is the silver bullet solution to all their problems. VII R will be the savior of the whole company and break records. Turns out it's not at all, and each entry is declining in popularity as they lost a decade with their best team trying to make something new. They lost a chance to make new fans. The opportunity cost of this nostalgia is staggering and they might not ever fully recover. They still have another game to put out of VII before they can even start the next one. Their best team, listening to fans and this is what they get.
Game development is far too slow to listen to anyone. You have to have a auteur with a unique vision. By the time 6 years pass from now, people won't be looking for a retread of Clair Obscur. FFI through FFXIII SQEX just listened to themselves. XIII was the first one out when online commentary was prominent and that commentary from fans is what destroyed the series. SQEX has to ignore them or die.
 
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This fan does not want a shitty FF8 clone with terrible dull as dishwater battle system like Lost Odyssey.

Truthfully, one of the most overrated JRPGS ever made. A couple of the visual novel sequences are great, the rest are meh though, and it had nice graphics for its time.
That's it. It was never particularly good.
 
  • VII:R is the biggest example though. For a decade fans hounded them about how this is the silver bullet solution to all their problems. VII R will be the savior of the whole company and break records. Turns out it's not at all, and each entry is declining in popularity as they lost a decade with their best team trying to make something new. They lost a chance to make new fans. The opportunity cost of this nostalgia is staggering and they might not ever fully recover. They still have another game to put out of VII before they can even start the next one. Their best team, listening to fans and this is what they get.
Is this fanfiction VII Remake what fans were asking for? Definitely wasn't what this fan was asking for. I don't think that qualifies.
 
SQEX's biggest problem with FF is listening to what the fans want. FFXIII was the last game they made where they put their own creativity and vision first, and it shows. The art design, characters and setting still stands up to this day.
  • XIV they tried to copy WoW, thinking that's what fans want. It was a pale imitation of XI.
  • XV they listened to fans and tried to make it open world. Game ran into a ton of problems, but was still at least a bit interesting.
  • XVI they cynically tried to copy almost everything; DMC, DBZ, Game of Thrones. There's barely a unique identity left.
  • VII:R is the biggest example though. For a decade fans hounded them about how this is the silver bullet solution to all their problems. VII R will be the savior of the whole company and break records. Turns out it's not at all, and each entry is declining in popularity as they lost a decade with their best team trying to make something new. They lost a chance to make new fans. The opportunity cost of this nostalgia is staggering and they might not ever fully recover. They still have another game to put out of VII before they can even start the next one. Their best team, listening to fans and this is what they get.
Game development is far too slow to listen to anyone. You have to have a auteur with a unique vision. By the time 6 years pass from now, people won't be looking for a retread of Clair Obscur. FFI through FFXIII SQEX just listened to themselves. XIII was the first one out when online commentary was prominent and that commentary from fans is what destroyed the series. SQEX has to ignore them or die.

I love FF, and I absolutely wanted a remake of 7. But I wanted a remake of 7 with better graphics and some voice acting. I didn't want them to go reimagine the game and drag it out into a giant trilogy over 10+ years. They didn't listen to the fans on this one - they tried to take the fans for a wallet ride and people are tired.
 
SQEX's biggest problem with FF is listening to what the fans want. FFXIII was the last game they made where they put their own creativity and vision first, and it shows. The art design, characters and setting still stands up to this day.
  • XIV they tried to copy WoW, thinking that's what fans want. It was a pale imitation of XI.
  • XV they listened to fans and tried to make it open world. Game ran into a ton of problems, but was still at least a bit interesting.
  • XVI they cynically tried to copy almost everything; DMC, DBZ, Game of Thrones. There's barely a unique identity left.
  • VII:R is the biggest example though. For a decade fans hounded them about how this is the silver bullet solution to all their problems. VII R will be the savior of the whole company and break records. Turns out it's not at all, and each entry is declining in popularity as they lost a decade with their best team trying to make something new. They lost a chance to make new fans. The opportunity cost of this nostalgia is staggering and they might not ever fully recover. They still have another game to put out of VII before they can even start the next one. Their best team, listening to fans and this is what they get.
Game development is far too slow to listen to anyone. You have to have a auteur with a unique vision. By the time 6 years pass from now, people won't be looking for a retread of Clair Obscur. FFI through FFXIII SQEX just listened to themselves. XIII was the first one out when online commentary was prominent and that commentary from fans is what destroyed the series. SQEX has to ignore them or die.
That is a controversial but very good take. FF is what made me buy a console after I played 7 and 8 on a PC but 9 never came out on it.
Games had magic. I played FFXIII, stopped -2, didn't try LR. FFXIV was good, it has its own identity. XV idea of a boys road trip was stupid AF and always will be stupidly AF. 16 I didn't even consider buying.
 
