The plot / writing feels like it was put together by a 13 year old, or maybe an AI. it's almost interesting, and almost makes sense, but doesn't. Things just sort of "happen", and they don't really make sense and aren't really explained. Character motivations are unclear. Also, the gameplay is shit.
The world they created is super compelling, which seems to always be the case with Final Fantasy games. I just wish they could make an actually good game to go with their top tier world building and art direction.
Recently my idiot friends were riffing on how the Kingdom Hearts story is incomprehensible and I suggested so are most FF games they lost their minds. I asked them to explain the plot of FF13 and collectively they couldn't do it.
FF8s plot is so insane that people go with "actually Squall died in disc 1 and fhe rest of the game is a dying dream" because that makes the most sense.
I enjoy 8 well enough, including having fun with its mess of a plot, (only non-mmo mainline final fantasy I dont enjoy is II, and even that has my boy Minwu) but some online friends I have cling so heavily to the "Squall is dead" theory, not just in a death of the author sense but insisting that it was intentional because they are under the delusion that professional writers don't write sloppy stories (one said this verbatim).
Like I think its fine if killing the author and believing that theory makes you enjoy the game more but insisting it had to be intentional is just a delusion.
that professional writers don't write sloppy stories
* gestures broadly at everything Square has done *
I mean, I love their games but the plots are almoat always a mess. I don't fully blame them, coughing up like 20+ hours worth of story content which has to keep the average 14 year old engaged and remaining coherent is a tough task.
The one exception to this I will raise is that I think Chrono Trigger is very tightly plotted, which is astounding because its a time travel story.
The actual PLOT of 13 isn't that great but god I love the character development and I will defend that game against the massive hordes of haters for that aspect alone.
What gets me with Kingdom Hearts is that it's the same characters every time. I haven't played since Birth By Sleep since the Nothing/Heartless/ whoever all feel so interchangeable
At the very least FF has new faces and places
FF13 plot is relatively simple albeit having stupid names for things and not explaining those terms.
FF13-2 and lightning returns tho are completely incomprehensible. Bur sahz has a chocabo in his hair so its all ok
Apparently in FF16 mages are literally enslaved so i guess Square Enix doesnt want to feature black people?
Still that reeks of lazy copout like why the hell the mages gets enslaved in the first place, like sure a lot of them are weaker mages but given that even the mages that practically are gods like the dominants are treated like shit i dont understand why theres no single faction where the dominant decides the mages are free.
In one region where they hate mages the Dominant is treated like shit. In other regions the Dominants are rulers, either directly or indirectly
Historical accurate electronic metal theme for a the giant rock boss fight
It's nuts how people will excuse filler, grind, and monotonous gameplay in JRPGs because they "play them for the story," but the stories/writing in these games are always fucking awful lmao.
I disagree with this post I have enjoyed many JRPG stories quite a lot! And even the mediocre ones I find getting to the next town and talking to the NPCs very engaging in fact I used to not be able to beat JRPGs because I ran from battles and never leveled up just so I could get to the next town and see what the NPCs say.
I admit after talking to a fellow FFreak friend that Final Fantasy is better at characters and atmosphere than actual story but I still like the stories. Though my favorite JRPG story isn't Final Fantasy its Tales of Symphonia, and then Chrono Trigger.
Just dumb 2000s edgy game of thrones "WOMEN ARE TREATED BADLY IN MEDIEVAL TIMES", except the three major female characters is the evil mom who sold her kingdom for another man, evil "loose" woman, and your quiet girlfriend that literally gave up her powers to empower the MC.
I guess the kaiju fights are cool
This is correct. SPOILERS:
During the scenes right around the Bahamut fight, she mentions' Clive's mom is a courtesan and not her child by blood.
I'm looking it up and I can't find anything about that
Her bloodline is supposed to be that one that has the Phoenix, which is why it's significant that the Phoenix rejected Clive and chose Joshua
Huh, I guess you're right. I swear I thought she said something about his mother being a commonor, but I'm not finding anything either.EDIT: nvm looks like erik above remembers the scene I'm thinking of. Clive's mom is a courtesan.
