I started at 7 and looked forwards to every iteration of the series since then, 8 was more of the same with a weird story, 9 was cute and a good throwback, then I went back to 6 which was a masterpiece, 10 was emotional and beautiful, 12 wasn’t great but had cool worldbuilding, being a FFT fan.
Here is when it starts to diverge a little. I would call this the start of ‘modern’ FFs
I actually liked 13’s battle system, it worked out many of the kinks of old systems, like healing after each battle and focused on each interaction as a puzzle to be solved. The story was OK and then the sequels kinda tried to do something different. Lightning Returns had terrible reviews, possible due to the time limit, which is why I never tried it
14 had a bad start and did a reboot to become a well loved MMO, but starting in the first world is such a chore with outdated MMO mechanics as someone who started later
15 was ambitious and unfinished. the first time I was truly disappointed in a FF game.
Then, we have the FF7 remakes, which are amazing, it seems that all the effort, the team members who have passion all signed up for this and it shows, but there’s a strong nostalgia bias to it.
Now reading the reviews for 16, it seems there’s no real reason to give it a try. At this point, I’m not sure what comes after the final FF7 game, is there a way to make 17 something people would care about?
I’m just disappointed in the way Square Enix seems to think turn-based combat is anathema for some reason. The series has abandoned its roots, it just isn’t FF to me.
Clearly they haven’t played Persona 5/Royal, and seen how much you can innovate with turn based battles and make them really fun
It’s not like Square Enix doesn’t know how to make good turn-based games. They’ve been hitting it out of the park with their smaller budget projects like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler. So I don’t know why they’ve rejected it for FF, imagine what they could do with a big budget title if they tried.
I joke about how halfway through development, someone at Square Enix must’ve realized that Bravely Default was actually a good game, and thus too good for the FF name. So instead they had to throw darts at an English dictionary to rebrand it.
I really liked 12s gambit system. It was really fun.
I thought it was a really nice change. They kept the ATB system all the older games had, and it didn’t break between overworld and battle screens constantly, making for a seamless transition between the two.
I tried to like 12, but I found it painfully tedious. I couldn’t carefully ration my MP the way I wanted to with gambits, and I don’t want to automate the game anyway, I want to actually play it myself. But manual takeover just felt way worse than a normal turn-based system too, the way it grinds the pacing to a halt and takes forever made it apparent that the game isn’t designed to be played manually.
I think that is what made that battle system interesting: More focus on delegation over micro management.
The main portion of the battle played outside of the battles themselves and was all about how you essentially “programmed” these workflows for each character to work in harmony together to win battles. You could get in the fray to fix any unintended outcomes of these flows, but was mainly to observe the outcomes and make adjustments.
Agreed.
I was actually very cold to the idea of the gambit system early on because “the game plays itself” sounded like such a cheap style of gameplay.
Later, though, when I got a better sense of what it was trying to accomplish, it made a lot more sense, especially when thinking about the game in the context of sharing the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics.
Tactics is all about troop strategy, simulating that experience of being a military commander. The gambit system in 12, meanwhile, is like taking that concept and moving it down to the ground level, where you have to strategize with your allies before an engagement and then trust that people know what to do in the moment, with the player intervention happening one character at a time being more like real-time improvisation than strategizing.