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Final Fantasy XII First Mentioned
According to a story over at GamerFeed, Square-Enix has said that Final Fantasy XII will appear at the Tokyo Game Show. No further details are given other than the game will be offline, as opposed to the forthcoming Final Fantasy XI. Apparently this is in response to fan pressure. Sounds good to me, too, since I don't really want to pay a monthly fee to play a Final Fantasy game.
Square Insider also mentioned this today as well as the following rumour:
It was announced earlier that FFXII is slated for the second half of this fiscal year, so perhaps the game is farther along than Square Enix is letting on. As soon as we know more, you'll know more.
Although, rpgamer.com says that composer Nobuo Uematsu talks Final Fantasy XII in his online journal - but it's not in a language that I can read. Can anyone translate this?
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Square needs to go back to the tried and true methods they were using for FFVII and of those before. VII had quite a bit of CGI's but they were short and you still had the feeling that it was a game, but in X the scenes took you out of the game, and some times interupted the flow of the game. If they go back to quarky characters and interesting plots like they had in the first 7 games, i think they'll be back on top in the world of RPGs.
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire
I'd agree that Final Fantasy XI is in fact a *good* MMORPG, but unfortunately it has very little to offer in the way of being a 'traditional' Final Fantasy. I, too, am in the beta, and I'd encourage everyone to read my journal entry about it at http://slashdot.org/~cyan/journal if they'd like to see my detailed thoughts about it. But, in short:
While the music makes us feel at home, the gameplay seems to follow the traditional "Everquest" style of MMORPG. SquareSoft could've gone for something very unique and different for "Final Fantasy Online", but instead we've got a game that looks like they hired most of the Everquest development team. Instead of experience tables being 'serial' or 'linear' (where you gain levels at relatively the same pace over the course of the game), you're forced to suffer through the 'exponential' system where the experience required to gain a level next is double what it was previously, and experience offered up by monsters is typically half. This, of course, is designed in such a way that you're forced to play longer to actually get to those high levels -- which means more money bucked up to PlayOnline.
Walking around from place to place takes *way* too long (sometimes five minutes or more, just to get across the other side of the city), and combat has become a boring chore instead of exciting like the previous Final Fantasies. Nobody likes to just sit there while your character goes "hrrf!" over and over again as he auto-attacks. Half the fun was managing things via the combat menu system. Then, it took me four levels to obtain another spell.
Of course, this is all notwithstanding the fact that there sqeems to be no solid story at all.. just a bunch of subquests (like in all other MMORPG's) that hint here or there at certain things. And *then* there was a huge problem of nobody wanting to team up with you at all to go out on party adventures, while this may be a symptom of the beta (not enough people), it was rather frustrating and seemed counter-productive to the spirit of the game.
In all honesty, Square has made the same mistake with FFXI as they did with "The Spirits Within", they should've simply called the game "Vana'diel" and left Final Fantasy out of it -- then at least people could've enjoyed it for what it is -- a nice MMORPG but ultimately not a Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy means "Completable in about forty hours, with rapid level progression, lots of treasure and goodies, a well-rounded storyline, and complete control over your party characters." As you can imagine, this isn't it.
Again, it's good as far as MMORPG's go, but bad as far as a Final Fantasy is concerned. I've been playing since Final Fantasy IV was released, and have since had the pleasure of playing all of them (that means I through XI now,) and they've all been relatively the same (which is a good thing!) until FFXI. FFXI broke things pretty badly. Besides, why pay for FFXI when you can just play something along the lines of Neverwinter Nights for free? Sorry Square, my dollars will be better spent somewhere else.
As for those of you complaining about Final Fantasy X, I thought it was actually one of the better ones. It took me the same amount of time to complete as any other Final Fantasy, offered that same amount of satisfying hack-and-slash (perhaps even more -- that monster arena will keep you busy for many, many hours), and the sphere grid system is an insanely great idea. Especially when you get into the late stages of the game where 'customization' of the grid is possible.
But isn't it funny that when there was an initial backlash against FFXI, Square quickly backpedaled and said, "Wait! We've got FFXII and FFX-2 in the works, too! Don't go away :("?
'cos Final Fantasy always reminded me of Moorcock's novels about the Eternal Champion. Especially when you consider that a lot of Square's heroes are at least as angsty as John Daker, or the Von Beks, or Dorian Hawkmoon. Square hasn't topped Elric, though.
Though it might be seriously cool to duke it out with Gaynor the Damned using a party made up of Elric, Moonglum, Oona (Elric's daughter), the Rose, and Ulric von Bek.
Of course, that completely buggers the chronology of the original novels, as Elric bites the dust at the end of Stormbringer.