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What do you think about recent Final Fantasy games?

Fbh

Member
FFXV: At launch it felt like an early access game. An inconsistent unfinished mess of a game with a terrible story, meh combat and overall bland design that felt like a Japanese team attempting to copy the generic western open world formula (poorly). The music was nice though and I visually it still looks great. 6/10
(I've heard it's better these days with all the updates and DLC, but I felt too burned by the 1.0 version to go back to it)

FFVII Remake: Surprisingly good mostly because I loved the combat system, good mix of solid mechanics with flashy visuals and I think it's one of the first JRPG's to really nail real time combat while still giving you a sense of playing as whole party instead of a single character. That said it's very linear, the side content sucks and the visuals are inconsistent (like it looks amazing one second and then you suddenly you are talking to Ps3 era NPC's). 8/10

FXVI: They made a decent action game with cool visuals, flashy, enjoyable yet basic combat, nice music and cool setpiece moments.... then decided to merge it with one of the most mediocre AAA "RPG's" of modern times. The saving grace for a big chunk of the game is the compelling story, until that too goes to shit towards the end.
6/10

Rebirth: Haven't played. Subpar image quality deserves a budget price. Will pick it up if it's cheap this black friday.
 
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Hookshot

Member
I don't and that's the problem for them. Dwindling amounts of people still care and by splitting 7 into 3 games they've admitted they can't make a game like 7 anymore, so why should people get excited for FF22 when it will be a 3rd of what came before.
 

Kronark

Neo Member
I haven't really enjoyed a mainline FF entry since 10 (Haven't touched 11 or 14).

- 12 had it's bizarre auto combat system and the story never got me invested. I dropped off though I have been itching to give this one another chance.

- 13 had the most unlike-able cast I've ever seen and the rough implementation of the stagger system led to a lot of fights just feeling like a grind. No real world to explore as 13 is literally Hallways: The Game. The main story was also awful and didn't make sense without you pausing the game to read up on the in game encyclopedia, a complete failure all around. I can still hear the FF fanboys defending it now "It really opens up around chapter 12 though...".

- 15 actually had potential but really missed the execution. The multimedia push was a mistake. Asking players to stop the game and watch a separate $20 movie to understand a lot of context is peak hilarity. The main villain had some compelling motivations but the game failed to decently convey that to the audience, you had to read about it in hidden text logs. Combat was also pretty mid, with most of it being mash X. At least the weird magical road trip in a car aspect was neat? The game had the framework of a decent story but completely failed to implement it into the game...

- 16 is again just a story failure. The game starts off with a decent prologue and I'd argue everything involving cid was promising but after that it's just a series of disconnected boss fight quests that get increasingly less compelling and bizzare. Around the point the story focused on Barnabas I could not have given a shit anymore.

Ironically FF 13-2 and 13-3 despite being spin offs are super fun games to play and some of the most fun I've had with the franchise since the PS2 era. Yes they still have stupid stories but I at least felt like the journeys I was going on were fun.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
I only like FFVII Rebirth out of the FF games since XII. But its far from perfect and its not a full story.

One I intially skipped but beat a decade later is Lightning Returns. Its actually solid. Its very different in setup with a good combat system and some neat dynamics that make the game a bit non linear of sorts.

Perhaps FF should take a cue from DQ, and go back to its roots. FF was always different with each game, but until after X not radically like today. Scale down on visuals, but up the ante on exploration and RPG mechanics. I hated XIII, XV and XVI.
 

hinch7

Member
Really enjoyed my playthroughs for 16 and Remake/Rebirth. Don't understand the hate personally.

15 though was a total skip. Didn't last a couple hours with that. Really strange game tbh.
 
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10 was the last masterpiece.

9 was the last fantasy.

They've gotten progressively worse, since.

