[quote name='Stargun007'][quote name='Skylander7']People praise FF VIII's battle system because it is "unique and original"...
So if I eat a bunch of crayons, and take a multicolored dump.. will people praise it for being "Unique and original"???
Square has definately lost the quality it once had in its games. To anyone who says that FF X has the best storyline ever.. please try Panzer Dragoon Saga, Chrono Trigger, FF VI, the Suikoden series, the Dragon Warrior series... I'm not blasting the new FF's, nor am I flaming anybody. I'm just saying.. if people would try these other and IMO greater games, you wouldn't be spending a hundred bucks plus for them on Ebay later down the road. I'm actually insulted by some of the crap Square has slung our way in the past few years, and how they get away with it.[/quote]
Argh, I'm so sick of this Square bashing. Ever since Final Fantasy became popular (with 7), all of the "old school" people have turned against FF, if not Square completely. Go replay some of your precious old ones. Are they good games? Yes. Are they as great as you remember them? Definitely not. Everyone only remembers the great parts, but not the bad. I'm not saying that every game post-6 is great, either. I'm replaying FF7 right now, and it's definitely got some pretty big issues (the dialogue is horrendous, and the minigames are really annoying) and 8 is so bad that I don't even want to think about playing it again. But face it- the stuff coming out of Square-Enix, especially the Final Fantasy games, is a billion times more original and more fun than most of the crap that comes out these days.
This may surprise a lot of people, but it's completely fine to love your old games and still warmly embrace all of the new stuff that's coming out. You don't have to be a complete n00b or completely old school. Enjoy gaming for the great entertainment it is and stop bitching about how everything was better in the old days.[/quote]
Absolutely. The "old-school" gamers (and I'm one of them) tend to view all old games through the rose-colored glasses of timeless nostalgia. Panzer Dragoon was downright horrible, IMO, but I will agree with the Suikoden series as having quite possibly the best storylines ever. As far as FF goes, it is UNTRUE to even bother saying that the old FFs are "better" than the new. You can LIKE them better, which is your opinion, but as far as the overall quality goes? Well, let's see:
Before FF VII, the script and story were written by the PROGRAMMERS because Square couldn't afford to have real writers on staff. And it showed, seeing as how the dialogue was so laughable, it could easily have been written by a precocious 10-year-old. For the time, when WE were kids, it was pretty darn great. But look at it now. It sounds like a monkey wrote the script.
Just about the most complex system before FF VII was maybe the Esper system, which was extremely simplistic, or the Job system found in FF V (and that was a poor, archaic version of the genius found in FF Tactics). Materia, Junction, Sphere Grid...it all allowed for a level of customization and freedom that wasn't even close to being APPROACHED in the old FFs, or Chrono Trigger, or PDS, or anything else in the old days.
We need to wake up and face reality. Games back then were made with extremely limited budgets, staff, and hardware. I love the old gems too, and always will, but if we wish to be LOGICAL, it's obvious that they've long since been eclipsed. FF X's storyline is a million times deeper and more insightful than ANYTHING found in FF I - VI, which, I reiterate, consisted of stories that could've been devised by a semi-intelligent parrot.
When we look back in time, the games we loved start to sit atop loftier and loftier plateaus. Before we know it, subconsciously, not a single game that is released in the future could ever top them...even though several already have, obviously. Is every new game better than every old game? Of course not. But especially when it comes to the RPG genre, most of the time, the answer is a resounding "YES."
Let's just sit back and view things as objectively as possible, shall we? FF X is well worth playing and one of the best RPG's of this generation.