lughnasadh123
Member
You're definitely not wrong. Whatever choice they make they'll piss someone off but credit to them for trying something new.
FF Fans
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Final Fantasy XVI Producer Yoshi-P Says It May Be Time for the Younger Generation to Handle Final Fantasy XVII
- Thread starter Thick Thighs Save Lives
- Start date
- Game Dev
Fbh
Member
Yeah I think it's about damn time. You'd think after XIII there was no way to go but up, yet apparently none of the "old guard" know how to get above ground level.
Can't believe I'm saying this but maybe Nomura really is the only competent director left at Square
Also I think people put too much focus on turn based vs real time.
I've read and talked a lot about FFXVI online and rarely do I see the opinion that it was bad because it was action based. The general consensus seems to be it was bad because it's a bad RPG and the combat is basically baby's first action game. The fucking combat in Hogwarts Legacy is more exciting than XVI.
Can't believe I'm saying this but maybe Nomura really is the only competent director left at Square
Also I think people put too much focus on turn based vs real time.
I've read and talked a lot about FFXVI online and rarely do I see the opinion that it was bad because it was action based. The general consensus seems to be it was bad because it's a bad RPG and the combat is basically baby's first action game. The fucking combat in Hogwarts Legacy is more exciting than XVI.
For some reason, starting with FFXII Square decided they needed to take the Sonic Team approach by throwing everything into the trash and starting from scratch with each new entry instead of building and expanding upon what the previous game did well.
Raven117
Member
Lol. Effing dork.
Jooxed
Gold Member
I thought 16 was fine. I like Yoshi P's storytelling and the stuff hes done. It felt like it could almost have been a great game if they went with different design decisions. Better combat system and having actual meaningful loot and party members I think would have changed the game drastically.
Madflavor
Member
Yeah I don't think any mainline FF game is outright "bad" either, at least in the true sense of the word. But I'm definitely with the common consensus that the was a severe drop in quality after X.
FFVII: Remake and FFXIV are the only entries I've loved in the past 20 years.
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LordNerevar76
Neo Member
Imagine how I feel liking bothMe, seeing people hating on Final Fantasy 16 after I enjoyed it:
Now I know what Starfield enjoyers feel like.
Skifi28
Member
I liked it too, just not all of it. Many things about it were great, but they could have trimmed the fat a bit.Me, seeing people hating on Final Fantasy 16 after I enjoyed it:
Now I know what Starfield enjoyers feel like.
Fabieter
Member
Well no its not there is no common consensus about it. Its a very toxic part of the final fantasy community who thinks.
The pacing
Some of its voice acting
The combat system srsly the combat system is huge drop of the pre ff x games
I absolutely dislike the sphere grid it was nothing but a grind hell
Look I love ff x live any other until ff xvi but you couldn't be more wrong that there was a drop of after ff x. There wasn't.
Madflavor
Member
Nobody is saying you can’t like whatever games you want, but FFIV thru FFX are widely regarded within the fanbase as the best era of Final Fantasy, and that is absolutely the consensus. Modern day FF games are a lot more divisive than they used to be.
Poll from 2020 with a sample size of 450k votes (Japan only)
Japan Votes For Its Favorite Final Fantasy Games And Characters
Debates about the best Final Fantasy games have been drawn out for years on end now – with fans going back and forth about which title broke the franchise, saved it, or was some sort of cult classi…
nintendosoup.com
One particularly large poll from Reddit:
35th Anniversary Poll
The Best Final Fantasy games revealed - as ranked by thousands of fans | RPG Site
Thousands of you had your say - and now he's the best Final Fantasy games, ranked. And since you chose 'em, you can't complain.
www.rpgsite.net
I agree that it’s toxic to tell anyone they’re wrong for liking any FF game. But toxic to say the games aren’t as good as they used to be? Definitely not.
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rofif
Can’t Git Gud
Hell, I love both ff16 and 15. Now that's an opinion nobody shares lolImagine how I feel liking both
SlimeGooGoo
Banned
.
