How could Final Fantasy be fixed?

[The Abhorrent]

"Back to the Basics" is probably the simplest way to put it.

Perhaps I use it as an example a bit too often, but Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii more or less is the type of game which I feels captures the elusive "classic JRPG feel" which the Final Fantasy series established ages ago but has somehow lost over the past decade.

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As for how to accomplish this, on a more step-by-step basis:

Less focus on high-definition graphics
Not only is a MASSIVE cost-saver, a simpler (but stylized) art design holds up much better over the years. But more importantly, it allows for more content to be built into the game; the cost savings from not using HD graphics can directly be put into making more content, and also refining what's already there.

Large setting
In all honesty, the "overworld" is probably gone the way of the do-do. However, large (with plenty of breadth to allow for exploration) locations are an acceptable substitute; give players something to do other than progress straight down a hallway and they'll have plenty of fun. By the way, MUCH easier to do without HD graphics.

Simple but effective storytelling
Nothing too complex, just a well-done story. This tends to mean many cliches are used, but the idea is to develop them to the point that the audience don't notice it. In fact, the net result tends to be the reason the cliches became so in the first place; let the derivative works get compared and criticized to the proper example which the developer sets.

Charming characters
Lighten up on the melodrama, allow characters to be optimistic once in a while. More "sophisticated" stories often end up overly dark and unnecessarily complex, and right now that's just not work out. Go back to the basics, with more light-hearted (but not too annoying) characters; getting the right balance can be tricky.

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In essence, it comes down to making a "good story". While classic tales can seem a bit cliche at times, there's a good reason for that - they didn't rely on the cliches, they created them.

Final Fantasy did it before.
Now they need to find out how to do it again.

 

[Signa]

They need to slash all the grandness to the bone. I've been playing FFV and FFVI on my GBA, and they still are good games. The ATB system was simple and effective, and while it was in 2D, I wasn't afraid to cast certain spells because they took too long to play out for the damage dealt.

If 3D is a must, then put the enemies on the map, so that players can avoid them. Nothing is worse about random battles than just trying to get somewhere, and constantly getting stopped. The enemy intro sequence takes too long in the early 3D FF games, let alone the battle.

As others have said, better stories are a must. They don't have to be mind-blowing, or award winning material, but they need to be something the player/viewer can be interested in. I stopped playing FFX about 4 hours in because nothing was happening, and I've never played a FF game afterwards. If you're not playing the game for the gameplay, then you have to have a story to back it up. You can't skimp on both and still have a good game.

 

[tzimize]

I've been thinking...

I've done a TON of complaining about Final Fantasy in recent years. I've also HEARD a ton of complaining about Final Fantasy in recent years. While the newer games still have their devoted fans, it seems that most American fans are of the mind that the series has been on the decline for a while.

So, how could it be better? And I'm wondering about specifics here. When I hear people complain about the series, they usually say things like "stop making the games suck," or "fire your writing staff," but that's not really constructive criticism.

So, specifically, what could be done to make the series better?

Nothing. The cultural gap is too big.

 

[Something Amyss]

Give the fans what they really want...A remake of Final Fantasy VII every couple years.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Perhaps I use it as an example a bit too often, but Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii more or less is the type of game which I feels captures the elusive "classic JRPG feel" which the Final Fantasy series established ages ago but has somehow lost over the past decade.

It's funny you should say that since Xenoblade Chronicles felt like a low budget Final Fantasy XII complete with MMO fetch quests.

 

[Winnosh]

Fire everyone.
Give the game series to Monolith
...
Profit

 

[Ipsen]

For me personally, make a battle system like in the newer games, but give the user more control.
Make it a bit more tactical.

Big open world that you actually walk on from place to place.

Lots of side quests/mini game/other stuff to do.
They can even keep the half magic/half sci-fi setting they've been keen on for sometime.

You know, all Squeenix needed to do was leave out auto-combat, and you'd have what you're asking for. It just comes down to the fact that it's still ends up a heavily menu-involved combat scheme.

Once I forced myself to stop using auto-combat for a long while, the tactics the game try to teach you come to light (and battles actually became fun, enough so for me to finish the game). From there, you learn to use auto when you don't have the reaction timing to get to the skill you need at the moment.

On topic, open worlds. I could bear all of the dullness of the story and its characters (XII laid that precedence for me) IF you could have field to romp around in. Boil it down, XIII was nearly all story and no distraction, so all the triteness of the story floats to the surface that much easier. Final Fantasy needs open worlds, because they just don't have good stories to tell anymore.

