[GRWC8] A Not-So-Final Fantasy [Article]

Last edited by A.I. on Fri Sep 12, 2008 1:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Anonymous wrote:A Not-So-Final Fantasy

I don’t like Final Fantasy. Pretty much all JRPGs actually but Final Fantasy is the main culprit and the main reason. The Japanese are all eccentric, crazy folk and when they do craziness well they do it very well, take Elite Beat Agents and the forthcoming Wii title, Captain Rainbow for example; madder than a bag of hammers. JRPGs are rarely tongue in cheek though and take themselves far too seriously. It seems to me that with each game, of which there must be nearly twenty, they try and out-epic the last game to the point of lunacy. Their infatuation with the lady boy characters and their crazy, super-styled hair is worrying but then again some people in Britain love Lenny Henry so courses for horses and all that. Final Fantasy “It’ll be out this year” XIII is something else though, the trailer shown at Microsoft’s E3 conference was just a mess of genderless adverts for ridiculously impractical clothing going around a city that would never work in the real world using impractical weaponry against impractical enemies. All the time showing off how awesome they look in slow motion.

It told us nothing about what the game might actually be like although it’s not a stretch of the imagination to think it’ll be the same as the last game. The trailer featured less than a second of what probably wasn’t gameplay but it doesn’t matter too much. It’s now so overly complicated that it has no appeal to anyone outside of the very core fans that have played the games since the original. They’re not even trying to attract new players or even a western audience (something not necessarily required but would certainly make sense) instead Square Enix are giving fans increasingly prettier wank-fodder until sometime in 2015 when a load of cosplaying douche bags will wait outside their local import shop to pick up their first orgasm in seven years.

Now the worst offender and probably the biggest non-Gizmondo fault gaming has to offer is turn based combat. An utterly boring mechanic born as a result of the technological restrictions of the time which is fair enough but to keep using it until well into the PS2 generation is criminally lazy. It’s changed though and I’m unaware of how well the new combat system works but as I haven’t heard anyone raving about it and being unable to hear the Final Fantasy nerds deep underground in their mum’s basements I’m going to assume it’s an above average mechanic at best.

Now I’m not exactly demanding change as it would have be an incredibly drastic one to garner a sale from me and why should they change it best solely on my opinion? God knows it sells. However they need to do something major and rethink their franchise, it’s in the Top 5 biggest games series without a doubt but they have to do something new. Imagine the publicity Final Fantasy XIV would gather amongst the gaming press if it were to actually do something different other than teenagers taking down something evil. Apart from simplifying the series and basing it more in reality (I do realise Fantasy is in the title smart-arse) I wouldn’t know where to begin. Actually, I might do, let the male characters grow some balls or at least let them drop.

All comments and feedback welcome. Thank you.

Loved it. Genuine laughter the whole way through. I totally agree with everything you're saying, too. I've yet to play a Final Fantasy game and, as such, the Microsoft E3 press conference "megaton" did little to excite me.

There are several places where I feel you could have used a few more commas (here come the grammar Nazis!) and just the one typo that I spotted:

it would have be an incredible drastic one...

Actually, that's two, isn't it? What happened? Did Ronald McDonald appear outside your window or something? The rest of it's immaculate!

I quite liked the point you were making and it was well thought out, but could have benefitted from a couple more read-throughs.

Some of the arguments and points were rather biased, and bordering on facile, but then this is the GRcade writing competition not the Booker prize.

Overall a nice piece, but a relatively pointless argument considering the history of the series and the infintessimal chance the the basic premise of the games will ever change. The article could have been written better, in my eyes, but who am I to judge.... oh wait yeh we are the judges right? Meh.

6/10 Good work. Ooh I feel like a teacher.

Hmm. Sorry, but I found that a little more aggravating than entertaining. As pointed out above me, its a little biased and in fact, unless it was supposed to be sarcy or I've missed the point of the article, I've got to say I disagree with a lot of whats in there. Its just an angry rant against a whole genre, largely because you seem to dislike the direction of one trailer.

I think some of the points you raise are extremely questionable and could do with more debate or focus. For instance the 'lady-boy' issue - you highlight Final Fantasy, but maybe you should go all the way and name drop for the sake of clarity. There are loads of 'manly' characters in that series (off the top of my head, Cid in VII - he beats his wife and smokes as a victory celebration, or Balthier in XII). What do you want, Halo the RPG? Be less vague.

