Don't Hold Your Breath For FFXIII

IGN is reporting that the next chapter in the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy XIII, has barely gotten into the production phase. "According to Sony's press materials, the highly anticipated RPG sequel is now 13% complete. Yes, a low, unlucky completion percentage. But thankfully it's not as low as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which is listed as 1.3%!" And remember, even if it's completed sometime late next year or early in 2009 folks in the states will probably have a wait while the game is localized.

Comments

They should just buy the strategy guide...

[halivar]

It's the only way *I* can ever finish a FF game 100%.

New name?

[Hangin10]

How about a new name? We're constantly getting new fantasies; I don't see anything "Final" about this...

Re:New name?

[rob1980]

Congratulations on rehashing a 15-year old complaint. If they cared whether you thought it was "final" or not, they would have changed the name long ago.

Re:New name?

[Hangin10]

I wasn't complaining, I was failing to be funny.

Re:New name?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can keep rehashing the name as long as they keep making every new iteration(mostly) with a new setting, plot, charactes, etc...

The name in the least important.

Re:New name?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "Final" because, at the time, the studio was in danger of going out of business, thus, "Final Fantasy" was to be their last game. Fortunately, it sold a copy or two....

I'm not

[matt328]

Maybe by then the PS3 will down to the reasonable price of $99 I paid for my slim PS2.

Don't Hold Your Breath

[Fozzyuw]

Don't Hold Your Breath For FFXIII

The only FF game I'm waiting to play is FFVII. When will they re-release this game for the DS, PSP, or other system? Otherwise, I'd like to play FFI, which I guess I can get GBA but it's 'advanced' with updated graphics. Bah, I want my 8-bit characters. hehe

Re: Don't Hold Your Breath

[Anonymous Coward]

The original FF1 is way too hard, even with an emulator (where you can save anywhere), unless if you like to spend 100+ hours leveling up.

At least the GBA port is playable (thanks to the fact that heal spells are cheaper and more efficient).

Re: Don't Hold Your Breath

[moderatorrater]

I want to see them re-release it for the PS3. The tech demo they released a few years ago was, in my opinion, the most compelling thing about the PS3 to date, and it wasn't even a game. If they have FF7 come out again with gorgeous graphics, you'll see the PS3 really take off in sales.

Re: Don't Hold Your Breath

[Endo13]

Could not agree more. That's the single game release they could do that might influence me to buy a PS3

As expected

[Sciros]

Considering it took FFXII five years to be released, and that it has only been out since Oct 31 in the US, I would have been VERY surprised were I to hear that FFXIII was anywhere near completion.

But, I guess that will continue a pattern: I got my PS2 when FFXII came out, I guess I'll get my PS3 when FFXIII hits shelves.

Anyway this is a good thing; I would expect FFXIII to be a very polished title; rushing it out would be a bad idea. FFXII re-established the series as one that sets standards, with its great reviews from everyone. FFXIII needs to continue that tradition, if anything for Sony's sake.

Re:As expected

[ivan256]

FFXII was the second single-player Final Fantasy game for the PS2. Wouldn't you have to wait for FFIV if you were going to continue your pattern?

Re:As expected

[Sciros]

Oh right, I forgot about FFX... well, the PS2 was too expensive back then and from what I heard FFX just wasn't good enough to buy a whole console for. FFXII in my view was, so I'm hoping the same will be true of FFXIII. Though a big reason I liked FFXII was Gideon Emery's Balthier. Also the musical score kinda hit home with me for some reason.

Re:As expected

[sqlrob]

Third, not second. There's FF X-2. Also Dirge Of Cerebus if you want to count action games.

Re:As expected

[ivan256]

Heh. I should get around to actually playing FFXII.

FFX was good. You're probably right that it wasn't good enough to justify the purchase of a PS2, but I'm not sure that any single game is before the price of the system has dropped to less than half of the initial price. Luckily, by the time FFX came out there were plenty of other good games that together more than justified the cost of the PS2. Perhaps by the end of 2008 when FFXIII comes out the same will be true for the PS3.

Re:As expected

[Chainsaw Karate]

VII - 1997
VIII - 1999
IX - 2000
X - 2001

XII was an anomaly. XII changed producers mid-development and had many features removed or altered. The lukewarm reception the playable demo received at E3 2004 also probably had something to do with the delay. (Remember they had no playable demo the following year at E3 2005, only a video.) So, I actually am surprised that FF XIII is still so early in development over a year after it was first revealed. There must be something else going on here besides just "not wanting to rush it out." VII - X all came out in rapid succession and they weren't half-assed.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

FFX wasn't good enough? I think it is mostly accepted as the second best FF title behind only FFVII.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Square has three or more Final Fantasies + other games in the pipeline at any time, with Final Fantasy being their big budget title released once every two years or so.