The FF7R series has the right model, but they need to bring on a new group of writers.
 

ssringo

Member
15 - looks nice, not that fun. Didn't finish.
16 - looks nice, not that fun. Didn't finish.
7Remake - looks nice, kinda fun. Finished once.
7Rebirth - looks nice, kinda fun. Did not finish.

7Remake is the only FF since the PS2 I've finished. Safe to say Final Fantasy isn't for me anymore.
 
triggered GIF
 

Nankatsu

Member
Personally for me FFXV was pretty good, because I got pulled into the game's universe - movie, anime, and so on, and everything made more sense.

The game at launch had some pretty decents gaps in the narrative, but those got filled over the years.

Remake and Rebirth are a blast and offer the best battle system in an action-rpg. Period.

FFXVI was a mistake and fooled us all.
 
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dezzy8

Member
FXV was unfinished, bloated trash. I love VII’s music and the combat using Tifa made it fun for me. I just totally skipped XVI. I’m really not interested in FF going full on action rpg. I would really love for them to make a traditional turn based FF.
 

IAmRei

Member
I like XVI as action games, and the visual, especially the art direction is the best for me, the game loop is mixed bag as new game. But i consider it as hack and slash entry, nothing is wrong too far.

FFXV story is kind of flawed, but well, i play for the gameplay, i like the combat and the explorations, and i ended overleveled for that. Guess I will replay it again later, in proper manner.

FFVIIR... I dont like it. The visual are pretty but i don't like the direction of the story.

In other side, FFTYPE-0 might be weird. But i like that game if counting FF as action RPG.

I wish it will return to turn based, and fantasy genre once more.

Dang, i even consider bravely default 2 as proper FF more than newer ff than 12... : ))
 
15 - A fragmented mess
16 - Good, Amazing first third, but after a certain boss it has massive pacing issues/extreme padding. If someone cares enough to mod the game and make an abridged version, it would be considered great.
7 Remake - Great
7 Rebirth - Have not played yet and probably won't until the third part releases.
 
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I like all of them, but there are things about them that I do not.
I still wish Sony console owners on PS5 could have the 13 trilogy again.
 
FF7:R Rebirth was a bloated sack of boredom in a technologically downright broken packaging and FF16 had some of the worst pacing and sidecontent I´ve seen since Gacha-MMOs became a thing.
I have no clue how both of those games got Metascores above ~60 and I've already forgotten about 15 and 13 I think that says enough.

Personally, I think I´m done even trying out FF games.
 
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Shodai

Member
FF7 Remake's should have been 1 game, done in a more traditional "remake" fashion with turn-based combat. If they wanted to make more money, additional DLC's to flesh the story out would have been a far better idea, IMO.

FF XVI I just couldn't play, the PC demo was lacking and the combat is just not what I equate to Final Fantasy.

FF XV I skipped because it simply did not speak Final Fantasty to me in any way.

FF XIV I skipped because I don't want to play any MMO's at this stage of my life.

Perhaps I'm just getting older and Square is going for a different demographic, but I cannot "square" that with the concept of being 16 games into a franchise - Clearly you want your long-time fans onboard. Personally, I believe Square needs a full overhaul of leadership, but if my work-life experience has taught me anything, undoing those kind of blobs in power is quite daunting and often not worth hoping for. Regardless, they have damaged the brand tremendously.
 
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Lethal01

Member
FF7 Rebirth is the highpoint of the entire franchise, mostly due to its battle system but the game as a whole is fantastic most of what people call "bloat" is totally optional can be totally ignored if you just choose to focus on main story.

FF15 was a mess and a dissapointment.
FF16 was well put together, but very bland and shallow combat wise. Story wasnt my cup of tea and combat system did not have thing I think are key.

I think the critical flaw in all these games is not including seamless world interaction for puzzle solving and having zero platforming.. Look at zelda on the n64 you can use all your abilities outside of battle to naturally do stuff with your, totk on switch being a natural evilution where the world is a playbox.

these games worlds are just dead backgrounds that demand nothing from you, they dont even ask you to do some careful jumps to progress through them.