I just got to that part in-game. After talking about how Clive failed to awaken the Phoenix, Anabella says "How the nobles laughed- -thag Elwin's firstborn was surely the son of a concubine and my own not long for this world!"
Then she points at Clive and lame ts that he wasn't the Phoenix so she's the real mom
I wanted this game to be cool so badly.
It seems like when a company gets too big, they make narrative decisions that are safe and avoid deeper conversations about the themes in their stories.
Sterling's video covered a lot of my sentiments, but I can't emphasize enough the issue I have around writing in slaves without addressing the systemic issues around slavery and bigotry.
If they didn't feel comfortable exploring stories like that honestly, they shouldn't have gone in that direction. I don't know a lot about the creative team, but I wonder how much of the worldbuilding would have been fixed if they had input from descendants of slaves.
It just makes me sad, I guess. Fantasy and sci-fi are cool ways to bridge the gap in understanding between people by using allegory and metaphor.
I saw Final Fantasy X, while flawed, depicting a world with systemic issues addressing discrimination coming from the top down. Yevon, the state religion enforced strict rules and offered conditional support based on conversion. I think the depiction of the Al Bhed was clumsy, but it was a good effort for a 2001 game.
Despite its linearity, Spira felt like a real world where recent FF entries just feel like backdrops for aesthetically pleasing cutscenes. I really wish they would go back to a more cohesive style of worldbuilding instead of the recent entries full of codices and incongruous designs (Why do like none of the settlements have walls? Who would fucking drive a car in FF XV's world when monsters can come out of the fucking ground at night?!)
Anyone else have hopes for the Final Fantasy IX remake? At the moment, I'm between cautious optimism for the chance to delve deeper in the established history of the setting, and fear that they'll take a more modern approach with info dumping in texts.
FINALLY some vindication for the FFX enjoyers. There were flaws but I thought final fantasy was finally pivoting in the right direction with regards to storytelling, and nothing that came after felt like it lived up to that standard.
God damn I remember being totally drawn in when the story reached the blitzball championship game. So many threads converging at once: chasing after the church goons kidnapping Yuna, while getting glimpses of Wakka holding the line for one last game, wondering if the al bhed girl is gonna make an appearance after seeing her crew skulking around, and FINALLY running into Auron when things seemed to be calming down, with the main character losing his composure after learning that Auron won't be able to fix everything like he'd been hoping for over the course of half the game's length. Societal and character drama all swirling together in one great "episode," it showed real understanding of pacing and drip-fed worldbuilding that, at the time, made it seem like no RPG franchise out there could match Final Fantasy's overall polish and professionalism.
Honestly I am afraid to see most Japanese writers explore this topic because they do not have exposure to it in Japan. Usually it end up like when white people write about it.
I don't think the writers at Square have the ability to tackle things like racism, but if they just had a black person on staff or something, that would go a long way to avoid obvious screw ups.
My opinion after beating it is that it was an okay game.
I thought the combat was really fun. I think "leveling up" should have been scrapped. It didn't really add anything. The enemies are always pretty close to your level anyway. Didn't seem like you'd get very far grinding, but I didn't do it so who knows.
Instead of being 30-40 hours, the game should have been 10-20 hours. Lots of boring filler between the fun stuff. There was an absolutely absurd number of pointless side quests that don't serve any purpose. They barely build the world or characters beyond what you'd learn just playing the main story.
It was cool that you || get to do eco terrorism and kill god again || but I could play a million other JRPGs to get that (even other Final Fantasy games).
I also liked the combat. Thought choosing my loadout was the only fun part of the RPG mechanics. Everything else felt like it didn't serve much purpose other than move my numbers up at the same rate as the enemies (in which case, why not just keep me and the enemies at a constant?).
It's a game I'd recommend to pick up on a sale. Some really cool visuals in it. Left feeling pretty empty by the story overall, despite some really cool moments throughout.
I agree with most of this. The game isn't mind blowing or anything and has zero class consciousness despite playing with a lot of class issues, especially in side quests. But I found myself honestly just not caring about side plots to the point where I was looking at my phone during the overly long conversations. Just too much bloat, you could even keep a lot of the side quests, just removed like half of the dialog if not more.
