Happy 30th Anniversary, Final Fantasy

[vnisanian2001]

What began as a Dragon Quest clone, has become the biggest selling RPG franchise worldwide, even more popular than in its native Japan. Ironically games are now released by Square-Enix, a merger between Square (the original company behind the FF games) and Enix (the company who published the DQ games, but never actually developed any of them). FF was by far the most worthy competitor of DQ.

[Bumpyroad]

I don't "worship" Final Fantasy, but if i was gonna try one, i'd probably be something like FF Type-0, because of the ARPG aspect.

[kaoru]

Happy Birthday Final Fantasy! You were cool once!

Wouldn't go so far to declare it a DQ clone, though. Square clearly wanted a piece of the newly popular RPG cake, but I don't think FF is quite similar enough to be an outright clone, especially compared to other NES games of the genre.

[vnisanian2001]

I actually wonder what the crew behind Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy (Yuji Horii/Akira Toriyama/Koichi Sugiyama and Hironobu Sakaguchi/Yoshitaka Amano/Nobuo Uematsu respectively) think of each others works? I know some of them worked together on Chrono Trigger.

[GamerL]

I find it very interesting how there was a period of time when Final Fantasy was as big in the US as any mainstream AAA franchise is today, even dudebro type gamers were excited about the latest one.

Said period was between the release of FF7 and FFX, it was X that, though it was well received initially, by making players play as feather haired "pretty boy" Tidus gradually scared the dudebro audience away and eventually by the time of FF13 even many of the remaining fans were hating the series.

So I'm very glad that FF15 has breathed new life into the series, it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here.

[Sac (a.k.a Icaras)]

IMO, I think 11 and 12 are what kicked Final Fantasy out of the mainstream. 11 being an MMO scared away alot of mainstream players, and 12 playing so differant scared off the rest. I know it essentially did for me, I completely skipped over the 13 series. and of course there was the disaster of the original 14.

I think 14: ARR is what helped rebuild the series rep, despite it being an MMORPG, plus despite their gacha nature, I also think some of the mobile games (Not All The Bravest!), like Record Keeper and Brave Exvius would have also helped fuel the nostalgia factor...that and the FF7 remake announcement and Cloud's smash bros. cameo.

[GamerL]

I think you're right, but I remember a lot of complaints over how "wussy" Tidus was, similar to complaints about Raiden in MGS2.

[retr0gamer]

Dec 17, 2017 16:04:43 GMT -5 GamerL said:

I find it very interesting how there was a period of time when Final Fantasy was as big in the US as any mainstream AAA franchise is today, even dudebro type gamers were excited about the latest one.

Said period was between the release of FF7 and FFX, it was X that, though it was well received initially, by making players play as feather haired "pretty boy" Tidus gradually scared the dudebro audience away and eventually by the time of FF13 even many of the remaining fans were hating the series.

So I'm very glad that FF15 has breathed new life into the series, it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here.

I think most people skipped over FF12 since the latest consoles were out and it got ignored. Didn't help that it was very divisive. Then you had a big gap between in and FF13 which turned out to be rubbish. I think FF13 was a big factor in the whole western 'Japanese developers are garbage' thing that happened last generation, despite the fact you had devs like Platinum and others on handheld releasing awesome games. (I also think the FF13 sequels are fantastic and don't get he credit they deserve).

[kaoru]

Let's not forget X-2. I'm pretty sure most people weren't too mad about XI going to be an MMORPG, maybe a bit bitchy about the number but pretty willing to simply ignore it. But X-2, and let me remind you that FF spinoffs back in that day were actually kind of rare, and a direct sequel (in game form) completely new. X-2 did probably way more damage than XI.

[Snake]

Dec 17, 2017 13:00:17 GMT -5 vnisanian2001 said:

I actually wonder what the crew behind Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy (Yuji Horii/Akira Toriyama/Koichi Sugiyama and Hironobu Sakaguchi/Yoshitaka Amano/Nobuo Uematsu respectively) think of each others works? I know some of them worked together on Chrono Trigger.

Yuji Horii and Hironobu Sakaguchi Co-produced Chrono Trigger.  Nobuo Uematsu lent a few music compositions to the soundtrack. I believe the bulk of the soundtrack was done by Yasunori Mitsuda (who would go on to compose for Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Inazuma Eleven series, etc).  

Hard to miss Akira Toriyama's signature art, background, and character designs.  

Interestingly enough was the script and story planning was penned by Masato Kato who moved to Squaresoft from Tecmo.  Prior, he wrote the script for the 3 NES Ninja Gaidens and the 1st Captain Tsubasa at Tecmo.  And then go on to script write and event plan for Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears.  Considering that, it's not surprising that the plots to FF VII, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears gives many players the sense of "WTF is going on and where is this headed?"

[alphex]

I thought the guy who wrote the story for FFVII had previously done a Glory Of Heracles game?

Anyway, I don't care for modern JRPGs which seem to only consist of cutscenes featuring next year's most ridiculous cosplay.

[Deleted]

Jeremy Parish's list for Polygon is whackadoo, but the man does know what he's talking about.

[kaoru]

Dec 19, 2017 15:49:49 GMT -5 alphex said:

I thought the guy who wrote the story for FFVII had previously done a Glory Of Heracles game?

Yes - among others. FFVII lists over half a dozen people as event planner, two in "story by" (one of which would be Kazushige Nojima, who wrote the four Glory of Heraclse games) and two for "based on the story by" (Sakaguchi and Nomura fwiw). Not quite the one man's brain child kind of tale.

[GamerL]

Dec 19, 2017 10:59:14 GMT -5 retr0gamer said:

Dec 17, 2017 16:04:43 GMT -5 GamerL said:

I think most people skipped over FF12 since the latest consoles were out and it got ignored. Didn't help that it was very divisive. Then you had a big gap between in and FF13 which turned out to be rubbish. I think FF13 was a big factor in the whole western 'Japanese developers are garbage' thing that happened last generation, despite the fact you had devs like Platinum and others on handheld releasing awesome games. (I also think the FF13 sequels are fantastic and don't get he credit they deserve).

I remember that, I wanna say I saw a lot of people saying how much just about any WRPG was better than just about any JRPG ever made around the time of FF13.

Seems like there was a backlash against Japanese culture in general around that time, whether it was games or anime or whatever, if you liked it then you were just a "weeaboo", I'm glad we've moved past that.

Dec 19, 2017 11:04:29 GMT -5 kaoru said:

Let's not forget X-2. I'm pretty sure most people weren't too mad about XI going to be an MMORPG, maybe a bit bitchy about the number but pretty willing to simply ignore it. But X-2, and let me remind you that FF spinoffs back in that day were actually kind of rare, and a direct sequel (in game form) completely new. X-2 did probably way more damage than XI.

I don't think X-2 really negatively impacted the series that much to be honest, most fanboys went gaga over hot pants Yuna and most fangirls were desperate to cosplay as her.

I think something like 12 coming out at a time when everyone was too focused on the PS3 launch was a lot more damaging. 

[retr0gamer]

I still maintain ffx 2 is better than the original which in retrospect was a pretty mundane rpg.