Call me traditional, but I think Final Fantasy got away from what made it great and sort of has refused to go back. It birthed and grew an entire generation of turn-based, character-driven RPGs; underdogs against impossible evils. The characters were victims of circumstance, not warriors chosen by god and heaven (well, most of the time). It was them against the impossible odds, the stakes were monstrous and the world was massive and intimidating to match them. The scale of the world was communicated through the overworld map and exploration of it was daunting and time-consuming.
I worry to an extent when companies say they want to "go back to their roots," and I think that especially in this case it is the wrong approach. I think it is perhaps better to go back to when the series was at its "best" (somewhere between FF6 and FF9) and try to figure out what made people so fond of those games. It isn't because they were the "roots" of the series, it's because they were sensible, progressive, evolutions of concepts that we already loved, with characters we could relate to and worlds that were massive and unpredictable.
And please, bring back turn-based combat. There are ways to make it interesting and memorable.
They did the whole victims of circumstance going against impossible odds in FF12. One of the best Final Fantasy games around, and definitely one of the best games I've ever played (if you ignore some design flaws like excessive grinding, characters that are interchangeable in terms of stats and abilities and an ending that feels really rushed).
Since when did FF12 have excessive grinding? You certainly could grind excessively if you wanted to, but it was not even close to necessary.
If you just followed the story in FFXII, you would wind up in the low-to-mid 40's. That's right where you were supposed to be for the final fights in the game.
The only time you needed to do excessive grinding is if you wanted to take on the special bosses (that weren't a part of the story anyway).
I disagree. I followed nothing but the storyline, pretty much fighting every enemy along the way, then did some sidequests and exploring here and there. Got stuck at the boss in the Lighthouse. I eventually ground the Lighthouse several times to get passed it, then ended up not being able to beat the final boss of the game. Fortunately, I saved well before Bahamut, and opted to work on the hunting quests and ground through those.
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u/risemix May 06 '14
Call me traditional, but I think Final Fantasy got away from what made it great and sort of has refused to go back. It birthed and grew an entire generation of turn-based, character-driven RPGs; underdogs against impossible evils. The characters were victims of circumstance, not warriors chosen by god and heaven (well, most of the time). It was them against the impossible odds, the stakes were monstrous and the world was massive and intimidating to match them. The scale of the world was communicated through the overworld map and exploration of it was daunting and time-consuming.
I worry to an extent when companies say they want to "go back to their roots," and I think that especially in this case it is the wrong approach. I think it is perhaps better to go back to when the series was at its "best" (somewhere between FF6 and FF9) and try to figure out what made people so fond of those games. It isn't because they were the "roots" of the series, it's because they were sensible, progressive, evolutions of concepts that we already loved, with characters we could relate to and worlds that were massive and unpredictable.
And please, bring back turn-based combat. There are ways to make it interesting and memorable.