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Faust
Perpetually Tired
You hit the nail on the head. I had made a guess at where the story was going to go as soon as that first trailer dropped and we learned of the "Mother Crystals" and it went exactly where I thought it would go, but had enough interesting turns, twists, and great character moments both through the main story and through the writing of the side quests to keep me heavily engaged in the world and what would happen.
The game though does has plenty of flaws from its lack of difficulty (seriously, add in a Black Codes thing ala KH3 so we can customize the difficulty from the outset) to its MMO-esque side quests that, while generally well written in the second half, still do not do anything new or interesting in terms of gameplay to keep the player engaged. So I am not surprised when some folks bounce off. The hate though is beyond overblown.
And another perfect point. No matter what anyone at Square does, there will always be a group of people who will get up in arms. There are a number of folks in this thread that were already stating the game would be the single worst FF game after its first trailer. Some folks will write off a title without ever truly giving it a try if it has a certain style, gameplay gimmick, or director attached. They also tend to be the loudest and most angry/dismissive.
FF Fans
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
SlimeGooGoo
Banned
.
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Madflavor
Member
At the end of the day, all I care about is Final Fantasy being a "Good Game", rather than a "Good Final Fantasy". I agree about fans being up in arms no matter what, but I think that's a monster of Square's own making. There's this misconception that Final Fantasy games were always very different from each other since the beginning, which I don't think is entirely true. Each new entry in the series from I - X did play relatively the same, they just kept evolving the formula and trying new things, all while keeping the basic foundation of Turn Based Combat. XII (or technically XI) is where the games started to become wildly different than their predecessors with each new entry, to the point now where the series suffers from what I believe to be an identity crisis.
While it's true that plenty of franchises will always have a portion of the fanbase that isn't happy with a new entry for whatever reason, it's certainly exemplified in Final Fantasy. On top of that, while I stand by that I don't think the last few entries were "bad", I don't think they were a measure of high quality either. Final Fantasy was once known as the RPG King of Gaming due to it's rich worlds, colorful and memorable characters, great storytelling, and fun turn based gameplay. But many other RPGs and JRPGs have either rivaled or surpassed Final Fantasy in these areas in the past 20 years. All this is to say there are good reasons why Final Fantasy isn't the gaming juggernaut it used to be.
I do wonder where Final Fantasy would be today in terms of popularity and sales if they continued the trend of trying to evolve the formula, instead of constantly experimenting with new types of gameplay.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Built upon the Job Systems of FF3 and FF5 and combined turn based combat in real time. A mixture of the two and was fun to boot.
Fabieter
Member
Nobody is saying you can’t like whatever games you want, but FFIV thru FFX are widely regarded within the fanbase as the best era of Final Fantasy, and that is absolutely the consensus. Modern day FF games are a lot more divisive than they used to be.
Poll from 2020 with a sample size of 450k votes (Japan only)
Japan Votes For Its Favorite Final Fantasy Games And Characters
Debates about the best Final Fantasy games have been drawn out for years on end now – with fans going back and forth about which title broke the franchise, saved it, or was some sort of cult classi…
One particularly large poll from Reddit:
35th Anniversary Poll
The Best Final Fantasy games revealed - as ranked by thousands of fans | RPG Site
Thousands of you had your say - and now he's the best Final Fantasy games, ranked. And since you chose 'em, you can't complain.
I agree that it’s toxic to tell anyone they’re wrong for liking any FF game. But toxic to say the games aren’t as good as they used to be? Definitely not.
It's not true that ff iv through ff x is loved by most people. FF 8 is one of the most hated games in the franchise.
Than tell me what's so special about ffx compared to old final fantasy and compared to the new one.
Imo if you like the post ff x ones you also have to hate ff x as well.
To the polls you posted. I made the experience that most people just favor their first final fantasy and trash the others which again is completely toxic.
If they go back to turn based combat systems I hope they do something in the vein of ff x-2. FF X is the worst turn based final fantasy we have.
Fabieter
Member
Well this is the best turn based combat system in the series so at least they have that.
