Anyone notice the difference between Squaresoft FFs and Square Enix FFs?

Ewan said:
Well... correct me if I'm wrong but SS made 10 FF titles and SE have made... 2. Not really a good comparison TBH. I'm talking about main FF titles, not spin offs etc.

I'll wait until they make more games to make a fair comparison. After all, I've only actually played 1 SE FF and that was FF12.

Personally, I suspect that I'm not going to really enjoy many more FF games ragerdless of who makes them (although Versus looks promising but does that count? :hmmm:) because even when I go to ones that I loved, I just don't feel the same 'magic' as I did when I was younger. I prefer more raw and gripping story lines and ultimately that's what I want from a game before gameplay. I don't think FF will offer me that anymore because it's essentially teenagers saving the world every time.
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But what about Kingdom Hearts ? the franchise has always been kiddie, yet people in their 20's like me still play them and have alot of fun with them.
 
Doomtrain said:
such a weak storyline really let it down
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i'm really starting to get the impression that the only people that call this story weak are the people that did not understand it the story was not really weak

weak is like saying it was crafted badly

it was more just different not as personal the more a situation

it had a strong plot the paceing worked

just because you did not like it don't make it weak at all

see thing is people go into this game thinking oh final fantasy then find things different and say bad bad bad when as a game it was actually ok i mean i enjoyed it but i do like my older games

anyway yeah i seem to remember something afew yeats ago about final fantasy stuff walking out

the games are different but they are not terrible they are still well made

what i think tho is they should now crap final fantasy and make something new if they are changing it so
 
If you've played 7th Saga you'd know that Enix's games trended towards bleak, linear grinding sessions with a strong focus towards the hardcore RPG crowd. For the most part they worked, especially with Dragon Quest. You have to expect that this influence would impact Square's development process somewhat.
 
Well, I've noticed some things are different. VAAN SUCKS!! XD

But no, there are many more changes than that. I'd say that when SquareSoft developed FFXII they made the game harder than the Square Enix games.

Example: *plays FF9*
Me: Man, this Ozma thing is pretty tough. Ah well. It's not to bad.
*plays FF12*
Me: WHAT THE ****!!! I've been fighting this Yiazmat thing for freaking FOUR HOURS!!!!! I've already taken 5 BREAKS!! END THIS TORTURE!!! DIEEEEEEE!!

Yeah...

Also, they changed the style of story a lot. Previous FF mainly focused on saving the world and stuff. This is mainly about polotics. (though still a good game imo)
 
Other than the story, the music!
The first thing I notice that differentiates Square's games with Square Enix games is the music. Up until FF9, the music are fun and unique. FF10's soundtrack doesn't follow the trend of its predecessors and I feel that it is no longer fun to listen to. Even though 10 was made by Square, and not Square Enix...

FF12 had awful music and bad storyline. The only thing that salvages the game is the battle system.
 
Yeah, I agree.
I started Final Fantasy VII and played it all the way through to the end because I was so interested in what happened. Same with VI, III, and X.
But then I played XII and XIII and I just quit those the first hour of both.
 
Excalibur-king said:
But what about Kingdom Hearts ? the franchise has always been kiddie, yet people in their 20's like me still play them and have alot of fun with them.
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Yeah I feel what your saying here...........I hate kiddie moments in the game,I mean people like Vanille,Hope,Penelo etc...............they really piss me off.......of course I don't mind some people like Rikku..........I mean they are serious sometimes.

and I don't hope to offend anyone...........

but it's a bit annoying and gay/childish........when someone like Vanille says "you can do it".............I think there might not be a difference between SE and SS here because SS didn't have voices in FF games til X...........but X wasn't that bad..........only one childish moment which was the laughing scene in Luca.............but other than that it was good..........I know some people like this scene but it's my opinion.
 
IMO S-E is not the problem.......its just the choices the designers made early on the R&D of new game stories, as we have learned it only takes 1 thing or whole bunch of little thing to
ruin a game.

