Final Fantasy has fallen upon hard times. Square-Enix’s juggernaut RPG series has, by most accounts, taken some serious missteps and is in desperate need of a White Mage to save it from the brink of death with a quick cast of Curaga. Final Fantasy XIII was quite possibly the most disappointing entry into the series yet and is dogged by uneven pacing and a combat system that looks pretty neat but practically plays itself. Many saw Final Fantasy XIII-2 as an improvement over XIII, but instead of leaving well enough alone, Square is going forward with another sequel Lightning Returns.
In the MMO world, Final Fantasy XIV was an unmitigated disaster upon release which forced Square to kill the game, throw a Phoenix Down and try again. Despite their recent misadventures, I think there are ample opportunities for Square to turn this whole thing around and make us fall in love with their key franchise again. Let’s start with something they may already be doing…
3. Make Sure Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Doesn’t Suck
Final Fantasy XIV Online’s launch was, to put it mildly, less than ideal. The game was unfinished, buggy and many of the interesting things Square-Enix attempted with their newest MMO just fell flat upon execution. The in-game market system sounds kind of interesting on paper: hire a merchant NPC to stand around a market area and sell your goods. However, this made shopping for specific items confusing since there was no indication of what a particular NPC was selling.
Despite this there was hints of a great MMO lying underneath the rubble. A friend of mine who played the beta for a time told me that the character creation system was robust and the game world was quite expansive. The most interesting aspect of the game in my view was the interesting character development. Your equipment determined your “class”. If you equipped a lance or spear, then you were a Lancer. The more you fought with a spear, the more skills you learned for that class. Okay, rad, but let’s say you just watched Marvel’s Avengers and decided that Hawkeye was really cool and you suddenly wanted to bulls-eye Fangs with a longbow. All you would have to do is equip one! Ta da! You’re an Archer now and you get to keep those Lancer skills you learned even though they may be a bit weaker.
Square-Enix is relaunching FFXIV as A Realm Reborn and the word on the street is that it’s much better. A Realm Reborn will also release on the PS3 which is good news for fans who want to play the game but do not have a powerful gaming PC. The market certainly is crowded, but, if executed correctly this time, FFXIV has the potential to really shake up the MMO world with its FF-inspired world and insanely flexible class system.
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6 Comments
Interesting characters and romance
Good article man! Can’t wait for Versus XIII, looks like it’s going to be great.
What I’ve always found most ironic about the whole Final Fantasy XIII series up to now is how Square-Enix have said that they wanted to make games where the storyline came first and that it had an emotive and brilliant plot, yet its story (Probably because it’s so damn confusing and over-complicated) is nowhere near as strong as earlier entries in the series. Especially when you compare it to VII for example. It just confuses me to no end, they seem to feel like they need to be all clever and stuff, citing that gamers have evolved, yet I’m replaying FF III on the Ipad right now and it’s still as incredible as it always was. A FF that is exactly like the old games, with a world map and turn-based systems, is exactly what they need to revitalise the series and they know for a fact that every fan would buy it and probably more than bought XIII-2. It also doesn’t feel weird playing FF in portable form so I wouldn’t mind a portable game at all, although I do think I might prefer a fully fledged console version, or maybe even both, with extra features on each format and transferable saves, that would probably be my dream for the next incarnation of the series! It would be pretty expensive to buy both versions though I guess haha.
Anyways, that rant over! haha I heard an interview where they stated they did plan to re-make FF VII but only if they made a game that they believed was better than it in the future first. God knows when that’s likely to happen or even what their standard is, they were pretty vague. It is kinda necessary sooner or later though!
Oh and it’s not that I didn’t like XIII or anything, I’ve pretty much loved each of the games in the series and I really wasn’t bothered by the linearity of the opening of XIII, I still fully enjoyed the experience. I just definitely prefer the whole open world, freedom thing. My favourite things about the old FF games were the hidden summons and magics that were only accessible by going off the beaten path, probably why I loved FF VIII so much.
Thanks! I definitely didn’t hate XIII. Once it began to open up and give you more options for battle other than just press X to attack, heal, then attack it became pretty fun. In some boss fights only one mistake could wipe the entire party easily. I don’t admit this to many people, but I was a huge fan of Final Fantasy X-2′s battle system and when I started playing XIII it became readily apparent that the Paradigm system was just a re-imagining of the Dressphere system without the Sailor Moon style clothes changing (unsurprisingly, X, X-2, XIII and XIII-2 were all directed by the same guy).
A remake of final fantasy 7 seems an abvious option, but it definitely has its risks. Imagine if they did a sub standard job. The legacy could be ruined and the one game everyone is holding onto fondly in their memories may become meaningless overnight.
people always talk about how open worlds were in games like ff7 or ff8, but thats not true at all. The mountains and the rivers and oceans funnel you through the entire game into places that the developers want you to go. The only time you can go everywhere is when you get the airship towards the end of the story. ff13 has pretty much the same mechanic (except without the airship). ff13 has those teleport stones to get you around places instead of the airship. Also, all you need to do is read the datalogs in ff13 in order to understand the story completely. It’s actually a very engaging and well thought out plot if people actually take the time to attempt to understand it. Most people say they hate ff13 or love ff7, but alot of them haven’t even played either. They just repeat what other people say. Try playing ff7 again after all the years since you played it last. I promise you it wont be as good as you thought it was.
Versus should be at Number 1, in my opinion. Been waiting for Noct for two years now, going on three; some have pined away for longer.
Great idea on how to deal with Lightning Returns, though.