Square Enix's New AAA Games Are Being Trounced by Final Fantasy 14

Not really surprised, the MMO game is one of the best in that genre. I don't think SE is giving up on single-player games anyway, there's still a good audience for that, but maybe they will need to cater to the old fans and return Final Fantasy to its turn base roots.

Clearly all of you who trashed Forspoken are to blame when they start focusing on online games instead.

TBF they've not made any genuinely amazing AAA single player games in a while. FF7 Rebirth was disappointing, FFXVI had a bad narrative, dull characters and a simplistic combat system in a bland world. Forspoken was undercooked and had bad writing.

Also, All these games were too expensive for the franchise they belong to. Look at Sega who are ecstatic with a million sales because their games are cheap as hell to make.

@Loamy Forspoken was a good game with bad writing, but you can still have fun with it, the gameplay is very good.

@breakneck rebirth was a masterpiece and 16 was great game u might not like them but both those got great reviews from players and reviewers. Persona is not a cheap game to make

I'm not sure what the hype is for ff14. I've been playing it a week or so (30 day trial). I'm on lv 40 and it's been endless fetch quests with a bit of story in between and that's if you focus on the main story which you're forced to do or the side quests and job quests remain locked till you progress. If anyone else is playing it, at what point does it get better?

When I pay for FFXIV, I'd rather have that money go to FFXIX, not to Forspoken and FFVII fanfiction.

@C25CLOUD They are cheap to make because Sega are smart to reuse their assets almost completely in cheaper middle games. Pirate in Hawaii or P3 Reload are great examples of this. The same models, world and animations are carried forward with minor updates.

Each Final Fantasy is a story of excess. High budgets, new graphics, new systems, 300 new/remixed tracks. It is outright silly. Did Rebirth need 15-20 mini games for every little thing, did they need to add the entire Shinra plotline to make an existing story more confusing and convoluted?
Did FFXVI need all that empty space in between areas or a gear mechanic that was so simple it didn't need to exist at the cost of focusing on the story's pacing?

@Loamy We live in a world where everyone can enjoy great TV series via streaming services. So why should I play a game with pathetic dialog which obviously aims for teenage girls?

They just take way to long to finish their main titles FF7R looks awsome but I lost my interest. They can say what they want but man how long are they working on this remake and it's still not finished

@MeanBeanEgg A Forspoken sequel that fixed the open world issues and worked on the writing/narrative would've been a high 80's MC game. It had some great combat and the parkour is a nice touch. Right ideas but no vision for how to make it work.

@Max_the_German Oh no! Right in the sarcasm!.

@breakneck They should have updated the graphics and made some extras, extra summons, weapons with the updated controls. They could have been working on FF8R/9R ages ago.

@z0d15g0d I'm slightly confused by your mention of a 30 day trial, the game is free to play (wth restrictions on some player to player interactions) until the end of the second expansion. However you do get 30 days free if you buy the game.

level 40 doesn't really tell me much since levelling is faster than it was when that content was "new" plus you are already playing a version of that content that has already been reduced by making some originally mandatory content now optional (although you may or may not have reached that point).

Fundamentally the "problem" here is that you are doing A Realm Reborn content. The context of this is that you are playing the part that has to rebuild the entire world, lore and deal with the narrative of the failed 1.x. And that content was supposed to last you months and is in effect a massive tutorial until you get to lvl 50 content. Compared to the base expansions which take about 2 weeks for the story and increase the level cap by 10.

Once you get halfway through the patch cycle for ARR and the game is free from the shackles of what went before it's a significant improvement. You get your "full" rotation at 50 and access to more varied content when you finish the base ARR. As you get halfway through the ARR patch cycle you also get better a better story and writing, both narratively and as the team got more comfortable with knowing when to have fun with the characters without impacting the narrative. The voice acting gets a major improvement at Heavensward when they sack off their US cast for a Uk one. The music which has its moments in ARR improves significantly once it becomes one mans vision rather than half of it having to be made by an external contractor due to time constraints on making 100 tracks.