Faust
Perpetually Tired
That is where I will disagree respectively. It was more difficult to fully change the combat system back in the day, especially in under a year - but the systems for FF1-3 were vastly different from one another.
FF1 had limited time spells, your attacks would not automatically go onto another enemy after the one you targeted died, and your party make up could not be changed unless you started a new game.
FF2 completely altered the way leveling and class make up worked. You leveled up everything dependent on what attacks you used, what spells you used, and how effective they were. None of the characters had a defined class, but were dependent and as efficient as the time you put into grinding them up and what you did with them. It also removed the "limited time" spells and switched it to a mana based system.
FF3 added jobs that had to be leveled independently from each other and allowed for a constantly changing party make up dependent on player choice.
FF4 added Active Time Battle which was as large of a change to how turn-based worked as FF7 to FF7R was, but for its time IMO.
Sure, they were all forms of Turn-Based battles, but they played vastly different from one another to the point of, at the time, being nearly unrecognizable. Compare that to Dragon Quest where it mostly stayed the same from entry to entry with a few minor changes like adding more playable characters.
I find it to be more common in games that have been ongoing for 30+ years with large changes between entries. From Zelda and Metroid to even Mario. The longer a franchise continues, the more hostile/toxic and splintered its fanbases will be. Just looking at some of the conversations around Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword, you would swear that the devs kicked the player's puppies in the face from the hostile reactions they had.
As for JRPG supremacy, I would argue that there really isn't *any* JRPG that is truly supreme in the modern gaming world. It is a niche genre these days. Though it certainly doesn't help that the wait between major entries of Final Fantasy are so long that you could see a person have a baby and watch them at every stage of their life (Baby to Grade School to High School to Working adult) with every release. Meanwhile games like Trails, Tales of, and more release far more often. I would definitely love to see Square stop chasing top of the line graphics and release entries more often than what they do.
Even when they did, nothing had come close to FF7's sales numbers. A number of the games that experimented with new types of gameplay have grown to either being some of the highest selling or the second highest selling (14) in the franchise history. If there wasn't any financial incentive for them to keep experimenting, they would have stopped it long ago. Clearly it is working to some degree.
K2D
Banned
..and yet FF is in an order of magnitude more relevant than DOOM, even with the recent resurgence.
I'm curious though as to why you need to-drive by on FF though? I HAVE some thoughts on as to why..
Go_Ly_Dow
Member
Lots of good points. Perhaps what's more divisive than combat that can make or break franchise popularity into the mainstream is open world vs linear. I often think how a game like XV which had a lot of reviews ranging from mediocre/good/great still managed to break the 10mil sales mark, albeit a slow crawl to get there. Also I see a lot of hype for Rebirth just because it's semi-open world.
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Riposte
Member
I find the centering of criticisms of Yoshi-P being based around "turn based" to be misguided. Most FF games are technically not turn-based and most FF and SQEX fans have shown they are perfectly fine with battle systems which lean towards hybrid or action or MMO-ish. I would go as far as to say the issue is not directly tied to combat systems at all.
Yoshi-P is basically an "anti-creative" influence. His modus operandi is to polish every aspect of a game into a perfected consumer-friendly 'product', where the uniqueness of that product is pushed off into superficial and referential aspects. Once you see this, it won't matter what kind of game he is making or changing, every decision will fit this model.
As this kind of developer, if you encounter anything 'strange' or 'frustrating' about a game or genre, then you grind it away (over time, if its a game with updates and expansions), so there's no friction. You appeal to fans by listening to a checklist of superficial desires and give it back to them in an even more superficial way. It just has to look cool.
FF and JRPGs in general will often rush to include 'weird' mechanics to stick out, but it's precisely these which will be striped away in a Yoshi-P game. In its place, you will just get an even more flashy visual - such as a cinematic set piece of playing as the summon into a summon cutscene ("what's more Final Fantasy than that!?").
You won't get Final Fantasy Tactics's Ivalice, but you will get a crude approximation of Game of Thrones (what had mass appeal in the '10s) with a totally worthless 'political map' that has nothing to do with the plot, so you get the vague feeling of FFT or Ogre setting complexity.