There are numerous teams working on engines and tools for their 'white engine'.

It's a piece of software. Don't you people know anything

Re:As expected

[Sciros]

It depends on who you talk to. I haven't played the game myself but opinions on FFX were generally split whereas opinions on FFXII are almost invariably positive. FFVII is considered the best FF on the Playstation systems (I think 'best FF' is still a title held by FFVI if you ask most folks who have played them all), but I think a large part of why that is, is that it was just about the only high-profile AA title on the Playstation, making everyone who just got into gaming at that point a huge fan. In that way it received the same "overrating" that Halo enjoyed as it brought in a large number of new players who did not have any solid standards by which to judge games. Both are great titles, but I don't know if they're the godsend that some treated them as. But, I've not played FFVII myself either.

Re:As expected

[Sciros]

You make a good point.

Of course, I'm also not sure what that "13% complete" means and whether anyone should care. What if they said it was 75% done? Would that mean anything? I suppose, given what that last 25% has turned into for many games, that it would not.

Re:As expected

[Neoprofin]

If it makes you feel any better, of close to 10-15 people I know who own FFXII I'm the only one who has finished it because the rest all got bored and quit due to the endless running and grinding for items. It's sad because I think the story is one of the best FFs have to offer, but the gameplay is honestly the least enjoyable of any game I've ever played to completion.

Re:As expected

[QMalcolm]

FFVII isn't really even considered one of the better Final Fantasies by the hardcore fans, they seem to like VI above all others.

Re:As expected

[mikeabbott420]

13%? With software the last 10% takes 90% of the time.

Re:As expected

[C0rinthian]

I'd recommend it. I lost a lot of enthusiasm for FF games after X. I finally picked up XII and feel it's a much better title. The gambit system is especially cool, as you basically get to program your party's AI.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, technically, X was the first single player, XI was taken by non single player, then X-2, then XII...

So the PS3 would go XIII, XIV (mmo), XIII versus, XV.

Re:As expected

[_xeno_]

FFXII sucked. I've played a total of like nine hours into it and got bored with it to the point I really don't plan on playing it again. The gambit system will literally play the game for you, leaving you free to run between cutscenes. The boss battles devolve into manually potion-spamming but otherwise letting the AI run free.

The story is practically incoherent, even this far into it. The characters are rebelling against the Empire because of the Last Rule of Politics. (Kingdoms are good. Empires are evil.) I have really no idea what anyone's motivation is - it seems to generically be "the Empire is evil." Which is evil because they said so, with no real evidence. (In fact, all evidence so far shows that said kingdom is better off under Imperial rule than it ever was under the old kingdom.)

The license grid is insanely lame and seems to be designed to force you to buy a strategy guide. The main problem with it is that it doesn't say what a given slot does until you've got something unlocked next to it. This makes guiding advancement essentially impossible. A license that has nothing next to it may say something like "Shields" but won't offer any idea of which shields it allows. So you wind up having to guess which "Shields" you need to move towards to use your new shiny shield. Likewise, any advancing towards specific abilities is impossible.

Unless, of course, you already know what's on the grid, by buying the strategy guide. (Or looking it up online...)

Likewise, the most powerful weapon in the game can only be obtained if you don't open certain chests. Problem: most chests are randomly generated, are actually called "treasures" and there's no indication that these magic chests are any different from any other randomly generated chest. They're also strategically placed so that it's impossible to miss them while progressing through the game. They're literally placed at key points that you have to travel through.

This "random chest generation" scheme also means that some of the best equipment has a very small (less than 1% in some cases) chance of being generated, and only after building a very long "chain" (killing the same monster family over and over and over and over again).

Personally, I enjoyed FFX far more than FFXII. FFXII really has no Final Fantasy "feel" to it, and despite being set in Ivalice, has no FF Tactics feel to it.

Re:As expected

[Fallingcow]

Yeah, count me as among the ones who didn't like it.

I felt like they fixed some stuff, then broke some more, like forcing you to grind/dungeon crawl for hours between story events. Why did they put gambits in there to automate 95% of those fights? Because most people don't like the vast majority of the fighting in previous FF games, since it's dull. Then after, going to the trouble of automating it to make it less crappy, they made you do MORE of it! WTF?

