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The Final Days of Final Fantasy
An anonymous reader writes "Could the Final Fantasy series have finally come to an end? About.com's Adrien-Luc Sanders thinks so in his article The Final Days of Final Fantasy. I'm sure many people here remember Final Fantasy VII and how it helped Sony win the console market away from Nintendo. The article contends that Final Fantasy's glory days are over, that with the release of Final Fantasy X-2, the underwhelming EverQuest clone Final Fantasy XI, and the much-delayed Final Fantasy XII (finally confirmed for a 2006 US release), we've effectively seen the end of Final Fantasy. Is it time for Square-Enix to give up on Final Fantasy?"
Throwing around pointless doom-and-gloom predictions when the next sequel to the franchise is still highly anticipated deserves an anti-award.
Even if SE completely abandons offline games they will still paste the Final Fantasy name on their games, though I expect to see a Dragon Warrior MMO before the next MMO FF.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
There's an interesting debate to be had about the future of the franchise, but sadly, this won't be the article to spark it off.
The author's main problem is that he didn't like FFXI or FFX-2. As far as I'm concerned, that's his problem. Far from being a failure, FFXI still has a commanding position in terms of the size of its user-base. Last I saw, it was only behind WoW and the Korean MMORPGs (for which figures should be treated with a degree of caution due to the methodology used to count players there). Indeed, before the release of WoW, it had been the biggest MMORPG played outside of Korea for quite a while. User figures have been steady for a long time, with the release of WoW not making any significant dent. In the highly competative, dog-eat-dog world of MMORPG publishing, I'd call that a resounding success, rather than a harbinger of doom.
FFX-2 has always been contraversial among Final Fantasy fans. I'll admit that it's never been my favorite installment in the series (this would be FFX - and yes, I've played the whole "main" series, including FF6). However, this isn't to say it's without merit. In many ways, it's a return to more traditional gameplay, with a much steeper difficulty curve than other recent games in the series and a job-based character system. If you approach it without expecting it to be "more of the same" from FFX, then it's actually a very good RPG. A lot of tormented, gothy Final Fantasy fans felt they had to dislike FFX-2 out of principle, because it's actually quite upbeat. Personally, I'm secure enough that I can play a game like this without it making me "doubt my masculinity" (author's words).
The most significant issue the author raises, in my view, is the wait for FFXII. This has certainly been longer than I expected. However, I think this is largely a reflection of the fact that development times and costs have risen, to match customer expectations. When you completely rework your graphical engine, combat system and game world for each installment of your series, you can't be expected to stick to a Madden-style production schedule. At any rate, I'll reserve judgement on FFXII until I can actually play it.