You can of course combine the two, as storytelling is integral in an JRPG. However, when a trailer for a new Final Fantasy title showcases 10 minutes of Cinematic interludes you know there is a problem.

Final Fantasy 7 which is often referred to as the best of the series used the cinematic experience as a visual climax that complimented an in-game accomplishment. Where as now adays I feel like I am playing around a series of cinematic scenes and plot devices that I have no interest in. It instantly reminds me of how much I hate it when a movie uses narration. I say to myself, "Couldn't you find a way to show me what I am suppose to feel rather than telling me how I should?"

I play RPGs so I can play out a story, not accomplish certain tasks and watch the story unfold in impersonal cinematic clips.

FFXIII and FFXIII: Versus so far have almost come of as benchmarks of how close Square Enix can get to the "Uncanny Valley" rather than letting me as a gamer know that their games are going to be epic in the old-school way of things. I have not seen a single moment of gameplay between the both of them and its now year 2 since their announcement. That's just plain sad. What is even more depressing is the notion that if all that manpower behind handcrafting 20 hours of 3D in-game cinematic movies was dedicated instead to making a solid game, everything would be fine and even more importantly there would be more Square Enix titles released in a shorter amount of time. I raise a glass in a premature toast to FFXIV, released in 2012, the first movie that you can play.

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"... the optional elements that demand so much effort to achieve on the PS1 represent only a bite-size version of the gaming Gargantua Grand Theft Auto has become. Mini-games, packages, rare vehicles, real estate management, rare weapons - Christ! The humongousness of it all defies belief, defies completion. Sure, people have achieved all that can be achieved in a game like Grand Theft Auto 4- one of its FAQs, not even the largest, is spread across more than 770 pages. But people built the actual Battleship Yamato, too, which now lies in two pieces on the floor of the ocean off Okinawa.

Just as has happened with the main plot, the sidequests of Grand Theft Auto have become ends in themselves, separated from any notion of the fun they were supposed to provide. Grand Theft Auto has the most compelling profile of any videogame. It bristles with guns - but what can actually be done with all of that firepower?"

Kudos for making an interesting, if flawed, analogue, but what he says could be said of any game franchise. Mario (from basic platforming to collectathon), Civ (what's this culture BS?), to Sonic (yay, werewolf, ehm, sorry, wereHOG). What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Not to mention that the biggest catalyst for adding such content to games is the public's demand for value for money. You pay a lot of money for a game and expect to be kept busy, at least, if maybe not entertained.

Ahhh, back in our days, when the games were a lot simpler, developers simply didn't listen to...

YOU DAMN KIDS!!! GET OFF MY LAWN!!! DON'T MAKE ME CALL YOUR PARENTS!

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I realize that "mini-games, bestiaries, accessories, rare monsters, rare weapons - Christ! The humongousness of it all" is there--but I take issue with the idea that all or even a majority of players approach the game with that kind of perfect "fit for display" endgame in mind. My sister, a much more avid FF fan than I, is the only FF player I know who will go through and actually try to complete the game to perfection--and even that is held aloft not as a glorious, steak-your-heart-on-it goal but as a purposefully pseudo-impossible one that lets her keep the disk in the drive for rainy days. It gives her a reason to pick up the old games and poke at them on rainy days--and that's it.

I was hoping as I read to come across a more probing inquiry into his use of the word "obsolete," but I didn't find one. It seems that he means it in terms of technological advancement--that, by the time the games (in this case FFXIII in its various forms) come out, bigger and better things will be possible and they will thus be obsolete.

I don't think gamers think in those terms, though. I think people are aware of the ridiculous amounts of time and effort that go into these things. Don't people hear "talk" of such-and-such company doing this "project" and then moon over it for a year or two or three? If people are impatient it is because they want to play the game, not because they're fretting over whether the graphics will be up-to-date. For this big, much- (one could say over-)hyped projects, the glitz and glamour surrounding them is at such a fever pitch, comparisons to the latest technological creations don't seem to crop up.

Obviously that's not true for everyone--there will always be detractors. But this market is (surprise! it's a market!) about making money...and the FF series does, yes, make money. Maybe its plots are childish or needlessly confusing, or on the level of--what did he say? a b-rate fantasy story?--but does any of that matter? They make money. They make a new game, and they make money. In this sense I don't see how the term "obsolete" is applicable. There's a suspension of expectation with the FF games precisely because they do have that whalloping star power. The vast majority of people who shell out for the series don't care that the insertion of yet another "In my honor!" death scene is a cop-out. They care that it is rendered in scintillatingly good graphics, and that the music is once again vibrant, etc. etc.

Perhaps the games are obsolete for him, or for those who think about them in the same way he does, but...it's dangerous to assume you know what the masses think. (That goes for me, too. What do I know?) It's depressingly reductionist, but the numbers speak for themselves on this one, I should think.

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Overall, Final Fantasy continues to set the bar for all other JRPGs. Going as far back as the NES original, the series made technical wizardry as much of a bullet point as Dragon Quest's signature low-fi, retro charm. As time and technology progress the process of bringing each numbered entry to fruition has grown longer. Add to this a schedule, which, in recent years, has never seen fewer than a dozen projects being worked on at once, and a daunting (for Japanese developers at least) switch to HD gaming and you have a recipe for delay.

Be that as it may, to consider a series which reinvents itself (to varying extents) with every iteration obsolete is asinine. And if anything, the plots/dialogue have gotten less ridiculous over time. Say what you will about Final Fantasy 12, but there's no denying that among JRPGs it has one of the finest translations and most elaborate plots to date. Speaking to the series' quality, I've found them no better or worse than your typical anime, manga, or super hero comic…all of which are mediums that practically demand to be enjoyed as pure camp. Hell, Dragon Quest wallows in camp like a pig in shit…it doesn't make the series any less enjoyable. I'd argue that it's that very quality - the fact that every title from part 5 on could be reproduced on the NES and lose little in the translation - which keeps the series feeling both fresh and familiar.

