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[Rickyiez]

All I know is FF13 and FF15 are junks and have no characters that I cared about . They have boring and sterile worlds despite transitioned into full blown 3D world . Let me show you fantasy worlds that oozes creativity and charms

or iconic scenes that was never to be seen again

 

[Torrent of Pork]

The lack of a plethora of competition, and rose colored nostalgia glasses.

 

[Sejan]

The writing in these games is so far up it's own ass, that it's just fucking eye rolling now. The entire 13 saga was just a really mediocre anime with hit or miss voice acting. After FFVIIRemake, everything reeks of the same shitty pretentious, vague crap from Kingdom Hearts, not to mention the super cutesy/anime behavior and acting.

I agree with the pretentious part. Most of the modern Final Fantasy games feel like they were written by a theater major, college flunk out with a persecution complex that is certain his latest screenplay is nothing short of a work of genius that will change the art forever.

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

The lack of a plethora of competition, and rose colored nostalgia glasses.

I need to repeat myself; many of us only experienced older FF games after the fact. So if we still preferred the older games when we actually played them only recently, you have no leg to stand on.

On the other hand, you don't sound like you EVER enjoyed any of the old FF games. So perhaps you simply never liked FF games before until they pivoted to your tastes?

 

[Platinumstorm]

I think it's because Square's stories are presented in a way that they aren't finished, and don't make sense. While it has been a long time, we went from saving God to killing God in less than 5 minutes, presented in a very random cutscene where all the eidolons were present in an assault, that I'm not sure we knew was going to happen.

I used to think the World Map really mattered, but it only did from the perspective that it helped the world feel alive where NPCs would react to their surroundings. Coincidentally, FFXIV has traces of this.

I do think the combat systems have lacked since the classics, but I do think that 7RE had a pretty pleasing combat system, especially when compared to XV [except for Barrett, oof]. I like to control my characters, so it feels odd when I can't.

I don't know that the casts of the franchise have really mattered in later games. FFXV was the most interesting example of this. Did you guys care what happened to Ignis? How about Prompto? What was the big guy's name? Gladio or something? I cared a lot about the "bond" between them, which they honestly did an excellent job at. However I had no reason to care about them as individuals.

You think back to the old games and while they weren't overly complicated, you knew they cared about something. Tellah, Edward, Palom and Porom; they each had a dramatic little standout bit that mattered to their character; even though they were in and out of the cast, and weren't really important to the story, except for Tellah. FFVI had individual storylines for each character, and I cared about essentially all of them. XV's supporting are just Noctis' buds with cooking with Colemann, photography, and ?
13 had ... this.

Spoiler

What game actually has supporting cast members that you care about in the FF series more recently? Oh yeah, FFXIV.

 

[Krizalidx11]

Remove Nomura

profit

 

[vaibhavpisal]

They just need a competently made game that didn't suffer from development hell for 13 years.

Modern games lack the pacing of old games. I don't remember any dull moment whatsoever. Just 40-50 hours of fun ride.

I played them all fairly recently for first time so no nostalgia in play here.

 

[Lethal01]

All I know is FF13 and FF15 are junks and have no characters that I cared about . They have boring and sterile worlds despite transitioning into full blown 3D world . Let me show you fantasy worlds that oozes with creativity and charms

or iconic scenes that was never to be seen again

What counts as classic? ps2 era? ps1? SNES?

To me, 15 is the only one that really felt like a big step down. 13 did have a weak story and was linear but made up for it with fantastic combat and cool locations, a step-down but worth playing.

VIIR Remake is a huge return to form and I'd say it's probably the best in the series. But I think the one thing the older games have over it is a good world map.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

There are many problems but the biggest consistent standout flaw in modern FFs is unrelatable, unlikeable, and frankly, ridiculous characters. If they could overcome that severe flaw they could get away with a lot of their other nonsense.

