[GRWC8] A Not-So-Final Fantasy [Article]
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 2:18 am
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Anonymous wrote:A Not-So-Final Fantasy
I don’t like Final Fantasy. Pretty much all JRPGs actually but Final Fantasy is the main culprit and the main reason. The Japanese are all eccentric, crazy folk and when they do craziness well they do it very well, take Elite Beat Agents and the forthcoming Wii title, Captain Rainbow for example; madder than a bag of hammers. JRPGs are rarely tongue in cheek though and take themselves far too seriously. It seems to me that with each game, of which there must be nearly twenty, they try and out-epic the last game to the point of lunacy. Their infatuation with the lady boy characters and their crazy, super-styled hair is worrying but then again some people in Britain love Lenny Henry so courses for horses and all that. Final Fantasy “It’ll be out this year” XIII is something else though, the trailer shown at Microsoft’s E3 conference was just a mess of genderless adverts for ridiculously impractical clothing going around a city that would never work in the real world using impractical weaponry against impractical enemies. All the time showing off how awesome they look in slow motion.
It told us nothing about what the game might actually be like although it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think it’ll be the same as the last game. The trailer featured less than a second of what probably wasn’t gameplay but it doesn’t matter too much. It’s now so overly complicated that it has no appeal to anyone outside of the very core fans that have played the games since the original. They’re not even trying to attract new players or even a western audience (something not necessarily required but would certainly make sense) instead Square Enix are giving fans increasingly prettier wank-fodder until sometime in 2015 when a load of cosplaying douche bags will wait outside their local import shop to pick up their first orgasm in seven years.
Now the worst offender and probably the biggest non-Gizmondo fault gaming has to offer is turn based combat. An utterly boring mechanic born as a result of the technological restrictions of the time which is fair enough but to keep using it until well into the PS2 generation is criminally lazy. It’s changed though and I’m unaware of how well the new combat system works but as I haven’t heard anyone raving about it and being unable to hear the Final Fantasy nerds deep underground in their mum’s basements I’m going to assume it’s an above average mechanic at best.
Now I’m not exactly demanding change as it would have be an incredibly drastic one to garner a sale from me and why should they change it best solely on my opinion? God knows it sells. However they need to do something major and rethink their franchise, it’s in the Top 5 biggest games series without a doubt but they have to do something new. Imagine the publicity Final Fantasy XIV would gather amongst the gaming press if it were to actually do something different other than teenagers taking down something evil. Apart from simplifying the series and basing it more in reality (I do realise Fantasy is in the title smart-arse) I wouldn’t know where to begin. Actually, I might do, let the male characters grow some balls or at least let them drop.
All comments and feedback welcome. Thank you.