[Editor's note: coonskin05 takes a look at the Final Fantasy series and tells us how he would change it as part of May's Monthly Musing topic. -- CTZ]
"Final Fantasy, have a seat. Your mother and me are worried about the kind of game you're becoming. We know you've been ... experimenting recently with different gameplay mechanics, and while some of them have made you a better game, others are isolating you from your fans. Is that really what you want to do to yourself?"
That is what I would say to Final Fantasy if I were its father. Final Fantasy is loved by millions, but recently the changes in the series have raised many an eyebrow. I know, however, for a game to stay relevant it has to do some things differently. So I would like to recommend Squeenix to implement the following changes to the series if they want FFXIII to be the best possible game it can be. Hit the jump to read on.
Battle System Final Fantasy's battle system seems to be something no one can agree on. Some people prefer the Active Time Battle seen in the majority of titles. Some like the true turn based style as seen in
FFX. Some deranged souls even enjoy the free roaming battles featured in
FFXII.
I have mulled over what the best combination of these mechanics are and I truly believe that
FFVII: Crisis Core has gotten it the closest. I agree with the free roaming people that just standing there scrolling through menus is boring, but I still believe the battles should be random. There are definitely things I would change about
Crisis Core's battle system. As many agreed, it seemed to be just an "X" button mashing affair. Instead of having to press the X button for every swing a la
Kingdom Hearts, simply selecting an attack button from a menu and then the character getting to attack on a set time schedule reflecting their speed, a la
Star Ocean, would be way easier on our thumbs.
Of course,
Crisis Core only had one playable character, which would be unacceptable for a real
Final Fantasy game. So how would the extra two or three characters in your team be controlled? By an AI with basic options you could choose for each character, none of that Gambit bull. And the ability to switch between characters on the fly, borrowing from
Star Ocean again. Finally, the DMW crap would have to go. The limit breaks would be gained as they are in
Final Fantasy VII & IX, a meter that builds as you take damage. The summons would go back to being just really powerful materia, again like
FFVII & FFIX.
World map The World Map is sadly disappearing from games recently, as seen in
FFX/FFX-2 and
Lost Odyssey. This makes me sad because the world map has always been a staple of the RPG genre, and needs to stay.
FFXII still did it wrong even though you actually traveled around the world instead of picking a place from a list.
Final Fantasy needs an actual World Map that you can roam around as you go location to location, like every title from
I to
IX.
Character Customization The recent trend of
Final Fantasy's has been that you are given a cast of characters and that any of them can be anything they want. Want the main character to be a white mage and the damsel in distress to be a powerhouse? With the Sphere Grid and License Board, this was possible. This seems like a step forward in gameplay mechanics, but I think it hurt the game in terms of plot development.
In my opinion, the reason
FFIV &
VI were regarded as having the best stories in the series is that each character had their own specific role and that was part of their being. Take that away and part of their personalities are being forsaken as well.
Setting Screw the Ivalice Alliance. Screw it. What made the old
Final Fantasy games so great is that each one was a separate entity from the others. A new world and cast of characters to fall in love with. Personally I never became too attached to Ivalice. Gaia I favored more but I still think it would be in the series' best interest to not stick with a given setting. Honestly I believe the more focus is put on developing the setting; the less effort is put on the characters background and overall plot.
Amount of Games This is one thing about the
Final Fantasy series we can all agree on. There are way too many spin off
Final Fantasy games coming out nowadays. Some I enjoy, such as
Final Fantasy Tactics and
Crisis Core. Regardless, it would be for the best if there were only the regular numbered games. Square-Enix is a huge, powerful company, if they want to do another kind of game they can name it something besides
Final Fantasy and still have it be a smash hit. The
Final Fantasy games are so big that they don't deserve to have attention be divided between tens of spin offs. I want
FF13, and after that
FF14, and so on.
There you go, my dream
Final Fantasy. I'm sure some of you will disagree with me, and I'm certainly not the God of
Final Fantasy (I believe that position goes to Ms. Bennett), so I'm open to suggestions of what you could do better.
Contest:
3:31 PM on 05.21.2008
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I would comment with something insightful, but it's 4:30 am and I know I would embarrass myself.
Ivalice is nice enough, but there certainly are a lot of games built on top of it.
And yes yes YES concerning character customization! I liked being locked into a character class. More freedom ended up meaning more unnecessary micro management, which was not fun.
But I think there is some merit in the way they're branching the franchise into different play styles. I'll go on again and say that FFCC:MLAAK is a pretty brilliant game and could really stand as the base build for a fleshed out and fresh excursion into the old worlds, or even a new one.
Otherwise, nice read and I definitely agree on the "GTFO Ivalice Alliance" thing.