I was hooked for about 10-15 hours, but just kept waiting for it to get cool. I continued waiting until I was within ~5-10 hours of the end, at which point I checked a FAQ to see how close I was to beating it... and promptly quit playing when I found out that there wasn't enough time left for them to cram a story in there. I really thought things would pick up when Larsa showed up, but then he disappeared for most of the game and they never really did anything with him. Then I thought that maybe the bunny people village or the fight with Balthier's dad would flesh out their characters a little... but no. I kept crawling through one long, boring dungeon after another, to be rewarded with 5-10 lines of pointless, wit-free, dry, emotionless dialogue. None of the characters, with the possible exception of Balthier and Fran, seemed to give a shit about one another. I don't just mean, "there was no love story"--though they certainly seemed to set up several and then do little or nothing with them--I mean that the characters seemed to have no connection with one another at all.

I could keep going. But yeah, some people didn't like it, and I'm not surprised to find out that a lot of other people quit playing like I did.

On the other hand, I'm now playing through Suikoden V for the second time, because once just wasn't enough. Awesome.

Re:As expected

[nuzak]

They knew all about that, so they did the last 10% first, which will make the rest a breeze.

Re:As expected

[7Prime]

This is true, FF7 is usually accepted by hardcore fans (although most feel it's overhyped), but pound for pound, tend to prefer FFVI as the first "modern console RPG". FFIX is highly regarded too as a very fine attempt at "returning to the roots" of the series. With all the references, FFIX was practically designed with hardcore fans in mind. Surprisingly, where I went to college, all the really hardcore FF fans favored FF8 as their favorite in the series (myself included), although, among more casual players and FF7 fans, FF8 is Satan incarnate (go figure).

FFX is kinda split. The increased difficulty appealed to hardcore fans, but the extreme linearity, and overly-cliche characterization was offputting to some. I like it less, as time goes on, but it's still a solid game.

Re:As expected

[7Prime]

13% because it's Final Fantasy 13, that's the only reason. Why else would they say FFv13 was 1.3% done... too much of a coincidence. These numbers are arbitrary.

And I hate to say it, but Square (as with most game developers) is NOT the greatest at estimating amount completed.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

You echoed my thoughts completely.

The mindless hours of clone-dungeon crawling, the lack of storyline, the lack of involvement in battles (and the subsequent bombarding of the player with these battles!) are all clear as day, and not really up for much discussion.

I'm usually not one to care too much about other people's tastes. But in this case I will go so far as to seriously question the integrity of any reviewer who gave this game a 10/10.

Re:As expected

[The One and Only]

Why did they put gambits in there to automate 95% of those fights? Because most people don't like the vast majority of the fighting in previous FF games, since it's dull. Then after, going to the trouble of automating it to make it less crappy, they made you do MORE of it! WTF?

Maybe they put in more fighting, realized how obnoxious it was, and then put the gambits in there to compensate? Games aren't developed in the same order they're played.

Re:As expected

[Chemical]

So, I guess I'm not the only one who thought the amount of time level grinding the game required was excessive. For a while I thought I was just doing something wrong. The enemies got much stronger than the party very quickly, and leveling took forever until you got the exp. doubler thingie. I'd spend entire two hour sessions just sitting around leveling, just so I could proceed with the game. Stupid.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

You've said quite much of what i feel too.
The term Ivalice made me expect something more common to FF tactics, which I loved, and I still play sometimes but basically nothing hit me about FF tactics in the game much.

FFX was pretty good, the story had some sense in FF series for the first time imo. Much better than killing everything in front of you to find out who you are etc... Besides graphics just got bumped up alot on FFX, but not too much more for FFXII. The battle system was quite poor like you described, ganging up on monsters surrounding and bashing them like brainless dolls just looked odd.

I hope they come up with something mose to the sense of looking more normal. They only come up with fancy graphics nowadays, but that's same for any other games too.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

What I've found nice about FFXII is that it's actually reasonably challenging. The regular fights are boring, with decent gambits set up, you really don't need to do anything...but using gambits is more fun than manually spamming the same attacks over and over again when fighting trivial enemies; boring fights are boring regardless of the mechanism. The boss battles are surprisingly challenging (FFX felt too easy to me, I would almost never get a "Game Over"). I keep the battle speed to max and have gambits do 90% of the actions for me, but it requires quite a bit of gambit adjustment and experimentation to beat some of the bosses.