At least, I'm not holding any more faith in that.

 

[Foolery]

I wasn't aware Final Fantasy needed to be fixed, aside from XIII. Which they seem to be trying to do with Lightning Returns. Anyway, I like how the series changes up each entry. Keeps it interesting. I am very curious how XV will be. Looks quite a bit like Final Fantasy Type-0 style gameplay, which we never got a release of here in the west.

 

[KazeAizen]

Sooooo pretty much Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2?

Apparently not, since I didn't much care for 13. (Aside from the combat. If it had been tweaked a bit it would have been really fun I thought)

13-2 had a lot of potential to be fun, but it just didn't quite get there for me.
(I missed visual job/class changes, among other things)

What you described though was pretty much what they did in 13 and 13-2. Just saying.

 

[Ipsen]

They could let it die.

The talent that brought them through the first half of the series so far just isn't there anymore. Whether that is due to loss of personnel, complacency of individual developers, market pressure, all of the above or something else, I don't know... but I do think letting the series die would be doing the industry (and gamers in general) a solid.

You see I'm not so sure about that. There are several long running series that people think should die. However its a difference between the series that don't give and damn and do give a damn. For example the CoD devs obviously aren't really trying anymore with their franchise. However between Final Fantasies I can see that the devs are giving a damn and still care about making the games. Sure they don't always hit bullseyes but its obvious effort is being put into it. The reason I think they shouldn't is because we already have one company who has abandoned the series that essentially built them up and its a damn shame. The loss of Mega Man is terrible. So I don't think Square Enix should let the game series that essentially made them die. Whatever has been going over there recently though seems to be good things. Rebuilding their MMO, pushing out titles that have been in development hell for years. They still care. Capcom on the other hand. It doesn't care anymore. Why else would Keiji Inafune and Hideki Kamiya, people that made two of their biggest franchises, leave and make spiritual successors to their own creations?

I have to agree here, and for the simple reason that Squeenix did a massive eyebrow-raiser in rebuilding FFXIV. Sure, you can call it a move to buy them more time get their shit together in-house for the next console version final fantasy, but by virtue of principal, it takes some balls to scrap your obvious failure and remake it, and well at that.

Hell, considering how hard it is to even get timely patches out the door, this was a good move by Squeenix in my book.

 

[KazeAizen]

They could let it die.

The talent that brought them through the first half of the series so far just isn't there anymore. Whether that is due to loss of personnel, complacency of individual developers, market pressure, all of the above or something else, I don't know... but I do think letting the series die would be doing the industry (and gamers in general) a solid.

You see I'm not so sure about that. There are several long running series that people think should die. However its a difference between the series that don't give and damn and do give a damn. For example the CoD devs obviously aren't really trying anymore with their franchise. However between Final Fantasies I can see that the devs are giving a damn and still care about making the games. Sure they don't always hit bullseyes but its obvious effort is being put into it. The reason I think they shouldn't is because we already have one company who has abandoned the series that essentially built them up and its a damn shame. The loss of Mega Man is terrible. So I don't think Square Enix should let the game series that essentially made them die. Whatever has been going over there recently though seems to be good things. Rebuilding their MMO, pushing out titles that have been in development hell for years. They still care. Capcom on the other hand. It doesn't care anymore. Why else would Keiji Inafune and Hideki Kamiya, people that made two of their biggest franchises, leave and make spiritual successors to their own creations?

I have to agree here, and for the simple reason that Squeenix did a massive eyebrow-raiser in rebuilding FFXIV. Sure, you can call it a move to buy them more time get their shit together in-house for the next console version final fantasy, but by virtue of principal, it takes some balls to scrap your obvious failure and remake it, and well at that.

Hell, considering how hard it is to even get timely patches out the door, this was a good move by Squeenix in my book.

Not to mention how much it actually costs to make and maintain a large scale MMO. Blizzard makes it look easy because they systematically destroyed everyone else could eventually print money with the damn thing.

 

[piinyouri]

Sooooo pretty much Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2?

Apparently not, since I didn't much care for 13. (Aside from the combat. If it had been tweaked a bit it would have been really fun I thought)

13-2 had a lot of potential to be fun, but it just didn't quite get there for me.
(I missed visual job/class changes, among other things)

What you described though was pretty much what they did in 13 and 13-2. Just saying.