Getting back to Final Fantasy though, another point Huling fails to either notice or mention is that the developers of Final Fantasy go to great lengths to create a world that enhances and cradles the plot, rather than have the story draped over a bunch of samey, loosely connected temples, dungeons, and towns. It's the rare JRPG that achieves what (modern) Final Fantasy does consistently - create an environment which justifies the dialogue and/or action.

As far as the side quests go…seriously? If they bug you that much just don't do them. Side missions are meant to be fun and/or challenging diversions from the main quest in addition to increasing the overall amount of original, playable content. It's nice when they do offer additional insight into the background of the story or characters, but this is by no means a necessity for every single one. I'll even go so far as to say that the bulk of what's found in Final Fantasy 6 doesn't even technically qualify as a "side quest" since a large number of the character specific ones are ultimately required to complete the game (with the "best" ending - for lack of a better, spoiler-free term). In any event, to complain about any option to more deeply explore the world one's immersed in seems, frankly, stupid.

And if what Huling is objecting to is the time we're required to wait for Square-Enix to produce all of this all I have to say is stop and look around. How long did it take Bungie to bring us Halo 3? Is the pace of Polyphony Digital' progress with Gran Turismo any less glacial than Square's? The biggest price we've paid as gamers this gen is one of time. Development of next-gen titles has become so elaborate that 2-3 years is increasingly becoming the norm - particularly when an entirely new engine needs to be created first.

His points about Final Fantasy 4…eh. I'll probably come back to that. Needless to say I don't agree with any of them. The only point that immediately stick out in my mind is Huling's claim that the chibi-style characters were somehow meant to underscore the cartoonish dialogue and extremely melodramatic plot. That's bullshit. It's a byproduct of the technical limitations of the DS itself. Its also a design choice (a convenient one, mind you)meant to harkens back to the SD sprites of the original.

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It makes perfect sense. The Yamato was an old style ship that once worked well. By the time it came out it was big, but outdated. The same thing happened with rpgs. Abstracting character stats to discrete numbers worked when there were massive hardware limitations, but these days we have powerful consoles that can show us how hard we hit or how devastating a spell was. We still don't get that (games like DnD never had this problem because its numbers can be interpreted by the DM into some actual consequence). For most of us that just isn't very fun.

Furthermore, most jrpg stories are indeed third rate fiction, the sidequests useless. We can do so much more, but the games simply refuse. The fact that the fans are still gripped by plots that are substandard even by anime standards, and that they praise disturbingly OCD game design does not mean it is good. Square still sells, but they aren't as relevant as they once were on any given console. FF comes out, sells a lot, and then dies down, rather than in the PS1 days where their games had a lot of influence. That is because most gamers have grown up and realized they were playing a genre that refuses to evolve (and unlike other old classics, did not have flawless design in the first place).

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To be fair, much of the extraneous elements in games such as Final Fantasy are just that -- nonessential tangents which are not required to gain enjoyment from the primary experience. Still, I'd say that the time and money a developer pours into creating menial tasks would be better served to provide a better experience for everyone, including those not willing to waste hours of his/her life mindlessly clicking a button for hours to receive some item or event of note (the lightning dodging "mini-game" comes to mind). Then again, anyone picking up a RPG and expecting stimulating gameplay has no real basis to complain given the genre is built upon grinding, simplistic number crunching battles, and the modicum of thought required to know that fire beats ice, water beats fire, and so forth, to be used in the thousand plus redundant battles to be encountered through the end.

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Here's a concept that could well be mindblowing for the author here: different people like different things. Some people find the extra side quests boring and unnecessary bloat, others see it as a way to get 100% completion, others see it as a good challenge.

So you don't like FFXII that much, okay... You could've said that in the confines of one page, if not less. FFXII wasn't the best, it felt like an MMO with no one to play with in terms of combat. But it was still enjoyable. I hope they learn from where XII failed.

Really, was this entire post necessary? All he wanted to communicate in the end is this. Final Fantasy sucks now; only the portable/DS versions are fun. The end.

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Now maybe it's just me but I find FF to still be an innovator in terms of today. Materia, Sphere Grid(loved me some sphere grid back in the day). And like most rpg fans I enjoy a storyline first, gameplay second.

in closing yes XII sucked, but that's one stinker. XIII is going to come along next year and people are going to be either be very happy or very pissed (I say very pissed because SE's been putting out a lot of crappily made games, but at the same time FFXIII probably has the biggest budget in the studio so it's less likely to suck at Last Remnant standards.)

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Final Fantasy's charm doesn't lie in it's massive production values or convulsive plot. Hell, I still don't understand VII to it's fullest extent. Final Fantasy is a staple of gaming, and it seems "obsolete" because, well, it IS. It's been done to death. Which is why I played IV and VI after finishing XII; charm and nostalgia.

When XIII hits, people are going to play it and bitch about it. Like every other Final Fantasy before it. It will sell like mad, but also "suck" in the eyes of the unwashed. But then they'll go back to their IV's and VII's and bask in effervescent halcyon warmth. And then they will buy XIV.

You can't sink Final Fantasy.

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Final Fantasy VI had many sidequests, yet all of them were closely linked to the story. They were everything a sidequest should be: not simply a means to get more loot, but a way to explore a character's profile or a specific aspect of the overarching storyline (while getting more loot).

Nowadays, I'll only bother with sidequests if they bring something to the drama/story/characterisation.

I just don't have the motivation to suffer through a tedious sidequest to find a +87 ATK Galactica Omniblade Phantom III when a +50 General Store Sword already gets the job done.

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