You are playing the "worst" part of the game, although much of this is more due to how much has been added since. I never thought ARR was that bad and I did it nearer to launch when we had the full fat experience and it took me 6 months to clear the base game. If you are trying to push through it then yeah I can see why it's harder work, but the pay offs are worth it. That said, fetch quests are always gong to be a thing, it's the writing that makes them tolerable and that comes with time.

tldr; The hype is based on parts of the game you haven't reached.

I think that includes dragon quest online as well though.
They should give more resources to FFXIV though. Blizzard has been ramping up resources on rival WoW and where during shadowlands FF was putting out more content, things have changed now. Though granted WoW is a buggy mess atm, i'd like to see FF putting out more stuff.

Not surprised. My most anticipated games from them are remakes of three games made in the 80s. What does that tell you?

@Nem it does include DQ but as that’s only available in Japan it’s a much smaller share

I hope they don’t scale back too much on single player games. I actually really enjoyed Square Enid games, mostly Final Fantasy though…Wish they’d make more spin-offs or something that weren’t just mobile games. I loved WoFF it particular. I’d rather have single payer experiences, because I’m not into online games or multiplayer too much outside what me and my brother play on Nintendo.

@Loamy if it didn’t have the story and dialogue written by Joss Whedon, it would have been a better game (yeah I felt the sarcasm of the comment, but still, Forspoken is the easiest failure to prey upon)

But seriously, the problem is that SE has dropped the ball in the last few years when it comes to single-player games. Even Final Fantasy 16 is a divisive game. I personally enjoyed the darker tone of the story and, to some degree, the gameplay. However, when compared to previous and more successful entries in the series, the game felt monotonous after a while and all it remains is a flashy showcase of nice graphics.

I still think that FFXIV is the best Final Fantasy game since FF12. Especially Heavensward, that felt like a proper old school FF adventure to me.

@SrpskaArtilerija I'm so glad you let me know!

This year SE has released pretty high quality RPG that received positive receptions like VII Rebirth, Romancing Saga 2 remake, and Visions of Mana.

But the way SE report their financial results feels like they doesn't have anything that prints money beside FF XIV. It's just weird.

Maybe DQ 3 remake will give them that big profits that they want?

REBIRTH is god and if it hasn't made a profit, the problem lies with the whiners and people who "played" the game through youtube and reviews.

And i still remember this page gave it an 8... it still sounds ridiculous.

I think this is in big part due to ff16?
ff7rebirth was awesome, but ff16 is just... dreadful. I've started it up several times and got about halfway through, but it just is not final fantasy, and for what it is (an action game) it's pretty poor.

@LowDefAl Thanks for that. I wasn't sure if I should continue but if I am in fact still at the tutorial phase till Lv 50(story missions right?) just to get new players up to speed with the ARR segments and can expect a significant improvement there after then I will slog it through. Now while I'm doing this if they can announce a FF8 remake...

@LavenderShroud Which is why I wish the young Seph, young Angeal stories should have been in a spin off single player game but alas we are never gonna get those as they got relegated to F2P gachas..

@z0d15g0d @LowDefAI summed up what I was going to say perfectly, so I'll just add that Shadowbringers/Endwalker are widely considered to have the best Final Fantasy stories ever. The first two expansions are also notably better than ARR, which is the weakest part of the experience. Its still worth playing though due to the character development that is spread throughout the base game and expansions.

It's a shame that there big AAA titles aren't hitting numbers, XVI and Rebirth are both amazing games, even Forspoken was okay. I'm sure Dragon Quest XII and Kingdom Hearts IV can turn that around

@z0d15g0d A lot of interesting stuff is capped to requiring 50 and finishing base ARR but the minimum I think you should do is this:

Finish base ARR, you should hit 50 well before you get to the end but you need to clear the trial after Castrum Meridanum and get the credits.

Start the patch series, which are 5 continuous smaller chunks where the game starts to move beyond the “let’s fix the game part” and into the good stuff. You will be required to do the Crystal Tower raid before the final quest, but this is a cakewalk now and aside from being a good thing by itself is now required due to a later expansion relying on some elements of it.

If you do all that and aren’t feeling it when you get to the final cutscene from that patch series then that’s the time to stop. Because as good as Heavensward is, it takes a while to get its own story developed and if you aren’t invested by the cutscene before it then you might not manage the first half of HW.

