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Final Fantasy XIV Launches To Scathing Reviews
RogueyWon writes "Now that the massively-multiplayer Final Fantasy XIV has been on the shelves for a couple of weeks, the reviews are starting to arrive; and it appears that the game is the subject of a critical battering unprecedented in the history of the main Final Fantasy series. First it was the Amazon user reviews, then Gamespot weighed in, describing the game as a 'step backwards for the genre,' and now IGN has described it as 'an arduous experience that, in its current state, isn't worth playing.' Given the general dissatisfaction that surrounded the release of the (offline) Final Fantasy XIII earlier in the year, many long-time fans of the series must now be wondering whether the magic hasn't departed."
What happened to Final Fantasy? I grew up with it, the original Final Fantasy was my first RPG, and then Final Fantasy 2, and then, what I believe to be the greatest RPG of all time, Final Fantasy 3/6 came out. Final Fantasy VII was great, and breathtaking, but since then, it's been downhill. Nine was a quick breath of fresh air, but VIII is the only Final Fantasy I've never played past the first hour. Ten was super linear (geez, *another* cutscene?), and X-2 was a joke (please stop making intrepid adventurers act like tween girls, it's insulting to everyone except tween girls). XII seemed to be on the right track, but that's because they used an established world and mythos from the Tactics series, and the biggest problem was it's abrupt ending and auto-gameplay, but at least there were some compelling characters and power struggles, although it fell short in that area. And then XIII I haven't played yet, because I took one look at the map, and lost all interest (hint, it's a straight line), and nothing I read said that the story made up for that lack of exploration.
It seems to me that the problem, more than anything, is the failure to dream up a really compelling setting, characters, and plot, and then let the player loose in it. Earlier games had those, but it seems that lately all that they're interested in is new systems of combat and leveling up. There are no villains like Kefka, no tragedies like Rosa's attempted suicide, no big reveals like Cloud's backstory, no tortured protagonists like Cecil.
In a lot of ways, it's as if they've substituted "cool" for "good". They want a cool story, a cool main character, a cool setting, not good ones, not well developed ones. The potential for storytelling in videogames, from a technological standpoint, it's all there. There's nothing really holding anyone back, but instead, we get flashy graphics and a new battle system, instead of characters we care about. When I was 14 years old, watching Rosa throw herself off a cliff, or Terra almost decide against saving the world, or even the NPC orphan teenage couple obliquely considering an abortion because Kefka had turned the world into a wasteland, that was good storytelling, and I expected it to only get better as technology improved, and it really didn't, at least not for the Final Fantasy series.
It's a shame, and maybe this is harsh, but I consider the Final Fantasy series to be like M. Night Shyamalan movies. Sure, "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" were epic, and "Signs" was pretty decent, but at some point you have to give up on things and count yourself as no longer a fan, but a harsh critic.
Every time a new MMO launches, I've got this baggage of playing WoW for 2-3 years. I expect the game that comes out to be as polished and as good as WoW. It's unfair but my logic just ends at "why don't I just play WoW instead." I hope other people are different but that's what I keep thinking and what leads to my termination of game play.
Actually "why don't I just play WoW instead." is exactly the question the games devs/execs should ask themselves. Because their games don't exist in a vacuum, they exist in a world where WoW has 12 million subscribers. If they want any share of that market, they have to give players a reason why not just to play WoW. And just "different" does not cut it if the game is basically beta or worse on launch.