To my favorite maker of games: SquareEnixFollow

I agree with Gaxe which has to be first. Squaresoft's PS offerings besides Xenogears and FFT(my choice) all are below my expectations. The undisputed king of Final Fantasy is VI, now and forever. FFVII and beyond lowered the standards by going mainstream IE.. selling out.

someone should make a new tactics game implementing the abilities and jobs of the previous game with new content, multiplayer action.

I have the PSP version but its next to impossible to find anyone else who has a PSP, and FFT.

I might start looking into making my own (watered down) version of this in my spare time. as it was such a badass game.

I would probably end up just makeing the engine and jobs and ****. im not gonna code a whole story and **** into it. waaay to much work.

Nothing is wrong with most of Square's recent stuff, even the playstation offerings. It's just not at the god tier level anymore, and is instead, average. The change didn't take square, enix, or squareenix fro amazing to bad, just from amazing to not as good as it used to be. Other developers caught up as well for being known as rpg makers, so they weren't special anymore. I don't know why so many gamers polarize their taste so much. It's impossible to find people who think that games are just decent now; they're either awful, or the best games ever, in the world.

Also, TWEWY was, in my opinion, the closest thing SE hs produced in years that included both the quality and experience of their older stuff. I haven't enjoyed an rpg that much since suikoden II.

Ah, memories...

To me, one of the best Final Fantasy titles will have been FFVI. Yeah, sprites and lack of 3D, but the story captivated me. Hell, I forgot to eat for a few days on christmas break when I got it lol... (yeah don't do that).

FFVII I knew all the spoilers and still played it. Just to see HOW it unfolds. I'm like that.

FFVIII, it was alright. same with FFIX.

FFX captivated me. FFX-2, eh... it was alright. Someday I'll get the 100% ending.

FFXII has a good story too, I think. (Someday I'll finish it and see how it ends.)

Let's not forget Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, etc. etc. Squaresoft back in the day had kickass titles.

I never played Xenogears and didn't play through Star Ocean: second story very much (liked what I did play through though), and only played Dragon Warrior I on the NES, so I can't really comment on Enix before the merger too much.

My point I think is... I have little problems with the games themselves. How they're handling their treatment of players and the implementation and decisions lately... ugh. Not much more I can really say.

(Now Secret of Evermore, on the other hand.... meh. ...US-side made game... US-side Customer Service... wait. correlation? nah, maybe coincidence.)

Side-side note: Einhander was pretty cool, but we're talking about RPG's and not shooters, right?

You're being melodramatic. It's one thing to complain that the quality of the rpgs are declining, but it's just incorrect to claim that square isn't making rpgs anymore, or has even changed focus. They haven't stopped designing games for you, unless your perspective is so entrenched with the mmo that you haven't played their other, recent, offerings of offline stuff.

If you want to see a company that actually doesn't care about it's core anymore then I invite you to buy a wii and share my pain. It seems like for every instance of the holy trinity of metroid/zelda/mario there are ten of insipid mii sports, cooking, and party games.

***



I would have loved chrono cross if it hadn't pretended to be in the same universe as chrono trigger.

Edited, Jul 30th 2009 8:36pm by Pensive

I disagree. Old people are starting to lose interest because they are getting older.

If, like me, you grew up playing FF games on the NES and SNES, you're now at an age where you're married, have kids, have a career, or some combination of the three. No more reading Nintendo Power on the schoolbus, then killing an entire evening playing video games in a beanbag chain in front of a television.

Everybody likes to pretend to be the old guy saying "back in my day...", but that's what you guys are doing now. "We didn't need mini-games in my day, dammit! Side quests? All we had was the main story, and we LIKED it!"




Edited, Jul 30th 2009 10:39pm by SEforPrez

I'd agree if i werent just playing better games instead. Mass Effect Lost Odyssey etc. SE would have done themselves a favor if they wouldnt have knee capped Hironobu Sakaguchi after the spirits within bombing. As far as im concerned he was Square. Hes still putting out quality products just not for SE.

