After years of constant and consistent heartbreak. Of hyping myself up to nothing but a slap in the face and kick in the nuts. Of swearing that ‘this time, they’ll do better’. False promises and pure unadulterated abuse. No, I’m not talking about Sonic or my ex … though they both kind of fit. Square Enix actually made a good Final Fantasy game. I was beginning to think it wasn’t possible. That when Enix cut the Soft out of Square, they went too deep and cut the quality out with it. For years, I’ve been using Final Fantasy as an example of how corporations are bad for games. Do I have to rethink my position? Nah. Final Fantasy XVI is the best FF in a long time, but still not good enough to turn me into a corporatist.
Growing up, Final Fantasy was by far my favorite video game franchise. If Mt Everest was the scale of my interest, Final Fantasy would be at the summit while Metal Gear Solid would be chilling down at base camp with Tenchu. Final Fantasy VII – X was the window of releases during my influential years and I will forever argue that they are the best era of FF, excluding XVI. Yes, I know what bias is.
Even though every title after X was a disappointment, I still played through them all. Hoping for some vitality. But after XV, I was done. When I heard that XVI was coming out, it barely even caught purchase on my grey matter. It was like hearing of a new Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty. Just another glob of slop for the pile. But then I played the demo. My eyes went from tired, baggy sacks to wide and glistening. My heart fluttered in a way I thought was lost to atrophy. Now I’m about twenty hours into the main game and I feel like I’m twelve again. Look at how much fun I’m having!
Online Issues
Before I get into the elements that changed Final Fantasy over the years, I first want to stipulate that I’m not talking about the MMO titles because I haven’t played them enough to comment. I hear FFXIV is great and has some fantastic expansions which makes sense considering Naoki Yoshida (director of XIV) is the main producer of XVI. If I have to make an argument it would be that it’s inherently more difficult to immerse yourself in a story within an online setting.
In the same way a horror movie can turn into comedy when being watched with friends, a game becomes secondary to the social experience when played with other people. I played a month’s trial of XIV and felt pressured to skip all the dialogue and cutscenes so that the other players in my team could grind. That being said, I’m sure they’re still great stories but online just isn’t my thing.
It’s not FF without beautiful scenery
What Happened to Final Fantasy?
Way back in the yesteryear of Square, before they were churning out AAA drivel by the bucket load, Square Enix was a little company known to the Western world as Squaresoft. In the late 80s, Squaresoft were struggling as a games developer so they decided to make one final game led by their head writer, Hironobu Sakaguchi. The word ‘final’ in Final Fantasy was literal because they felt it could be their last chance as succeeding in the gaming industry. And succeed they did, enough to make Final Fantasy one of the most recognizable franchises in gaming history.
For ten mainline Final Fantasy games, Hironobu Sakaguchi was at the heart, applying his exceptional storytelling skills. They were even able to start negotiations to merge with the Enix corporation, a large competitor in the RPG realm. But then they made a movie. There aren’t enough megatons to describe how much Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within bombed. It even shook their negotiations with Enix. Hironobu decided to resign and with that, they lost one of the greatest storytellers this world has known. And since then, there has been a considerable lack of heart in Final Fantasy stories. Let me explain.
The Iron Giant is an old FF staple
The Heart Torn Bleeding From the Franchise
When I say ‘heart’ I more mean the particular framing by which these stories adopt. Earlier Final Fantasy games had a specific question they were trying to answer. In FFVII, it was ‘how do you find your way back to normalcy when your entire identity has been stripped away from you’. In FFX, it’s ‘can love cross the boundaries of time and dreams’. These are very gripping questions with people and personal interactions at the center. Then once they’ve defined the heart of the story, they’ll add a bunch of the more grandiose themes on top like toppling corrupt power structures and preserving nature.
In the later games, they steered more toward the generic fantasy direction. Every FF is a fantasy in that they’re set in their own fantasy worlds dealing with things inherent to those worlds but after X, they fell more into basic tropes like war or the battle between good and evil.
Haven’t seen a protagonist this well written since Zidane
War, What Is It Good For?
Final Fantasy XII starts with a human story about a kid coming to terms with his dead brother then it’s pretty much dropped instantly for the main plot which is all boring war stuff. In XIII, you don’t care about their plights because all the characters are insufferable. XV did have some cool stuff about a king proving that he’s worthy, but then it was drowned out by more war stuff. You may say that FFVIII and IX had war stuff too, and yes they did, but the games weren’t about war. FFVIII was a love story about learning the importance of love and self-sacrifice when your heart has shut off. And the war elements in IX were all about how overwhelming power can corrupt even the most peaceful of nations.