On the battles, I'm kind of a purist and would prefer turn-based battle, however, i know it's considered outdated so Active-Time Battle would definitely work best for me.
Sony has no say as to how FF games are developed.
Nice post. Actually agreed on about everything you said. FF10 had to be my last favorite FF. After that, the games seemed to be a joke.
FINAL FANTASY 5
Job class system, old school ATB. Thats what i want. Give me that now!
I'm not sure the series can be saved at this point. FFXIII is not a game I plan on buying. After all these years I think they finally lost me.
Said in jest, my friend. I do completely disagree with you about XII in every category, and yes, I have played other FFs (1, 2, 3, 9, 10).
"The fate of the world can wait, now draw your card!!"
Also in FFX, everyone is pretty much locked in to their class by the sphere grid, except Kimahri who is the Blue Mage/Mime, my favorite character, and vastly underrated. I do think XII gave far too much freedom, because by endgame all of my characters could do everything, the only difference was how much I used them and what niche I wanted them to occupy. V & VI are def. my favorite as characters go, V because of the sick combinations you can make with job abilities and VI because all of the characters are different and while they're all capable of being powerful (I don't agree with the 'Worst FF Character' contests and all that, Relm and Strago can be as powerful as Sabin or Cyan) they're powerful in different ways, unlike FFXII.
All in all I think the essence of FF as a niche in RPGs is their tendency to try new/different things with pretty much each one, it keeps it fresh.
In closing, I know it's blasphemy as a fanboy-ish devotee to the series, but VII is my absolute least favorite, the graphics continually make me vomit all over myself, and it just really doesn't add much from VI as far as gameplay goes
I definatly agree on the customization issue though... though another reason i would throw in is the fact that having defined roles actually forces you to use most or all of your characters. Games like FFXII, FVIII and such are games that you could get through just fine by only picking three characters and sticking with them... very little reason to bother with the others except in a few cases like the last fight in FFVIII... Without the full customization, you have proper encouragement to use all the characters. Not to mention, personally, i'm very indecisive, and that becomes a problem when i'm being indecisive over a very trivial issues... like stuff as little significance as names can bug me... much less stuff like picking between certain skills (especially when i can't undo the action)
@braulio09
It was a little half and half... due to the lack of higher level sphere's that block your path, early on in the game you are pretty much forced into a single path... however, later in the game you get the sphere's needed to open other paths and thus can get customization of the characters... Kamari for instace was placed directly in the middle because he was meant to go on ANY path.
That probably sounds crappy but I've been tossing it around for awhile and it looks really really cool in my head.
+1 awesome-sauce to you.
If you want to make a new awesome Final Fantasy, then use the power and graphics of a modern system and the play style of the can't be bested classics. (ie FF4-FF7)
I personally thought "Lost Odyssey" was a better sequel to the Final Fantasy series, then XII was!
As I agree with some points mentioned, I do see the good part in SquareEnix doing bad, this gives opening to other RPG companies to do what they been sucking to do for years.
As for VI awesome story, awesome characters, awesome fun.
One of its problems is that it keeps the time between different people's turns at a constant instead of a variable, which, given your character has enough speed, allowed you to abuse the quick attack command to attack for like 3+ times when you should only be attacking once.
Active Time Battle is much harder to find loopholes for, but also does very little to factor in what action you're taking compared with your overall delay before your gauge restarts.
Round-based battle systems (set battle round, every character guaranteed to make at least one action per round) make a characters speed ranking virtually useless, as a character hitting for 500 at the beginning of the round will never have the chance to use his/her speed to keep up with someone hitting for 700 at the end of the round. With no way for a character to "lap" another character in turns, the 'hard-hitting but slow' will always be better than 'fast but weak'.
Personally my favorite battle system is the ones in Grandia. A simple, compact bar/ring that keeps everyone's (including your enemies) information all in a small space, but is still easy to know what's going on. It's closely linked to ATB system, as each character has to cover a certain distance before they can perform an action, and the rate you go across that area is determined by your speed. They also make spells/abilities take different amounts of time, depending on your familiarity with them, and you can delay enemies from casting dangerous spells by attacking them during their charge up time. It just seems to me like it's the most constant system that keeps both balance of characters and a decent amount of strategy in battles.
World maps, honestly, I can live without. The efficiency of point and click beats out "exit city, board airship, check coordinates on map, go to next city" any day. I can't count the amount of times I've fought so much stuff on the world map while on the way to my next area that by the time I got there, I had to turn back and go to the city inn and heal myself up.
Character customization is nice, the job systems in FF5/X-2 were some of the best of the series. So you can make Penelo weild weapons that are bigger than she even is? She'll never be as good at it as Basch would be with the same liscences, and Basch will never be as good as Penelo at healing everyone. You try and make someone into something they weren't built for, and you're gimping yourself. As far as I know, a characters stats are based on their level, not what liscences they have. FFX's system, however, was just plain broken once you got to the end of the game. Having every character with 255 of every stat is ridiculous.