The messiness of MMORPGs will be cleaned up and packed into a perfected formula of weekly tokens and lockouts and every expansion will have the exact types of content, to the point where you could just take most of those powerpoint slides and just change the names and numbers a little. What unique changes there will be, will be along the lines of making the jobs less 'frustrating' to play (and more similar to each other), in exchange for more flashy visuals.
Personally I think he is an awful fit for the series, because I want Final Fantasy to be weird. It's a small miracle he made a below-average DMC-like and not a Skyrim clone (which is what I predicted he would about 10 years ago). I also don't have any more patience with him after he tried to play the victim regarding western journos being mean to JRPGs, while echoing their arguments in the very same interviews.
Yoshi-P is basically an "anti-creative" influence. His modus operandi is to polish every aspect of a game into a perfected consumer-friendly 'product', where the uniqueness of that product is pushed off into superficial and referential aspects. Once you see this, it won't matter what kind of game he is making or changing, every decision will fit this model.
As this kind of developer, if you encounter anything 'strange' or 'frustrating' about a game or genre, then you grind it away (over time, if its a game with updates and expansions), so there's no friction. You appeal to fans by listening to a checklist of superficial desires and give it back to them in an even more superficial way. It just has to look cool.
FF and JRPGs in general will often rush to include 'weird' mechanics to stick out, but it's precisely these which will be striped away in a Yoshi-P game. In its place, you will just get an even more flashy visual - such as a cinematic set piece of playing as the summon into a summon cutscene ("what's more Final Fantasy than that!?").
You won't get Final Fantasy Tactics's Ivalice, but you will get a crude approximation of Game of Thrones (what had mass appeal in the '10s) with a totally worthless 'political map' that has nothing to do with the plot, so you get the vague feeling of FFT or Ogre setting complexity.
The messiness of MMORPGs will be cleaned up and packed into a perfected formula of weekly tokens and lockouts and every expansion will have the exact types of content, to the point where you could just take most of those powerpoint slides and just change the names and numbers a little. What unique changes there will be, will be along the lines of making the jobs less 'frustrating' to play (and more similar to each other), in exchange for more flashy visuals.
Personally I think he is an awful fit for the series, because I want Final Fantasy to be weird. It's a small miracle he made a below-average DMC-like and not a Skyrim clone (which is what I predicted he would about 10 years ago). I also don't have any more patience with him after he tried to play the victim regarding western journos being mean to JRPGs, while echoing their arguments in the very same interviews.
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Raven117
Member
Correct. Thank you.
The rest was just jacking around and poking fun at some “consensus.”
Raven117
Member
nails my feelings on it.
They had a great story in there… first few hours were just excellent. Then just slid back into the tired old jrpg tropes.
I feel like two different teams made it.
Power Pro
Gold Member
Please let us reignite the feeling that was FFX
I'd like to reignite those FFX-2 feelings
Synless
Member
Some of you are fucking crazy. There hasn’t been a bad mainline Final Fantasy ever. There just have been ones that were to your tastes and those that were not.
I have loved them all. Sucks for those of you who can’t enjoy the variety. Quit pretending the ones you didn’t like were shit though, because they were not, they ranged between really good and fantastic.
I have loved them all. Sucks for those of you who can’t enjoy the variety. Quit pretending the ones you didn’t like were shit though, because they were not, they ranged between really good and fantastic.
Madflavor
Member
I don't necessarily disagree with that you're saying, but what I'm really talking about is that they all used Turn Based Combat. At the time when you played a new Final Fantasy, you knew you were getting Turn Based. As the series progressed they experimented and evolved how to level up and customize your characters, and how combat flowed, but the fundamentals of Turn Based Combat remained there. But when FFXII came out, that's when the new single player entries really started to become vastly different from one another, because they were outright changing the entire combat system. I'm not trying to minimalize the changes and improvements they made from I - X. However in terms of combat, I - X have a lot more similarities to one another, than XII - XVI have with each other.