You need to play more action RPG then

pretty sure ive played all the best ones, for me the full party control via switch, universal meter for specials and slow down + menu system is perfection. what would you recommend.
 
I never got into XV but I Platinumed XVI and intend on doing the same with VII Rebirth. I'd probably play though XVI again if it gets a PS5 Pro Patch.
 

ap_puff

Banned
Rebirth/Remake are amazing, 16 had a ton of potential but is deeply flawed because it has some cool moments but it's bogged down by bad gameplay systems and even the combat system suffers from being way too easy. I think they did an incredible job with the character direction in the Remake series.
 

Pejo

Gold Member
13 killed the series, 15/16/Spinoffs/remakes are just the death throes. People say "the only thing constant about Final Fantasy as a series is change" which is true, but S-E seems dead set on changing it into entries that are received worse and underperform by their insane metrics. Still, we're getting other stuff now that fills the void in the JRPG catalogue, so Final Fantasy losing its status as a premier JRPG series doesn't hurt as bad as 2010 me would have expected it would. Hell, The Octopath games are better (to my tastes) than any Final Fantasy released in like 15 years. Just imagine if they got the dev budget of FFXVI for instance.
 
It's hard to say, they are very different. XVI was a cool concept, but fell flat with the story falling apart halfway through or less. Needs to go back to RPG elements, gutting the series of that was a huge mistake IMO and made the other flaws more apparent. It should lean more into what its identity is, not shed that IMO.

The VII Remake stuff is a slap in the face - while Rebirth was lovely in terms of gameplay, I still hate that they are mutilating FF VII like this. I don't particularly like XV, but I plan to replay it sometime in the next year or two to reevaluate.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I liked FF7 Remake. Haven't played Rebirth yet. I started FFXVI but the aggressive DRS when action started put me off of it, so I was waiting for PS5 Pro to pick it back up. I'll get around to it. I skipped XV.
 

Lee49

Neo Member
Never played XV but the other games had so much potential to be more but is sadly held back by bloat and bad writing for me.
 

xenosys

Member
XVI - Dire, boring, cut-scene simulator with a tedious, braindead battle system that the Ninja Gaiden and DMC fans will love. It's not a JRPG. Had Clive not been such a well-written character, this would have gone down as arguably the worst FF game since XIII.

Remake - A good game, that was ultimately let down by the developers need to pad out a 15 hour experience into a 35-40 hour one for no-reason other than to create superficial product value.

Rebirth - A stellar game. Confirmed FFVII as having one of the greatest ensemble casts in the history of the medium. Take away the Ubisoft towers, encourage more organic exploration, sort out the ending and it would have been a Breath of the Wild-level experience.
 
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Sharius

Member
it's doesn't feel right, i like a FF with alot of side quest and minigame, but the kind of FF9 sidequest and minigame, not buttload of nonsense like FF7 rebirth
 

taylor34

Neo Member
FF7 original was great
FF9 was pretty great
FFX was my favorite probably
FFX-2 was awful
FF12 was ok, the non-autoleveling of companions made it suck at the end
FF13 was meh
FF15 had a sub par battle system and focused way too much on cup of noodles and eating
FF16 is better than some of them but not as good as 7 to X
FF7 remake was fine, a little bloated
FF7 rebirth was not great, was happy when I finished it. Way too many mini games and bloat.

They keep chasing action trends instead of focusing on the core gameplay which people want. Instead of changing up the battle system and making it worse and worse, why don't they change it so your decisions actually matter in the game and make it branching?
 
I can't really speak much on FFXV which I dropped pretty quickly. I may give it another try some day.

I definitely liked XVI. It leaves a bit of a weird taste, being extremely weak in some aspects and extremely strong in others. Interestingly, the weak parts are the rpg parts like questing, exploration and story, but the character action game style combat is really fun along with superb setpieces, visuals and music. They really tried to do something different and although it didn't come together, there's a lot to praise. I was genuinely bummed to hear it didn't perform sales wise as I do like the game, and the dlc which adds even more powers to play with in combat.