It's also a shame the killing god plot took so much emphasis, because the geopolitical stuff was reasonably interesting and I would have rather seen more of that and not do the typical FF thing of raising the stakes until the point that the main character is the only thing standing between reality and existence. Also agree that the eco-terrorism is a good hook and should have been more emphasized.
The game play is like an arcade version of Elden Ring, it's more forgiving and frantic, which has a level of fun to it. The way they constantly raise the stakes of some boss fights with more and more Eikon stuff really does feel cool.
But I found myself honestly just not caring about side plots to the point where I was looking at my phone during the overly long conversations. Just too much bloat, you could even keep a lot of the side quests, just removed like half of the dialog if not more.
Right at the end of the game like 15 green icons pop up and I gave up listening to them talk. I started skipping through the dialog by mashing X (this was before I realized if you paused, you could skip the interaction by holding triangle) and even then, they were way too long. NPCs use way too many words to convey VERY simple concepts, it's maddening.
I think the most hyped I was with the story was right around when you
spoiler
start learning about bearer/slave dynamics and then decide to crush the mother crystal which is clearly causing the blight AKA climate change
and then I just got less hyped over time because it never actually examined those things in any meaningful way. Clive just shouts boring platitudes about human will and that's about as deep as it goes.
Exactly my thoughts on the NPCs using just an incredible amount of words where you do not need that much. Spoilers throughout the next parts:
I agree that my interest was also the most piqued right before Ultima became a big part of the plot and the main focus was blowing shit up and saving the people in chattel slavery. I would say my interest starting really waining once Jill gives up her power to Clive to make him even more powerful, super special and important. I understand this is a game for teenagers and so the very important young person that saves the world is going to be utilized, but yeesh.
I did wonder with a lot of the talk about "will" and "conscious" and all that if it was a translation problem? I know these days we get much better translations than we did in the old days of the series, but the words almost felt like they weren't be used properly and I don't know if that's because they were being poetic or if there just wasn't a good English translation of the concepts? I'm honestly not super familiar with Japanese language, so I was just guessing or maybe giving them too much of the benefit of the doubt.
I think I remember reading that the English localization team was given a lot of freedom, so I'm not sure how much can be chalked up to translation. But yeah, his use of the word seemed inconsistent. And I agree about the part with Jill. That was basically when I was praying for the game to end and then it went on way too long after. Oh well, I got to see some cool kaiju fights I guess.
Literal women disempowerment to empower the male protagonist. Anita Sarkeesian was right
🌎
btw on that note, did you know Phil Fish (partly hated for being right during gamergate) is back on social media (mastodon) and mostly posts about killing rich people? Very cool!
I'd go back to Dark Cloud 2 if my PS2 controllers weren't corroded and drifting
It's the first Final Fantasy I felt nothing for. It looks so generic, and I'm really tired of the Summons being central to the plot.
Not in a rush to pick this up. Oh well... Cya in another seven years, FF franchise.
The world of FF16 is compelling, but nothing within it is — the history, mythology, and politics of the world are entirely nonsensical and seem to largely be shallow constructs built solely to move Clive from place to place. This becomes especially obvious with the lore dump bullshit that
spoiler
Ultima
does in the endgame right before the final couple sequences — there is no coherent ideology there, there’s no actual attempt to wrestle with any ideas, it’s just a rehashed strung-together list of jrpg tropes with nothing underneath. Such a letdown for a world with so much potential.
Was interested in this game but I would rather save my money for Elden Ring dlc (copium) so for my edgy JRPG with swearing I played chained echoes instead.
Not Elden Ring DLC but Armored Core is looking kinda cool
Does it have the classic problem where a Japanese developer tries to make a game appealing to the West but completely bungles the tone when trying to be more mature and edgy? The hilariously bad third person cover shooter Quantum Theory is the poster child for this, being a very sad attempt by Japanese game devs to do Gears of War.
It's interesting such a big studio would still be struggling with this stuff in 2023 when Resident Evil managed to nail a more Western-style entry in 2017 with REVII, but I think that game had an American writer and the FF team might still be all Japanese
