Final Fantasy is a franchise that has been there throughout the ages of video games. It is a prolific series that has broken new ground, garnered thousands of fans worldwide, and is always hailed as having a tremendous story. And I don't understand why.
I can't exactly speak from experience as I've never played the exalted Final Fantasy VII. That seems to be the only one that matters anymore. People are so rabid about it that all Final Fantasy fans want is another one. Or, some kind of high definition remake. Again, I can't really speak from experience being that I've never played it, but was it really that good? Why can't you just bust out the old system and play that again. I'm sure the graphics haven't held up that well, but seeing an old game for me brings me straight back to when I played it back in the day.
What was so great about Final Fantasy VII? It has the most broken combat system like all of the current Final Fantasy games: The ATB system. What does that even stand for? I think it's Attack Time Based System... more like Attack Time-based Bullshit system if you ask me. The ATB system works as follows: enter battle, wait.... There is your first problem right there. The game forces the player to wait. Most, if not every other game let's you get right into the battle with a turn based battle system. There is nothing wrong with this. There was nothing broken with the turn based thing, so why change it? Why Square Enix, why? Pokemon, which if I'm honest is probably the only other Japanese RPG that I've ever played, allows me to get into a battle, and immediately make my decision. It may not be my Pokemon that goes first, but I have still chosen my next move. Back to the ATB system... after waiting for your gage to fill up, then, THEN, I get to scroll through my options. This is an RPG, people! I'm going to have a mage type character in my party that knows loads of spells, and I as the player may not know all of them. So, the game forces you to scroll through a novels worth of pages filled with spells, WHILE THE TIMER IS STILL GOING. That's right. You are open to attack. This is straight up punishing gameplay. The time does not pause while I scroll through my menus, it keeps on ticking away. This whole time based system becomes worse in different ways, but I'll go into that more. Either way, this gameplay system is completely broken. I should be able to sort through the spells and abilities that my character has, no matter how many, without having to race the clock. Have you ever taken a really hard test at school, and they put a time limit on it that you knew wasn't enough. That is every single battle with every Final Fantasy game with the ATB system. I don't know what they were thinking over at Square Enix. It doesn't make the battles more realistic, it doesn't make the battles more visceral, it doesn't make the battles more intense. The only purpose that the ATB system seems to serve is to frustrate the hell out of me. The whole of the battle systems, throughout every Final Fantasy game is a farce!
Example: Final Fantasy IV, for the Nintendo DS.
I was really excited to play this game. I bought it on a whim after seeing a Final Fantasy concert. That sounds strange, given how much I hate the series, but watch the old G4tv episode of Icons focusing on Nobuo Uematsu, the composer of the Final Fantasy games, and you'll understand why I love the music and hate the games. Final Fantasy IV has the ATB system, and was completely remade to have 3D graphics and even have voice acting. I haven't played the original Final Fantasy IV, though I'm sure that it didn't have the ATB system. The NES was before that time. There are some interesting things to the battle system that could have had some potential... except for the fact that it is squandered by the battle system itself. In FF IV for the DS, I can choose the order in which my party is arranged. Cool! I thought to myself, that way I can have my tank up front to absorb all of the damage while my fragile characters can hang out around back and launch spells and heal the tank. NOPE.
I usually take my DS to the laundromat to help pass the time. Wanting to get more into my DS as a platform that I spend more time with, I thought Final Fantasy IV would be a good place to start. I was wrong. At first, I wasn't. I was getting the hang of the system, and picking up new, and awesome characters who changed up gameplay and made the game exciting. However, due to the story taking my main character to places that separated me from those new and exciting characters, I got stuck, on top of a mountain with under leveled characters. Here's another reason why I hate, absolutely hate, Final Fantasy games. The main characters. As of late the characters of Final Fantasy games have been lack-luster, run of the mill, emotionally dead, or repressed, cardboard cutouts of human beings. The depth of the main characters are terrible, and the side characters that you come across aren't much better. However, being that these are side characters, and they only help out in the party all the time, apparently these people do not matter to the writers of Final Fantasy. So players are forced to hang around these awful characters, and because of their time with these characters, they are much stronger than the other members of the party. This creates an imbalance. A nonsensical imbalance that ends up breaking the game. Generally in a Final Fantasy game, the main character will be miles ahead of the other characters in the party, and that forces the player to grind, and level the other characters who will never catch up BECAUSE THE MAIN CHARACTER IS IN THAT PARTY! He's gaining experience too! He's leveling up and maintaining his status as the strongest character. This makes no sense! Where's the balance?! Bioware RPGs are brilliant because of one simple concept: The Experience Bank. This allows players to use characters that they wouldn't often use because they are under leveled, and bringing said characters up to the player level.