 

[Elysion]

Earlier FFs had a much better ‚flow‘, for lack of a better word, thanks to the way the games were structured. You traveled across the world map for a minute or two until you reached your destination (be it a town or dungeon or whatever). You then did some stuff in that down/dungeon, before returning to the world map to travel to the next location. Rinse, repeat.

The size of those locations was usually fairly limited, since most were made up of just a few prerendered backgrounds, but this also meant none of them overstayed their welcome. This also meant that it was pretty easy for the developers to put a bunch of towns and cities into the game, each with their own unique visual identity. This, combined with the freely traversable world map, made those earlier FF games feel much bigger than they actually were. Since you traveled through different environments fairly quickly, this also meant that those games felt relatively fast paced. And the fact that you could explore the whole world map, first on foot, later with other vehicles like airships (or even underwater with a submarine!), gave those games a very grand and epic feel.

Modern FF games on the other hand have very few towns or cities in comparison, since each town or city has to be created as a fully traversable 3d environment with a high level of detail. They also don‘t have a world map, so instead you often have to travel through vast swathes of wilderness inbetween locations, which can be quite tedious sometimes (FF12 was probably the worst in this regard). And turning world travel into a selection on a menu screen completely killed the feeling of epicness from earlier games.

While FFX started a lot of those trends, it still retained a lot of the feel of the earlier games, thanks to its fast pacing and diverse locations. While it had 3d environments, the fixed camera angles allowed the developers to get away with having relatively small locations, similar to previous games. If it had had a world map like DQ8, it would‘ve been pretty much perfect.

FF12 on the other hand felt like complete departure. Its cities were large, as were the areas inbetween, but they quickly overstayed their welcome and became boring. Traversing the dungeons turned into a slog after a while (made worse by the fact that so many of them looked the same).

I don‘t know if it‘s possible to make a Final Fantasy game that feels as grand as earlier installments without having a GTA level budget and workforce. Maybe they should bring back fixed camera angles like in FFX, at least for cities and dungeons. Since fixed camera angles make it easy to restrict what players can see and where they can move, it would allow them to limit the size of locations without making them feel too small, which means there can be a larger number of diverse locations even without an astronomical budget. Add a world map to travel between locations (though much larger than in earlier games), with cool vehicles to get around (especially airships), and you have a modern FF game that feels similar to its early predecessors.

 

[Horatius]

one of the main reasons for me is that it was a lot cheaper and easier to generate the illusions required to make a world/setting/game feel "big" and meaty pre-HD era. the exact places where they've cut corners to instead spend the time on HD graphics and stuff, no world map, no cities in some games, etc. etc., are exactly the things that make the older games feel huge. the relative simplicity of low poly character models and pre-rendered backgrounds, which wouldn't fly today as a gameplay style, actually sell the illusion of size a lot better than something like ffxiii's hallways. look at the release dates of ff7-10, it's damn near a game a year. not having to deal with HD graphics and 3d engines just cut a lot of the bullshit out and let them focus on the stuff i care about and do it quickly. it's why i wish mistwalker's new game wasn't apple arcade only, because man it looks awesome and i want to support it.

but yeah, can't imagine the wider mainstream market would be ok with that style over true 3d worlds. instead all the games inevitably go into production hell and are hugely expensive and yeah. now, the irony is, DQ11 is fully 3d and has great cities and a wonderful world map etc., but they don't care about graphics and detail as much in that franchise, so they aren't pissing away dev time on that. think their marketing guys have been so in love with graphics as a sales tool since FF7 that they've lost the ability to do anything else with the main FF games, which compounds the above problems.

the other reason, though production hell obviously heavily impacts this too, is just terrible scenario writing lol, done with nomura. parts of FFXV had potential and i liked the characters, but it fell apart by the end. ffxiii was just dogshit start to finish.

there's a little bit of hope for the future because between XV and FF7R they seem to have settled on an engine and kind of figured out wtf they're doing, but the gameplay style of 3d quasi-open world just makes them feel smaller than the adventures in the old games for me no matter what they do.