I don't know what to say anymore man. You're position on this seems pretty at odds with reality. It's not like I'm pulling this out of my ass. You look at both Japan and the West, and entries like VI, VII, IX, and X have never stopped topping out in the upper chain of fan favorite lists and polls, for decades. I can say with full confidence that 1994 - 2001 was the most beloved era of Final Fantasy. You're correct that not every FF game in that era was a home run hit with the fans. At the time FFVIII was a bit of a black sheep in the series. The thing is, it was a black sheep that was sandwiched between two brilliant entries within a 2-3 year time span. Compare that to today where it's been one divisive entry after another, with 5-7 year development time between each one.
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SakkanartSilentJealousy
Member
Give it to FF9, FF12 teams. Do they still exist?
Majima Everywhere System
Member
No, older dudes, 70+, the series was handed to the wrong people with 10.
The old FFs were an interpretation of D&D shit. What is it now? Anime action trash. Give it to someone in there 90s that knows what the fuck is up, and people will return.
The old FFs were an interpretation of D&D shit. What is it now? Anime action trash. Give it to someone in there 90s that knows what the fuck is up, and people will return.
Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
I will admit, I fell in love with it at first, then I hated it after. Put it down, then I loved it again because I soaked in the entire combat system for 2 hours, straight. Just trying to get good at it. Shiiiiit. I switch between characters like an absolute maniac and que attacks like an assembly of death and destruction. it's awesome, even on the hardest. Story is a little, eh? Here and there, but It was enjoyable, overall. I think I enjoy the simplicity of the original, more. Especially if you mod up the original with the new enhanced backgrounds on the PC version with the HD polys and chibi polys... omfg. Unbeatable experience, with the high quality music files.
Kokoloko85
Member
FF16 was way better than FF15 and FF13 so they are just haters in my book lolMe, seeing people hating on Final Fantasy 16 after I enjoyed it:
Now I know what Starfield enjoyers feel like.
Kokoloko85
Member
FF11, 12, 14 and FF15 didnt have traditional combat either, so not sure why people act like FF16 is the first to change the combat
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
I am happy there are some people that can appreciate The Spirits Within.
kunonabi
Member
Having rewatched it recently the biggest problem with TSW is the fact that it's a movie instead of a TV/streaming show.
Fabieter
Member
Well I dont actually who think which final fantasy is the best one because its an opinion and therefore legitimate. I played and liked every mainline titles. I even played the endgame part of final fantasy x which I rarely do.
But if I get your logic the right way.
People prefer the old games so that has to mean it had a drop off in quality which is ridiculous.
Well lets I love the doc series played all of them multipe times I prefer dmc 3 by a longshot but I would never call the others worse just because I prefer the third one that would be weird.
Synless
Member
That movie is ok, but directly stated mainline which I intended to mean the games only.
Chukhopops
Member
There’s a lot of design space between « turn-based with menus » and « whatever they went for with FFXVI », it’s not one or the other necessarily.
The problem with FF16 gameplay isn’t what has been removed, but what is left. You have party members not mattering, no class roles, one playable character, equipment not mattering, skills being simple cooldowns since there’s no resource management, elements not mattering, items not mattering because the game is piss easy.
The discussion about this was poisoned from the beginning because too many people think JRPG gameplay is either Dragon Quest or FFXVI. What about all those games which manage to have RT combat without dumbing everything down?
Synless
Member
I am saying to you, you are wrong. Reviews and/or user scores agree, across the whole spectrum of the series, your overall wrong. I won’t argue with you further, try harder next time.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
two of those are MMO. I played 12 because it had what was essentially an iteration of turn based combat, and I liked the gambit system. I did not play 15 because I did not like the demo.
NightmareFarm
Member
Whoever it is needs to bring the series back to its roots. Enough with the experimental gimmicks that have been ongoing for over a decade, I don't know why the developers keep pushing them so hard. All we want is just a no-nonsense straightforward turn based adventure for once again like FF10 and prior. No DMC rip offs, no road trips with an emo boy band.