I adored remake. I'm not an FFVII guy, I started playing the series with FFVIII, so I didn't feel like they needed to leave midgar in part 1 or anything like that. Taking it for what it was unrelated to the original classic, I had a ton of fun with that game's world and characters except whenever it got all meta and pretentious. Rag-tag eco-terrorists vs evil megacorp for the fate of the planet is a great setup for a story, adding dumb shit like spectres and multiverses and Sepiroth smirking because he's in control even though you just killed him like 5 times really hurts the narrative. None of those story failings matter though because I'm having so much fun hanging out adventuring with the main party who are just amazing. Like when they're surrounded in the top of the shinra building at gunpoint and it's like "who even are you guys" and everyone strikes a pose and Barret goes "I'm Avalanche!" and Aeris says "I'm your local florist!" and Red's like "I'm a lab rat dog...thing!" they crack me up. Then there's the amazing battle system where all the characters have different, interesting playstyles. On hard mode, the variety of tactics needed to achieve pressured status on an enemy so you stagger them actually manage to combine the strategic depth of a turn based Jrpg with the fast pace of an action game successfully, making it a blast to play.

All that goes triple for Rebirth. The graphics suck compared to the PS5 version of remake but the trade off is bringing back the old school feeling of Jrpgs being enormous adventures you can get lost in with a ton to see and do. You can have an awesome card game battle against RedXIII while he's moonwalk dancing in a human disguise, or play an amazing piano minigame with Tifa in a bikini. You can fight insanely hard VR mission gauntlet challenges, there's so much game here to sink your teeth into. The serious, dramatic direction of the story still has my eyes rolling with how dumb it is... But the fun, adventuring side of the story is a laugh riot, whether its jammin' to salmon the doge's escort mission theme, Elena getting mad about vanilla ice cream, or Yuffie swooning at the sight of a muscle man's hairy pecs dancing. It was a huge downer to hear not many people even bought such a fun game. All I could do was buy more copies and gift them to friends! Hopefully lots of people are waiting for the trilogy to be completed before they buy, but if they try to play all 3 games at once they might feel a bit daunted when Rebirth alone is bigger than most games out there.
 

Stu_Hart

Banned
FF15 was ok, nothing too special. The characters didn't resonate with me.
FF16 was mediocre and forgettable. The environments were stale and linear, the gameplay was a repetitive chore and felt floaty with no impact behind the attacks, and it has pacing issues.
FF7 remake series was good, love the characters, best gameplay out of the modern FF games, story was good, memorable environments, but rebirth's ending irritated me a bit.
 
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TheCed

Member
I absolutely hate XV... got tricked into paying a collector edition to beta test a game...

XVI was a'ight... not what I wanted from FF but it's not a bad game either. Played it, finished it and then moved on.

Remake and Rebirth are what I wanted. I understand the criticism but I absolutely love the games so far.

So... the franchise is... Uneven but eh... I'll still buy the new ones.
 

JORMBO

Darkness no more
I think XV had a good story overall. It is a shame that a lot of it was split off into various other forms of media, DLC, etc. A lot of the story in the game itself was very rushed. The gameplay was ok. Overall I liked the game, but it had obvious issues.

XVI was mediocre. I enjoyed my time with it, but it is a game I will never touch again. The combat system wasn't deep enough to carry through the whole game and it didn't really have any RPG elements.

XIV expansions have been mediocre for awhile. The last good story was Shadowbringers, but the actual content for the expansions has stuck too close to the same formula. After the last several expansions and XVI I wish SE would stop giving YoshiP so much power over stuff, but they seem to just give him more things to do.

