The Redemption of Final Fantasy, and Square Enix

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buddhafied

Sphere Hunter
Sep 30, 2013
241
126
Vancouver, BC
#1
I am, by all mean, not an expert like many of you in the series, nor that I can remember which director directed which game in Final Fantasy. However, I've been a fan of Squaresoft (then Square Enix) over the past 20+ years. I've seen a lot of changes in the two decades, some for the good, some for the bad. I'm starting this thread so we can discuss about the direction of Square Enix the last couple of years, not just about one or two particular games, but the series as a whole.

I think, as much as we can argue all we want, one of the biggest downfall of the series happened around the release of Final Fantasy XIII. Yes, there were many things already happened prior to that including the leaving of Sakaguchi, etc. But we didn't see the extend of how the company was falling apart until Final Fantasy XIII. The extreme long developing cycle, built up expectation that didn't met, and critically lukewarm reviews all lead to huge backlash against the series. There were many things I still like about FFXIII, (I always like Lightning as a character, the graphics were beautiful and I enjoy the gameplay) but we will be fooling ourselves if we think it was a well received game, period. Since then, the bad press never stopped.

I've read many bad things written about Square Enix over the past 4 years, much of them I don't blame fans, because gamers are a passionate group with a loud (cyber) mouth. However, I want to talk about how much Square Enix was willing to accept their mistakes, regroup, fix, and relaunch. I think we can see this in the series of events after the launch of FFXIII and FFXIV.

If FFXIII was the game that put a hole at the bottom of the ship of Square Enix, FFXIV 1.0 was the game that almost sunk the ship. I was in the game since alpha test 1.0, as much as I stuck with it for as long as I can, witness the shutdown of server and relaunch, I still think 1.0 was unplayable. What SquaeEnix did afterward was amazing and unheard of in the MMO world. They publicly admit they have ruined the name of the series, appointed a new director with an extremely transparent developing schedule and agenda, rebuild the whole game to launch 2.0 while maintaining 1.0 up until shutting down the server at 1.23. To us FFXIV: ARR players, Yoshi-P was our hero.

Many has criticized Square Enix decided to go ahead with XIII-2 and Lightning Returns despite the weak reception of the original game. I see XIII-2 and Lightning Returns the version 1.23 of XIV. Square Enix used those two games to recuperate some costs while regrouping themselves. Again, we can argue if XIII-2 and Lightning Returns were good games or not, but we can't say Square Enix not doing anything "behind the scene" to fix the brand. The result is what we've seen in last year's E3 and this year's Tokyo Game Show. While majority of the gaming world were complaining, laughing, making a joke out of Square Enix about Versus XIII, which since last year has become FFXV, they were actually simultaneously keeping as modestly satisfied with "patches" of FFXIII and preparing the relaunch of Versus XIII and Type-O (also as we see from Nomura leaving the XV project now, Kingdom Hearts III.)

What we see this year at TGS is a company that has, hopefully, learned from some of its biggest mistakes, and delivered long due promises to its fans, acknowledged they were long due and, to some extend, listened to their fans. I don't know how these games will turn out, but one thing I know for sure, Square Enix and Final Fantasy has redeemed itself for me. Like every day for the past 20 years of my life, I am still proud to be a geek who have the love for a little video game series called Final Fantasy.
 

yeah_93

Warrior of Light
Sep 27, 2013
1,512
570
Venezuela
#2
I'll wait until XV actually comes out to judge. The next months will present an indication however, let's see if we have to deal with another info blackout of FFXV.
 
Likes: Tornak