Guys...Final Fantasy games will ALWAYS be divisive games by nature. The fanbase as a whole is insufferable and cannot agree on anything, and that goes for every.single.forum I've ever seen talking about the series. Some people want the franchise to go in one direction, some people want it to go in another. Square is caught between a rock and a hard place here.
That being said, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is BY FAR, the BEST RECEIVED Final Fantasy game in the last 20 years. And like I've said in another thread, I think what's hurting the game right now is not the game itself, it's bad decisions made by Square with previous games.
FF13 had convoluted story and jargons, bland characters and sketchy combat.
FF15 was unfinished and a disappointment compared to what we were promised.
FF16 was such a 50/50 game. Half of it is made of pure greatness and the other half is pure shit.
FF7 Remake deciding to end with a very.fucking.confusing ending for anyone that doesn't engage with online discussions and haven't played the original, which is fucking stupid decision making. The first game in a remake trilogy should be great at onboarding new fans, but the ending just threw that out of the window and pretty much wants you to have played the original to get the true impact of what's happening. They could still have gone for the ambitious changes, but they should have had a more measured hand in the first game of a trilogy.
All that culminates into FF7 Rebirth releasing in a weird climate where I feel like excitement for the FF franchise is at the lowest it's ever been.
Devil May Cry 2 shat the bed when it came out and DMC3 achieved lower sales because of it. Does anyone here think DMC3 is a bad game...?
It feels like Square needs to string a few bangers together to get people to say "Final Fantasy is back", just like Capcom needed some bangers to get out of their Crapcom days. FF7 Rebirth is the first step.
You cannot look at me in the eye and tell me that Rebirth's combat isn't the best combat Square has ever produced. Hell, it's probably one of the best combat systems I've ever seen, and I didn't think they had it in them. It's such a monumental step up from even Remake. It succeeds where FF16 failed, it mixes both action and strategy/RPG perfectly, and manages to make characters feel distinct in the process.
The game oozes charisma, the scale is amazing, they're throwing a lot of variety at you even within the confines of Ubisoft game design, always trying to change how you interact with traversal and so on and they managed to make exploration rewarding. Pretty much all the complaints from FF16 were addressed here, and guess what? Apparently it's still not good enough for some of you guys.
Sometimes it really feels like you guys have a hateboner for this series, and no matter what Square puts out, complaints will ensue. Like y'all have an idealized, perfected version of what FF should be in your heads and any deviation is seen as sacrilegious.