VII Remake and Rebirth and both what I want from the series. Good story, characters, combat and it doesn't always take itself too seriously. Rebirth is great. For the next game I hope they can chill out on the amount of mini games and vary the side content a bit more.
 

Neolombax

Member
Overall, I enjoyed XVI, XV and 7R in that order. The only thing that held back XVI was how limited the progression felt. It wanted to be an action game but has the length of an RPG. That said, there isn't enough gameplay elements and progression that carried XVI throughout that length, that's where I felt the game fell short. If they wanted to make a DMC type FF, then give the game tons of combos and tools to play with. The different Eikons just don't cut it.

7R was the worst of the bunch. I didn't mind much the mechanical approach when entering new regions, the minigames were fine since they're pretty much optional. But goddamn the story was confusing asf for someone who isn't familiar at all with OG FF7. Most of the time, I felt like caving Cloud's face in. It feels like watching a crazy man going on a crusade and none of his teammates are acknowledging how psychotic Cloud is.
 

poodaddy

Member
FFXII was the last good one. The new FF7's are disgraceful, an edgy twelve year old could write a better story. XV just didn't meet the mark, though I did finish it admittedly. I think I kept hoping it would get good. I'll play through XVI at some point, but I haven't yet, and it's a shame that they moved towards character action for it. XIII is....Jesus Christ what a pile of shit. XIV is an MMO so....nope, not even once.

FF VI, IX, XII, and Tactics are some of the best JRPG's of all time, but the franchise is a fucking zombie today....shoot it in the head and mourn what it used to be, cuz it's long dead and it's not coming back.

Oh, and Tetsuya Nomura is a talentless hack.
 

Allandor

Member
15 - looks nice, not that fun. Didn't finish.
16 - looks nice, not that fun. Didn't finish.
7Remake - looks nice, kinda fun. Finished once.
7Rebirth - looks nice, kinda fun. Did not finish.

7Remake is the only FF since the PS2 I've finished. Safe to say Final Fantasy isn't for me anymore.
Just playing the pixel remasters now. Funny how those aged. Yes, especially the early games were not so deep, but somehow you care more about the chars than in FFXv.
 

FreeY$L

Neo Member
Its been a weird series for me, i grew up during the PS2 era, ffx and xii were my jam back in the day, played the ps1 titles afterwards, 7 i thought was alright, 7 Remake/Rebirth however, were a damn cultural event for me, picked up 7Remake during the lockdown period, and it consumed me, and so did 7 Rebirth which i consider my favorite game of all time.
Xv was shit, xvi was even worse (its the only game i ever refunded on psn, and even psn’s horrible customer service knew it was bad).
I tried going back to play the old ones again but i cant stomach them anymore.
 

Griffon

Member
FFXIV is the first FF that failed so utterly to make me care about its world, plots, and side characters. Felt like it was written by a toddler who's seen a couple of GoT episodes but quickly lost interest in it.

And the gameplay was braindead and repetitive, on the "sweet spot" where you'd hate it if you love action games, and you'd hate it if you love RPGs. Perfectly pleasing absolutely no one.
 
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Killjoy-NL

Banned
FFVII Remake and Rebirth are amazing, although Rebirth had a lot of needless padding and I'm not too fond of those flying ghosts and the Zack fan-service.

FFXV had a great ending, but felt unfinished and rushed, because it probably was.

FFXVI I just can't get into.


Gameplay of all these games >>> archaic battlesystems (turn-based/ATB).
 
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FF XV is an unfinished game that was thrown together after Nomura went and focused on KH. I like it but it's got problems.

FF XVI wants to be this big ambitious game with A Song of Ice and Fire inspiration but it's shallow garbage.

FF VII Remakes are just RuPaul's Drag Race with JRPG elements.
 

keefged4

Member
FFVII remake and rebirth are good. But XV and XVI are slog fests, only play once and never touch again type games. The last half of XVI had me bored to tears.

I wish they'd forget all the action stuff and bring out another FF IX style FF.
 
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