I’m not saying anything containing war is bad, I’m saying that war is overused in fantasy and often used to get away with lazy writing. If you’re putting war at the heart of your story, then everything either becomes about ending the war or winning the war. There’s no longer any room for making the stories personal. FFVIII and IX are deeply personal stories that fully delve into the character’s psyche. FFXII has barely any personality at all. FFXIII’s personality is that of a dirty dish towel trying desperately to convince you that it’s clean. And FFXV’s personality is that of the friend who keeps making promises and never keeping them.
They did Ifrit justice in this game
I’d Have a Beer With FFXVI
From the very beginning, FFXVI is dripping with personality. There is a lot of war stuff, but it spends less time on the war and more on individual characters and their struggles. It almost immediately becomes about the plight of the slave class. You feel the weight of every action you take because of how much the game concentrates on characters over plot. Even the dumb little side missions have weight. Collect some crap to help apples grow in dead soil, then it later makes the point that apples growing in a harsh environment is a perfect analogy for your team and their survival. This dumb apple mission becomes about giving the slaves you save a beacon upon which they can restore their hope. Now that’s just good writing.
Final Fantasy XVI has some of the best writing I’ve seen in any game. In the demo alone, they had the stones to kill off important and lovable characters for the sake of rich character development. From that, I could tell straight away that I could trust the writers to do what was necessary to give me a compelling story. Haven’t felt that kind of trust since The Last of Us Part II.
Possibly the sexiest of all the Cids
The goal of any story is to give the player/reader/viewer something to feel for. Final Fantasy used to provide stories that gave you so much to empathize with. Characters with nuance and plots with intricacies. Then they stopped that for a while, steering more in the direction of providing action and big worlds with lots of lore. But action and lore are worth nothing if you can’t first get hooked by something worth feeling for. There’s a similar tale on the gameplay side.
Death to Turn-Based
If you’ve only played recent Final Fantasys, you may understandably think that it’s more of an action franchise than an RPG one. But for the most part, Final Fantasy was all about role-playing with turn-based battle mechanics. And they were good at it too. I can’t think of a single game that does turn-based better than FFX does. In any case, after Hironobu left, they’ve steered further and further away from strategy-type mechanics and more towards fast-paced action.
With the success of Kingdom Hearts, it seems they drew the conclusion that action titles would be the focus for future titles. Possibly overlooking the success of Kingdom Hearts is probably better attributed to the bridging of two giant fan bases but hey, what do I know? The fact remains that FFXIII and XV are more about crazy flippy explody action instead of slow strategic decision-making. As well as FFVII Remake, Crisis Core, Stranger of Paradise, etc. And, I cannot stress this enough, Square Enix is absolutely trash at making action games.
FFXVI was no doubt inspired by God of War with their big boss battles
They always seem to prioritize making things look flashy on screen over the actual fun factor. This is shown by the inclusion of auto-battle mechanics and ‘one button does all’ kind of stuff. In XV, you just hold a button down and your character continuously attacks. There’s no thought put toward timing or anything that makes action games fun. FFVII Remake is a pure exercise in frustration. You make Cloud jump around doing all these crazy slashing attacks then an enemy flexes an eyebrow and you go flying across the arena. And you can’t react because you’re locked into stupidly long animations. To this date, I have played exactly one good Square Enix action game.
The Magnificence of FFXVI’s Battle System
Anyone who’s seen footage of FFXVI knows that it isn’t deviating from the action trend. But at least they had the self-awareness to know how bad they are at it. So they brought in Capcom veteran Ryota Suzuki as the battle designer. I don’t think I have to explain Capcom’s chops when it comes to fighting mechanics. I would go as far as to say that Final Fantasy XVI has the best battle mechanics of any game under the Square umbrella that I’ve played.
The bosses are so fun
It’s not too convoluted that you’re tripping over the controller trying to get certain attacks out. The animations are quick and responsive, and it prioritizes dodging and blocking over attacking. You are rewarded for precise timing and the enemy attacks are all adequately telegraphed. It perfectly blends Final Fantasy-style flashiness with intuitive and immersive gameplay. I didn’t think it was possible. With this one title, Square has swayed me. Now, when I see a new Final Fantasy title with action mechanics, I don’t have to cringe.
Rant Over
I hope I’m not leaving too much of the impression that I hate modern Final Fantasy. I will admit to some slight hyperbole at the beginning of this article. Though I have issues with it, I often go back and play FFXII because I love the environments. XIII has an alright battle system once you learn all the nuances. And XV isn’t horrible, it’s just boring. I love how much effort they put into revitalizing all the goofy enemy designs in FFVII Remake and the skyboxes are amazing.
Gotta love those Capcom designers
I believe there’s something good in every game, but with a quality standard set by FFX, the precipitous drop is obvious. It’s crazy that we needed six more main-line games (and countless spin-offs) to get back to that level of quality. FFXVI has quickly become one of my favorite games. It has resurrected all the dead tissue surrounding my heart, callused from years of Square Enix grinding. I would say more, but I’ve got Mother Crystals to destroy.