 

[iHaunter]

Nostalgia.

 

[NahaNago]

One of the biggest issue is that they are failing in creating the video game worlds. The older games could use the fact that it was a weaker system in order to pretend that the cities, nation, and world is far more bigger than it actually was. It's like reading a book and then watching a cheap movie made from the book. In your head you have this massive detailed word but the tv show is barebone in the details of the world. It is much harder to create an entire world if your aren't completely computer generating it. Plus you have to populate it with thousands of npc. Even ff7r fails to create the large midgar city and blocks you from entering so many sections of the city. FF15 from what I've played unfortunately the world that I explored simply looked boring. A solution to this would be to focus on making a small town or country that is diverse in environments and have the town slowly open up as the story progresses. Best bet to use would be an island.

 

[Nickolaidas]

The fact that back then we had played zero to five other jrpgs, while we have now played over a hundred.

 

[DragoonKain]

Earlier FFs had a much better ‚flow‘, for lack of a better word, thanks to the way the games were structured. You traveled across the world map for a minute or two until you reached your destination (be it a town or dungeon or whatever). You then did some stuff in that down/dungeon, before returning to the world map to travel to the next location. Rinse, repeat.

The size of those locations was usually fairly limited, since most were made up of just a few prerendered backgrounds, but this also meant none of them overstayed their welcome. This also meant that it was pretty easy for the developers to put a bunch of towns and cities into the game, each with their own unique visual identity. This, combined with the freely traversable world map, made those earlier FF games feel much bigger than they actually were. Since you traveled through different environments fairly quickly, this also meant that those games felt relatively fast paced. And the fact that you could explore the whole world map, first on foot, later with other vehicles like airships (or even underwater with a submarine!), gave those games a very grand and epic feel.

Modern FF games on the other hand have very few towns or cities in comparison, since each town or city has to be created as a fully traversable 3d environment with a high level of detail. They also don‘t have a world map, so instead you often have to travel through vast swathes of wilderness inbetween locations, which can be quite tedious sometimes (FF12 was probably the worst in this regard). And turning world travel into a selection on a menu screen completely killed the feeling of epicness from earlier games.

While FFX started a lot of those trends, it still retained a lot of the feel of the earlier games, thanks to its fast pacing and diverse locations. While it had 3d environments, the fixed camera angles allowed the developers to get away with having relatively small locations, similar to previous games. If it had had a world map like DQ8, it would‘ve been pretty much perfect.

FF12 on the other hand felt like complete departure. Its cities were large, as were the areas inbetween, but they quickly overstayed their welcome and became boring. Traversing the dungeons turned into a slog after a while (made worse by the fact that so many of them looked the same).

I don‘t know if it‘s possible to make a Final Fantasy game that feels as grand as earlier installments without having a GTA level budget and workforce. Maybe they should bring back fixed camera angles like in FFX, at least for cities and dungeons. Since fixed camera angles make it easy to restrict what players can see and where they can move, it would allow them to limit the size of locations without making them feel too small, which means there can be a larger number of diverse locations even without an astronomical budget. Add a world map to travel between locations (though much larger than in earlier games), with cool vehicles to get around (especially airships), and you have a modern FF game that feels similar to its early predecessors.

These are some good ways of putting it. To add to it, unfortunately, with their focus on environments, they’ve gone for detail over explorability a lot of the time. Which probably has led to a lot of the corridors we saw in FFXIII. They don’t have either the budget or the time or both to make a massive world with that kinda detail.

I wonder what they’re gonna do with FFVIIR. If they abandon the world map(and I expect them to) people are gonna be pissed. They could make it like FFXV rather than a traditional world map, but I don’t expect them to do that either. It’s a shame, because they could’ve been on somewhat of the right track here, but I have just a feeling in my gut and maybe I’m cynical, that part 1 of FFVIIR will be the best by far and it’ll be down hill from there. It was too good to be true. Not the game, even though I thought it was good, but the idea that they’d nail the remake as a whole. I expect them to deal with the openness after Midgar pretty lamely. Like have a travel map menu, or just be screen to screen separated by cutscenes taking you to each place.