All in all ive resigned that any SE game im gonna buy will be an overpriced movie ticket with about 20hrs of boring time kill between gorgeous CG. Hence me buying SE titles new anymore, ill just watch the videos on youtube or buy it used at gamestop in 8 months for 15 bucks. Exception being any reissue of FFIV, its my kryptonite.

Funny you should mention this. I'm currently boycotting the local McDonalds. They forced me to wait while their employees were chit chatting with friends who stopped by. They got my order wrong. And just general lack of service.

Did this happen just once? No. Not at all. I'd hardly boycott something for a single time of bad service. See, the problem is that it was an ongoing thing. I stopped in once a week or so and got consistantly poor service.

This went on for about a month before I spoke to a manager about the issues. He sincerly apologized for the lack of service and said he would speak to the employees. He even offered a 10 dollar gift card. I thanked him, but refused the gift card. Its not about me wanting free stuff, its about me wanting decent service.

So, I went back a week later. Same lack of service. I thought, well gee, maybe he hasn't gotten a chance to talk to the employees yet. The following week, the same thing. And the week after that too. So, I'm not going their for a good long time.

See? Its not about any ONE thing that McDonalds or SE has done. Its been a consistant lack of service on their part. One time things are forgivable. Even two or three if the service is decent the rest of the time. Both McDonalds and SE have failed to do that. So, its time to put my money elsewhere.

(On a side note, I DO realize that most McDonalds have excellent service. It just seems to be this one store that really REALLY sucks.)

The difference is that they split the games up. You don't see metroid having mini games about soccer, cooking, cards and other party activities. No, Metroid is Metroid, and the mini games are sold separately.

Zelda is however losing its charm with more and more mini games. I recall the Wii zelda had things like "carry the pot to the city" and "fishing" and "roll the marble" and so on. Then again even during the SNES days they attempted things like "run through the maze on time" "Dig for treasure" and so on. Things nobody in their sane mind would bother with unless there were heart pieces involved.

You just got to question these groups and companies who design content people don't want, but add a reward to force them to do it anyway. What is the idea behind making people put up with things they don't enjoy for a reward they enjoy?



Except it has nothing to do with need, and all to do with interest. I don't find it fun at all to take a break from my Ferrari racing sim to play "fill the gasoline can" mini game for 20 minutes between races. No company has yet made this design choice, but I can see the world heading in this direction.

Far too few companies care about making true games and just attempt mish-mash games. The worst part of mini games is usually that you can't even avoid them if you want good items. So even the game companies know people don't want them so they have to put up a lure with good items. Isn't that kind of odd? Extra time spent on content nobody wants, and then you add items to force people into doing said extra content they won't have any interest in doing.

If I had the option, I'd rather pay 10 dollars less for a game without mini games than the current costs that involve months of development of mini games I don't want. (Unless anyone here thinks chocobo breeding was done in an hour)

Sad to hear when bad company policy makes people leave, even more sad when you know the guy leaving.

Here's to hoping SE can learn from this and become that much better for it.

Edit:
Super off-topicness:



Microsoft's new interactive controlerless gizmo(Project Natal) showed a girl playing a racing game and then pulls into the pit to get new tires and the dad had to actually get up and change her tires.

The video itself was pretty cool I thought, but we have to change our own tires now when we play a racing game? I thought that was pretty wierd.

Link




I can agree, yet disagree at the same time. While I don't have the patience to sit down for 8 hours a day playing a game, if the game is good...I can easily sit thru 2-3 hours of it and enjoy myself. I recently played legend of the dragoon for the 3rd time. I still enjoyed myself because I was able to get into the story. Though I will admit I have never collected all of the stardust's to finish that mini game part of it.

Edited, Jul 31st 2009 7:57am by spcwill

Gonna have to say I agree too.

Square nowadays seems more like a BUSINESS ONRY company rather than a group of people who genuinely like making good games. It's just such a shame to see what used to be one of the most respectable companies out there go swiftly down the toilet.