Square Enix Has Lost the Plot for the Final Fantasy Franchise

Final Fantasy XIII - Cram what we want down players' throats.

Final Fantasy XIII – Cram what we want down players’ throats.

Note: This is an editorial/opinion piece, and neither speaks for the rest of the gamersledge.com staff, nor community members from the site. If you want to skip the tldr (too long didn’t read) backstory to learn about me and my experience with Square, click here.

Well, it’s done. Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns has finally been released in the wild, and even has a timely demo for folks that would like to download and play it. Let me give you some free advice — don’t bother.

See, the thing is that Square Enix has completely lost the plot. They no longer know how to make Final Fantasy games that people care about (XIV not withstanding, see farther below).

In order to get my point across, I feel the need to look at my own personal history with the company so that you, the reader, can understand who I am as a Square Enix longtime customer, and why I have lost all faith in the franchise.

FFII
My very first game was Final Fantasy II on the SNES in the United States (Final Fantasy IV). To say I had never played another game like it is an understatement. It was the first truly character-driven story I had ever experienced, and it blew me away. I had saved my own money to own a Super Nintendo, and this was the first game I had ever purchased. I was riveted to the storytelling and realized that video games could be an entire new medium I had never considered.


This review sums it up nicely.

FFIIIFrom there, Final Fantasy III (Final Fantasy VI) landed in the US and I was blown away by how they not only managed to keep what I liked, but expanded into new areas. Again, we were treated to one of the most character-driven stories to ever be put on screen not in a movie. All of this with a major plot twist that I have yet to see replicated to this day. As we are a spoiler free site, I will not go into it, but if you have never played this game, there are very few parallels I can draw other than the Walking Dead to the major plot twist that happens two thirds through the game.

To this day, I’m not sure which I like better – Final Fantasy IV or VI — I like both for different reasons. Not to mention they both have amazing soundtracks that sound even better when symphonies perform them:


Final Fantasy VI’s main themes.

And then, as I entered college, a small collaboration between the artist behind Dragonball Z and Square produced what is arguably the greatest RPG of all time, and one that would change my life, as I would only invest more hours into three other games throughout my lifetime.
ChronoTrigger

With this game, we had something that has always captivated me: Time travel. Introduced into an exceptionally vibrant RPG and the inclusion of multiple endings (13 to be precise, which I beat and saw all of them) and not only did my grades suffer, but so did my attendance. Many things happened in my life at school that are for another post, save to say that for a while I was not playing videogames. And then, I poured myself into them. I discovered the Ultima series, the Gold Box D&D computer game series (I was a bit late to that party) and the 7th Guest distracted me for a time.

ffviiFinally, I was in a good place for gaming with friends, and I invested in the original Playstation. I was excited beyond belief for Final Fantasy VII. I had imported Tobal No. 1 to get the demo from Japan, and later had the second demo from Playstation Underground (you could get videos and demos — on disks! 1996 was the shiznite!).
I will summarize my experience with FF7 very quickly – I logged 370 hours in total on the game, (most of that was from my duplicate knights of the round materias firing off over and over and over lol) and it was the first time I ever noticed a chink in the storytelling armor of Squaresoft (I had over 20 pheonix downs in my inventory — seriously guys, no disconnect there?). But overall, I LOVED it. And there were so many games that followed that weren’t Final Fantasy.

My infamous Bushido Blade drinking game appeared in 1997, Tobal 2, Einhander, Final Fantasy Tactics, and then Xenogears, Bushido Blade 2, Parasite Eve, Brave Fencer Musashi in 98 – to say they had me hook, line and sinker — I was now traveling for work, taking my playstation with me. Squaresoft games were my lifeblood.

ffviiiIn 1999, I had no clue that my favorite final fantasy of all time was coming – Final Fantasy VIII.

It featured a much more memorable (and easier to make sense of) story than VII, had a new magic system that I loved (and most other people hated), and even took us into space! I very quickly figured out how to exploit the new mechanics (two healers, 1 almost dead main character; limit break your heart out and raise when necessary), but that did not stop me from grinding almost two hundred hours out of the game. Between the soundtrack, the gunblades (so cool!) and the story, I believe it is the most overlooked and underappreciated game in the series.

Something else notable happened in 99 for the first time – they rereleased many of their games that had only appeared on the SNES onto the Playstation – and people ate them up. This was the first time that Square had truly realized they could make money by simply porting. (That and they were gearing up for the Playstation 2.)

2000 began and Final Fantasy IX launched. Would you believe that I absolutely detested it? It felt like such a backwards departure from their last two games; that it felt old and stale. Plus, I hated Zidane and felt the story was contrite. To this day, I’m not sure if I ever finished it… I’m not even including a picture for it, that’s how much I didn’t like it!

I walked out of my local gamestore with FIVE PS2’s in late 2000, and I sold them all to friends (not even at an upcharge) and when the first Squaresoft game was released in March of 2001, I had worked myself into a fervor over:

The Bouncer by Squaresoft. I played the hell out of it. It was the first game I walked away from (besides FFIX) feeling less than satisfied. The graphics were amazing, the fighting was fun, but the story was mediocre.

ffxBut my disappointment wouldn’t last long, as Final Fantasy X would come along and remind me why I loved Squaresoft in the first place. Strong characters, a great story and Blitzball – I absolutely loved it. I was in awe of the graphics. The story wasn’t as good as previous entries, granted. But it did have relatable characters, set around the important task of saving the world once more. Although I did not spend *nearly* as much time with it as previous entries due to life and work, I thought it a worthy entry into the series. (I can’t wait for the HD rerelease upcoming for PS3 and Vita — crossing fingers for PS4 at some point)
For me, it was a satisfying beginning to the PS2 era for Squaresoft. Little did I know, my demise would come just after finishing the story.