Everything S-E does relating to FF is under a microscope because it is there flagship series Kingdom Hearts is great series.....but it still early in its run and has some legs left
+ it has two companies involved it its development......but FF is old.......very old in the industry, and new ideas are not always well received by the players, and designers sometimes struggle to come up with new combat systems.

They only release a FF game once every 4 years nowadays so limited chances to have success and more chance for failure as designers push the envelope.........its a gamble that does not always pay off.

Staying true to the series offers limited ways in moving forward, the ATB system is very restrictive and character types do not want to be repeated bringing up the stigma of comparison to earlier character types.

With or without Enix this stagnation in the series would have come around eventually,
restricting the players choices (Gambits FFXII) and limiting the character choice (Paradigm Shift FFXIII) are not the right ways to go about making the aged ATB system relevant again.

Its time to move on........Which is what Versus will do?
 
DarkShadow said:
Yeah I feel what your saying here...........I hate kiddie moments in the game,I mean people like Vanille,Hope,Penelo etc...............they really piss me off.......of course I don't mind some people like Rikku..........I mean they are serious sometimes.

and I don't hope to offend anyone...........

but it's a bit annoying and gay/childish........when someone like Vanille says "you can do it".............I think there might not be a difference between SE and SS here because SS didn't have voices in FF games til X...........but X wasn't that bad..........only one childish moment which was the laughing scene in Luca.............but other than that it was good..........I know some people like this scene but it's my opinion.
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It's more to do with the atrocious American voice-acting than the script itself, they make some parts sound very kiddie-like whereas in the Japanese version it's a lot less so (eg. they laugh properly in Luca) Western voice actors for video games and anime need to improve.
 
I thought FFX was a S-E game? That's what it says on my copy of FFX :hmmm:

The main distinction I noticed between SquareSoft and Square-Enix, in terms of FF games, was the over-all sound and graphic quality. I mean, there's major differences between FFIX and FFX, but that's only because of the different console, right? :huh:

I think I've said before how I'll just like what I like and dislike what I dislike, so I don't really make a distinction in FF games in terms of the names that show up in the credits, you know?

I mean, look at the remakes. Compared to the original SNES FFIV made by SS and the DS remake made by S-E, I favour the DS version more. Not just for graphics and audio, but for other in-game tweaks, like having unlimited arrows.

But maybe I'm just a blind FF fan. I've pretty much enjoyed all the FF games I played over the years.

The thing I don't get is why there's so much foaming mouth arguments about how legitimate a game is in a FF series. You know how I know a game is FF? It has it in the title :awesome:
 
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@Fusionist I think your just playing newer copy of FFX........
FFX was made while the company was Squaresoft........

after all it does say FFVII,FFVIII,FFIX is a SE game on PSN.........

FF I-X was made by Squaresoft..........but under SE if you buy a newer copy
 
Firstly I'd like to start by saying I love the FF seires it is a big part of my life and when ever a new one is released I ger excited by the prospect.
However, over the past 4 installments (If you include the MMORPG's) I wonder if I got exited for nothing... I remember when it was my 11th Birthday and I'd already played 7 and 8, my grandma had bought me 9 for my birthday and I got soo excited about playing it and it was amazing and I loved the game just as good as the other 2 and well worth the wait. Nower days it seams I wait twice as long for a half as good game to come out. Sometimes I think maybe I am growing out of Final Fanatsy but I can still go back and 7, 8, 9 and 10 and enjoy them nearly as much as I first did. It therefore got me thinking why is FF not as good any more... the Squaresoft company had merged with Enix Corp. after 10, the presise point in which FF went down hill, coincidence... I think not.
As far as I'm conserned they should have left it at 10 and kept us begging for more rather than now I want to beg them to stop killing Final Fantasy and just stop making them, while yes they may be a visual achievement Final Fantasy seams to have lost it's soul.
 
