I think the problem with Final Fantasy is that Square is too scared to be serious and gritty.
They think about it, but not wanting to offend anyone, they switch to bright colours and annoying "gay aeroplane" characters like Vanille.
They could have done some brilliant side stories based on the conflict between Vanille and Sahz, but that would have made Sahz into the stereotypical angry black man, which might have made him less popular... But the fact that they made him a wise cracking, afro toting, chicken loving, gun user who pretty much shrugs off his son being used and turned to crystal makes him even less likeable.
In FF7, they didn't shy away from conflict so much and it's overall setting was more dystopian.
It had bright friendly guff, but you didn't really have to pay attention to most of it and the stuff you couldn't avoid was better done (shemale Cloud  ​)... Also, Cait Sith got crushed to death, which is nice ​

yeah this is pretty much how i feel on the matter. it's frustrating because they introduce slightly more complex themes into the games, but are way too obsessed with making it a FOR ALL AGES kind of game that you really can't take what they're doing seriously. it's like they want the game to appeal to ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY, but ultimately make it so the game doesn't really specifically appeal to anyone.

considering how they have an irrational amount of pull with consumers, it's pretty irritating that they don't try to be at least slightly more ambitious. they legitimately have room to be more experimental with their games, but are clearly satisfied with just making safe games that only really young audiences could get excited by. not like this is anything new, though. this is exclusively how they've operated for a long time. i guess it's just annoying when you can really pinpoint how this strategy has completely ruined otherwise interesting games.

The new Front Mission is like Armoured Core but there is a difference in my opinion Armoured Core in a whole and it's sequels will always be better then that trash of a game.

Sometimes, I wonder what happened to the old Squaresoft that effectively turned them into EA.
Square used to release games like Vagrant Story and Front Mission, but now their RPG's are pretty terrible and the next Front Mission sounds more like Armoured Core.
It's like they used to kick out a little gem every so often and even those not promoted much became popular.
The problem is that rather than learn from their success, they scrap what's popular and shit out some heartless tripe like The Bouncer or Driving Emotion Type S, which just shows that 80% of their effort goes on graphics rather than gameplay.

i've always been inclined to think that it was square phasing out sakaguchi that kinda did it. he was the president and head dude through all the years that square actually didn't suck and was making perpetually interesting games, and kinda got bumped around 2001(probably due to how much of a failure the movie was) which was really when squaresoft completely stopped making anything remotely interesting.  i seriously doubt that's a coincidence.

of course, i don't know if this can be attributed more to sakaguchi being a good guiding light(mistwalker is kinda underwhelming), or the fact that yoichi wada is a fucking awful videogame person and should not be allowed to use technology. probably both are true, considering square went from really being the best game company out there to genuinely being one of the worst, seemingly overnight. kinda goes to show how important it is to have A CREATIVE PERSON in charge of a game company rather than SOME BUSINESSMAN.

Sometimes, I wonder what happened to the old Squaresoft that effectively turned them into EA.
Square used to release games like Vagrant Story and Front Mission, but now their RPG's are pretty terrible and the next Front Mission sounds more like Armoured Core.
It's like they used to kick out a little gem every so often and even those not promoted much became popular.
The problem is that rather than learn from their success, they scrap what's popular and shit out some heartless tripe like The Bouncer or Driving Emotion Type S, which just shows that 80% of their effort goes on graphics rather than gameplay.

EA on the other hand, seems to be moving away from releasing truly awful drivel, though admittedly, this is mainly down to them buying new studios such as DICE, Criterion and Bioware to get their hands on titles like Dragon Age, Mass Effect and Battlefield.

I've maintained that it was the advance in technology and frankly story driven linear RPGs just don't handle the "upgrade" very well. They basically turn into bad semi-interactive 3D animes that are just no fun(there's no playing). Part of the whole reason why the old 8-32 bit RPGs were so appealing was that there was a lot left to the imagination with the whole numbered stats, dialogue boxes, sprites, battle-screens etc. The whole idea of the designers attempting to maintain some of these things, like a turn-based battle system, while leaving nothing to the imagination on modern hardware is just retarded when you consider that the entire reason the concepts were developed was because of technical limitations that don't exist anymore.