No open world though. And I did say the combat needed to be a little different.

If they are absolutely hell bent on keeping battles menu based (very likely as I remember reading an article somewhere were one of the devs admitted that he equates menus to strategy) then they should just give us the version from X-2.
It was an outright melee but a ton of fun.

 

[Rattja]

Well, what made the old games good? That's a good place to start.

Having a character that are actually interesting would be a good start.

A battle system which does not boil down to mashing X would also be nice.

Oh and where the hell did minigames go? I miss those =(
But not blitzball... don't ever do that again.

 

[Manji187]

1. Give the player loads of varied content to experience through actual gameplay.

2. Imagine the characters to be actual people and then check whether they truly behave like actual people would.

3. Never assume that the player is engaged with the characters/ story just because he/ she chose to play the game. Work to create engagement.

As a side note, I'm still waiting for another Vagrant Story style one-man (or woman) dungeon crawler. Maybe throw in some Metroidvania (collecting/ backtracking) and a hybrid battle system (Dissidia x Monster Hunter)? Maybe have the player select from a bunch of characters at the start and have him/ her play that character's version of the grand, overarching narrative?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Final Fantasy has never been good and has always needed to be fixed. The games have that typical boring and repetitive turn-based combat that just makes you navigate menus and nothing else. FFXII showed that every FF game could play itself with a few if-then-else statements (the gambits). If you want to do turn-based combat, it needs to be strategic or else it's just boring and slow.

 

[Scars Unseen]

You know what game had probably the absolute best implementation of the JRPG-style menu based combat system ever? Monster Girl Quest(and its two sequels). The game was linear in the extreme and had no random battles, but then turned those into a strength rather than a weakness by crafting each battle so as to present an actual challenge. You actually had to pay attention to what the enemy was doing and make use of all of your abilities to win. (By the way the Monster Girl Quest series is NSFW in the extreme, so be warned)

So I guess my answer is to bring things back to basics and ramp up the AI difficulty(not as in FF4's type of difficulty where everything just hits really hard and has a lot of hit points). Give characters special abilities and limited resources, and then make them use them.

Aside from that, I think FFIX had the right amount of openness, and FFX was probably the best implementation of the classic battle system. FFVI had the best cast, both in player characters and in villains, and I'm kind of digging FFXII International's Job System. Maybe somewhere in the middle of all that could be another great Final Fantasy game.

 

[cdemares]

I had some ideas, but after reading through, I realized there are a bunch of camps now. All of them want another go at an existing Final Fantasy. The answer, in retrospect, was obvious. Splinter the series.

Final Fantasy can stay around the VI era, because the old-timers will care more about the name.
Legacy of Dalmasca will give me what I want: political story-lines, a real-time open world and AI tactics.
Spiky Warriors will hover around the VII-X era, giving you cool cyberpunk worlds, romances, and fashion!
Final Fantasy Online will...continue doing it's thing I guess.
And finally, Nova Crystalis is just what you think. A continuing exploration of Crystariums and Paradigm systems.

Done. And there was peace in the galaxy.

 

[Raioken18]

Bravely Default is everything I wanted from a FF game.

The Job System rocks, hear me Squeenix, keep the Job System!

Frankly I don't care about moving in 3d that much, the Bravely Default system was just... everything I wanted from a FF game. It was such a welcome surprise from a title I wasn't expecting.

I mean yeah sure graphics and stuff are fun and you can keep stacking different game play styles on top of each other, but games are just about having fun and the turn based combat is a bit slower and allows you time to think about what you will do. I'm just so smitten with this game, lol.

 

[Eve Charm]

You can't fix final fantasy, It already went off the deep end. It's basically like Sonic, even if they can manage a good game people will still jump all over it saying how the entire series is crap now lumping it with it.

But if anything, Final fantasy still hasn't gone into space yet.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Bringing back the spirit that has been missing since Sakaguchi and Uematsu left would be the first thing, but since Mistwalker exists, I'd rather buy games from them. I still feel that Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey were the final two Final Fantasy games because they actually felt and played like what I expected a new FF game to.
Honestly I don't think Square can recapture what a lot of us loved about the older games and the attempts they've made have driven most of us away too much to care. Sad really when you think about it. Not for nothing but the Dissidia series was probably the last FF-tied games I enjoyed, and only because they weren't supposed to be actual parts of the series.
However, Square can keep making Kingdom Hearts games... they haven't really screwed them up yet.