Self-explainatory. The Final Fantasy VII saga including Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core, is miles better than anything FFX represents.
It's really not self-explanatory. What's your issue with the (taken out of context) scene exactly?
I honestly don't understand the hatred against FFX. It was quite honestly one of my favourites, with FF6 being the absolute favourite. I've heard all of the complaints over and over, and none of them make the slightest bit of sense to me. It's as linear as just about the majority of games. You're given an area to explore, story progresses, and you're given another area to explore, which is pretty much the exact same algorithm that every other older Final Fantasy game used. The story itself was clever while still being easy to understand, and the battle system was one of the best systems in the entire series. I love the fact how you can plan the battle so far ahead, as well as being able to win any battle easily just through having intimate knowledge of the game mechanics. Sure, the voice acting might not have been in perfect, but it was acceptable considering it was one of the first PS2 games with voice acting.
And no, that laughing scene is a terrible example of poor acting because the entire point of the scene was that the laughter was supposed to be forced. Tidus was upset about the situation he was in, and Yuna mentioned that she practiced smiling when she was sad. Of course, Tidus felt very awkward trying to force himself to smile and laugh, thus the awkward scene. But if you notice, they both eventually start genuinely laughing at themselves because of that awkward laughing. Sorry for going off ranting there, but that always pisses me off when people take a scene completely out of context, and use it to judge the whole game.
The games I didn't like would be FF8, FF12 and FF13. For all of them, I didn't enjoy the game mechanics at all. The battle systems to me just weren't that fun whatsoever. The fact FF13 encouraged auto-battle showed how poorly designed their battle system was. Speaking of mechanics, FF13 was a shoe-lace. If people thought FFX was linear, just compare it to FF13. FFX had plenty of exploration compared to FF13. However, my biggest problem with FF13 and FF12 were the stories. I finished FF13, and I still haven't a clue what was going on and I have no idea who that final boss was suppose to be.
Clearly based off FF13-2, Square Enix is listening to their customers. FF13-2 made an obvious attempt at trying to integrate all of the different suggestions that their consumers have been giving, mainly exploration. It'd be very interesting to see how Lightning Returns is now as a result. Judging from the trailers, it looks like Square Enix is taking an action-RPG approach, which is also something people have been asking for. Personally I think they should have just jumped to FF15 or whatever so they can start fresh with the story, but I'm guessing they're just not willing to invest so much time into creating new assets and taking a larger risk. So really, I'm just waiting to see the reviews for Lightning Returns. It looks surprisingly promising.