I agree about the story, though.

I also don't like the quickening mechanism very much, it particularly sucks with a PS3 controller, as you can't do single presses of R2, so all you can do is spam all the buttons and hope for the best.

Re:As expected

[brkello]

Well, you are pretty much wrong about everything. Let's break it down.

The plot is more "adult" themed than others in that it is very political. At 9 hours in you haven't even scratched the surface of what is going on. But, I am not going to get in to plot spoilers...this is up to personal taste and I can understand how people might not like it. There is more gray than black and white good and evil. Motivation of characters is pretty obvious though (losing family members, being forced under someone else's rule, etc.).

The gambit system is actually pretty cool. It is like a little programming language you can give each character. So in this game you set up your gambits to deal with the easy fights....you prefer mashing a single button to select fight in the old ones? To each their own. Boss fights are epic...I did one last night that lasted 90 minutes...and I guarantee you that I had to control almost everything in that. So really, if you don't like gambits, don't use them. Duh.

The license grid works perfectly fine. I didn't use a strategy guide because all the stuff that is related (like shields)...get this...they are all grouped next to each other so it is freaking obvious which upgrade path you want to take. One direction for spells, one for techniqs, one for accessories...how much more do they need to spell it out for you. If you are really worried, then go to gamefaqs and look...it isn't a big deal. I am near the end of the game and had no problem specializing my guys all the way to their max...even if you make a mistake along the way...lp comes quickly and you have accessories you can wear to double it.

The most powerful weapon in the game is obtainable in two ways. The way you describe is a way to get it incredibly early in the game. The alternative is to get it later in the game by completing different objectives. What's so wrong with that now?

And I don't know of a single chest that has anything to do with kill chains.

I don't blame you for not liking the game. Just try to be accurate in your criticisms.

Re:As expected

[_xeno_]

The plot is more "adult" themed than others in that it is very political. At 9 hours in you haven't even scratched the surface of what is going on.

The problem here is that the story is so boring that I really don't feel like continuing it. Good stories grab their audience early and keep their interest throughout the story. FFXII is about as bad as you can get in that respect: it starts with one story and jumps to another one very early in the game. They do reconnect several hours into the game, but it makes the story that much more difficult to get involved in.

So in this game you set up your gambits to deal with the easy fights....you prefer mashing a single button to select fight in the old ones?

That's a false dichotomy. There's more to life than button mashing and auto-play. My personal favorite of all the various Final Fantasy battle systems was FFX's. There needs to be a middle ground where you're still actively involved in influencing combat and the strategy and having a completely automated system.

Just because I don't like the completely passive system doesn't mean I want the exact opposite.

The license grid works perfectly fine. I didn't use a strategy guide because all the stuff that is related (like shields)...get this...they are all grouped next to each other so it is freaking obvious which upgrade path you want to take.

You're obviously not a min/maxer, but my main complaint with shields was based on a specific example where I had to grab a whole bunch of armor licenses to find the right shield license to obtain. I'd much rather have the entire grid revealed so I can figure out which licenses I want to grab and which I can safely skip. Knowing that there are techniques in one direction is nice, but I have no idea if any of them are worth anything! Maybe there's a technique I'd really want to work towards, but there's no way of knowing that without moving through all the techniques.

The most powerful weapon in the game is obtainable in two ways. The way you describe is a way to get it incredibly early in the game. The alternative is to get it later in the game by completing different objectives.

We're not talking about the same thing, then, since the alternative is to get a 0.1% chance drop. No typo there - literally a 1 in 1000 chance to get it as a chest drop. You can repeatedly spawn the chest, though. Of course, if I wanted to do that, I'd play an MMORPG and at least pretend there was a social aspect to it.

And I don't know of a single chest that has anything to do with kill chains.

Chest drop rates are influenced by chain levels, at least according to the FAQs I checked. Some chests will only drop certain items at higher levels.

Re:As expected

[Fallingcow]

Did you also find all offensive magic to be a total waste of a turn (most of the time, at least; there were one or two exceptions) and the summons to be so wholly underwhelming that, in any boss fight, one was much better off using that go to put another coin in the slot machine that is quickenings?

I couldn't figure out whether I was doing something very, very wrong or {1 physical attacker + 2 healers + rotating to get maximum quickenings} really was the ONLY way to win boss battles. Did I just not level enough to use those other things effectively? I find that hard to believe, given the amount of grinding (and beast-hunt sidequests) that I did, but maybe they expected me to do even more.

