It was being promoted as some monumental landmark thing that was going to change both gaming and movie industries forever. Nearly every American news media was raving about its FeMC as this new icon of the era, even fucking Maxim magazine had her as a Top100 model. This was at a time when Square had dropped FF9 and FFX was dropping like two weeks after, so the franchise was its generally unquestioned peak.
So having this completely mid movie drop, with every one of those media sycophants turning on it immediately after, it just dropped every ball it could.
I never thought it was that stupid though. Again, nothing special, but I thought it was fine. Maybe it was just a case of hype going too high and the film not being able to deliver.
I remember when retards used to blame the Enix side for ruining them, even though Dragon Quest is one of the last bastions of the old school style JRPGs while the Square side keeps fucking up Final Fantasy and investing in shitty western games
Its funny because most of the FF games have great things in them, that seems to be always destroyed by some absurd theme and "style" the lead dev is pushing.
Like, once Toriyama wasn't able to bog down FF13 with his Lightning waifu obsession and "story driven gameplay," its sequel had one of the funnest RPG combat systems. Which he then promptly threw away to make the final sequel nothing but Lightning wank with a gutted form of the combat system and stupid timetravel plot.
Dragon quest was a product of it's time. It should have stayed there.
Holy shit who actually still plays turn based JRPGS where your party stands in a line and there is no tactical depth or engaging gameplay whatsoever. The people that still play those are mostly soy goblins playing shitty waifu gatcha games, which are only that way because it's low effort and low skill required to make and play.
Now I'm not saying enix made square retarded, they're perfectly capable of shooting themselves in the foot on their own. I'm just saying holding up mainline dragon quest as good is ridiculous. And final fantasy tries to evolve past that original style, which only existed because of technological limitations.
Hell that DS game with the giant tanks where you played as a slime was better than every single mainline DQ game. The spinoffs that actually try to do something better are way better than mainline DQ.
And the ones where you control one singular character doing the exact same thing, with AIs controlling the rest of the party, where you have just as much input as before but one fourth the thought and foresight required, are SO much better.
I wasn't claiming final fantasy specifically was a good example, but they did try to do better. The system you describe is an action game, which is at least less boring and has been executed far better. .hack, back in 03, had that kind of system only you controlled all three party members in real time by giving detailed orders to the other two while playing as kite. That was infinitely better than anything in the "three niggas in a line" genre. And later there was a few years where the vast majority of JRPGs were on a movement board like fire emblem, which again, far superior in depth. Other JRPGs have your turns playing out in a time based manner - eternal sonata did this. Heck, the world ends with you could be called a JRPG, and it was fantastic with simultaneously controlling two characters.
Dragon quest is a boring, shit game that aged like milk and only autistics, incompetents and major nostalgiafags actually like it.
Even dragon quest side games do way better than actual DQ. That ds game was DQ rocket slime, and it was amazing. DQ heroes is a serviceable musou game. Regular DQ and literally any JRPG that is still just "three niggas in a line" is such low effort trash that it would be better just skipping the meaningless padding "gameplay" to be a VN.
Have you considered you are experiencing a major dunning-Kruger moment as regards turn based strategy and its countless millions of fans? Not every turn based game is balanced like Pokemon or Paper Mario.
Turn based strategy is not "three niggas in a line". That genre is like fire emblem or other S-JRPGs. Hell, pokemon actually has more depth than DQ, if you look into the absolute shenanigans the competitive crowd gets up to. I'm not into those but it's at least better than dragon quest. And paper mario thousand year door was better than DQ as well.
The irony of this shitty argument is that action based actually predates turn based. JRPGs started with games like Dragon Slayer, Hydlide, and even Zelda which all had action based combat. It wasn't until Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy 1 which both kickstarted turn based JRPGs, so no there is nothing new or revolutionary about action RPGs.
Your opinion on Dragon Quest is subjective, so there is no point in me trying to convince you. My initial point was that Enix wasn't behind trying to make all their JRPGs have the same gameplay as the Mana series, they were actually the traditional ones while the Square side which was bleeding all the old talent at the time was just trying to reach normies by making action games instead of RPGs.
Also Dragon Quest 11 and Persona 5 each sold millions worldwide, so yeah there is an audience for it. I like Paper Mario and Pokemon, but to me those are just comfort food games with very simplistic rock/paper/scissor mechanics, theres hardly any resource management or really much strategy outside of who gets to hit harder first. Dragon Quest at least has a job system, skill trees, equipment/resource management, crafting systems, and a steeper difficulty that prioritizes MP conservation over just spamming OP moves.
I tried to play Xenoblade 2 due to all the hype, but the game just felt so monotonous to me where I was spamming the same flashy moves over and over again with my AI party auto healing me, the risk/reward factor wasn't there and it felt like I was just watching a light show.