 

[existensmaximum]

Much better and more memorable music, no voices and no pronounced anime theme, less convoluted stories.

(I'm talking SNES era here)

But then again, that's pretty much more of an argument for older vs modern JRPGs in general.

I can still really enjoy "new" old RPGs from that area that I've never played before, but rarely modern ones. So it's not just nostalgia.

 

[Melfice7]

The worlds, characters, MUSIC, turn based combat

 

[namekuseijin]

total control of your party in ATB battles - plus the music of Uematsu and the creative drive of Sakaguchi.

I don't care for boy bands, furry MMO and idiotic action battles where your party are just NPCs...

 

[Virt McPolygon]

World maps full of interesting towns to visit, with memorable and melodic songs.

The most interesting turn based RPG I played in the last decade was probably fuckin Hylics 2.

 

[West Texas CEO]

I would say lack of a traditional world map made me disconnect from Final Fantasy in recent years.

I can give an exception to Final Fantasy X, but

 

[kunonabi]

The stories were just more interestingly constructed. Just look at of those opening sequences from the older games and how they set the tone and establish character. Playing XIII and XV is just brutal in those opening hours and they honestly don't get that much better. I know XV was in development hell but that doesn't justify how creatively bankrupt that game is. The modern games have all these amazing production values, well not so much XV, but the way the stories are told makes them feel amateurish and cheap.

Action combat just isn't appealing to me either. If your going to give me a party of distinct characters with different abilities and personalities then I want to control them at all times not just pawn them off on the a.i. while I play a bad action game or mmo-like

 

[Kenpachii]

Its to anime now.

I could relate myself with the games and the world back in the day. Now its just a anime emo weeb fest.

 

[godhandiscen]

Is anybody who holds this opinion, the series getting worse over the years, able to enjoy the games today with the same attention as you could back then?

I played 6-9 and Tactics. I bet the series is better nowadays (FF8 looked like shit even back then) but the themes just don't resonate with me anymore.

 

[demonstr8]

A number of things like staff changes, the HD era, chasing trends, focusing too much on graphics, atrocious management leading to long delayed releases, Motomu Toriyama and more that I can't think of right now which resulted ultimately in the series losing it's identity.

Pick any Final Fantasy out of 4/5/6/7/8/9 (and even 10 although that was the start of the decline) and you will see the series identity remain the same throughout any of them.
I personally think FFXII still had all the best parts of any FF it's just that the core gameplay was changed so much with the introduction of gambits, having no battle scenes, not originally being developed as a Final Fantasy game and instead an Ivalice game, being the first mainline game without Uematsu at all and having the director leave somewhere around halfway through is just too many elements against categorizing it with the rest.

Anyway back to my point about the other six games, they all comprise of these things
>Uematsu composing
>A world map where you acquire a sea traversal vessel and or at least an airship (X and onwards failed this, XV brought it back too late in the game)
>Multiple mainstay spells and summons some of which were hidden content (XII mastered this, XV failed this so very badly)
>A new highly customizable party progression system that's inherently non linear (V is a masterwork here, XIII is an abomination in comparison)
>Extremely high high quality side content pre or post endgame (VII, VIII, IX, X XII all set the bar incredibly high)
>An overall not dark but not childish storyline that dealt with some kind of semi serious subjects at intermittent points in the story (VI, through XII all did this)
>A cast that did not look or was not evident to be overly anime in styling (this isn't a big issue for many but VII was a great balance, VIII was almost real life people, IX had total fantasy creatures, X was still fine but XIII started pushing it with Vanillle)
>Last but not least: ATB System (V didn't have it yet but functioned almost the same and X had the Conditional Turn Based System which was a similar, fresh BS)

Take out one or more of these elements are you aren't making a game that the general populace recognizes or evidently even likes because it isn't Final Fantasy anymore.

