Harem-kamisama said:FFX was one of the best selling games in the series, and even got a sequel. X is often a popular pick for favorite FF game of all time, and I feel most people have it at least in their top five. Its with 12 that the series started to falter, and it was a seemingly assinie move to keep making sequels to the worst FF game ever , FF 13 that basically put the series where it stands now.
While that's true, I know a lot that would argue that FFX was the start of the decline. While it still maintained the turn based combat, it was a VERY linear experience. You can almost see the direct lines from X's linear style and XII's combat to XIII.
Here's the important part, however. A lot of people DO put XII as the first bad game, meaning people were pretty accepting of X's linear story. A lot of people enjoyed Kingdom Hearts very action oriented gameplay, a game with a following that (at least as far as I can see) was almost exclusively made up of Final Fantasy fans. The things that many people say are fundamental problems with Final Fantasy CAN work. The problem was not that they were implemented, but that they were implemented poorly.
The problem with XIII's linearity was that locations felt grand and empty. When spaces were filled with people, the people were largely empty shells. This is a stark contrast to X where even just the locations were dripping with character. (Aside: X also had arguably the best soundtrack of the series IMO, which helped a lot)
XIII's action based gameplay had the appearance of action, but restricted by turn based elements. Rather than leaving the RPG elements outside of combat (like KH did), and allowing the action to shine, the game ended up with a slow paced combat system masquerading as a fast paced system.
I feel other series and publishers have long left square enix in the dust, at least in terms of jrpgs.
Sort of? There are only a few modern JRPGs that reach the heights of Final Fantasy 6-10, and they have been relative standouts. For instance, the
Tales of series has been pretty hit or miss, though they have had a couple of great games since then. The kind of inspiration that comes from analyzing and competing against others has been relatively absent, and I think that's part of the reason that we saw such a decline for a while.
What I'm excited for is the future. The genre is seeing a resurgence, and the fact that we've got Final Fantasy XV and hopefully another main console title in Dragon Quest (currently scheduled for 2016) is fantastic. Persona is already running pretty high with most people, and Tales just needs another good solid game to be up there with them (I feel like their on the verge of finding their mass market). We could be in for an all time high for the genre as a whole (though I think VR may hinder that some, as that obviously works best with certain types of games).
Not that I think it's necessarily going to happen. That would be quite the convergence. But a guy can dream