What did people expect?

[ivan256]

FF12 practically just came out. There's always about one and a half to two years between them. I don't know where Zonk got 2009 from (clearly not from the story), but March 2008 seems more likely given the numbers and what's happened in the past. Then probably November '08 for the US and EU.

Re:What did people expect?

[MaWeiTao]

Actually... There was almost exactly two year separation between the release Final Fantasy 7 and 8. However, there was a 3 year separation between Final Fantasy 10 and 12. FF11 was also released in 2003, but since it's a MMO I consider it a separate entity. Given the production values of Final Fantasy games, and the tendency for delays we'll be lucky if we see the game by 2010.

Needless to say, it's in Sony's best interest to have the game released sooner than later.

Re:What did people expect?

[Andy Dodd]

Do you mean a three year sep between X-2 and XII?

The separation between X and XII was way more than three years, I remember playing it in 2001 after it had been out a while.

hmmm

[TB]

Those numbers are bogus, they're just having fun with the whole 13 thing.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. There's thirteen minus thirteen news to be had in this article... I found the whole "13" thing moderately funny, but now I'm over it. Wake me up when there's a release date... Looks like I'll be sleeping for another 6 years (get it? 2007 + 6 = 2013! hahahahaha! aaaaaaaaahhhhh, and now, I'm done)

Don't hold your breath...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still holding it for Duke Nukem Forever.

13% 1.3 % DNF

[El_Smack]

Duke Nukem Forever is at .0000013%.

That's the percentage you get for puting up a webpage that says "When it's done."

They would probably have had

[Farakin]

the game finished if it wasn't for the 678,934 hours of cinematics that they had to make. When a game is 10hours play time and 45 hours of movies it isn't a game anymore.

Re:They would probably have had

[F-3582]

That's what they said about the first Xenosaga episode, too. I still liked it the best ^^ Although episode 2 had a much better battle system.

Re:They would probably have had

[trdrstv]

When a game is 10hours play time and 45 hours of movies it isn't a game anymore.

Apparently this interactive movie is what many people are looking forward to. Considering the 2 biggest "exclusives" (and I use the term loosely, given all back and forth statements in the press) of the PS3 (FFXIII, and MGS4) both fall under that category.

Re:They would probably have had

[Gravatron]

MGS i'll give you, but the ratio seems to be about 5/1 with about 5 hours of gameplay per hour of movie in mgs, with FF's being about 30/1, with 30 hours of game per 1 of fmv. Of course in an rpg, you also have to consider if text scrolling or non-interactive story elements count as a movie or a game. Take FF8 for example. Boasted over an hour of FMV. People said it was an interactive movie, yet my gameplay clocked in at about 65 hours first playthough, and thats leavign out stuff like the card card sidequest. FFx's wasn't much different from that.

Re:They would probably have had

[bogjobber]

What if it's 30 minutes video and 60-70 hours playtime? Because that's much closer to the actual numbers.

Don't Hold Your Breath For Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

The press materials also listed the new Zonk sarcasm detector at 0% complete.

Boggles My Mind

[immcintosh]

How they could accurately place its completion at precisely 13%. Not 12% or 14% mind you, we are THIRTEEN percent done with this.

Re:Boggles My Mind

[Anonymous Coward]

They make a to do list and check stuff off.

Graphics, animation, story, mechanics, features, coding, etc.

Re:Boggles My Mind

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Perhaps they have a "list of tasks we need to accomplish to complete development of FFXIII", and 13% of the items on that list are done?

Re:Boggles My Mind

[Anonymous Coward]

How they could accurately place its completion at precisely 13%. Not 12% or 14% mind you, we are THIRTEEN percent done with this.

Maybe it wouldn't have gone miles over everyone's head if they had said they were XIII% done? :P

Re:Boggles My Mind

[rbarreira]

Perhaps they actually have an accurate plan for doing the game?

Re:Boggles My Mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Our budget is $100,000,000, we have spent $13 million, we are 13% done!

or

We planned on a release in 630 days, and we are 82 days into production, we are 13% done!

er... yeah.

I could be mistaken

[Anonymous Coward]

But I thought I remembered reading those same exact numbers a year ago. Smells like a joke to me.

FFX, FFX-2, FFXII

[tepples]

FFXII was the second single-player Final Fantasy game for the PS2. It was the third. FFX (2001) and FFX-2 (2003) preceded FFXII (2006).

Wouldn't you have to wait for FFIV if you were going to continue your pattern? FFIV was a Super NES game.