GIGA FAN of the Final Fantasy golden years here, and yeah current output is disappointing to me.

Every few months I try and do a bit more on FF7 Rebirth, but every time I find something that annoys the hell out of me.

So I just finished the Gi cave dungeon and was looking forward to getting back to the world and on to a new town. But OH NO a detour to another dungeon (?), Gi Land on a boat?
And it just happened to have Sephiroth appear AGAIN just to turn his back and walk off. How many times are they going to milk that shot?
Could NOT be bothered, so I saved and turned it off, I'll come back in another few months. I wish they'd just stick to the script and stop bloating things out.

Put the CHADS back in charge
 
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FF XIII is one of the worst games i ever had the chance to play and, personally, fails is every aspect that can make a FF game a... well, a FF game:

- Horrible story
- Horrible world ('world ?')
- Horrible cast
- Horrible gameplay
 
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FF XIII vs Lost Oddyssey. Lost Oddyssey is often considered the real Final Fantasy XIII.
FF13 sold more than Lost Odyssey. The Xbawks exclusivity obviously didn't help the latter though.

FF XV vs Dragon Quest XI and FF VII:Remake. The more traditional Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (the series which inspired Final Fantasy and stuck to its roots) are more popular.
FFXV sold more than FF7R and DQ11. Btw, DQ is a SE franchise unto itself that has run basically in concurrence with FF. Why does it reflect anything on FF what DQ sells?

FF XVI vs Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Once again a Final Fantasy inspired game is more Final Fantasy than FF XVI.
FF16 sold more in one week at 70 dollars on one console than Expedition 33 sold in 5-6 months at 50 on 3 platforms.And I'm not a fan of FF16.

I will agree that the mode for FF needs to change, but it's not by listening to fickle JRPG fans.
 
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FFXIII is a misunderstood game. Many of the criticisms stem from the era when open-world games were becoming mainstream and many people were asking for games like that. Nowadays, with the saturation of the genre, I bet many would complain less about the game.

- It's visually beautiful, the character modeling is far superior to many PS3 games.
- The story is fantastic, the characters are very interesting.
- The soundtrack is one of the best ever made.

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Final Fantasy XIII is what helped alienate a generation of potential new fans. A trilogy of poor games with progressively declining sales, with a terrible FF XIV 1.0 launch sandwiched somewhere in between.

People seen the marketing push behind Final Fantasy XV, got caught up in the hype as it was touted as the spiritual FFXIII Versus title which had been promised for years, and gave the franchise another chance. Good sales to mediocre reviews once again, the brand takes another huge hit and people lose interest.

Until FFVII Remake launched in 2020, that was 11 wasted years with poor mainline entries. An entire generation skipped with a fast-aging legacy fanbase and no-one replacing them isn't good news.

The only game that has generated new fans for them is FFXIV, who largely aren't interested in the mainline entries.
 
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FF16 sold more in one week at 70 dollars on one console than Expedition 33 sold in 5-6 months at 50 on 3 platforms.And I'm not a fan of FF16.

I will agree that the mode for FF needs to change, but it's not by listening to fickle JRPG fans.
FF16 sold 3.5 million units by march 2025, COE33 sold 3.3 million in 33 days, although it was free on gamepass.
 
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Best ways during FFIV to FFX although X is good too.

FFIV and FFIX are the two best as FFIV hit the mark on the sword and sorcery setting and theme and FFIX has that unique Jim Henson theme.
 
FF16 sold 3.5 million units by march 2025, COE33 sold 3.3 million in 33 days, although it was free on gamepass.

The March 2025 figure was incorrectly reported.


"Toyo Securities estimates that "Final Fantasy XVI," released in June 2011, has already sold over 3.5 million copies. (Note: The original article stated that the number of copies of "Final Fantasy XVI" was stated by Square Enix HD President Kiryu Takashi at the financial results briefing, but this was based on Toyo Securities' own estimate and was an error on the part of the author. We apologize for the correction.) "

If it sold 3m in it's first week on release, and Steam estimates have it somewhere between 630-820k copies, it's safe to say it's well over 3.5m right now.
 