I've noticed it for some time now. Since the creation of Final Fantasy X-2 which is the first FF game I played under the new "Square Enix" title. The quality of the game play, at least in my opinion, seem to go down while the graphics sky rocket. Though I enjoyed XIII a little more than I did with XII. Couldn't tell ya who's fault it is because I'm greatly ignorant on the subject. I could only tell you where I started to notice the decrease in quality.
 
How do we know that the difference just doesn't exist inside our minds?

I don't know. It seems like people who play early Final Fantasy games just want to stick to playing those. To me XIII wasn't really that bad, and there are a lot of reviews that'd probably agree. It's too bad there are people who didn't like it, but there are also people who didn't like _____.
 
I agree there is a difference... But I think its more than a mere company name change... I think it would have turned out the same way had Squaresoft stayed Squaresoft...

I think it was just gaming culture at large was changing inevitably. It's focus was more on looking high-tech and new, so less work could be done on storyline and character development. As long as they looked cool...

Which usually is what breaks newer games, of every company. They look awesome, but they still kind of suck.

In SE's case, they were able to make amazing games at one point, and sometimes they have the potential to bring it all back... Really though their games nowadays are hit or miss.
 
Shubito said:
I agree there is a difference... But I think its more than a mere company name change... I think it would have turned out the same way had Squaresoft stayed Squaresoft...

I think it was just gaming culture at large was changing inevitably. It's focus was more on looking high-tech and new, so less work could be done on storyline and character development. As long as they looked cool...

Which usually is what breaks newer games, of every company. They look awesome, but they still kind of suck.

In SE's case, they were able to make amazing games at one point, and sometimes they have the potential to bring it all back... Really though their games nowadays are hit or miss.
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It's sad but most likely the truth. The massive these days seem to care more about graphics and such than a good story, at least from what I've seen and many people are trying to cater to them, not just Final Fantasy.
 
Ayen said:
It's sad but most likely the truth. The massive these days seem to care more about graphics and such than a good story, at least from what I've seen and many people are trying to cater to them, not just Final Fantasy.
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Oh yeah. It's all companies. So far the only company I haven't lost faith in is Atlus. Still making unique long and replayable games to this day.

For example the new Tekken and Soul Calibur games. Yes, they look cool, but the sacrificed character development for it. Those are two games with great potential, and that used to have greatly rewarding growth in the characters, but not anymore.

SE is not alone is giving up everything that made it famous for better looking, shiny graphics. All the companies are doing it, and it's working. If you don't you fall behind. They just simply don't have the right technology I suppose, to make the characters look so real that they dont look realistic at all, and also give them depth.

They've also taken greatly away from the length of games. Why? Because shiny graphics comes first. It's depressing, most certainly.
 
I remember reading a phrase quoted from one of the developers of FFXIII (I forget which one exactly) who basically said that because they're busy making everything in the game look nice, they didn't have time to make the story longer or the world more non-linear and interesting.
Same quote mentioned that if his team from XIII remade FFVII faithfully but with the level of graphics in XIII, development would be ridiculously long and costly...

Not an excuse, to be sure, but it basically means that yes, they do seem to be prepared to sacrifice quality of gameplay for quality of graphics.
 
Well for me basically I'd easily settle for FF10 graphics and have an amazing story line and battle system. Yes graphics are cool but when you feel alienated from the story and the characters... It just dosen't seam worth it.
 
The difference is Square Enix are trying to do new things with Final Fantasy to keep it from going stale. Final Fantasy 10 was an end of an era you could say because after that the games began taking a very different direction. They did the same thing with Final Fantasy 6 because before 6 Final Fantasy was a medieval based game and six ran away from that, and seven took it even further. I enjoyed 10-2 and all the new things that it introduced and the same goes for 11, 12 and 13. I haven't played 14 yet. I think Shubito said it best, it's a matter of business really. Times are changing and you can either change with the times or be buried. The masses of today which are giving these companies money want something very different in games than the masses of yesterday. I don't blame Square Enix or any company for going where the money is. Some times I don't always like it myself but from a business standpoint, I think it's smart.
 
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