It's probably a bad sign when the most culturally relevant element of your franchise is a movie that bombed. Yes, it's true, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within seemed to predict Frakking (or the act of creating man-made earthquakes to release natural gas from the planet) and how it could possibly ruin our world. But beyond that, Final Fantasy seems to be in a bit of a lull, save for the recent Final Fantasy XIV trailer at least year's E3. See, Final Fantasy suffers from the quadruple crown of over-complication. Multiple games with confusing titles across several platforms? Check. Multiple games in the same universe across multiple platforms and media? Check. Occasional forays into strange mechanics and hard to relate characters? Check. Using the war chest of nostalgia the franchise has created to release cheap cash-ins that cost too much money? You bet your Chocobo. Because the Final Fantasy franchise has been around since the dawn of the NES, it's changed, grown and mutated. It's released great games, bad games, strange games, engaged in strange dalliances with pay-to-win iOS games, there's the brutally uninviting entirety of Final Fantasy XIII, two MMOs (one of which required a reboot after being so terrible), the fact the sequel to the much beloved "Final Fantasy Tactics" was a Gameboy Advance game with a bare-bones plot similar to The Neverending Story, and the less said about Ehrgeiz and Mystic Quest, the better. There's also the Crystal Chronicles series - the much touted return of the franchise to Nintendo consoles....which pretty much demanded you have a Game Boy Advance or two, a link cable (or two) and a Gamecube. The thing about Final Fantasy is that it's such a massive franchise with such massive appeal and money-making potential it's easy to exploit the brand and its fans for everything they're worth until no one cares. Being a Final Fantasy fan, let alone completest, is far more complicated than it should be. Take for example Final Fantasy VII - the most beloved of the Final Fantasy titles. Fans clamored for a sequel or remake to the game - frothing at the mouth for more Cloud, Barrett, and Tifa. And they got it. On cell phones. The first true 'sequel' to Final Fantasy VII was a mobile game before that was a 'thing'. The second? A shooter staring Vincent. The third? An action RPG game on the PSP, which 15 people on the entire planet owned. Beyond that there's been a DVD movie and more slash fiction than those Guns n' Roses rumours you keep hearing about. The above problems are less irksome with Final Fantasy X's and XIII's sequels, but the idea of releasing a sequel to a game that's wildly different in tone and style and appeal creates a situation where players are buying games based on the brand and not on whether or not the game being released is something they'd like to play. Thus when it comes to over-complication, extreme over-complication, Final Fantasy deserves all the finger-points of judgement it can get. Players don't want more Final Fantasy, they want good Final Fantasy. They want relatable characters and quality stories. Interesting battle mechanics and the whimsical distractions like Chocobo breeding and the smile-inducing Golden Saucer date sequence from Final Fantasy VII. Instead, it seems Square Enix isn't quite sure what it's doing with the franchise, other than milking it dry in ways that are confusing, complicated, and make very little sense. Though thankfully someone has had the presence of mind to never, ever, EVER copy the weapon system from Final Fantasy VIII, and that remains appreciated. Which games have buried themselves alive under a mountain of plot threads and contrivances? Let us know in the comments!