Somebody didn't get the joke...

[badasscat]

According to Sony's press materials, the highly anticipated RPG sequel is now 13% complete. Yes, a low, unlucky completion percentage. But thankfully it's not as low as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which is listed as 1.3%!

Let's see... FFXIII (as in 13) is 1.3% complete. FFXIII (as in 13) Vs. is 13% complete.

Hmmm... 13... 1.3%... 13%... see a pattern here?

It's a common Japanese piece of PR to release "completion" percentages that everybody there knows are always ludicrously arbitrary. Go to any game show in Japan or read any publication and you will see this number next to every game on display. A publisher can put whatever number they want there. Square Enix is obviously having a little fun with this convention.

Re:Somebody didn't get the joke...

[Aladrin]

Maybe he didn't get the joke (I didn't realize they often releast percentages that are wholly inaccurate... Maybe because I don't find it funny), but you definitely did not get HIS joke.

But how long?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that it is 13% complete alone doesn't mean the game is far from completion. You have to take into consideration HOW LONG it took them to finish that 13%! If they did this 13% in one day, then the game is pretty close to being complete! :nitpick

Re:FFXIII

[jZnat]

How the fuck did this get modded informative? It's all fake spoilers for a completely unrelated topic anyhow.

Waiting? Try emulating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you have a decent computer, try ePSXe + the 3 ISOs of the disks (available on The Pirate Bay and elsewhere). You may have to Google a bit for settings, though, because they tend to take a little tweaking.

Add to that a $20 USB controller from Wal*Mart and you're golden. Oh, there's another program called the ePSXecutor or something that can help because I think it has some default settings for ePSXe. But I haven't had any major troubles.

As for FF 1, sheesh. Get NESticle (or any of the 8 zillion other NES emulators) and a ROM. It should be named something like Final Fantasy (U).nes and available on practically every ROM site on the internet. It's not even hard to find. Hell, last I looked, there was some giant torrent on TPB with every NES game ever dumped. And it was only a few scant GB, which takes what? A day or two to download on a slow connection.

Yes, that's a funny joke

[solar_blitz]

I guess some people forgot how to translate Roman Numerals into Arabic :D. The message they're trying to convey? Quit asking! We're working on it!

Why do we want FFVII remade again?

[Ayanami Rei]

It's one of the technically, emotionally, and stragetically weakest games they ever released. It just so happened to be the first one with 3D CGs on the PSX.

1) Little in the way of optional super-enemeies (compare FF IV, FF V, FF VI). I mean, you could fight Cactrots, and the Emerald and Ruby weapons. Yawn.

2) Junction system was not thouroughly tested, IMHO. You can make unanticipated (and seemingly absurd combinations) of materia that give you god powers, exploiting battle engine bugs. I mean, they were trying. Weapons that had lots of bonuses had few materia slots. Weapons with lots of slots had few in-battle uses. But they hadn't got every pair-wise combination of materia's side-effects worked out...

3) Little differentiation between characters, other than limit breaks.

4) The storyline is okay but a bit over-the-top for my tastes and while I know they were trying to be deep and profound at parts, the result was just confusion and philisophy 101. It definitely smacked of "I just watched Neon Genesis Evangelion".

5) Load time made random battles unbearable... and they hadn't touched ATB or the menu system or thrown in any new strategic elements so it made it feel like more of a chore than it should have been.

6) The game difficulty is too easy. The way they made enemies hard was to give them an assload of HP, essentially.

Minor issues:
* Limited equipment configuration (weapon/armor)
* Few strategies for doing +9999 damage; only methods for multiple strikes is to use W-Attack, a limit break, or KOTR.

Re:Why do we want FFVII remade again?

[bigstrat2003]

We want FFVII remade again because a good number of us (about half, in my experience) consider it to be the finest RPG Square has ever produced (the other half, in my experience, being proponents of FFVI). Just cause YOU don't like it doesn't mean a hell of a lot of other people don't. Your post is attempting to bring about another instance of one of the most pointless discussions since "Mac vs. PC".

Those of us who like FF7 honestly disagree with the points you made. We aren't, as we are so often accused, blinded by the fact that it was our first FF (well, some probably are, no one I've ever talked to is). Seriously, dude, let. This. One. Die. You'll never convince an FF7 fan of your points, and we'll never convince an FF7 hater. What's the point, other than to start a flame war?

Re:Why do we want FFVII remade again?

