Final Fantasy is, and has been for a long time, Squaresoft's flagship product. All the FF products, while not having direct connections to each other, carry similar "themes" -- similarities of gameplay, world design, and so on that make them clearly Final Fantasy rather than something else.
With all the time and effort (not to mention money) expended on them, one would (I think justifiably) expect that the series would generally improve as time went on. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Final Fantasy VII was a reasonably good FF game, but it was also the first Playstation FF game, and had some advantages which were, at the time, unique to it. It was incumbent upon FFVIII to give us something more -- something cooler and better. It failed.
The overall STORY isn't that bad -- the plot is decent and some of the characters interesting. However, our main character is just not generally likeable; Squall has less interesting personality than Cloud Strife of FFVII, and that's a pretty damning indictment since Cloud didn't develop much personality until some way through the game. More importantly, gameplay is if anything more of a railroading exercise than FFVII -- which, given that VII used the metaphor of a railroad from the beginning, is a sad state of affairs.
By now, Square should have recognized that flexibility of play and so on is a GOOD thing in CRPGs. Chrono Trigger remains popular enough to garner commentary even today, due in great part to its multi-ending design. Why the FF series still relies on the idea that you have no real choices and get dragged from fight to fight boggles the mind; Kewl Komputer Animation doesn't make up for the fact that they haven't added any new game techniques since the Nintendo days. Oh, they have some cute little side games -- card collecting and so on -- but the story itself isn't even captivating enough. Some of the battles can go on long enough to be boring in themselves. Oh, the animation cutscenes are pretty, and some of the music very nice -- and the past timeline sequence is, sadly, more interesting than the main one.
A disappointing effort from the people who have, in past times, produced some of the most innovative and interesting games.
Final Fantasy is, and has been for a long time, Squaresoft's flagship product. All the FF products, while not having direct connections to each other, carry similar "themes" -- similarities of gameplay, world design, and so on that make them clearly Final Fantasy rather than something else. With all the time and effort (not to mention money) expended on them, one would (I think justifiably) expect that the series would generally improve as time went on. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Final Fantasy VII was a reasonably good FF game, but it was also the first Playstation FF game, and had some advantages which were, at the time, unique to it. It was incumbent upon FFVIII to give us something more -- something cooler and better. It failed. The overall STORY isn't that bad -- the plot is decent and some of the characters interesting. However, our main character is just not generally likeable; Squall has less interesting personality than Cloud Strife of FFVII, and that's a pretty damning indictment since Cloud didn't develop much personality until some way through the game. More importantly, gameplay is if anything more of a railroading exercise than FFVII -- which, given that VII used the metaphor of a railroad from the beginning, is a sad state of affairs. By now, Square should have recognized that flexibility of play and so on is a GOOD thing in CRPGs. Chrono Trigger remains popular enough to garner commentary even today, due in great part to its multi-ending design. Why the FF series still relies on the idea that you have no real choices and get dragged from fight to fight boggles the mind; Kewl Komputer Animation doesn't make up for the fact that they haven't added any new game techniques since the Nintendo days. Oh, they have some cute little side games -- card collecting and so on -- but the story itself isn't even captivating enough. Some of the battles can go on long enough to be boring in themselves. Oh, the animation cutscenes are pretty, and some of the music very nice -- and the past timeline sequence is, sadly, more interesting than the main one. A disappointing effort from the people who have, in past times, produced some of the most innovative and interesting games.