I haven't played any of the Ivalice-based games except for FFXII, which I hated, so I can't say much about that. My *personal* preference would be for them to drop the Final Fantasy titles for all of them, and make Ivalice a stand-alone series.
Some Final Fantasy spinoffs are good, some are just to make money with a cheap game. Tactics could have lived with being a non-FF game, but Crisis Core and X-2 are both directly based on other FF games, and both would need the title to work as a game at all.
The battle system though was great in that title, but I would have preferred something a little simpler for my already "too much shit inside" brain.
I really don't mind my characters standing in a line while timers tick down or turns pass by. It like it that...a lot. Hell, X is still my favorite battle systems with the old ATB's running right up behind it. XII is a dismal behind even last place.
The problem for me is Square Enix. I understand them wanting to strive from strength to strength, the trouble is we only see this much attention go to the FF series.
Square Enix games catalogue lacks variety, and this is something they are only now starting to realise (cue their comments this week).
Dear Square, Atlus are beating your ass. Persona 3 was superb and acclaimed. Trauma Center was new and original, with a great sequel on the way. Odin Sphere was cool (yes I know its made by Vanillaware). Persona 4 is on the way. Suddenly I care less about Square, until they diversify their games more.
What would I like to see? Square put FF series on ice for a two to three years, concentrate on their forgotten hits and build some new IP, some in different genre than rpgs.
So more Front Mission, Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, Einhander. Even a new Live A Live game would be cool.
I want Front Mission Online ported to 360 and PS3, which would be a nice in a Chrome Hounds mold, even if it was an action game and not an rpg.
If Square want to hook up with outside talent, I'd say Ubisoft, Konami, Epic, Bethesda, Bioware or Take Two would be great, as these lot can create good action and rpg games.
I like your ideas, especially bringing back the world map. I'd like to add something though; they need to bring back secrets! Remember how many hidden things there were in the old FF games? That seems to have disappeared.
I've only played a very short bit of Star Ocean, so I can't really comment, but what about adding team-up attacks and spells like Chrono Trigger? You could have your specialized characters, and party management would come into play because if you didn't keep certain characters in your party, you couldn't use certain team-up attacks. Even so, those who don't participate in battle should still receive EXP so they are actually usable later down the line.
ALSO WANT REMAKE OF FF6 (and 7 [and chrono trigger{and SoM}])!!!!![/b][/big]
One thing I miss is how learning magic/skills was in the early games. FFIV you learned based on level. I'm okay with learning with Espers, Materia, and Equipment because those choices aren't as permanent (at least to me) as the Sphere Grid, Dress Sphere, or Gambit Board. Espers and Materia.
When you learn the skills/magic from Espers, Magic, or Equipment you change to another of the above if you realize you need to learn a different skill you desperately need to beat the next boss.
Ultimately tho the different iterations and evolutions of the FF games is a big part of what keeps me coming back.
It took me a while but I did actually got to like the battle system in FFXII. However I turned speed to max, menu paused the action, and took those stupid targeting lines away. Essentially making it more like a active time system. It worked nicely. I could see them making more use of a battle system like that in some form, if not another FF. I really like active time battle system but at the same time I like to have more to do in the battle (i.e. Mario & Luigi Super star saga).
Pretty much agree on all other fronts fully, except I really like Ivalice, but that's because I LOVE the original Final Fantasy Tactics.
But I think you missed the one way FF could truly redeem itself. I think remakes of 1 and 2 need to come out badly for the 360 and the wii. I mean, whats with the hate Squeenix?? I'm pretty sure they have every other system covered.
Ditch the metrosexual blonde. I mean it. It throws me off when the people involved in the "lovers angle" both look like females and the "male" looks prettier than the female.
Also:
i got to the last boss in ffx, and just realized i actually wanted all the characters to die. painfully.
so i deleted my save game.
I suck at BBCodes.
@vertice:
at least you felt that you wanted them to die. FFXII had bland characters (for me anyway). By the time I reached the final boss and handed him his ass and I was watching the ending, I was thinking: "That's it???"
This didn't feel so much like a "If you love it, change it", it felt more like "If you loved it, change it back". Every one of your ideas seemed like a step back for a series that is most notable (in my opinion) for its evolutionary changes. I know I'm in the minority here, but I honestly loved everything about FFXII's gameplay, especially the gambit system.
I don't know about you, but I always look forward to a new Final Fantasy because it's almost always a fresh experience, even with the direct sequels (for good or ill). Love FFXII I do, but I don't want the next Final Fantasy to be like it, much in the same way I don't want it to go back to being FFVI (except maybe in plot).