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FFXII News Coming At Square Enix Event
Gamespot is reporting on the upcoming Square Enix Summer gaming event at the end of July. From the article: "As expected, the most anticipated stage presentations at the event will be the two planned for Square Enix's upcoming role-playing game, Final Fantasy XII. On day one, series' music composer Nobuo Uematsu will discuss the game while showing off some new footage. The company will also be making a major announcement about FFXII."
You've got a slight point about FFXII being a .hack ripoff (although Kingdom Hearts would perhaps be a fairer comparison, as it's both older and also by Square), but personally, I'm going to wait and see.
Almost every installment of the Final Fantasy series has changed something about the game-world or play-mechanics from the previous installments. Every-time, we see the more short-sighted of the fanboys wailing about how this is the ruination of the series and how it's removed everything that ever made it worth playing. Personally, I take the longer view. Every time Square have changed the play mechanics, they've managed to create an interesting and enjoyable game, rather than "just another sequel". The only recent title in which they *didn't* significantly change things, but rather went for a deliberate nostalgia trip, was FFIX. This seems to be to be a title that's largely forgotten when people talk about the series these days.
Real time action done right is fun. Granted, it isn't my idea of what Final Fantasy is, but the games have gone from rigid turn based combat through to less structured delay based combat so why not realtime action? We've seen the begining of the end for the series before (VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XI have all been called that by people who didn't like abandoning squatty sprites, changes in the magic system, nostalgia-fests, voice acting, same world sequels, or online play respectively and I think it's safe to say that if V had come out in the US between IV and VI, fans would have complained about that as well) and while there are certainly people who prefer the older games (I'm replaying FFV at present and I've probably played FFVI through more times than any RPG other than Chrono Trigger (if you don't count Nethack)), but I doubt we're at the end of Final Fantasy. At least, if we are, we aren't at the begining of the end.
Now, then... almost at world 3.
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