Plain and Simple Pt. 1: Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy XIII looks awesome.
Well, it had better after how long they've been working on it for. North American audiences won't be seeing from this title till some undetermined time in 2010 (thank you very much, Microsoft), but all that is doing is building up the suspense. From the trailers I've seen, this looks like it could be on par with the greatest titles the series had to offer...of which I won't name here for fear of starting a fandom debate/flame war. The story (what little is known about it) seems just as riveting as Final Fantasy can get, and the characters are the most diverse and lifelike since part VI. In fact, I'm very glad to see that the majority of the cast doesn't look like J-rock stars or dolled up teen idols, they actually look like roughed up soldiers, people who look like something their setting would produce; someone who's taken their fair share of abuse and oppression. I mean, that seems to be the recurring theme in Final Fantasy: government oppression, and some rebel force out to set things right. It's pretty hard to weed out the ones that aren't about some teenage cast of freedom-fighters out to take down some evil empire or corporation, but, as least as far as Final Fantasy goes, this one has the most believe cast to support the idea. Granted, earlier titles couldn't graphically represent the look of their characters very well, but even so it was very hard to accept them as people who struggled through a brutal regime and decided to fight the good fight.
Um...what is the point of all this. I'm not usually one to flaunt around my opinions about things. Especially when it comes to something like Final Fantasy, cause the fans of their respective titles will just about defend them to the death. Nothing wrong with that, but it does kind of irk me when that fandom sometimes makes it hard for others to enjoy their favorites. Like for me personally, probably my favorite in the series is Final Fantasy VIII, which is incidentally a lot of other peoples' most hated. Honestly, I couldn't give less a damn about that, but it does get under my skin after a while of going to forums and the like only to hear constant bashing a picking apart of one my favorite games. Made worse by the fact that everyone seems to favor part VII more, a game I feel is in some ways inferior...but I won't get into that right now.
What was I on about?
So, what would you say is the last good Final Fantasy game? Some would say the greats ended with part VI, and rightly so. VI was a great game for its time, and seems to have aged particularly well, even being remade for the Game Boy Advance (crossing my fingers for a Wii Virtual Console release as well). Others would be more inclined to pick amongst the Playstation titles, which is a much more broad selection. Some say VII was the last, others (but rarely) say, VIII, IX, and finally X. I hear XI did pretty well, but I'm not going to count to that one right now as it doesn't really fit into the main series as well. And XII? I loved it, but it doesn't seem to have the fan following as some of the earlier ones, from what I've seen. A lot of people like to nitpick about that one. True, they do it to just about every game (I think), but some more than others. Many say that Vaan was a lame main character, even though he technically wasn't the main guy (at least, that's what I thought). For the sake of argument (and a much longer article), I'll just say that the last good title was X; not really my opinion, but it did seem to be more well received than its successors. This brings me back to the heart of my argument: Part XIII looks awesome. What I mean by that is that this looks like the phoenix down that could revive peoples' faith in Square Enix. It could be just me, but it seems that the series has slumped a little bit since they became Square Enix. Their first game was X-2 (way to kickoff your partnership), and since then if we weren't getting a sequel to VII, we were getting something that didn't really feel like a Final Fantasy title. Like I said, I love XII, but did it really seem like it should've been XII? Or XI for that matter. Both I feel maybe should've been spin-offs, but at least XII kept somewhat to the feel of the series as a whole, so that one can pass. Now with the announcement of XIV, also an online title, I just wonder what is going on at Square Enix. That's why I think I'm going to enjoy XIII so much. Versus XIII and (maybe) Agito XIII as well. Because they look like Final Fantasy games. Back to the tried and true formula of the series, but evolving it, expanding it so it becomes something bigger than anything before it, but you can still tell it's Final Fantasy.
Plain and simply, I think Final Fantasy XIII is gonna be the saving grace of Square Enix.
Well, it had better after how long they've been working on it for. North American audiences won't be seeing from this title till some undetermined time in 2010 (thank you very much, Microsoft), but all that is doing is building up the suspense. From the trailers I've seen, this looks like it could be on par with the greatest titles the series had to offer...of which I won't name here for fear of starting a fandom debate/flame war. The story (what little is known about it) seems just as riveting as Final Fantasy can get, and the characters are the most diverse and lifelike since part VI. In fact, I'm very glad to see that the majority of the cast doesn't look like J-rock stars or dolled up teen idols, they actually look like roughed up soldiers, people who look like something their setting would produce; someone who's taken their fair share of abuse and oppression. I mean, that seems to be the recurring theme in Final Fantasy: government oppression, and some rebel force out to set things right. It's pretty hard to weed out the ones that aren't about some teenage cast of freedom-fighters out to take down some evil empire or corporation, but, as least as far as Final Fantasy goes, this one has the most believe cast to support the idea. Granted, earlier titles couldn't graphically represent the look of their characters very well, but even so it was very hard to accept them as people who struggled through a brutal regime and decided to fight the good fight.
Um...what is the point of all this. I'm not usually one to flaunt around my opinions about things. Especially when it comes to something like Final Fantasy, cause the fans of their respective titles will just about defend them to the death. Nothing wrong with that, but it does kind of irk me when that fandom sometimes makes it hard for others to enjoy their favorites. Like for me personally, probably my favorite in the series is Final Fantasy VIII, which is incidentally a lot of other peoples' most hated. Honestly, I couldn't give less a damn about that, but it does get under my skin after a while of going to forums and the like only to hear constant bashing a picking apart of one my favorite games. Made worse by the fact that everyone seems to favor part VII more, a game I feel is in some ways inferior...but I won't get into that right now.
What was I on about?
So, what would you say is the last good Final Fantasy game? Some would say the greats ended with part VI, and rightly so. VI was a great game for its time, and seems to have aged particularly well, even being remade for the Game Boy Advance (crossing my fingers for a Wii Virtual Console release as well). Others would be more inclined to pick amongst the Playstation titles, which is a much more broad selection. Some say VII was the last, others (but rarely) say, VIII, IX, and finally X. I hear XI did pretty well, but I'm not going to count to that one right now as it doesn't really fit into the main series as well. And XII? I loved it, but it doesn't seem to have the fan following as some of the earlier ones, from what I've seen. A lot of people like to nitpick about that one. True, they do it to just about every game (I think), but some more than others. Many say that Vaan was a lame main character, even though he technically wasn't the main guy (at least, that's what I thought). For the sake of argument (and a much longer article), I'll just say that the last good title was X; not really my opinion, but it did seem to be more well received than its successors. This brings me back to the heart of my argument: Part XIII looks awesome. What I mean by that is that this looks like the phoenix down that could revive peoples' faith in Square Enix. It could be just me, but it seems that the series has slumped a little bit since they became Square Enix. Their first game was X-2 (way to kickoff your partnership), and since then if we weren't getting a sequel to VII, we were getting something that didn't really feel like a Final Fantasy title. Like I said, I love XII, but did it really seem like it should've been XII? Or XI for that matter. Both I feel maybe should've been spin-offs, but at least XII kept somewhat to the feel of the series as a whole, so that one can pass. Now with the announcement of XIV, also an online title, I just wonder what is going on at Square Enix. That's why I think I'm going to enjoy XIII so much. Versus XIII and (maybe) Agito XIII as well. Because they look like Final Fantasy games. Back to the tried and true formula of the series, but evolving it, expanding it so it becomes something bigger than anything before it, but you can still tell it's Final Fantasy.
Plain and simply, I think Final Fantasy XIII is gonna be the saving grace of Square Enix.