Time for a rant from a disappointed fan.
Folks, the last good Final Fantasy game came out ten years ago for the Playstation 2. Since then Square's NEVER been true to their own formula outside remakes and it's been an unerringly downhill slide.
Final Fantasy X-2: Decently innovative gameplay, but a needlessly convoluted and metagamey system whose logic is unclear compared with that of the first game. The "Charlie's Angels" thing has inspired a lot of drooling fanboys and cosplayers over the skimpy, colorful outfits, but I don't think anybody really enjoyed putting up with it all through the game. It was just obnoxious.
Final Fantasy XI: A shallow, boring MMORPG that only die-hard Final Fantasy fans really played a whole lot and only those who were crazy enough to actually enjoy mastering it stuck with. Flat-out ignored by the majority of the fanbase for its departure from the series proper.
Final Fantasy XII: There's a lot of people who'll disagree with me here, but it's terrible. I like what they did with Ivalice and everything, but the characters are boring and there's nothing within them to make the player really connect with them. All their appeal is pretty much centered around Balthier's finest imitation of James Bond and Fran's breasts. Outside this they exhibit little growth or development and many of their motivations are barely clear. Vaan and Penello were shoehorned in by editorial mandate; Bache was actually supposed to be the main character, but it was decided that he was ACTUALLY TOO MANLY and instead of doing the SMART thing and just changing his character design they decided to make up two more characters and cram them into the plot. The game's system itself is so broken that Square completely re-did the license board system for the international re-release, opting to feature more of a job system in order to help characters become more distinct since there was absolutely no difference between them otherwise and players could happily ignore most of them. Quickenings are so busted that boss fights are intentionally set up around abusing the crap out of them. I could rant more, but this is just overall a dissatisfying game thanks to the schizophrenic production it went through over five years. I can see what they were trying to do, building a complex story of political intrigue and imperialism and a world where everybody thinks they're doing the right thing rather than where the bad guy is just evil for no reason, but it came off as way too impersonal and detached at its best moments and just flat-out boring the rest of the time. It's not what people really wanted out of the Final Fantasy series and it's not up to the standards of quality the series is usually known for.
What else did Square give us in the meantime? The Last Remnant, a game where you issue vague SUGGESTIONS to the characters, cross your fingers, and hope they do something helpful. Before that, Kingdom Hearts, which was awesome and also around the time of Final Fantasy X, and Kingdom Hearts 2, which is a horrible mess of plot-holes, a boring story since all the best questions that they raised were wasted on Chain of Memories, and more of a collection of features than a game.
Finally, NOW we get Final Fantasy 13, the game that has the balls to say, "you know all that RPG stuff we usually do? Like, the detailed setting, the characters we usually interact with and the towns that you're usually able to go and visit and explore and crap? We're not doing any of that." Instead, you move forward through prettily dressed linear corridors, fight monsters, buy items at SAVE POINTS--there are NO SHOPS in the game--watch cutscenes, rinse, and repeat for hours and hours and hours. It's like they had such a huge problem developing this game with today's production standards that they scaled it way the hell back to the barest basics of what a Final Fantasy game could possibly be, and I guarantee that when the pretty visuals wear off there's going to be a lot of angry fans.
Square's been on the downhill slide for quite a while, and most fans will agree they haven't made a proper Final Fantasy in the last DECADE, so it's no wonder they haven't been able to grow their fanbase. All this press release tells me is that they're stupid, don't understand what their fans want, and now are simply openly admitting to it rather than pretending and stalling--and that's what they've been doing for the last ten years. Anybody ever wonder where Kingdom Hearts 3 is? News flash: It's on the PSP and it's called Birth by Sleep. What do you want to bet they did this to avoid updating it to the new hardware standards of the Xbox 360 and PS3 as much as humanly possible, opting for the old "safe" standards that they knew from the PS2 instead?
The fact of the matter is that Square hasn't been interested in what they do for a long, long time. Now their head says they want to adopt more "western" ideas. Let's get something straight here, people--we don't WANT them to do that. NOBODY wants them to do that. Nobody's ASKING them to. If I want to play Dragon Age, I'll go and play Dragon Age, not Final Fantasy. I play Final Fantasy for an original, detailed, and fantastical setting and a strong story centered around explicit narrative, character growth, and development, with the main focus being on fairly broad themes but at least exploring different ones between each game's setting. That's the appeal of their franchise, and it's a completely different product from what other, more western RPGs represent. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the way these games are built, except that they have consistently FAILED TO DELIVER for TEN YEARS. That's Duke Nukem Forever levels of fail, folks. All the while they've been pandering--PANDERING, condescendingly at that, to their fanbase rather than actually trying to make good products with mass appeal.
If they change the formula now and try to imitate someone else's style, I can tell you what's going to happen. They'll blow millions on art assets and a new game engine, then release their game to a horrible reception as fans collectively scratch their heads and feel dissatisfied and empty and non-fans continue to ignore the game out of the same reasons they ALWAYS did. Square goes bankrupt, and we really WILL have seen the Final Final Fantasy. I may sound like I'm exaggerating here, especially since they're a fairly major publisher, but crazier things have happened. Square's not as big a company as they seem to be and put themselves in serious financial trouble over a bad MOVIE once upon a time. It's not that far-fetched that the next decade could see them finally bury themselves in a deep grave with poor business decisions.