As soon as I had cleared FFX, someone told me that in Japan, they had released a new kind of Final Fantasy — one that allowed people to play together. Now, I had dabbled in MMOs before, like Ultima Online and Everquest; but this was a SQUARESOFT game online.

ffxiIt was called Final Fantasy XI. I imported it, and spent the next six months typing in Japanese and staying up until all hours of the night playing with other westerners who had imported, with the Iron Maiden Troopers linkshell. I lost myself for five years of my life into this game, I have one of the firstNinja Artifact Armor Quest FAQs ever written. You can touch me!

The music was fantastic, the story was actually interesting and the camaraderie was second to none.

BalthierWhen Final Fantasy XII finally came out, I was absolutely thrilled. It was *almost* Final Fantasy XI offline; a single player variety. It also sported a character (who is now my favorite final fantasy character) with a very similar name to my online handle. Balthier, you sly devil, you! I devoured 12 and went right back to the online version, salivating at what could be on the horizon with this new Playstation 3 on the horizon.

ffxiiiWhen Final Fantasy XIII came out, I played. And I played. And I sat there in disbelief. The game was horrible. The characters were milktoast; their motivations were generic. The dialogue was contrived. The story was laughable. I had no freedom (and by the time I did, I was sick of the game honestly). I could care less about Lightning; she’s the most boring protagonist they’ve ever had. I like ZIDANE more than her — at least I feel something for him. The approach to the game was all wrong; I never felt like they gave me a reason to care about anyone other than Sazh; but even that was pretty hamfisted the majority of the time. It is the only Squaresoft game I have ever traded in.

This is where I will take a quick aside to discuss Final Fantasy XIV; I don’t have much to say about it other than a) It’s a lot of fun and b) it’s Final Fantasy XI but with some enhancements. Really. This is why it works; they didn’t really do anything new — yes, there are new things and ways to do things, but seriously — it’s the same freaking game. They just changed the names of the races!!

Square’s loss of the plot

Square has been selling less and less of the Final Fantasy franchise over time.

Final Fantasy VII sold 9.8 million copies.
Final Fantasy VIII sold 8.2 million copies.
Final Fantasy IX sold an estimated 8 million copies.
Final Fantasy X sold 6.6 million copies.
Final Fantasy XII sold 5.2 million copies.
Final Fantasy XIII sold 6 million copies
Final Fantasy XIII-2 sold just 2.8 million copies.

This is a huge departure in sales, and as of this writing, if you look at launch sales for FFXIII: Lightning returns, it is just 18% of what Final Fantasy XIII’s launch sales were.

Yet here we have the creator saying that Lightning is one of the most popular characters ever. On top of that, when asked about creating a remake of Final Fantasy VII, the MOST popular entry in the entire franchise, he said “It would take a lot for that to happen.”

Really? Are your current ideas that great? Let me tell you – just having played the demo of Lightning Returns, I can say the following critiques:

1. The music is horrible, and somehow sounds dated.
2. Battle, while I see it being potentially deep with the job class, is in no way, shape or form interesting to me. I have 3 AP bars (1 for each class) and can switch between them when I run out. It’s still only one person fighting and completely uninteresting (to me).
3. At the start of the demo, you make me watch the cutscene without sound, that I then spend watching for six minutes with sound. And I still don’t care. The characters are still soulless, the dialogue is boring and cliche, and when Hope is speaking to me as I’m traversing the world, I trigger cut scenes that stop him from speaking, never to hear the end of what he was going to say.
4. That brings me to production values. It’s like they aren’t even trying. I’m running through corridors that have no soul. You have me chase Snow through all these areas so quickly, there’s no time to either figure out why they are there or whether I should appreciate them.
5.Then, I finally find where he is, and I have to teleport away because someone *spotted* me? When I just killed three guards in a roomful of people, I just beat 40 someodd monsters, and I just took out a three-story tall hentai creature — but I’m worried about some freaking human guards? Really?

It’s a mess. It’s like there is noone overseeing the different departments and coordinating them to make a cohesive game.

So, I’ve spent 2000 words criticizing. How can they fix it moving forward?

1. Start fresh. If you aren’t going to give us our Final Fantasy VII remake (which would print money), then start with a story that people are going to care about. It doesn’t always have to be about saving the world.

2. Look at the past to draw better influences. Look at the storyline from Final Fantasy VI. You haven’t played a story card like that in quite some time. Maybe it’s time to turn your storytelling on its ear. How about changing things up and having a Final Fantasy where we play the villain? That would most definitely be different. Recent games from this generation (The Last of Us, the Uncharted Series and others) have shown how you can make compelling origins for bad people.

3. Stop focusing so much on the combat systems. It’s still an RPG. If I want an action RPG, I’ll play Kingdom Hearts. Figure out how to innovate the traditional JRPG system. It doesn’t even have to be realtime (gasp!).

4. Listen to your fans, don’t tell us what we want. Your sales reflect that you aren’t delivering what you want.

5. Your sales expectations are unrealistic. Figure out how to utilize smaller teams with more limited budgets to give a core experience that gamers want. (Final Fantasy Tactics 2 anyone?)

Square Enix, I love Final Fantasy. I love your older games. Come back to the path. We vote with our dollars, and unless you start listening to what I want as one of your core gamers, you won’t be getting anymore of mine.

Do you agree or disagree? What has your experience with Square games been in your life? Let us know in the comments below…