I'll never forget when one of the producers at Square Enix compared FFXIII to the latest Call of Duty game, that was a fucking depressing day.

Thanks for reading my wall of text.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Thanks for reading my wall of text.

No problem, man. My pleasure.

 

[TheAssist]

Personally I think 7R is one of the best if not the best FF to date. It mixes all the stuff I like. The characters (imho better then the original, finally a FF that felt like being on a trip with your friends), the setting, the music, the atmosphere and the yes the battle system. It has the tactical turn based elements but with the real time component. I think many people forgot how they played 95% of battles in the old FF's. Trust me, I've played some of the older ones recently, its just smashing that x button to attack until the enemy dies. Its not more fun, engaging, or tactical. With more materia the FF7R system can get the same depth as the original, in addition to the real time component.

I do think the average music has become a bit worse, but there are still great tracks in all of the games, especially XV.
The character writing has become either very weak (XII, XIII) or was outsourced to animes and paid DLC (XV) which made the whole story much less enjoyable and stiched together. Ardyn good be one of the best villians in the series, but they hardly explain what he is all about in the actual friggin game.
Honestly, most FF dont have a good overall plot, its just that the characters from VI onwards are being challenged by the story in interesting ways and its fun sticking around with the group and see how they cope and eventually overcome.

Overworld is something very interesting and I actually want to make a thread about that topic. Because so many people say that, but what is the overworld in a FF game? Its basically a mostly empty map that connects all the towns and dungeons and makes the world more "real" and less like one big corridor after the next.
Honestly I think FFXV had the right idea. Make it big, make it look good, but dont actually put that much content in it. FF is not Skyrim. Overworlds were never about the content in it. Sure some hidden dungeons, some super bosses, but thats about it. Its mostly about making the world feel big and putting the towns into context. Put some interesting monster hunts in it, some hidden stuff but dont give me an Assasins creed style funpark. I kinda like how desolate the world was
However they need to make traversal more fun. Yes start of slow by walking so you realize how big it is, but dont wait tens of hours before the player gets a decent way of transportation.

For reference:
I dont think FF I-IV hold up by todays standards. V is still great because of its job system, though its too grindy because of it. The first good story came with VI. VII, IX and X are great imho for a variety of reasons and even though they all have problems, I hold them very dear in my heart. XII I didnt like because of its lack of good characters and the world was mostly sand desserts which felt boring after a while. XIII is just one eye roll after the other and XV has so much potential in terms of story, design, music and maybe even characters to be a good, if not great, that it boggles my mind how it turned out so bad.

 

[UnNamed]

Mainly the combat system.
FFVI and FFVII, very deep and articulated CS and progression.
FF8, FFX, FFXII poor CS.

 

[Furball]

1. The old classic created the Trend (FFI to XII ) . Now they instead are chasing the Trend (XIII - XVI )

2. Those game dont has dumb fanbase like so many comment in this thread

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

I think the stories were definitely better and more interesting, but even then the dialogue in a lot of the older games was really simplistic in comparison.

I recently replayed FF7 and 9 and boy, does the writing feel like the work of competent writers instead of copypasted anime gibberish lifted 90% from Evangelion like in FFX (I quit mainline FF after X-2).

Related to this, I always thought VA was a huge reason behind the general decline of FF and JRPGs in general. They were books, they turned into movies. And my level of attention to what goes on in the games shifted accordingly.

Also, character design got more and more outlandish and preposterous. I have a hard time feeling immersed in a story where the MC dresses like a clown and looks like a primadonna - and let's not talk about the villains, for eff's sake.

 

[cireza]

I don't find that the classics are better than FF XIII trilogy and FF XV. My favorite among the older games are FF V and FF VIII. There isn't some kind of rule to me that says : everything before/after this date is awesome/shit.