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They fucked up for a decade and they have two generations of gamers that were given no reasons to care about Final Fantasy.
They're paying for that right now while they're trying to put the band aid of multiplaform development on a shotgun wound.

Imo with FF7 Rebirth they have finally found the winning formula (minus the exaggerated mini games bloat) that has everything a AAA FF should have (great story, music, characters, fun combat system, fully explorable world and cities).
Now they just need to apply it to a new game with an original story and some slight twists.

Hopefully they're not so dumb to throw everything away to follow some trends or looking at what is selling in the west.
 
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Fans aren't part of an homogenous group. Since most entries are different from eachother, fans will be fans for different reasons. My reason for being a fan isn't due to a specific gameplay style, an art style or a type of world. I'm a fan because of the crystals, summons, chocobos, moogles, the music, behemoths, Zu(s), killing godlikes,etc. And the fact that every mainline entry is it's own different thing.

The loudest doesn't necessarily represent the most wallets. You are not the representative of every fan. SE can't please everyone. No one can please everyone. SE is also very interested in bringing in new fans.

It's a tricky situation that is only obvious/simple to those who are inside a bubble that thinks they're the center of the universe and therefore everyone should only cater to them.
 
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SQEX's biggest problem with FF is listening to what the fans want. FFXIII was the last game they made where they put their own creativity and vision first, and it shows. The art design, characters and setting still stands up to this day.
  • XIV they tried to copy WoW, thinking that's what fans want. It was a pale imitation of XI.
  • XV they listened to fans and tried to make it open world. Game ran into a ton of problems, but was still at least a bit interesting.
  • XVI they cynically tried to copy almost everything; DMC, DBZ, Game of Thrones. There's barely a unique identity left.
  • VII:R is the biggest example though. For a decade fans hounded them about how this is the silver bullet solution to all their problems. VII R will be the savior of the whole company and break records. Turns out it's not at all, and each entry is declining in popularity as they lost a decade with their best team trying to make something new. They lost a chance to make new fans. The opportunity cost of this nostalgia is staggering and they might not ever fully recover. They still have another game to put out of VII before they can even start the next one. Their best team, listening to fans and this is what they get.
Game development is far too slow to listen to anyone. You have to have a auteur with a unique vision. By the time 6 years pass from now, people won't be looking for a retread of Clair Obscur. FFI through FFXIII SQEX just listened to themselves. XIII was the first one out when online commentary was prominent and that commentary from fans is what destroyed the series. SQEX has to ignore them or die.
What they made with FF7 Remake was the furthest thing from what fans wanted. I think that whole thing is one of the biggest disappointments in gaming I've personally seen, and they certainly weren't listening.
 
FF XIII vs Lost Oddyssey. Lost Oddyssey is often considered the real Final Fantasy XIII.

FF XV vs Dragon Quest XI and FF VII:Remake. The more traditional Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (the series which inspired Final Fantasy and stuck to its roots) are more popular.

FF XVI vs Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Once again a Final Fantasy inspired game is more Final Fantasy than FF XVI.

At this point, Square should get the clue on what the fans want.

Everything you said is PERFECTLY said!
 
What they made with FF7 Remake was the furthest thing from what fans wanted. I think that whole thing is one of the biggest disappointments in gaming I've personally seen, and they certainly weren't listening.
Speak for yourself because I personally highly enjoyed both FFVII Remake and Rebirth.
 
SQEX's biggest problem with FF is listening to what the fans want. FFXIII was the last game they made where they put their own creativity and vision first, and it shows. The art design, characters and setting still stands up to this day.
  • XIV they tried to copy WoW, thinking that's what fans want. It was a pale imitation of XI.
  • XV they listened to fans and tried to make it open world. Game ran into a ton of problems, but was still at least a bit interesting.
  • XVI they cynically tried to copy almost everything; DMC, DBZ, Game of Thrones. There's barely a unique identity left.
  • VII:R is the biggest example though. For a decade fans hounded them about how this is the silver bullet solution to all their problems. VII R will be the savior of the whole company and break records. Turns out it's not at all, and each entry is declining in popularity as they lost a decade with their best team trying to make something new. They lost a chance to make new fans. The opportunity cost of this nostalgia is staggering and they might not ever fully recover. They still have another game to put out of VII before they can even start the next one. Their best team, listening to fans and this is what they get.
Game development is far too slow to listen to anyone. You have to have a auteur with a unique vision. By the time 6 years pass from now, people won't be looking for a retread of Clair Obscur. FFI through FFXIII SQEX just listened to themselves. XIII was the first one out when online commentary was prominent and that commentary from fans is what destroyed the series. SQEX has to ignore them or die.
I don't think they listened on VII Remake. No one told them they wanted new stuff to pad it into 3 different game releases. They lost the casual audience with that who bought the game and left scratching their heads that it wasn't the full game and they moved on.
 