[Endo13]

The problem with your comment here is that 90% of it is simply your personal preference - and unfortunately for you, most of the FF series fans do not share your preference.

Re:Why do we want FFVII remade again?

[halycon404]

Um, Evangelion was a masterpiece, and while wierd and warped, is easily in the top 5 of best anime of all time. While FFVII is um.. the game that came after FFVI, and before FFTactics. Not much more I can say about it. But, I'm also the guy who owns NGE 5 times over because it kept being released on a new medium, or a bug got fixed in the video or translation.. so I need to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

You act as if...

[Ayanami Rei]

I never played it in the first place.

Guess what, it was my first FF too.

But then you play all the other ones in between waiting for releases and you get some perspective on the stories, characters, battle strategies, etc.

And like, FFVII is a popular franchise with a rich universe, but the gameplay wasn't that great. So unless they're going to make radical changes (I doubt it), then why get excited about a re-release? It's not like they used any FFVII-specific spell effects that would look SO COOL rendered in HD, relative to any other release.

Why not take a property that was mildly popular, and redo that one instead, and ramp up the marketing and polish on that universe?

FFVI was remade too soon. Maybe the people didn't get into it was because it's too retro, even for the PSX re-release? The CGs looked like ass and didn't enhance anything. And while I love the hand-drawn art, it's due for a hi-res re-envisioning. I want to see the bump mapping on the bare areolaes of those goddess statues, damn it.

And even FFV. Never popularized state-side. Had a GBA re-release that actually had a decent translation, tons of fun. Battles you would lose, and actually want to try again, because you knew okay, that was not the right way to do that guy. No enemy had more than 65000HP. Can you imagine that? And you had like, 20-some odd classes and 100+ abilities you could use (not counting spells).

If they upgraded it to 3d with new spell effects, snazzied up the battle system , updated the cutscenes and dialog... it could become a new fan favorite!

I'd only play a remake of FFVII if they actually changed the game engine -- updating CG is not enough.

All of these games could use a dose of the FFXI+ engine if remade as they had particularly memorable locales and dungeons. These would look great if you could walk around them in 3d, and fight monsters without transitions.

In that case, I would be for a FFVII remake. But I'm not putting it past Square for that. I mean, they had to outsource that remake of FFIII in 3d for the DS for gods' sake.

Re:You act as if...

[bigstrat2003]

But then you play all the other ones in between waiting for releases and you get some perspective on the stories, characters, battle strategies, etc Yeah, I did that too. I still rate FF7 as the best in series, and is easily in my top 5 games overall (probably at #1, but it gets pretty fuzzy trying to rate legendary games against legendary games).

And like, FFVII is a popular franchise with a rich universe, but the gameplay wasn't that great. So unless they're going to make radical changes (I doubt it), then why get excited about a re-release? It's not like they used any FFVII-specific spell effects that would look SO COOL rendered in HD, relative to any other release. Disagree. I think FF7 has great gameplay. Some things didn't work (Gold Saucer, I'm lookin' at you), but the materia system was incredible. It lent great customization to the game, and I still occasionally find out about really cool materia combos.

Why not take a property that was mildly popular, and redo that one instead, and ramp up the marketing and polish on that universe? If you look at it from a fanservice perspective, you want to remake the game with the most fans. If you look at it from a sales perspective, you want to remake the game with the most fans. Either way, you take the most popular game and remake it. That's how I'd do it at least.

FFVI was remade too soon. FF6 wasn't really remade, just ported with some extra stuff tacked on. This is, however, the other obvious candidate for a remake (even though, ironically enough, I think it's vastly overrated... which is not to say I dislike it).

I'd only play a remake of FFVII if they actually changed the game engine -- updating CG is not enough. That's not what ANY fan of a game wants out of a remake, in my experience (well, almost any). The fans are going to want the same game with prettier graphics, and changing it is going to be something akin to terrible blasphemy. I'd like to think I wouldn't be horribly upset over them changing the game like that (hell, I can play the old one, and ignore the new, if it pisses me off that much), but I'd still be irked. And I'm a rather reasonable representative of a fanboy... the rabid ones are horrible.