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Fbh
Member
Pretty much.
FFXVI was average not because "real time" but because it just wasn't a particularly good game in any way:
- The sidequests mostly suck and feel like filler MMO stuff: That has nothing to do with combat
- The story starts of really interesting but then devolves into tired JRPG tropes: that has nothing to do with combat
- The world is boring because there's largely nothing to do or find, exploration is rarely rewarded and mostly just gives you money which is literally useless as well as crafting materials which you have in the hundreds because there's nothing to use them on: That has nothing to do with combat.
- The world is also pretty boring consisting of tons of empty fields. The cool looking cities are mostly reserved for cutscenes (except for a few linear missions) but during actual gameplay you mostly go to generic small towns.
- Dungeons are linear corridors connecting one fight to another: that has nothing to do with combat
- The game locks you into playing on what feels like a "very easy" difficulty: That is related to combat but there's nothing about it being real time which prevented them for having multiple difficulty options
- The economy is broken. There are stores and money but there's nothing to use your money on because the piss easy difficulty negates the need for healing items and the crafting gives you better equipment than anything sold in stores
- The crafting is just a basic linear upgrade path where you regularly unlock new gear that's better than the previous gear in every way. There's no decision making or character building, you don't decide between more defence vs offence or magic damage vs physical damage or speed vs power.
Even the combat is very lacking, it's not as easy as "turn based good, real time bad". There are good and bad real time systems and XVI just doesn't have a particularly good one:
- Locked into very easy mode for no reason
- No weapon variety. Even proper action games like DMC and Bayonetta have multiple weapons and playstyles while here you are locked into using a sword. There aren't even different types of swords.
- Boring progression, there aren't that many abilities to unlock and the number of active skills you can equip is pretty limited, somewhere past the middle point skill points become irrelevant because you can max out enough abilities to fill up your skill slots.
- There's an elemental angle to abilities which feels wasted because you can do normal damage to any enemy with any element. Even enemies like the fire bomb which have historically been resistant or immune to fire take regular damage from your fire skills.
- Boring "meta", just spam stagger abilities until the enemy is staggered then spam damage abilities. Works on literally every enemy.
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Madflavor
Member
I will admit, I fell in love with it at first, then I hated it after. Put it down, then I loved it again because I soaked in the entire combat system for 2 hours, straight. Just trying to get good at it. Shiiiiit. I switch between characters like an absolute maniac and que attacks like an assembly of death and destruction. it's awesome, even on the hardest. Story is a little, eh? Here and there, but It was enjoyable, overall. I think I enjoy the simplicity of the original, more. Especially if you mod up the original with the new enhanced backgrounds on the PC version with the HD polys and chibi polys... omfg. Unbeatable experience, with the high quality music files.
Remake is where Square finally got the formula right when it comes to blending Action with Turn Based combat. It's easily the best battle system they've made in the past 20 years. Least in my opinion. I absolutely loved Remake.
Fabieter
Member
Well you have a point here. I would love final fantasy to bring alot of these things back for a future entry. I enjoyed 16 for what it was but I dont need another one in the same vein but I also don't need classic final fantasy to be brought back.
As for me I just want xvii so be something new and I would love it to be more of a RPG again because for all the stuff they did right that was clearly missing in XVI.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Fair. However if you want to pull the mainline card I can't take people seriously when they say that they loved 13, 15 and 16. Takes a very special person to love those games. From a gameplay standpoint the games are ok but from a FF standpoint they are awful IMO.
I can give 13 and 15 some slack but FF16 as a mainline entry is going to forever be a big insult to what Final Fantasy always has been. The fanbase has always been divisive but FF16 takes the cake between "I love everything about it" to "This isn't Final Fantasy".
It's already become the Elephant in the Room at this point.
Synless
Member
Dude, it’s litetally fucking rated high in both user and published scores. Your opinion is the minority flat out and again, as a statement of fact however, it’s wrong.
As an opinion sure, your right, it’s your opinion after all. Having an opinion is fine, but its so overwhelmingly the minority you have to step back and just stop.