Now that’s a fair amount of work but if you’ve gotten to 40 in a week then it shouldn’t be too bad. If you’ve need to, take a break for a few days so you don’t feel like it’s a chore. What quests are you doing now?

@savarunl I really enjoyed 15 for 4/5ths of the game, but its one of those in hindsight had a lot of issues, the combat was far too basic, no loot system etc, feels like a beta game. I think the story was okay, if it had better mechanics around it. I am in no rush to ever reply it again though

@Steelhead I would argue that the emotional sledgehammer to the stomach that is the third act of Shadowbringers is one of the strongest stories in any medium that I’ve ever experienced.

@LowDefAl Thanks dude. That's got me motivated to continue. I haven't played it in a few days but the last quest I did was the "Summon Titan" job quest as I'm a summoner. Also loot for this class sucks at the mo.

FF XIV is a behemoth.

I enjoyed FFXIV from ARR through the end of Heavensward pretty heavily, then played it on and off to finish every expansion at a super casual pace. The story was my primary focus. Dawntrail is the expansion that lost me for this very reason, but it was a good journey and I finished the 10 year story arc.

A game a customer buys once isn't making as much money as a game that requires monthly payments?! Stop the presses!!!!

Part of it is just getting way too cute with their flagship franchise. I thought FF7Remake was just okay and that Rebirth was an absolute dumpster fire of weird combat mechanics and over-reliance on mini games. FFXVI was a decent if long-winded action game, XV was an uninteresting open world slog... They just aren't hitting on them like they used to. It may behoove them to take the series back to a more proven formula. They can experiment with their other IPs, but get Final Fantasy back to being a quality RPG series and not whatever the last few releases have been.

The bloated productions in and of themselves aren't helping either. For example, FFXVI had a real Game of Thrones kind of vibe to it, but it released several years too late to really capitalize on that.

@z0d15g0d Unless the game tells you your goal is too low level, or you are getting demolished you don't need to worry about gear until you hit 50/the patch cycle. Just equip whatever drops or is given to you.

You are 3/5 through the main base ARR scenario according to the official split. The next section will keep you busy until 44 (quest wise)

Talk about Final Fantasy brings me to a discussion I was having over the weekend with friends, and it came down to how a non-Final Fantasy game feels like what a modern Final Fantasy should be. That is Dragon’s Dogma 2. I’m finally playing it for the first time because I was waiting for PS5 Pro, and wow, I can’t stop feeling like this game is a fully-realized experience of what I imagined in my mind as a 10 year old playing FF1 on the NES. The vocation system, the world, characters, etc.

Nope.. the vii and rebirth are one and done. I pretty much couldn't be bothered to redo the whole game on hard or even do all the virtual arena fights.

Whereas, an online mmo will keep bringing you back if there's new content.

I'd like to point out at one point square so the sale of ff16 as not good because they expected the game to cover the financial failure of forespoken and foamstars

If square released properly optomized games on release, I feel like alot of us that waited and still are now for a sale would have jumped in. That just hasn't been the case for games like Rebirth or Ff16. They also sold off all diversifying ip to make a quick buck. SE is just straight up mismanaged. Much like Ubisoft and now clearly Sony as well.

Couple that with what feels like a PS5 pro marketing scheme to offer it selling points through brute forcing better performance with these old games, only if you buy into an over priced and under performant mid gen hardware.

Especially as it certainly suggests further base performance patches are likely not even coming because of the choice to Help Sony sell the pro. Cause let's be honest, literally the ONLY genuinely transformative Pro boost available at launch is with Rebirth. So most of those that waited hoping on them actually finishing these games technically are now going to wait for very steep sales or ps plus inclusions.

The reality is that games like Metaphor and games like FF7R have around the same demographic market, but FF7R costs magnitudes more to make.

I have been having more fun with the Romancing SaGA 2 remake than Rebirth, and there is no way it had close to that budget.

I played FFXIV for a while, plenty to do, easy to get into. However having played FFXI, certain elements of this was better, it's harder but the job roles are far more broad and versatile if you get the right gear, it felt like you could explore more, had so much fun challenging things from a different angle. However without the matchmaking from XIV you really needed to be in a good group to do certain things in XI.

Apparently nobody wants GAAS, so absolutely a big mistake on Sony's end to invest in this abomination /s