 

[Whitecrow]

-No shitty moe anime influence.
-Worlds that felt like worlds, and not a set of independent stages put together.
-Better story telling.

That's a lot already.

I must say tho that XIII-2 is not far from the classics. Shame that the characters could use some more work but, it's amazing nonetheless.

 

[royox]

Those who believe FF isn't as good as it used to be should forget FFXV exists and pay more attention to FFXIV.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Those who believe FF isn't as good as it used to be should forget FFXV exists and pay more attention to FFXIV.

That's an MMO, though - it doesn't count.

 

[royox]

That's an MMO, though - it doesn't count.

The main Scenario is a single player experience better than any FF that they released after PS1, so yeah it counts.

 

[MISTER INVEIGLER]

Merger with Enix.

 

[West Texas CEO]

The main Scenario is a single player experience better than any FF that they released after PS1, so yeah it counts.

Nope.

 

[namekuseijin]

A nice sense of scale, an interesting world with NPCs you can actual speak to and interact with who have new things to say after major events, unique but not ridiculous character designs, cool looking environment/world design, a nice bit of titillation and for the most part, a lack of pretension.

The writing in these games is so far up it's own ass, that it's just fucking eye rolling now. The entire 13 saga was just a really mediocre anime with hit or miss voice acting. After FFVIIRemake, everything reeks of the same shitty pretentious, vague crap from Kingdom Hearts, not to mention the super cutesy/anime behavior and acting.

Kingdom Hearts was really the beginning of the downfall for Square...

 

[royox]

Nope.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Its def. not nostalgia as I enjoyed FFVIII Remaster more than XV or VII R.

Its the amount of things you can do, the world map giving you a sense of scale, the overall atmosphere. You can miss things, or make different builds. A second playthrough can be done differently. I also like finding certain mob for certain materials. They were also complete packages. I never asked for expansions for those games. XV felt incomplete even after all the additions. FFVII Remake is a deliberately incomplete game.

I beat Lost Odyssey earlier this year and its a true classic JRPG that feels complete. Lacks the polish and engaging battle mechanics of classic FF games but great game otherwise.

 

[Pantz]

If I wanted my party members to attack on their own I'd cast Berserk on them.

AI party members and the lack of the traditional world map to explore were the most jarring for me going forward. I not think of them as better or worse, more like different types of games.

It will be interesting to see if VII Remake Part 2 can capture the feel of the world map or not.

 

[OldBoyGamer]

Interesting discussion. Not sure we’ll ever be able to really quantify something like that.

One thing I can point to is that the FF series, since VII, felt like it was leagues ahead of any competition.

Maybe it was the quality of the art, the story, the world building and the characters all popping into life in 3D on the PS1?

everything else felt years behind. FFVIII didn’t trigger with me, but IX was amazing and X too. And for me, that bought them so much credit that lasts to this very day despite over a decade of not hitting that same mark of being so far ahead of the competition

 

[Clear]

Please refrain from using "nostalgia" or "rose tinted glasses" as arguments.
It really doesn't add anything to the discussion, and gives the idea that those games are somehow "objectively" outdated and that no sane human being would ever be able to enjoy those games if not by direct influence of some emotional bias.0

Its actually very relevant.

FFIX being the defining example as it was created to satisfy a nostalgia for the first titles in the franchise after FF7 and FF8 moved away from that tradition. A lot of people seem to love the game despite it having a weak, unfocussed story, and a tedious battle system because of this.

Its a very common phenomenon with game franchises that people's first experience indelibly defines for them what a series *is* and must be. Expectations can be incredibly difficult for some people to get around, which is why you quite often see sequels that diverge significantly from what's expected or gone before taking a beating from their fanbases irrespective of their merits.

The fate of FFXV being a classic example as it took flak for no longer being Versus XIII. Its actually a pretty unique game in its focus on male-bonding on a road trip, an approach I think is more interesting than a classical romance/tragedy sort of deal. Yet fans expressed a weird obsession with Stella being replaced by Luna, despite the former never really existing in any sort of public-domain way.

