I personally would like to see the Final Fantasy series go back to it's roots a bit. I thought that the battle mechanics in 13 were pretty good but the story telling has really become sad. If I was to make my own Final Fantasy game here are some things I would do.
Character:
1. Get rid of the teen anxt. (Or how ever it's spelled.) This may work well in Japanese culture, but if you really want to see in the west you have to remember that a good amount of your fans have been so for years and are adults. If you feel the need to make children your main characters that's fine, but the majority of us don't want to actually deal with whiny teenage protagonists. Give them at least some maturity.
2. Try and give your characters some personality that stands out a bit. Vaneel was the closest to hit this mark in 13 but the rest seemed to be some what bland. Character personality seems to all ways seems to be Square's weak point. In most of the series the "party" characters seem to have some pack mentality. Only a hand full of characters seem to ever stick out in my mind as interesting whether I hated them or not at least they were memorable. (exe.) Cid-07, Zell-08, Locke-06, Bathier-12.
3. Give me a villian I can actually love to hate. This is another major flaw in the franchise. For the most part the villains are usually so blah. The only two villians I can think of that were pure awsome were Kefka from 06 and Dr. Cid from 12. Sadly in 12 Cid should have been the main villian instead of Vane.
As for Kefka, I may be in the minority here, but Kefka is probably the best FF villain ever. By the end of the game if you didn't hate that bastard then you should have your self checked in to a rubber room before you do something the rest of us will regret. I mean seriously the dude poisons a town's drinking well and dances around while doing it. On top of that the guy kind of looks like a clown, and as we all know clowns are pure evil.
Story:
This has all ways been hit or miss with the series. Even though my first one was 7 I still think that 6 had the over all best plot. Almost all characters had sub-plot to it and really there was no "main" character. The main character was who ever the story was about at the time. 13 I think tried to emulate that idea but failed with over all weak characters.
A lot of people complained about the game being to linear, but really almost all of them are linear. You have to get to point a in order to continue to point b. It's just that 13 seemed to be a rail road for most of the game; much like 10 was. The older games just did a better job of covering up the linearity of the game with world maps and side quests.
Music:
Please. For the love of all that's holy. Get Nobuo Uematsu back. His music is iconic to the franchise and is seriously missed. I don't have anything against the composers that did the last two games but to me Final Fantasy isn't the same with out his music.
These are just some things I would do if I made a Final Fantasy game. Square needs to take a look back at what made their previous games great before making another one. I understand that things change and it doesn't help that they have lost a good number of their Final Fantasy staff over the years, but really Squeenix rather then just making remake after remake of the games that did really well, why not learn from them and make a really awesome new game built off of the ideas of your predecessor games. Namely good story and interesting/deep characters.
Character:
1. Get rid of the teen anxt. (Or how ever it's spelled.) This may work well in Japanese culture, but if you really want to see in the west you have to remember that a good amount of your fans have been so for years and are adults. If you feel the need to make children your main characters that's fine, but the majority of us don't want to actually deal with whiny teenage protagonists. Give them at least some maturity.
2. Try and give your characters some personality that stands out a bit. Vaneel was the closest to hit this mark in 13 but the rest seemed to be some what bland. Character personality seems to all ways seems to be Square's weak point. In most of the series the "party" characters seem to have some pack mentality. Only a hand full of characters seem to ever stick out in my mind as interesting whether I hated them or not at least they were memorable. (exe.) Cid-07, Zell-08, Locke-06, Bathier-12.
3. Give me a villian I can actually love to hate. This is another major flaw in the franchise. For the most part the villains are usually so blah. The only two villians I can think of that were pure awsome were Kefka from 06 and Dr. Cid from 12. Sadly in 12 Cid should have been the main villian instead of Vane.
As for Kefka, I may be in the minority here, but Kefka is probably the best FF villain ever. By the end of the game if you didn't hate that bastard then you should have your self checked in to a rubber room before you do something the rest of us will regret. I mean seriously the dude poisons a town's drinking well and dances around while doing it. On top of that the guy kind of looks like a clown, and as we all know clowns are pure evil.
Story:
This has all ways been hit or miss with the series. Even though my first one was 7 I still think that 6 had the over all best plot. Almost all characters had sub-plot to it and really there was no "main" character. The main character was who ever the story was about at the time. 13 I think tried to emulate that idea but failed with over all weak characters.
A lot of people complained about the game being to linear, but really almost all of them are linear. You have to get to point a in order to continue to point b. It's just that 13 seemed to be a rail road for most of the game; much like 10 was. The older games just did a better job of covering up the linearity of the game with world maps and side quests.
Music:
Please. For the love of all that's holy. Get Nobuo Uematsu back. His music is iconic to the franchise and is seriously missed. I don't have anything against the composers that did the last two games but to me Final Fantasy isn't the same with out his music.
These are just some things I would do if I made a Final Fantasy game. Square needs to take a look back at what made their previous games great before making another one. I understand that things change and it doesn't help that they have lost a good number of their Final Fantasy staff over the years, but really Squeenix rather then just making remake after remake of the games that did really well, why not learn from them and make a really awesome new game built off of the ideas of your predecessor games. Namely good story and interesting/deep characters.