Call of duty dominated the shooter market and it was still dogshit. I didn't say there weren't millions of autistic elevens that will keep buying that trash, look at the mobile market. I said it was outdated and bad.
Action games have evolved, JRPGs as a whole have evolved, DQ is stuck in a system that only exists because they didn't have the skill or capacity to make better ones.
Xenoblade is not very good, tbh. I only played the first one and it was terrible MMO combat with severe level scaling issues. That combat system was an abortion. That is an example of making a bad game. Fire up an emulator and play the original .hack games.
There's no real strategy in DQ, don't bullshit me. Grind till you're the right level, heal when you need it and press A for big attacks on bosses. Pokemon doesn't have strategy in the PVE component at all - it only does on the competitive level, which doesn't exist for DQ. Thousand year door wasn't difficult, it was just interesting rather than simply "three niggas in a line".
Anyone that can't clear a DQ game is literally braindead. It's a timesink to pad the length of the story and get you invested in it. Satisfying autismos and elevens' desire to grind for numbers going up doesn't mean it's actually quality.
And persona literally sells entirely because of the waifus and story. It's a VN. It's better than DQ at least because it goes all in on that aspect of it, but the gameplay is not any measure of good.
You shot yourself in the foot relating sales numbers to quality and now you're flailing because you're objectively wrong and you know it, and have zero counters.
Square overbanked on their success on the PlayStation, that was a good run, and I don't think we're going to see anything like that wave of quality and quantity ever again.
But around this time, you could tell mainstream-wise that FF-Mania was starting to cool down. 7 had the opportunity of being one of the first big 3rd party PS1 exclusives and launching right as the anime boom in the US kicked off into overdrive.
8 got a little too emo for my tastes, and 9 got tragically overshadowed in the US by the PS2 launch and the mainstream Joe Schmoes who weren't aware the cherubic designs were supposed to be a callback to 8/16-bit era FF games who saw the kid protagonists and assumed it was Final Fantasy for babies, despite what was on those four discs and proceeded to jump on the next-gen hype train.
I never finished X, I got to the part where the typhoon wiped out the sports stadium before I lost control of Tidus and the game locked up, but I liked what I played beforehand.
And about X-2, let's just say that I have an old joke about X-2 being Square's not-so-subtle test for how fast tweenagers could scramble for their PS2 console's power button before their parents came into the room
Which is unfortunate, because X-2 is one of the best games in terms of raw gameplay in the entire series. Skipping all the dialogue and cutscenes makes it pure fun and the peak of the "3 niggas in a line" genre, which is why they made the game require you to watch all cutscenes in full to get the best endings and items.
And X itself is a phenomenal game now that mods have created a "skip cutscene" option.
Yep. Hero, Brute/Lancer, Saint/Healer, Sage/Wizard. You see that shit in garbage tier Isekai to this day.
Once you open the door from 3 to 4, you could argue FF IV's lineup of Redeemed Hero, Lancer/Traitor, Rogue, Healer/Love Interest, Wizard is best. (Five man band tropes go here.)
The reality is that adding a rogue isn't that big an upgrade. (Edge gets no love.)
"5 niggas in a line" is not the upgrade from from "4 niggas in a line" that 4 niggas is from 3 niggas. Plus, "3 niggas in a line" catches more of the pixel art RPG era than either alternative.
A Thousand Words is also quite a powerful song, even if it feels completely corny in context about why she is singing a random concert its still very good.
Also, as a recommendation. Just resign yourself to not getting 100% completion from the onset, and you'll enjoy the game a lot more. You'll miss a lot, but its so strict at times it strangles the fun out of it when you need a guide for every two seconds.
Hot take: Squeenix's sequel games are better than the originals.
FFX-2: Better. FF13-2: Better. FF14? First expo better than launch. FF Dissidia? Dueodecim was better (except Chaos' intro line quotes, I liked those better in the original). FF7-AC/BC/CC/DC? Better. FFTA-2: ...Okay, maybe not ALL of them, exceptions exist.
Spirits Within killed Square. I liked the movie but their reach exceeded their grasp on that one.
I don't really get why people dunk on that movie so much. Sure, it's not some pinnacle of film, but it's still a decent movie.
That's a fair point, the budget was ludicrous and the normal ties to FF were tangential at best.
You had to be there.
It was being promoted as some monumental landmark thing that was going to change both gaming and movie industries forever. Nearly every American news media was raving about its FeMC as this new icon of the era, even fucking Maxim magazine had her as a Top100 model. This was at a time when Square had dropped FF9 and FFX was dropping like two weeks after, so the franchise was its generally unquestioned peak.
So having this completely mid movie drop, with every one of those media sycophants turning on it immediately after, it just dropped every ball it could.
