It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
RPGs got worse for me as soon as they shifted to adding VAs for every line. FFX (1&2) were the last Final Fantasy games I played all the way through. (FFX-2: would not play again even though the combat system was better). I’m fine with voice acting, but I liked when I could read dialogue and advance it accordingly.
If you ever get the itch, I thought XII was better than X. But if you didn’t like X, you almost certainly won’t like any of the XIII series or XV. I haven’t played XVI or VII remake yet
And yeah X-2 was pretty bad. Of the ones I’ve played I think I’d only put XIII-2 behind it
To me, 12 was the start of the downfall. Make it less like a classic JRPG and more like an MMO. Got rid of the strategic turn based battles in favor of watching your characters just do things. It led directly to 13, which to me was by far the worst thing to ever happen to Final Fantasy. It was also the moment I realized that I must be weird as hell, because reviewers kept panning the story as overcomplicated (which is basically what I live for) and praising how unique that awful battle system was.
Bingo.
Me: “I want to strategically pick from my attacks and dynamically respond to shifts in the battle with a whole optimized and customized party.”
Square-Enix: “Best I can do is half-assed hybrid character action game or stupid, limited autoplaying AI.”
Ah, yeah tbh I forgot that was the first that wasn’t turn based. I just remembered loving the characters, plot, and environments.
So guess the battles were so pointless I forgot about them. Maybe after the success of Expedition 33 square enix will bring back turn based. At least as an option? Please?
Doubtful. When they remade FFVII they waved their hands around about there being a menu and said “Look! It’s just like the original!” despite the fact it’s NOTHING like it at all. They’re going to gaslight everyone about their bad, flashy effect game systems rather than give classic fans what they want.