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Thread: When Did the Final Fantasy Series "Jump the Shark"?

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    Default When Did the Final Fantasy Series "Jump the Shark"?

    I would say March - April 2003, those being the months when Final Fantasy X-2 was released and when Enix acquired Square.

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    I think everything after Final Fantasy 7 is just "nothing special", and are games I really dont care for.
    Final Fantasy 8 was the beginning of the decline, the games became way too 'story based' and included too many long drawn-out dialogue scenes.

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    Yeah, I think for me it started with 7, but overall I'd say 11 was where the series started really losing fans. Having a numbered entry be an MMORPG changed what the series name meant too much. Before that, you mostly knew what you were getting into, but at that point we weren't talking about traditional JRPGs anymore, and Final Fantasy had been the face of the genre in the west to that point.

    I agree quite a bit about 8 starting negative trends. The games started to focus on the characters' feelings more instead of the struggle in their world. It's like the newer Star Wars movies. I wasn't even curious about 10 year old Anakin, and certainly didn't need a whole movie about him. I would have preferred a focus on the clone wars and the rushed rise of the empire, whose infrastructure seems to have grown impossibly quickly in the time alotted. Similarly, if I don't get into the character of a whiner like Squall and the game is built so much around him and his person, I stop caring.

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    Final Fantasy 8, then 10 and beyond. Final Fantasy 9 was good so not included. Final Fantasy 10-2 while having a bad story has amazing gameplay. Final Fantasy 12 has amazing everything except for gameplay.

    After losing Sakaguchi they brought Matsuno to do the work on Final Fantasy 12 and from what I've played, everything other than what I feel was awful progression unless you trial and error on that license board when learning skills is amazing. If they fixed the issues with Final Fantasy 12 then it probably would have been the greatest JRPG of all time, but the gameplay drags because of its flaws and after seeing a full list of the license board, it's because of a poor design decision that I could probably get past if I replay it and use a filled out license board as a guide. Maybe they did fix it with Final Fantasy 12 Zodiac Job System version.
    Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.

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    After the jump to PS2, I stopped caring. I loved the PS ones especially 9. I couldn't get into X. I like XIII from what Ive played. I need to beat Odin one day.

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    Jumped it at 7, and then jumped the shark, then killed it with its frickin laser beam with 8. Up until 7 there were some general set terms, patterns and designs the franchise stood on and stood for -- you could go into it and have a certain expectation how things in general would work. No it wasn't as copy paste common as Dragon Quest has stuck to, but it was fairly uniform. They decided to jump to big personality, big movies, big animations on anything, convoluted boyband looking people and weird plots with some good moments here and there. With 7 forward it more or less gave up being what FF was and did its own thing with each release after uniquely. Other than your staple enemies, magic names, items and stuff I find the name is more of a crutch to sell a disassociated game to the fans of the franchise. Not saying that's bad, but it's more like slapping a name on the box to sell something by old reputation alone.

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    I think X was the last one I really loved. Once they announced XI being an MMO, I could kind of tell things were starting to change. Once 12 came out, I wasn't very happy with how much they had changed things. It wasn't a bad game, but it didn't feel like a FF game to me. The FF XIII trilogy is not bad either, but I prefer 4-10 over those. I am still looking forward to how well XV turns out though.

    Edit: I feel as though Bravely Default is what Final Fantasy should be

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    That last part there I agree with entirely. Bravely Default is Final Fantasy, the Final Fantasy they shouldn't have strayed from.

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    Quote Originally Posted by celerystalker View Post
    Yeah, I think for me it started with 7, but overall I'd say 11 was where the series started really losing fans. Having a numbered entry be an MMORPG changed what the series name meant too much.
    Yeah, 7 wasn't my favorite, but 11 is where they really jumped. Frickin online shouldn't have been a numbered entry! And now there are TWO numbered online games... Get bent, squeenix, and take your FF13 garbage with you too.

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    It seems plenty of people liked XII.

    I hear there's a patch to play the International Zodiac Job System version in English; it's a version with some engine tweaks that was only released in Japan.
    "There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)

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    The two most ridiculously overused themes in the Final Fantasy series are amnesia and orphans. So the game with mass orphan amnesia is irrefutably the game where FF jumped the shark. That, of course, would be 8.

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    Quote Originally Posted by sidewinderl View Post
    The two most ridiculously overused themes in the Final Fantasy series are amnesia and orphans. So the game with mass orphan amnesia is irrefutably the game where FF jumped the shark. That, of course, would be 8.
    ^ This is quoted for truth. ^

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    FF8 that one I couldn't put more than 10-15min on at a store display where someone had left it in game ready to go. The gameplay, the mechanics, the item/magic handling all of it just sucked and that's not even getting into the story elements being ripped on already here in the posts above. FF9 was always to me the best PS1 FF game because it was like a humble Japanese deep bowing apology for doing stupid crap after jumping ship from Nintendo as that one went back to the franchise roots and did it well.

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    For me it was around ffx/x2


    A lot got lost in the transition to the ps2, and they've never really recovered.
    "Kidnap the presidents wife without a plan..."

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    Final Fantasy II

    I mean c'mon.. you don't make a sequel to a game called Final Fantasy. It's the last one, and that's final!

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    ^^oooh. I see what you did there. Well played.

    (And not only that FF2 jumped the shark by killing the 'RPG' style experience system and making it a 'usage' system to get gains which was so popular it was dead and buried with FF3.)

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    FF7/FF8 didn't feel like Final Fantasy games to me. FF9 was pretty decent.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanooki View Post
    ^^oooh. I see what you did there. Well played.

    (And not only that FF2 jumped the shark by killing the 'RPG' style experience system and making it a 'usage' system to get gains which was so popular it was dead and buried with FF3.)
    Well, technically it wasn't dead at FF3. It just spun off into SaGa instead.
    Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.

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    I think I heard that before but I've never played Saga. The closest were the rebranded Saga (FF Legend) games a long time ago. I know it came back on the DS/3DS in Japan remastered but we got hosed out of that being localized for whatever reason.

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    Technically it came back in 8, but you were punished for usage instead of rewarded. And actually I guess you could say materia brought it back before that.

    I have a pretty contrarian view of 9. It was a shameless Dragonball ripoff that was drowned in Disney paint and buried in enough terrible fan service to make JJ Abrams take notes. 9 couldn't top 8, but it was still an amnesia and orphan fire sale. I also believe that it may have been the first FF game to give the player amnesia. Some of the characters are so forgettable that one time I saw a diehard FF9 fan say, "Amarant who?" Amarant is even among the party characters displayed on the cover art and people still can't remember him.

    I did like the skill system, though.
    Last edited by sidewinderl; 12-15-2014 at 01:00 PM.

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