So, there I am, on top of a mountain with my underleveled characters facing down a boss. This boss can take down my underleveled characters in one to two hits. When I have the opportunity to revive my characters with a Phoenix Down, the action goes completely wasted. Reason being, is that the character that I have just revived hasn't had a chance to heal himself, and it is the other characters turn. I put my fragile mage in the back, so that he wouldn't take damage. So that the enemy would attack my Tank first, and NOT my support. This doesn't matter. The whole arrangement of characters, does not matter in the game of Final Fantasy. Chess has the pawns in front, so that they can run interference. They are not the strongest pieces, but they can get in the way, and not much is lost when they go down. Much like the hit points of my Tank. However! Being that the enemy can choose whomever it wants to attack, it decides to take down the weakest of my characters. Which happens to be my recently resurrected mage. I'm not complaining about the Phoenix Down, and how it doesn't revive my character to it's full health, but the brokenness of the combat system.
How am I supposed to get past this greater evil? Hmmm? Grinding. That's what I am supposed to do. Take the time, out of my day, out of my experience, to just straight level. That is all. There is no point. There is no training montage. There is no anything. It is just to get stronger. The reason that Final Fantasy, along with a bevvy of other Japanese RPGs, fail, is because of it's grinding. Grinding breaks up the pace in the worst way. Never in a story will you hear about the heroes aimlessly wandering the landscape, killing as many creatures as possible to get stronger. This kind of thing is left up to the back story.
There is a time and place for training. Usually, at the beginning of the story, or the whole story where the hero is working his way up to the final fight. Say, in Percy Jackson. There is a need for some kind of explanation of training. Percy Jackson is an ordinary person, in extraordinary circumstances. He needs to know about the new world that he has just entered into. Harry Potter needs training as a wizard, so that he can eventually face his destiny to defeat Voldermort. Rocky Balboa needs to train endlessly so that he can come out of retirement and fight Mr. T. These are all necessary circumstances where a character needs development in that specific area. Characters in Final Fantasy should not have to level grind in order to progress. These characters are already adventurers. Final Fantasy IV, has players taking control of Cecil, a knight. A knight who is a captain, of his own armada, and who is widely regarded among his colleagues as the best, in the worlds strongest of armies. There is no reason, as to why this character should need to level grind. The other characters as well, should not need to level grind. Usually, they are in the same profession, or have been training their entire lives, to become what they are. The fragile mages that I kept in the back row, were but children. However, they too, were widely regarded as extremely talented individuals for their age. While I admit that they would need to undergo more training, before setting off on a quest to save the world. These two characters should be able to grow through their time on this adventure.
Grinding breaks games. This concept in games brings games to a tedious halt. An excuse that I've heard that was for grinding was that it extends the life of their game. "More bang for your buck" as they say. But where's the bang if it's just a dull roar, suppressed by the tedium of doing the same stuff over and over again? What about the story, or character development, or anything? There is nothing that transpires. The characters only get stronger in level, but I feel as though no progress has been made. I didn't advance through the story, I didn't explore a new area, I just ran in circles for an ungodly amount of time, where all I did, was murder innocent creature protecting their territory from a band of jackasses wanting to get stronger.
Dragon Ball Z has more engaging training sessions than this. Somehow, someway, the heroes of the show hear about an oncoming evil that is stronger than they have ever faced before, so they should get stronger so that they can defeat it. It's the same situation as Rocky, but on a more ridiculous level. In Final Fantasy, each character is in some way, already quite the adventurer and qualified to take on most challenges. Though, none of the characters ever charge themselves with the task of being the planets protectors. They were chosen, seemingly at random, to save the earth, or whatever planet they exist on. If they truly are the chosen ones, then by whatever divine power that exists within those societies, or whatever powers that chose them, should help them along in some way by bestowing upon them some kind of sacred power of some sort. There should be challenge in the game, but not punishment. Not forcing the player to spend hours and hours, doing nothing but pouring time into leveling.
Now, in my experience, side quests are hard to come by in a Final Fantasy game. They are usually too difficult for my low level characters, and when my character becomes strong enough, my supports are usually too weak. Leveling should be rewarded throughout the game, at a steady pace, that makes those levels feel earned, and not given freely. The player should have to accomplish great tasks to get those levels. Again, going back to Bioware RPGs, specifically Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Leveling feels earned. Players can go through the main story quests only, and feel sufficiently powerful, even though, they haven't reached their full level cap. The challenge of the game adapts to the player level, and keeps a constant challenge for the player. There is grinding in Kotor, but it is cleverly masked by the numerous amounts of side quests, that are both interesting and engaging. The variety of ways that you can deal with these quests make them all the better. It may be something as simple as a delivery quests, but players have the choice to not deliver that item, sell it and make a pretty penny rather than doing as they were told and taking home a small profit. It could even be an assassination mission. Players can undergo the guise of a bad guy, find their mark, and tell them to get out of town because there is a bounty on their head. There is nothing like this in Final Fantasy. It is simply: find quest, complete quest. No option. No moral choice. No freedom.
Linearity is not a bad thing, but it can kill games. When the freedom that the player has is to choose what character to level up, with a certain materia or guardian force, or when the choice is to either flank left or flank right, there is no choice. There is no freedom in a game like that.
At least the music is nice...
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