People need to stop trying to gate-keep their particularly loved version of FF as the "one, true vision".

Its just lame-brained stupidity of the highest order.
 
XIII trilogy and XV were great.
XVI was absolute trash.
VII remake trilogy is a waste of 10 years over one of the worst RPGs I have ever played.
Clair Obscur is irrelevant. Doesn't feel like FF in any way, as far as I am concerned.

Hurry up and get over with VII remake so we can move on to something new and good... if people at Square-Enix still know how to make new games.
 
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It still saddens me that FFXV faced so many problems during development because it had the potential to be the best FF of all time. So much discarded content and so many wrong decisions in development. The entire thing is so disjointed to a point that you need to follow a guide to understand the entire plot given the quantity of "unrealized gameplay content" and cross media material.


FFXVI and FFVIR, on the other hand, feels like amalgamation of everything wrong with Square today. FFVIIR feels like a Disney Star Wars compared to Lucasfilm Star Wars.
 
Final Fantasy XIII is what helped alienate a generation of potential new fans. A trilogy of poor games with progressively declining sales, with a terrible FF XIV 1.0 launch sandwiched somewhere in between.

People seen the marketing push behind Final Fantasy XV, got caught up in the hype as it was touted as the spiritual FFXIII Versus title which had been promised for years, and gave the franchise another chance. Good sales to mediocre reviews once again, the brand takes another huge hit and people lose interest.
Ehh, XV sold over 10 million copies. I don't think that was all due to built up fan hype for some obscure vaporware announced 10 years earlier. I think it sold well because it was some open world Ubisoft slop and there was genuine demand for that sort of game back in 2015. It seemed like it drew in a bunch of new gamers to the series.
 
Ehh, XV sold over 10 million copies. I don't think that was all due to built up fan hype for some obscure vaporware announced 10 years earlier. I think it sold well because it was some open world Ubisoft slop and there was genuine demand for that sort of game back in 2015. It seemed like it drew in a bunch of new gamers to the series.
How certain are you that people were gung-ho about a half baked narrative where a bunch of k-pop royalty blabber on about shit like wedding dresses and cooking recipes?
 
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Outside of poor writing and Square really struggling with developing HD games, one of the biggest issues with FF is that after X they constantly tried to reinvent the wheel.
The games up until X obviously had their own unique mechanics and ideas, but were largely turn based JRPGS with a similar structure.

With XII they started to experiment more, but every time they did something new and everyone didn't love it (which was never going to happen) they just threw it into the trash and tried with something completely different, never allowing themselves to iterate and improve a specific formula.

The one time in the modern mainline entries where they tried to iterate instead of throwing everything away, with FFXIII-2, they made a game that, at least mechanically, was pretty good.
It built on what worked in XIII (the combat) while attempting to improve in the areas that got criticized (level design, lack of side content, no towns and NPCs, etc).
If they had taken those ideas and lessons and made a new game with them, instead of a sequel to XIII with a crappy story, I think it could have been quite successful.
 
I haven't truly loved an FF game in close to 20 years. Square has absolutely no idea what they're doing with the series anymore. It feels like a shambling corpse they're trying to milk, and Square seems actively ashamed of its roots. The visionaries are gone.
 
Yeah, XIII is pure cringe but eventually there is some gameplay value to be farmed if your patient enough.

XII is a masterpiece and way ahead of its time.

Rebirth is the best FF they have put out since XII and is mostly a giant win. Remake was too much filler and not enough scope. XVI was like Kojima without an editor, too overboard too allowed to go full kingdom hearts, FFXV is a weird one, like it almost felt the game was disconnected from the story. I'd say XV had potential but never reached it, but it isn't a terrible game in and of itself, just an uninteresting one.

Triangle Strategy is also great. Octopath is good.
 
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My FF love affair lasted from FFVI to FFX and every FF since has been, compared to the classics, crap to some degree. But Lost Odyssey, DQIX, and Clair Obscur can all go take a long walk on a short pier regardless of how shitty FF became. I played CEE33 for a few hours and have zero idea what the fuss is about.
 