 

[Calverz]

Medieval setting and world map

 

[Tschumi]

I've never completed a FF game, even the ones i felt sure i would, like 12 and 7r.. with 12 i got bored when i went to that desert with a million towers and pretty annoying enemies, 7r i can't play because tifa looks like a 3d hentai character and i don't want to deal with the potshots my girl would take whenever she saw her..

My problem with ff is the combat is just invariably out of my hands to just the right extent for it to not be exciting to me. I like WoW for turn based combat, or RTWP games, i don't like actual TURNS. And i don't like difficulty spikes and suboptimal wayfinding like ff12

 

[Horatius]

The main Scenario is a single player experience better than any FF that they released after PS1, so yeah it counts.

you're very right about the storyline, it's really pretty great, but ffxiv gameplay is so cookie cutter wow clone that i fully understand if people cbf sitting through that shit

 

[royox]

you're very right about the storyline, it's really pretty great, but ffxiv gameplay is so cookie cutter wow clone that i fully understand if people cbf sitting through that shit

Wow clone.

Laughs in Ninja's mudras.
Laughs in Bahamut and Phoenix Summons.
Laughs in Gunbreaker's gunblade.
Laughs in Red Mague's doublecast and Melee combos
Laughs in Dragoon's Jumps and Nidhogg possession.
Laughs in Machinist's Gurren Lagann

I play both and the only similar thing is that both are MMO and both use skillsl binds. Play Swtor and you will understand what WoW clone means lol.

 

[KungFucius]

Stories are pretty crappy. FFX was the first one I hated. The main character was a dream... What a waste of 50 hours of my life. They also stick with very immature themes which are old at this point. My first FF was FFII (IV) on SNES when I was 15 or so. 30 years later I really don't want a story geared towards teenagers and younger. The stories also seem to not know where they are going and then collapse into cringe near the end.

The world structure also changed. There used to be huge maps you could explore and when you got the airship you could go anywhere and find hidden stuff/ things you missed. Now, if they have one, the airship is just an interface to some lame fast travel.

I still play every mainline, single player game, but I am always left feeling kind of meh after it.

 

[Allandor]

- Story -> it was more fantasy like and did not have big holes in it (and btw, everything was delivered in one packed and was not based on movies you must look or DLCs you must buy)
- exploration was good to find stuff that helped you
- Summons were actually summons that helped (well later in the games most summons were a bit redundant, but at least up to the mid they were powerful and helpful)
- Characters actually evolve and you care for them. In FFXV every character could die and I wouldn't care for him because they are just so replaceable (and unlikeable).
- The good old round based active time battles >>>> than realtime button-smasher battles
- Epic moments where epic and not like in FFXV where everything was forced to be epic, dramatic, ... (insert any strong word, FFXV tried to force everything) ... that dragon-thing at the beginning, loud music, sneaking ... but worth nothing. It was not remotely an epic moment when the create woke up.
- No real worldmap to explore. Yes I know FFX quit with that tradition, but it was one of the things that was (and still is) required for good world-building.

 

[salamanderjuice]

how is it hard to figure out ? It’s literally the Noubo Uematsu score that carried the entire franchise for me

Had FF XII used Uematsu score it would’ve been hands down the best JRPG game in the entire Square history, including Chrono Trigger & FF6/7, it was a flawless game only ruined by uninspired music

Been playing XII right now. It ain't flawless. Healing your party with potions or spells after a battle takes like 30 seconds in every other FF. In 12 it's like 30 minutes because you have to wait for the characters to use the potion or spell. I get not letting you use items from the party menu in battle, but when there is no foes around? Seriously? And if the party leader goes to sleep during a battle, nobody wakes them up after everything is defeated? I have to either waste an item or have somebody attack them. So stupid.

Don't even get me started on the licenses/gambit crap...

 

[Birdo]

The games didn't change. I did.