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
I guess we can agree that the art/worldbuilding is pretty great. Except for the suprising lack of any black people ? Not sure if there are any minorities in it but I think their excuse was realism....in a world with chocobos and dragons. Like say what you want about House of the Dragon and Rings of Power but at least those fantasy stories featured black folk in decently sized roles. For a fantasy game that will feature black people - Dragons Dogma 2 (might end up being better than FF16 as well)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I'd go back to Dark Cloud 2 if my PS2 controllers weren't corroded and drifting
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.
I just got to the final quest last night & haven't officially beaten the game, but since I know all I have left is to do the optional content, I feel like I can objectively talk about the game as a whole. Spoilers below.
spoilers within for the game
Like all modern Final Fantasy games, the third act is shit. I do think they had something in the first 30 hours of the game - I really enjoyed how initially the stakes are less about killing a god and more focused on the fact that Valisthea is apparently just a shithole where 2/3 countries are okay with the enslavement of Bearers while also either worshiping or being led by their Dominants (Empire & Dhalmekia). Honestly I think the core mistake of the story lies in the fact they felt a need to explain 'WHY' Eikons are.
They could've just focused on the mother-crystals causing the blight & had the central story focus be the clashes between the dominants via international politics/war and the utter destruction that causes as Clive and crew go about destroying the mother-crystals/freeing bearers (and ultimately saving the continent/world) but I feel like someone decided mid-way through that it'd be cooler if that just was all made meaningless by re-imagining the Ascians from FFXIV as a single entity. Which is ultimately (pun intended)...okay at best but honestly it kept annoying me every time I'd catch glimpses of the sort of story/world they kinda gave up in favor of making the last act of the game so boring.
Jill apparently spends 5 full ass years being the sole Dominant at the Hideaway who is able to prime (because Ifrit won't answer Clive for...reasons? maybe this gets explained in the final quest I've yet to do, but as far as I can tell, this is never really explained) and the story kinda hints that this is causing the Curse to affect her but never actually comes out & says it. She freezes a path across the ocean for Clive without much real issue after being sidelined after their first encounter with Odin and then just...lets Clive take her Eikon? I was so mad at this (and the accompanying literal 30 second "wow Clive you suck for doing that to Jill. actually ok I forgive you" fight between Joshua and Clive over this a quest later) that I literally put the game down until last night.
Jote is introduced in a really bad-ass way when Joshua & her are captured by Benedikta, taking that stab to the shoulder and being like "holy shit milord please don't prime she's baiting you" - especially since this is very early on when the game hasn't really done much other than show that every time Dominants do their things, the average person suffers. Jote then proceeds to spend the rest of the game being relegated to basically Joshua's shy side-piece who serves only to remind the player that Joshua is still really frail physically, is eventually just hidden in the hospital area of the Hideaway for the last act of the game because after it is revealed she is actually part of a previously unmentioned secret spy organization devoted to the Phoenix that apparently they came up with very late into development when someone thought to ask "hey where did these characters first meet anyways".
The Hideaway in general is just full of characters who deserved way more emphasis and story-beats than Ultima does. You get introduced to Oscar - the nephew of Rodney Murdoch who trained Clive to be a Shield - who wants to become a Guardian of the Flame and wants to follow Clive around to learn from him. This happens sometime after Eastpool, where Rodney's wife Hanna was living until Clive & gang bring a story-led massacre party to town, is wiped out. There's a whole side-quest where you bring Bearers to Eastpool and convince them to rebuild and live in Eastpool. The quest even mentions Oscar and that maybe he'd like to go back to Eastpool to help contribute to the re-building effort of the town his Uncle & Aunt loved. Cool. You go back to the Hideaway and Oscar is just still standing in front of your room. Every line for the rest of the game "Wow I can go back to Eastpool and rebuild?? very kind of you". Which just leaves me wondering, was a significant portion of this character's content cut for whatever reason?
Tarja's entire character is focused around being the Hideaway's doctor and also the person who removes the Bearer's brands. A side-quest you do for another physiker at the Hideaway is focused around this, about how Brand removal is quite dangerous and can even kill patients. Both Tarja and the quest-giver mention that they'll keep searching for better ways though and that basically being scarred is still better than being branded. Both the concept and topic of Brands are never really explored in depth though. The quest tells you that there is indeed a poison in the Brand that will kill the Bearer if they disobey their masters. Does not explain how Clive was able to run around for sometime after being Branded and literally killing his squad.
I feel like the main reason that the story really just feels unfinished/disjointed in places is because the game is less of an RPG and more of an action game. 95% of the Treasure Chests in the game give you materials for 'crafting'. I literally have like over 2000 Sharp Fangs and like 800 Meteorites at this point. You'd think the frequency at which they're given to you would mean I'd be using them a bunch, compared to like...potions. I don't even think you need Sharp Fangs for any equipment beyond the first 10 hours of the game. Not to mention the equipment/attributes themselves are just stupid. Oh wow, a piece of equipment that reduces the cooldown of an Eikon's move that I never use by 3.0s? Oh wow, I just unlocked a new crafting recipe at the blacksmith for a new belt that gives me an additional 5 stagger? If you master 3 Eikons' ultimate abilities (I use Flames of Rebirth, Judgement Strike, and Gigaflare), you can basically peel through bosses and enemies just by staggering them once and then using all three abilities in a row. Why would I need an additional 15 stagger?
Basically every Eikon ability after Bahamut's is useless. The fact you can only assign 3 Eikons at a time and you're forced to spend like 10,000 skill-points on each ability before you can swap it to another Eikon is supremely annoying. Tbh though, the combat doesn't really ever ask much of you so I guess there's no real point in the abilities besides deciding which of the Eikons aesthetic you like the most (and it is Ifrit, Odin, and Shiva for me ultimately. Bahamut's Megaflare ability is trash and at least Shiva/Odin have somewhat useful abilities bound to Circle).
Anyways 6/10 Final Fantasy. I sincerely wish they'd return to their roots a bit more for the next main-line game but unfortunately we will probably never get a true turn-based mainline game again where 90% of the dev focus is on the other parts of the game rather than making flashy combat spectacles (which admittedly, have been the best part of 16, but still, there are so many times I get hype for a real-time cutscene in the middle of a boss fight).
I don't know if a series can have good writing after it's been running so long that the writers they're hiring got started by writing fanfics of it.
I haven't played a Final Fantasy since number 6 though.