Also, I acknowledge you don't necessarily have the space for the turn based issue - you could write a dissertation on it if you so wished - but there are some points you could bring up for balance. Take Kingdom Hearts - its a Final Fantasy spin-off RPG actually co-starring FF characters - it actually does use modernised more or less real-time combat, surely it counts as a Squeenix attempt to bring RPGs forward? Ditto Star Ocean 3.

The quality of the writing is alright, I have actually read worse in magazines and papers. In fact it is a relatively amusing article so thats something else I did like. By the way I don't mean to sound like I'm having a go, I just felt a couple of things could have been explored a bit better. For the record I haven't written an article and have no intention of doing so, so ignore my opinion if you wish (I'm aware its anonymous and you can't really respond), but all the same those are my two cents.

And Pilch - try one, you never know you might like it.

I'm assuming it was designed to be an entertaining "different point of view" type article, but at times it seemed to fall flat on it's face because it didn't seem to be that well researched. To claim that the new battle system isn't very good because "you haven't heard anything about it" seems ridiculous, especially when all the reviews, and general opinion, is that it was a great step forward for the series, so it should have came up pretty quickly if you did a bit of research. And when a large portion of the fanbase are complaining about how different and completely un-Final Fantasy like the last game's plot was, to then ask them to innovate and change the plot for the next game just adds to the opinion that the piece was badly researched.

How do you know Square Enix's marketing campaign? Final Fantasy XII was a shake up to attract new fans, and FFXIII will probably try and do the same. But yet, you claim that it appeals to nobody outside of the core fan base or any western audience. I find that to be a rather odd statement. The ladyboy comment is another strange one, as it means you don't actually know many of the FF characters, or you consider a large portion of men to look worryingly feminine.

Personally, I'd say it's never a good idea to write an article that can basically be summed up as "I don't like game X, and I'm going to give you a bunch of reasons why" unless you can put a twist on it somehow.

puppetBoy wrote:And Pilch - try one, you never know you might like it.

Don't worry - I will. I've simply never had the chance before as I've never owned a playstation. So long as reviewers don't unanimously call it rubbish, I'll pick up XIII for the 360. The opinion given in this article must be an outsider's view looking in - it sums up my thoughts nicely. My opinions might not be quite so extreme but they'd make for a less entertaining article, I'm sure.

I didn't like it. A fairly average piece that's less an informed article than an uninspired rant. Not that I don't consider your points valid, or even for that matter well made, but if you're going to enter a rant, then by the end of it I want to be agreeing with you. All that really came across was that you don't like Final Fantasy, and all I could help feeling was that I didn't really care.

Kinetic wrote:I didn't like it. A fairly average piece that's less an informed article than an uninspired rant. Not that I don't consider your points valid, or even for that matter well made, but if you're going to enter a rant, then by the end of it I want to be agreeing with you. All that really came across was that you don't like Final Fantasy, and all I could help feeling was that I didn't really care.

I kind of agree with this.

Most, if not all, of your points seem to come down to your own personal preference, and your total disregard for turn based fighting is a little hard to take.

I liked it. The ranty style made me smile, there were some good gags, and it's the kind of post I can imagine being made on any number of decent blogs.

I love the way in which some won't like it seemingly solely because of the writer's bias against a series they like. As far as I'm concerned, this shows that the piece is doing even more right, and flags up the inner workings of critical opinion for some people: "That review can only be good if I agree with the score."

I've lost count of the number of articles I've read in my time where I think the verdict is wrong but it's well written enough for me to admire the piece anyway (case in point: much of Charlie Brooker's non-Screen-Burn stuff). I strongly doubt that the writer's point here was to cleverly bring out other people's bias by satirising his own, but that's what the article is capable of accomplishing. People's first reactions to things are often more brilliant to read than what those reactions are actually responding to, as they reveal so much about the way those people's minds work.

Yeah, I liked this. It's not the most elegantly-written piece, and there are a few little clunky errors, but it genuinely made me chuckle on at least two or three occasions. And the last line is a corker. "Grow some balls or at least let them drop" - I might have to use that one sometime.

Well done.

Edited on request of author.

[GRWC8] A Not-So-Final Fantasy [Article]

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