Regardless, the point is that making a remake of FF7 is one of the most sensible remakes, just because of fan base. There are only two remakes which make sense, FF7 and FF6... and I'd hope that either of those, if done, would be followed by the other. I want an FF7 remake because that's my favorite RPG. You're acting as though the fact that some people consider FF7 overrated means it's not worthy. Fast forward to 10 years from now, if Bungie decides to remake one of their games. There are going to be people (and not a tiny number of them) who say that Marathon or Myth should be remade, because Halo is vastly overrated (hell, people say that about Halo now). However, the ideal choice for a remake would be Halo (or something in that series), just because that's the game with the biggest following. FF7 is the same way, it's either Square's #1 or tied for #1 (hard to get a good grip on this stuff from casual observation) RPG, fan-wise. That makes it worthy for a remake.

VIII

[MikeFM]

When they re-release FF VIII for PS3 or a modern PC I'll probably buy it. I loved 7, 8, and 9 but 8 was my favorite. I'd love to see any of those with PS3-quality, or better, graphics.

Re:VIII

[Cerium]

8 was one of my favorites as well. But really, the graphics weren't all that bad. They don't stand up to today's standards by any means, but the differences in 7 and 8 is like night and day. Even the prerendered sequences in 8 were significantly better than those in 7.

Sure, I'd throw some cash at Square if they made a remake of 8, but I'd much rather see 7 done first.

Too Late To Switch To Wii?

[I'll Provide The War]

With the Wii weekly outselling the PS3 6:1 in Japan and 4:1 in the US is it too late for them to consider switching platforms?

$179

[Nazmun]

Thats my prediction for end of life cost of the ps3. Too many extra components in the ps3 like wifi, more video encoders/decoders, blu-ray, and most of all the hard drive which will always have a near fixed cost to the end. As platters gain in data density the lowest cost hd's cost as much to manufacture as higher density ones. I think thats the primary reason sony is gonna increase hd size over time (surprised ms isn't doing it).

In any case that alone adds like $30-$40 over the ps2 which still retails for $129.

Local comparison

[Nazmun]

Unfortunately for sony i'll bet that number is shipped. The sam's club i work at has a prominent display for the ps3 (for the last week or so) and i don't think we've ever had a display for the wii of any kind (home office sent us a full pod of displays but we've had it racked forever). We've received at least 50 wii's in the past month and 27 ps3's at some point within the last few months.

IN any case all the wii's sold out and we still have those 27 ps3's we got probably two months ago. One week after the price drop and our database show's zero sales of the ps3's.

Probably not to their style...

[Junta]

Square is all about 2 things nowadays:

-Re-releasing their old, popular titles over and over and over again for big bucks with very little effort. (the reason they avoid Wii's virtual console like the plague is because people are *still* willing to pay ~50 bucks for the same game they already bought for ~50 bucks at least twice already, crazy fandom... The games were good, but not good enough to sign up for being repeatedly reamed).

-When they do release a 'new' game, it's been increasingly more style over substance. The shinier and more polygon count, the better. The more cinematic-like cutscenes, etc. PS3 has the Blue-Ray format, allowing for significant amounts of storage, and the graphics subsystem to do their 'ooh shiny' bits. Wii does not have the graphics/processor capability to do that to the same extent. Wii is a lot of things, but rendering real-time graphics it is significantly less adept at. DVD has a lot of storage, but give Square the license to use up to a BD-ROM's capacity, and they'll probably eat it up.

To me, Square jumped the shark a bit ago. From Square's perspective they probably think (and perhaps accurately so) that it doesn't matter *what* platform they release for. If only 2 million PS3s exist in households, and they release for PS3, they probably think people will buy the PS3 *just* to play their game if nothing else (evidently, this may be the case here as well). Square and Sony have a certain hubris in common about how infallible their new product will be in the marketplace. Sony crammed a number of agendas into the PS3 and priced it high, because they thought they just couldn't lose. Maybe Sony is starting to/would soon see the light, but Square hasn't had such a humbling experience yet.

FF X relase date

[Anonymous Coward]

... at least in the U.S. was late 2001.

I remember because I was working at Target at the time and found it in the stockroom but not on display. There was no big PR push or anything, it just shipped early, just in time for Christmas and to show the PS2 had something to counter the then-recently released (and sold out) xbox and gamecube.

If you were playing X in 2001 after it had been out a while, you must have been playing the Japanese relase...

I know...

[Ayanami Rei]

Square-Enix is full of whores anyway. FFVII is definitely an easy sell on a remake.

Another reply comment made the Marathon/Halo remake connection. I _hope_ that Bungie would have the balls to do a remake of Marathon instead of Halo in the future. This strategy (take the underappreciated old and make new) has been very successful for other series (game, movie, TV) and I would like to see it happen.

It is inevitable what Square-Enix will.

But I don't have to like it!!!