I guess as a non-American, it probably wasn't pushed as hard here and the hype didn't carry it up as high, making that fall much less dramatic.
It really was ahead of its time.
It was hugely hyped, got a big theater release, and while it was impressive as a tech demo it was a stupid movie.
I never thought it was that stupid though. Again, nothing special, but I thought it was fine. Maybe it was just a case of hype going too high and the film not being able to deliver.
I remember when retards used to blame the Enix side for ruining them, even though Dragon Quest is one of the last bastions of the old school style JRPGs while the Square side keeps fucking up Final Fantasy and investing in shitty western games
Its funny because most of the FF games have great things in them, that seems to be always destroyed by some absurd theme and "style" the lead dev is pushing.
Like, once Toriyama wasn't able to bog down FF13 with his Lightning waifu obsession and "story driven gameplay," its sequel had one of the funnest RPG combat systems. Which he then promptly threw away to make the final sequel nothing but Lightning wank with a gutted form of the combat system and stupid timetravel plot.
Dragon quest was a product of it's time. It should have stayed there.
Holy shit who actually still plays turn based JRPGS where your party stands in a line and there is no tactical depth or engaging gameplay whatsoever. The people that still play those are mostly soy goblins playing shitty waifu gatcha games, which are only that way because it's low effort and low skill required to make and play.
Now I'm not saying enix made square retarded, they're perfectly capable of shooting themselves in the foot on their own. I'm just saying holding up mainline dragon quest as good is ridiculous. And final fantasy tries to evolve past that original style, which only existed because of technological limitations.
Hell that DS game with the giant tanks where you played as a slime was better than every single mainline DQ game. The spinoffs that actually try to do something better are way better than mainline DQ.
"No tactical depth"
And the ones where you control one singular character doing the exact same thing, with AIs controlling the rest of the party, where you have just as much input as before but one fourth the thought and foresight required, are SO much better.
I wasn't claiming final fantasy specifically was a good example, but they did try to do better. The system you describe is an action game, which is at least less boring and has been executed far better. .hack, back in 03, had that kind of system only you controlled all three party members in real time by giving detailed orders to the other two while playing as kite. That was infinitely better than anything in the "three niggas in a line" genre. And later there was a few years where the vast majority of JRPGs were on a movement board like fire emblem, which again, far superior in depth. Other JRPGs have your turns playing out in a time based manner - eternal sonata did this. Heck, the world ends with you could be called a JRPG, and it was fantastic with simultaneously controlling two characters.
Dragon quest is a boring, shit game that aged like milk and only autistics, incompetents and major nostalgiafags actually like it.
Even dragon quest side games do way better than actual DQ. That ds game was DQ rocket slime, and it was amazing. DQ heroes is a serviceable musou game. Regular DQ and literally any JRPG that is still just "three niggas in a line" is such low effort trash that it would be better just skipping the meaningless padding "gameplay" to be a VN.
Have you considered you are experiencing a major dunning-Kruger moment as regards turn based strategy and its countless millions of fans? Not every turn based game is balanced like Pokemon or Paper Mario.
Turn based strategy is not "three niggas in a line". That genre is like fire emblem or other S-JRPGs. Hell, pokemon actually has more depth than DQ, if you look into the absolute shenanigans the competitive crowd gets up to. I'm not into those but it's at least better than dragon quest. And paper mario thousand year door was better than DQ as well.
The irony of this shitty argument is that action based actually predates turn based. JRPGs started with games like Dragon Slayer, Hydlide, and even Zelda which all had action based combat. It wasn't until Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy 1 which both kickstarted turn based JRPGs, so no there is nothing new or revolutionary about action RPGs.
Your opinion on Dragon Quest is subjective, so there is no point in me trying to convince you. My initial point was that Enix wasn't behind trying to make all their JRPGs have the same gameplay as the Mana series, they were actually the traditional ones while the Square side which was bleeding all the old talent at the time was just trying to reach normies by making action games instead of RPGs.
Also Dragon Quest 11 and Persona 5 each sold millions worldwide, so yeah there is an audience for it. I like Paper Mario and Pokemon, but to me those are just comfort food games with very simplistic rock/paper/scissor mechanics, theres hardly any resource management or really much strategy outside of who gets to hit harder first. Dragon Quest at least has a job system, skill trees, equipment/resource management, crafting systems, and a steeper difficulty that prioritizes MP conservation over just spamming OP moves.
I tried to play Xenoblade 2 due to all the hype, but the game just felt so monotonous to me where I was spamming the same flashy moves over and over again with my AI party auto healing me, the risk/reward factor wasn't there and it felt like I was just watching a light show.
Call of duty dominated the shooter market and it was still dogshit. I didn't say there weren't millions of autistic elevens that will keep buying that trash, look at the mobile market. I said it was outdated and bad.