I've always wondered whether rpgs like that would have benefitted from cutting out half their characters and having more focus. It's hard enough telling a strong story in a game with a few characters (both through the quality of writing, and through more formal uses of GAMES themselves), that when you have to put together a game with a half dozen dudes AND have to put together high definition art assets AND compose music and deal with competent voice acting AND build an actual, playable, and interesting game that ties everything together competently and neatly is virtually impossible.

nah. i don't think it is that these companies are overstretching their resources, i think that it is just they they choose to use the vast resources they've got to make some of the worst ideas for games. hundley said something i thought was pretty true - alot of the time these games are set up to be so fun, and really interesting, but a few terrible choices make the games terrible.

like final fantasy 13, the characters are all the most cynical stereotypes, and you play it hating it for a while then you realise that the characters actually develop as you go through the game. i remember when i realised that hope was actually being explored beyond being an angsty teen and pretty boy for serial moms i was really surprised, same with snow. and the two of them have this actually interesting conflict going on between them for the first half of the game. that's just one example of the interesting characters, but the thing i want to point out is how it totally dies off in the game. by the end of the game, there are no characters. you just have 6 battle figurines who throw out awful stock lines until you get to the ending, which i skipped because i was so sick of the game by that point i didn't even care how it ended. they had this little roster of characters who I assumed were going to be awful, then they managed to convince me they weren't and i cared about them for a while. then they stopped doing all that interesting stuff and started talking about saving coccoon and l'cie and fal'cie and who cares incessantly even though they had me friggin reeled in! like i was playing the game and i didn't expect to but i actually liked sazh and vanille together, and vanille and fang and snow and lightning and alot of the other dynamics that were going on and i was excited to see the whole thing go even further and then it just didn't and some 60 year old asshole kept showing up to talk about the end of the world and i switched off.

real talk: i am currently more engrossed in the story and care about the characters of Mario Galaxy 2 more than I did with what I played of FF13.

How does Galaxy 2 compare to the first one?

I would be satisfied with more Galaxy levels tbh.

you have terrible taste

nah hes actually kinda right. in fact i'd argue that if you thought ff9's story was anything other than rehashed garbage you have terrible taste

I'd like to to say that I played FF6 about a year ago and I don't understand what all the fuss is about that game. Infact I never really enjoy playing any of the FF games except maybe tactics. I only remember enjoying watching my older brother play FF7 (but not really understanding what was going on).

It's funny, I never really thought about playing FF6 again until I started watching someone play FFXIII. After then, I ended up playing for nearly 12 hours straight. I was disillusioned to the experience at this point, but I was still enjoying the experience. It puts my whole dislike of FFVII into perspective with my dislike of where Final Fantasy has "evolved" since then. (If you don't understand it yourself, then all you have to understand is that other people like what this game offers apparently. I can't believe it took me this long to realize how similar FF6 and FF7 really are, I didn't really get it myself until a friend told me FF6 was his second-favorite under FF7.)

It's funny, playing it over again I can see that FFVI was really a starting point for the series to decline, which can only lead me to expect that none of the games had to be very good in the first place. Still my favorite out of the main titles though. But there is no force I could imagine that would ever cause me to remove final fantasy tactics from my all time favorite games list.

Just won my first Phoenix Wright case (on my iPhone). 8-)

I am really enjoying RDR. Wasn't the biggest fan of GTA4 but I like this a lot more. I think the comparison is a bit silly really as they are two different genres. When I first played it I found it to be closer to Fallout 3 than anything else down to the atmosphere and scenery. The acting is definitely the best in a game so far. Uncharted 2 comes close in terms of acting but this game just has so many characters. The dialogue is a lot longer and better developed than in GTA but I guess they have made a real effort to make it a wild western life simulator as well. There are some special things that you can do like ride a mine cart whilst shooting mothers in the face that you don't really get in the drive-here-shoot-this nature of the other game.

One of the things that impressed me is that the PS3 version isn't that bad at all, graphically. The PS3 version of GTA4 was rendered in 480p and upscaled to the monitor which was pretty dreadful. Apparently Episodes from Liberty City has the same treatment as RDR and runs closer to 720p so I might get that.

Not just a good Wild Western life simulator it is also a great Snidely Whiplash simulator too.

Also now a days PS3 normally has the better graphics since now there more tuned to the coding. Sadly the game freezes a lot they need to do a stability patch or something.

also I'm having problem with a mission if anyone can help. I need to sneak on to this train and I keep on getting killed right after i take out the frist guy that is mounting the Gatling Gun.

did you get the guy on the roof?