Does Square Understand Why We Love Final Fantasy?

The Garland-Chaos Time Loop story is admittedly a pretty bad one. But I don't really judge a game whose entire narrative could be fit onto a single sheet of paper by high standards.

The time travel stories in other games have also been really bad. FFXI at least tried to hand-wave it away with "divergent timelines/multiverse" stuff, which was slightly less tired 15 years ago than it is today.

The main vibe I'm getting from this thread is that some folks don't understand that Final Fantasy has always been kinda mid in terms of gameplay and "D-minus, see me after class" for story. I absolutely love the franchise, but it's a vehicle for spectacle and music. It's kinda silly that they insist on re-inventing the wheel for every game, but that's how it has been to some degree or another since the first sequel.

In defense of their storytelling, it is often complex and layered. It's just teaspoon-shallow. Shall we go down the list of villains whose motivation was "I will save the world by killing everyone"?

While the idea of world destruction nowadays is kinda shallow topic, a more realistic and interesting approach is considered the final boss doesnt want to destroy the world just because, but because he/she is a very conflicted and depressive person, with mental issues and emotionally unstable that only happens to have enough power to destroy the world.

Being unable to come in terms with his/her own mental problems, the resolution of destroying everything starts making sense as an alternative to suicide.

Then the story can unfold the very human psyche to try to discuss what factors lead the villain to his/her current state.

Its a way better story development than saying some random guy just popped out of nowhere and decide to destroy everything.

Square doesn't understand the difference between their mouth and their *** these days.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ig-noble-prize-mammals-absorb-oxygen-rectum/

If you miss the turn based combat, I HIGHLY recommend playing Like a Dragon & LAD Infinite Wealth. They are some of the best games I have ever played and the main character is better than any FF char imo.

I really dont miss turn based combat, and FF was always interesting for how they very early adopted the ATB system, and for a long time always made tweaks in combat moving from RPG classic battle to active real time battle that, IMO, reached its peak with FF11 and FF12.

I recommend you guys to download en emulator and play classic games, it is available on Iphone and Android devices.

I don't consider FF1 and FF8 in the same way in this regard.
One is central to the story.

The other is all "hurr durr we grew up as kids together but forgot everything but oh wait now our nursery worker is an evil time travelling witch".

I also don't think FF1 story is good but the battle system and difficulty make it a great challenge.

Cause playing emulators on an iphone is so fun. If you want handheld gaming, just invest in a Steam Deck or Legion Go etc.

It's perfectly fine, even for PS1 and PSP I had no problems using on screen buttons for FF games.

I went back to FFXIV for 3 months; cleared the last and current expansions, leveled some jobs to 100, dabbled in Savage content, capped my crafters/gathers, made some more gil (which is useless). Not much left to do but grind dailies to level all the jobs OR obtain achievements which feel flat upon completion.

I enjoyed playing FFXI. I came back right before the 20th anniversary. BUT, after killing highest lv Bumba & capping all the Odyssey gear + making all the JSE for all jobs & after killing Aminon Hard several times, getting some MLs on several jobs, I was stuck with the feeling I had nothing left to accomplish... Yet, I still miss playing. Just something about having an active social LS that has weekly events, helping others get ahead, chatting during events, especially dyna-D (which tends to go sideways, lol): I miss those things & other games seem to lack the socialization FFXI offers.

Any active events LSs still running weekly events(Dyna-D, Ody, Sortie, Omen, Vagary)?

guess we can just play the mods huh

FF8 was a dogshit game. If you know much about it you can get OP very quick and breeze through the game, then beating Omega is just 100% luck based depending on if you get Lion Heart or not.

I'd love a modded version that was actually challenging and removed luck based winning which isn't really present in other FF before 12.

Not sure ya do! He's changed with the times, and is an avid FFXIV addict.

Square really doesn't know what we like about Final Fantasy, and they don't really care either.

I was sure for a long time after Heavensward in FFXIV that Yoshi-P and the writers/devs for FFXIV did know, because they were really delivering with the FF flavored WoW clone on both gameplay and storyline front until around Shadowbringers where they collected lightning in a bottle on the narrative front while sorta taking a dump on the gameplay.

But then they released Endwalker, which could have been great, but wasn't. It was a direct sequel to Shadowbringers, pretty much, but it only succeeded in further restricting the scope of future FFXIV stories and absolutely was not good narrative.

Endwalker actually walked back some of Shadowbringer's emotional payouts, as well as some of its narrative, but it also took the extremely odd avenue of painting Hydaelyn up as some hero when she was literally a genocidal maniac that endorsed Hermes's "test."

I can't say I blame them for wanting to direct sequel Shadowbringers immediately. It did so well that it pushed XIV to overtake XI as the biggest longterm earner for them. But if you stop and think about Endwalker, its themes vs. what actually happens, it's a big, inconsistent mess. And it only gets worse in the post game .1 to .55.

Can confidently say though, that Final Fantasy as a series has experienced its next big upheaval in terms of what its fanbase and demographic is. It's largely not for us, anymore, and the SE corpos AND creatives don't give a damn.