Kingdom Hearts was great because it took a cast of happy go lucky characters from Disney Worlds, and threw them in a very very dark story, and it all just melds together wll.

No, no it doesn’t.

No, no it doesn’t.

Have you even played it?

Add my two cents to this discussion…

I am somewhat worried for the Final Fantasy series. The one thing that has made it unique was the fact it made up a new world, with new characters, and story for every game and changing around the gameplay a bit.

It bothered me when they released FFX-2, which seemed more a lame “continuation” of FFX, having some of the same characters. Of course, everyone likes to believe FF7 was the best ever FF game. And while the Advent Children looks nice, why do they feel they need to revisit that universe?

I simply do not understand the need to rehash some of their former game universes, and certainly hope this doesn’t become a continuing trend for the franchise. Stick to new characters and ever-changing worlds, for that’s exactly what made FF successful.

But anyway, that’s just my opinion from more-or-less watching others play through FF games.

Oh, and I thought Kingdom Hearts was OK. It was something different, that’s for sure even if it pulled in some former well-known characters from previous FF games.

I just don’t get it.  Any of it.  Full stop.

OK, my limited experience was this:  Running away down a pathway by a castle, being chased by some huge-ass robot scorpion, jump to cut-scene, gett wiped out by said scorpion, then repeat.  And it went on, over and over again, until I just want to jam the disk into the developer’s eye socket…. :x

No, no it doesn’t.

Have you even played it?

Beat it twice, the second time through on the hardest difficulty.

The story is extremely dissapointing - the game focuses much more on combat than plot, and the problem is, the combat isn’t so hot. It has a lock-on feature, but the creatures in the game (especially those flying bastard imps) when locked on make the camera go apeshit as it flips radically to try and get a view of the enemy.

The game delivers you the story in such small chunks spread out that I really didn’t have a desire to know what happened to everyone. Not only that, but many of the world’s suck ass a la the Peter Pan ship level and forest world with the gorillas. It doesn’t help that you spend half the game trying to find your two companions. The space minigame utterly sucked and combat boiled down to waiting for the enemies to stop respawning right in front of you.

I still haven’t put serious playtime into any of the Final Fantasies, don’t know why but their whole concept just don’t appeal to me that much. In fact I think the only game I ever played myself was FF3 (6) on an SNES emulator, as I remember I didn’t understand much and kept dying in the prologue already. I quickly gave it up and put a dozen or so hours into Chrono Trigger instead at which point I got stuck and gave that up as well. Maybe I’ll give the series a chance again one of these days, but I already have way too many games on my shelf which I’m only halfway or less through…

[quote author=“Zack”]Switching topics, I too am worried about Final Fantasy. Actually, I’m not. The series has crushed the genre of any creativity since it basically owns the U.S. RPG market, thus lesser known RPG’s but with more creativity sell pathetically and don’t get sequels. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Tales of Symphonia, Xenosaga all are better than anything Square’s done in years. FFX-2 was just the beginning…they’ve announced at least two other pseudo-Final Fantasy games set in the VII universe to try and capitalize off the game’s popularity.

I don’t see how Final Fantasy owns the U.S. RPG market. None of these other RPGs get sequels you say? Then why is there a Xenosaga 2 Coming? Square Enix could probably do a sequel to Star Ocean as well if they wanted, and Final Fantasy 12 looks to be a very fresh creative game. Then there’s the GBA, where loads of Non-Final Fantasy RPGs were released and were somewhat successful. Are the FF7 and FFX spin-offs good? No, but I think the creation of these games was driven by Fan demand. Final Fantasy 11 shouldn’t even have been part of the main series (though I still want to play it damn it). Anyway, FFXII is due next year, perhaps, being the last FF on a PS2 most likelly, it’ll be a rebirth of the series, and set the stage for what FF will become on the PS3….

We should at least be content that FF hasn’t become stale like another long running series…. (Mega Man)

Added a Poll. It wouldn’t let me do too many options, so I had to leave of FF2 and FF3.

[quote author=“Zack”]

Switching topics, I too am worried about Final Fantasy. Actually, I’m not. The series has crushed the genre of any creativity since it basically owns the U.S. RPG market, thus lesser known RPG’s but with more creativity sell pathetically and don’t get sequels. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Tales of Symphonia, Xenosaga all are better than anything Square’s done in years. FFX-2 was just the beginning…they’ve announced at least two other pseudo-Final Fantasy games set in the VII universe to try and capitalize off the game’s popularity.

I just thought I’d chime in to mention that both Star Ocean: Till the End of Time and Tales of Symphonia are sequels….

Also: Damn you for not including Final Fantasy Tactics in the poll, Mike!

[quote author=“Fartz”][quote author=“Zack”]

Switching topics, I too am worried about Final Fantasy. Actually, I’m not. The series has crushed the genre of any creativity since it basically owns the U.S. RPG market, thus lesser known RPG’s but with more creativity sell pathetically and don’t get sequels. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Tales of Symphonia, Xenosaga all are better than anything Square’s done in years. FFX-2 was just the beginning…they’ve announced at least two other pseudo-Final Fantasy games set in the VII universe to try and capitalize off the game’s popularity.

I just thought I’d chime in to mention that both Star Ocean: Till the End of Time and Tales of Symphonia are sequels….

Also: Damn you for not including Final Fantasy Tactics in the poll, Mike!

Its not really part of the main series though

I think the series has been getting very stale, the more technology advanced the more they let it try to do the “show” for them. FF6 I feel had no such technological crutches and was genuinely an awesome RPG even by today’s standards. I play it still.

Then FFVII came along and…(><) So bad…cool concepts but overall…so bad, awful translation, disjointed story, far too EASY and then it got more predictable than saying man is mortal.

FFVIII was a terror and the first FF game I refused to BEAT…if that says anything.

FFIX I felt was all there in spirit but the execution was…well, less than stellar I dont even remember the characters.

FFX I enjoyed, but couldve done without the speaking. FFX-2 was…I dunno, but it was not good to make a sequel for FFX. Just rode the all-girls-in-revealing-clothes trend.

FFXI was a total and complete grind fest and while I got far in it, I definately had to snap out of it, it sucked so much time from my life it is sad and the reward was about 400 bucks down the proverbial toilet.

Each ff has elements that are very good, but I wish they would stick to a better rounded formula like FFVI

*mysterious beggining
*Loads of characters you give a crap about
*awesome side quests
*awesome main quest
*awesome, you never-saw-it-coming climax to the story
*way cool customization
*nice balanced battle system
*challenge
*imaginative design (not brand imitation and thematic pop culture theft)

[quote author=“Macster”]FFIX I felt was all there in spirit but the execution was…well, less than stellar I dont even remember the characters.

I thought the opposite of FFIX, I thought the cast was quite good.