Final Fantasy is definitely stale. Hitting a few points I spotted reading through the thread first:
- VIII is a good game. The combat system was designed in such a way that you could play the game just about any way you wanted to, modifying the challenge to however you saw fit. The first play through, you're unlikely to see this, barely beating the final boss by the skin of your teeth, at least if you're anything like me. Subsequent plays will result in really seeing the game for what it is though. It can be very time consuming depending on how you play, but hell, any good RPG should take up a solid amount of time. Plus, that story. Definitely one of the best stories in an FF game. Makes you want to keep playing.
- VII really isn't that great of a game. The story isn't fantastic, and the characters aren't all that loveable. It's certainly tainted by nostalgia, making an okay experience seem like the best ever. VII to FF isn't like OoT to Zelda. It hasn't aged well, and remaking it would simply reveal how dated much of it is.
- Following the VII train, Crisis Core was an abysmal game. The story was garbage, and the battling was ridiculously generic. Progression was slow, and the game was lacking. It was good when it was new, before the PSP actually had some half decent games. Crisis Core has aged terribly the past few years though, showing just how clunky and crappy it is. While I'm on this topic, Dirge of Cerberus also wasn't good. In fact, it was easily the worst of the VII milking train. Advent Children was pretty cool for what it was, at least.
- XII was too experimental. It tried to change too much too quickly, and the story and character development, the staples of a good RPG, suffered because of it. That's inexcusable. The augment system was also kind of crappy. The license system was okay, an interesting attempt to reinvent the generic class system, but I'm doubting too many people actually strayed from the armor and weapon types that characters initially started with. I mean, they pretty much set you up with a decent balance of characters for any situation. Changing it up was practically discouraged. The world was honestly a bit too big at times as well. It was simply a rather tedious experience with the chance to be brilliant with some refining later on. So instead they made FF XIII. Brilliant move, SE!
- XIII, well, we all know why it isn't very good. If it wasn't an FF game, after initial reviews, most gamers wouldn't have touched it. With that in mind, I'll leave it with this: Black-Ice, if the story telling was good, that "70%" of people on this site would understand it fine. Clearly, there's a problem with the story telling if people are beating the game without a proper understanding of events. When it comes to a problem, majority always rules.
- Yes, IX concluded kind of badly, but all in all, it was a fun game to play through, and it was better than VII in terms of story, yet better than VIII in terms of general battle mechanics. It was kind of the balance of the PS1 games. Not absolutely brilliant, but not bad either. Simply worth having in your collection.
Having played nearly ever Final Fantasy game to some degree, I can say without a doubt that VI and the entries previous to it were the most consistently well done. Most had a problem or two here or there, but for the most part, you could enjoy playing through all of them. I mean, I've beaten IV to death, and V and VI have had their respective playthroughs. I've never actually beaten I, II, and III though. I and II, I simply don't have the patience for anymore (I have a hard time getting into games these days), and III I got to the end of but even I thought the game was too tedious to grind myself to a point where I could actually challenge the final boss with a reasonable chance of victory.
I've never played X or X-2. No opinion there.
Essentially though, from VII and beyond, you can easily find at least one flaw that would be game breaking to a large number of people in every entry. The formula broke in the transition to 3D and attempts to rework it has left it in a continually worse condition. As pretty much everybody that apparently made FF palatable no longer even works on the games, the odds of FF coming back in anyway that resembles the great games of old that made us love the series are slim at best. SE has turned into a company that doesn't innovate, but rather milks existing series for all they can possibly give. It's a shame, as Square truly was a great at one time. That merger was the worst idea they ever had, regardless of the reasons.
FF doesn't need to reinvent itself to survive. It has a terminal illness, and nothing will bring it back. It's just about getting as much out of it as possible before it finally dies.
It was just fun!