Action games have evolved, JRPGs as a whole have evolved, DQ is stuck in a system that only exists because they didn't have the skill or capacity to make better ones.
Xenoblade is not very good, tbh. I only played the first one and it was terrible MMO combat with severe level scaling issues. That combat system was an abortion. That is an example of making a bad game. Fire up an emulator and play the original .hack games.
There's no real strategy in DQ, don't bullshit me. Grind till you're the right level, heal when you need it and press A for big attacks on bosses. Pokemon doesn't have strategy in the PVE component at all - it only does on the competitive level, which doesn't exist for DQ. Thousand year door wasn't difficult, it was just interesting rather than simply "three niggas in a line".
Anyone that can't clear a DQ game is literally braindead. It's a timesink to pad the length of the story and get you invested in it. Satisfying autismos and elevens' desire to grind for numbers going up doesn't mean it's actually quality.
And persona literally sells entirely because of the waifus and story. It's a VN. It's better than DQ at least because it goes all in on that aspect of it, but the gameplay is not any measure of good.
Your argument is literally just relative to whatever fits your narrative.
"x game I don't like is just popular for a totally illegitimate reason, and y game I prefer is better because I like it better"
The fact that you have to speak in cringe zoomer memes with "three niggas in line" or w/e shows you are incapable of formulating any coherent point.
You shot yourself in the foot relating sales numbers to quality and now you're flailing because you're objectively wrong and you know it, and have zero counters.
GG, better luck next time
I mostly agree with everything you say here. I think I missed that you were trying not to umbrella all these things.
Square overbanked on their success on the PlayStation, that was a good run, and I don't think we're going to see anything like that wave of quality and quantity ever again.
But around this time, you could tell mainstream-wise that FF-Mania was starting to cool down. 7 had the opportunity of being one of the first big 3rd party PS1 exclusives and launching right as the anime boom in the US kicked off into overdrive.
8 got a little too emo for my tastes, and 9 got tragically overshadowed in the US by the PS2 launch and the mainstream Joe Schmoes who weren't aware the cherubic designs were supposed to be a callback to 8/16-bit era FF games who saw the kid protagonists and assumed it was Final Fantasy for babies, despite what was on those four discs and proceeded to jump on the next-gen hype train.
I never finished X, I got to the part where the typhoon wiped out the sports stadium before I lost control of Tidus and the game locked up, but I liked what I played beforehand.
And about X-2, let's just say that I have an old joke about X-2 being Square's not-so-subtle test for how fast tweenagers could scramble for their PS2 console's power button before their parents came into the room
Which is unfortunate, because X-2 is one of the best games in terms of raw gameplay in the entire series. Skipping all the dialogue and cutscenes makes it pure fun and the peak of the "3 niggas in a line" genre, which is why they made the game require you to watch all cutscenes in full to get the best endings and items.
And X itself is a phenomenal game now that mods have created a "skip cutscene" option.
That genre is better when you have 4 niggas
Well X-2 is a job system game in which you can change mid fight. So those 3 niggas count as like 18 compared to most games.
Yep. Hero, Brute/Lancer, Saint/Healer, Sage/Wizard. You see that shit in garbage tier Isekai to this day.
Once you open the door from 3 to 4, you could argue FF IV's lineup of Redeemed Hero, Lancer/Traitor, Rogue, Healer/Love Interest, Wizard is best. (Five man band tropes go here.)
The reality is that adding a rogue isn't that big an upgrade. (Edge gets no love.)
"5 niggas in a line" is not the upgrade from from "4 niggas in a line" that 4 niggas is from 3 niggas. Plus, "3 niggas in a line" catches more of the pixel art RPG era than either alternative.
I'm calling traditional JRPGs this forever now, that's hilarious.
Same
It was some tweet I saw posted around. It stuck with me ever since as well, as everyone knows the exact type of game it describes.
I'll give it another shot, you have me intrigued.
Though, I'll admit, True Emotion was a legit banger and one of my favorite opening themes from that generation
A Thousand Words is also quite a powerful song, even if it feels completely corny in context about why she is singing a random concert its still very good.
Also, as a recommendation. Just resign yourself to not getting 100% completion from the onset, and you'll enjoy the game a lot more. You'll miss a lot, but its so strict at times it strangles the fun out of it when you need a guide for every two seconds.
Hot take: Squeenix's sequel games are better than the originals.
FFX-2: Better. FF13-2: Better. FF14? First expo better than launch. FF Dissidia? Dueodecim was better (except Chaos' intro line quotes, I liked those better in the original). FF7-AC/BC/CC/DC? Better. FFTA-2: ...Okay, maybe not ALL of them, exceptions exist.
It is physically impossible to not be better than ff14 1.0.
I heckin' LOVE NFT's!!! :O