Outside of poor writing and Square really struggling with developing HD games, one of the biggest issues with FF is that after X they constantly tried to reinvent the wheel.
The games up until X obviously had their own unique mechanics and ideas, but were largely turn based JRPGS with a similar structure.

With XII they started to experiment more, but every time they did something new and everyone didn't love it (which was never going to happen) they just threw it into the trash and tried with something completely different, never allowing themselves to iterate and improve a specific formula.

The one time in the modern mainline entries where they tried to iterate instead of throwing everything away, with FFXIII-2, they made a game that, at least mechanically, was pretty good.
It built on what worked in XIII (the combat) while attempting to improve in the areas that got criticized (level design, lack of side content, no towns and NPCs, etc).
If they had taken those ideas and lessons and made a new game with them, instead of a sequel to XIII with a crappy story, I think it could have been quite successful.
Yeah this is a good point. IMO XII and XIII both introduced some really great ideas, then they just abandoned them.

Then after that I don't even know what happened. XV was some Frankenstein creation that was cobbled together from bits and pieces of a different game + some trans-media universe. From various things I've heard, I get the impression that S-E themselves were surprised that it reviewed and sold well. They expected it to be a dud and just wanted to get it out the door to recoup some of their investment.

And XVI… I have said many times before, I strongly suspect this started out as some DMC-style Final Fantasy spinoff, then they decided to rework it into a mainline title. That's the only way I can make sense of XVI.


Who knows. I expect nothing from Final Fantasy anymore. I don't particularly care whether they go full-blown action, traditional turn based, sci-fi, medieval, whatever. I think that has little bearing on whether the game is good or bad.
 
FF XIII vs Lost Oddyssey. Lost Oddyssey is often considered the real Final Fantasy XIII.

FF XV vs Dragon Quest XI and FF VII:Remake. The more traditional Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (the series which inspired Final Fantasy and stuck to its roots) are more popular.

FF XVI vs Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Once again a Final Fantasy inspired game is more Final Fantasy than FF XVI.

At this point, Square should get the clue on what the fans want.
Tell me the sales of all those games you compared.
 
Loving FF7r series. I did hate 16 and felt 15 was lukewarm at best. BUT FF7 Rebirth really has given them the template to move forward with. They finally have a great modern combat system, a great open world system, and are figuring out the pacing of these modern games (still a work in progress, but I expect FF7r3 to be phenomenal)
 
The VII Remake project definitely has some industry trend chasing to it but overall, I'm very happy with how Remake and Rebirth turned out, but I do think the mainline FF games seem to show S-E doesn't know what to do.
 
I do think they would benefit a lot from sticking with the same approach to gameplay for at least a couple games in a row. The improvement from Remake to Rebirth is significant in this regard, but too often they are going from one first attempt to another first attempt.

The biggest problem they have is that there is not really a single FF fanbase with anything like a consensus on what they want. Opinions are all over the place on which ones are even good, especially from 12 onwards.
 
I do think they would benefit a lot from sticking with the same approach to gameplay for at least a couple games in a row. The improvement from Remake to Rebirth is significant in this regard, but too often they are going from one first attempt to another first attempt.

The biggest problem they have is that there is not really a single FF fanbase with anything like a consensus on what they want. Opinions are all over the place on which ones are even good, especially from 12 onwards.
"there is not really a single FF fanbase with anything like a consensus on what they want"

And Square always tries too hard to please them. Each Final Fantasy game is a response to the previous one (FF13 is too linear? FF15 is open world. The teenager characters of FF15 are cringe? FF16 has a mature story)
 
Now everyone loves Expedition 33 and how linear and tight and story-focused it is and how good the battle system is and how good art and music is.

FFXIII does the same, and all FF fans jump on the tables in protest and they still don't shut the fuck up.

You suck, that's the truth. Every single one of you sucks.
 
Now everyone loves Expedition 33 and how linear and tight and story-focused it is and how good the battle system is and how good art and music is.

FFXIII does the same, and all FF fans jump on the tables in protest and they still don't shut the fuck up.

You suck, that's the truth. Every single one of you sucks.
Expedition 33 had tons of stuff to explore and things to find in each area. It also had a world map and tons of optional locations to explore.

Plus writing and dialog that are actually suitable for grown-ups.

They are not very similar at all.
 
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