2025 Please reconsider the way of FF game design.

[Lumen]

Hello gamers,

I really don't get it.
Why is Final Fantasy focusing on beeing more like a film?

FF was allways a game, the medium of the present and the future.
Where you can live storys instead of beeing told one.

Every time the controlls are taken away, I'm not playing the game.
I treat that usally as pause time because not much intresting is happening.
If it's really boring I even do/watch something else on another monitor.
What's your guess on how most players react to qte/flashpoint/pointless button mashing failchecks?

I also don't understand why they need to focus on uninportant stuff, like handing over items or someone walking somewhere, that's stuff you don't want to care about.
It even hinders the story, when cutscenes are so stretched out they are telling storys a lot slower than books.

So please SquareEnix do what you can do best:
combat, artstyle and a nice story.
Please add all that lovely fluff where it doesen't hinder or stop the gameplay.

Happy New Year

[Krówka]

You are you, not everyone out there, game devs going by statistics, meaning you're among minority of people playing FF games.

For me it's opposite and FF series starts from VI exactly because past FF games had very little cutscenes and presentation was poor,
I love cinematic experience while hating those awful repeatable fights from early games where you were attacked every few steps and just pressed attack command because it was too boring and too easy to do anything else. In older FF games I avoided any random fight anyway I could due to how boring the gameplay was outside of unique bosses.

In short amount of unique enemies and tons of cutscenes is all that defines a good FF game for me since the release of FF6, other aspects are beautiful music and emotional story with main characters dying, it's all in FFXVI so I consider it a good FF game, just the optimization is non existent and need third party workarounds to play, the only reason I gave it negative review.

[Admod, the Equivocal]

I was so sure that the Final Fantasy people all ways wanted to make movies and animations instead of video games. They've tried to make successful video game movies many times and failed.

When it comes to FF games I started with FF8. I slogged my way through it because the story was so compelling I had to know what happened next. Then each one I played afterwards drew me in with the story and I kept playing. I STILL hate ATB combat and only really enjoyed FF10's combat.

The newer combat in 15 is just easier to button mash my way through but I still enjoy the stories which is the main draw to Final Fantasy. FF16 is even easier combat, but I do miss the combo abilities and parties from the past FF games. I don't think FF should be a solo adventure, even though FF13: Lighting Returns is technically also a solo mission.

[Krypto]

Spoiler alert: text boxes in the old games were also cutscenes, and FF9 had a ton of them.

At least you can skip the cutscenes in 16 if you want to.

[Lumen]

Originally posted by Krypto:

At least you can skip the cutscenes in 16 if you want to.

Yeah and sometimes there are 5 of them in a row which make the skipping alone take the lenght of one cutscene. But still better losing 1/5 of the time instead of 5/5.
In older games cutscenes where mostly meaningfull.
In FF16 you have at least 30 minutes of unskippable handing over something animations.
Which is a complete waste of my time.

[narc]

I feel like there hasn't been a proper FF since 10. 12 felt too much like an mmo, 13 was a hallway simulator, 15 I can barely even remember what the game was even about. The emphasis on cinematics seems to have increased over time.

[Lumen]

Originally posted by narc:

I feel like there hasn't been a proper FF since 10. 12 felt too much like an mmo, 13 was a hallway simulator, 15 I can barely even remember what the game was even about. The emphasis on cinematics seems to have increased over time.

This goes for the complete franchise. It was one of the reasons I quit FF14. While it was cutscene heavy from the start it felt like they replaced even more gameplay with cutscenes.
FF13 was about Lighning. I still like that hallway gameplay more than open world.
In open world I have extremly slow gameplay by turning every stone, missing out or reading a guide(which completly negates the open world benefits).
In comparsion I like the mission flow in 16 more than in 15.
Overall so far(haven't finished yet nor played the dlc's) I like 15 more because the cutscenes in 16 began to bore me.
I like the gameplay in 16 more but there isn't that much of it in comparsion to traversing and cutscenes.
So what's a proper FF for you then? Turn based? 1-5 screens closed world?
I played FF10 on gamepass for half an hour or so and didn't like it.

[Calandir]

People need to understand There is no going back to Turn based gameplay. Never. You have myriad of interviews saying they want FF to go into action to open itself for new generations of gamers.

Sweet spot is FF7R with it's ATB filling and using skills when you got bars. It's hybrid system that works. XVI is simply DMC.

Final Fantasy always tried something new, and there were always people against and for those changes. You can be fan of Final Fantasy, and not play the newest instalment when you dislike changes etc. I'm unhappy with XVI that's why I'm not finishing it and waiting for Rebirth.

They tried something new, I didn't like it, and that's it. You need to be selfish in gaming.

[Yew Nough]

Originally posted by narc:

I feel like there hasn't been a proper FF since 10. 12 felt too much like an mmo, 13 was a hallway simulator, 15 I can barely even remember what the game was even about. The emphasis on cinematics seems to have increased over time.

Safe to say every game developer is making playable movies instead of true games.

I think most PS1-PS2 era Final Fantasy games worked to the degree that it was still exploration-heavy. FF7R also meshes a lot of the story into the exploration so you don't have to stop playing to watch another cutscene.

I'm with OP: Games need to be fun and engaging, otherwise it's not a game.
This pseudo-movie nonsense needs to slow down.