Sony lets Square Enix go

[EclecticGroove]

I still haven't played a traditional JRPG better than what Level 5 and Square Enix gave us in Dragon Quest VIII, almost a decade ago.

Some of the classics were great. But some of the new games can be good. It just depends on what you're looking for.

FF7 is, to many, "their" FF game, the one that they hold all the others up to. For some, it's FFX instead. A lot of that has to do with when you first played a given game and where you were at in life, etc.

For me I'll always remember FF 2/4. I'd never played a game with such a great mesh of visuals, sound, and gameplay before. 3/6 was certainly better in many ways, but I'll always remember 2/4. It wasn't my first RPG, not even my first FF game. But it was certainly an awesome game.

The only thing that has gotten better without a doubt is the quality of the visuals and the music. (I don't mean the design and composition, those are much more subjective).

I think the RPG genre needs to grow up a bit. It's fine to have some for the younger crowd. A lighthearted game with a typical teenager protagonist is great. But I'd love to see a game with the quality of visuals and sound that a company Square could put out if they had a really good writer and director behind it. Something with some great characters, dialog, and well thought out story that didn't fly off the rails.

Throw in competent game design and you'd have something that people could really lose themselves in (in a good way).

[KitsuneNight]

^but but that means bucking the trend
it means effort it mean staking risks !!

it will never happen

square is not keen on risks

[midnightrider]

JRPG=grindfest doesn't have to be true if done well.

Remove random battles, and you have better thought out games. The "downside" is that random battles allowed for complexity(job classes and similar systems), but that complexity comes at the price of even more grinding/farming than usual.

The only exception I've seen has been Suikoden. The exp. system ensures you don't have to fight a whole hell of a lot, and run becomes "let go," so you're not stuck fighting level 1 enemies every time you backtrack, though eventually you get a teleporter, and an item to return back to base. They covered every aspect that would make the genre tedious, come to think of it(gambling is usually easy to win at, so money isn't as much of an issue either). ...except you do have a limited window to recruit all 108 characters(usually just leads to the happiest possible ending), and you need a specific bit of timing in a scene for them to have their effect in Suikoden 2.

[EclecticGroove]

I don't mind random battles at all, just stack items/equipment early that lets you avoid/decrease them if you want. Or even better have difficulty levels that actually mean something. IE: Easy = little/no random battles, quick progression, and minimal need for any attention to be paid to stats/party builds, etc. Purely for those who want to be able to play and experience the story and characters, but not so concerned about anything else.

And on the flip side would be a hard mode where there are tons of battles, and you are forced to think about party builds, equipment, etc constantly for every area, let alone every boss.

[j_factor]

No random battles and it ends up like Mystic Quest. Everything is predetermined and the player is just going through the motions.

[EclecticGroove]

No random battles and it ends up like Mystic Quest. Everything is predetermined and the player is just going through the motions.

For an "easy mode" that's pretty much the point. You can change things up with intermediate and hard difficulties. The rest of the game can be pretty much the same unless they want arbitrary game differences between difficulties (different endings, different choices, etc).

[midnightrider]

No random battles and it ends up like Mystic Quest. Everything is predetermined and the player is just going through the motions.

...or Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG's, the Grandia series, any Dreamcast RPG that isn't Skies of Arcadia, later "Tales of" games, etc.

[j_factor]

Those games still have random battles. You can see the enemy before battle, but that doesn't make it nonrandom.

[SegaSonic91]

I still haven't played a traditional JRPG better than what Level 5 and Square Enix gave us in Dragon Quest VIII, almost a decade ago.

Absolutely! I loved that game so much, I even liked the lack of voice acting. I was dreaming about what a fantastic team like Level 5 could do with DQIX and fucking Square went and made it a shitty handheld game! DQX was even worse. I really, really hope DQXI is a TRADITIONAL DQ game on the PS4. Cell shaded of course.

I did think that Mistwalker had a hell of a lot of potential and loved both of their 360 games. It's a shame they took bribe money from MS instead of just making PS3 games. Maybe then The Last Story would have also been a PS3 game and they would still be around making games. Lost Odyssey really felt like a modern post FFVI RPG to me. Maybe that be the the series evolved if he hadn't made that shitty movie, sigh.

I loved Ni no Kuni as well and it shows just how beautiful a DQ game would have been on the PS3. I just wish LEVEL 5 had not used a gimmicky fight system and just used something like DQVIII's system. I really hope that the rumour of a sequel on the PS4 is true.

[midnightrider]

Those games still have random battles. You can see the enemy before battle, but that doesn't make it nonrandom.

Perhaps anything I listed after Grandia. In the case of Chrono Trigger, the enemy locations couldn't be any more meticulously planned. Mario and Grandia, it's always the same enemies in the same area, every single time(just like CT, but without the battles happening on the same screen, and the enemies wander about more). It was planned out.

[EclecticGroove]

It depends how you want to decide on random battles. Do you mean random as "anything that isn't a scripted fight"? Or the more commonly used "unavoidable fights from nowhere"?

Because the second one is generally solved by being able to see enemies + having items/consumables that can make them ignore/avoid you.

The first is not seen much in RPG's simply because it doesn't leave much room for anything happening. It would either be a huge linear path of scripted fights with little or no diversity, or it would be a fairly empty open world. The first one a lot of people dislike in an actual RPG because there's almost no freedom to do anything in the game.

The second could work with specific design choices for both the gameplay and game story/world, but in general would make things seem a bit barren.

[16-bit]

I think it's more than apparent now that the best games they publish aren't even made in house. Deus Ex and the Batman games they've published are much better than any Final Fantasy game that I've seen since at least IX..

[EclecticGroove]

I think it's more than apparent now that the best games they publish aren't even made in house. Deus Ex and the Batman games they've published are much better than any Final Fantasy game that I've seen since at least IX..

But those are VERY different from what FF was... now of course it looks like they might be going more in that kind of direction with FFXV, but who knows.

Either way however, the people looking to buy a game like Deus Ex would not be looking to fill the same itch as they would buying an FF game.

Of course, the fact that more people are critical of the FF games of late doesn't help. Those FFXIII sales numbers were not horrible, but they certainly aren't great... and it's bargain basement price at game stores shows just how well received it was.

[Knuckle Duster]

I'm not really interested in anything new from Square-Enix/Eidos/Taito. It's a shame, too. I play Action Adventure & RPGs more than anything.

Child of Light is coming out soon from Ubisoft, that looks great and uses a Grandia inspired battle system. Trails in the Sky 2 is coming from XSeed & Falcom to finish off the big cliffhanger story of the first game, both of them should be ported to Steam this year. Zeboyd games are doing Cosmic Star Heroine which is a 16-bit style cross between Phantasy Star & Chrono Trigger.

I am not hungry for more Final Fantasy. I have a sub to XIV if I ever feel the need to look at androgynous folk and their giant battle chickens.

[Waterfaller]

My one and only reaction to that piece of news:



Bias aside, I stopped caring for Square back in the early PS2 era. They tried so hard to impress with pretty visuals, but that doesn't make a game. Looking back on their past few games, like 3rd Birthday, and Lightning Returns, they're sad. Maid costumes, Aeris costumes? I know pandering when I see it!

And as much as I love, and I mean LOVE Dragon Quest, with the last two games being online affairs, I dunno, I think my faith in that series is starting to falter. Star Ocean, I dunno, I never had the chance to play Til the End of Time or Last Hope, how're those? I do love the hell out of the first two games.