13 Years Ago, the Most Underrated Final Fantasy Game Changed the Series Forever

Nobody can pinpoint what makes a Final Fantasy game, that is the nature of the anthology series, but it hasn’t stopped people from trying. With 16 mainline entries, there are bound to be some titles that fans feel stray from the “correct” path. For a large part of the fanbase, the worst offender against traditional Final Fantasy is Final Fantasy XIII. Despite its initial bad reputation, the game has been re-evaluated since its original release, and thirteen years later, its impact on the franchise's modern direction is undeniable thanks to one innovation — the stagger system.

Final Fantasy has been struggling in recent years, something that the team working on Final Fantasy XVI has openly stated, but this isn’t a new problem. In many ways, the series has struggled to find its footing since franchise creator Hironobu Sakaguchi left following Final Fantasy IX. Since then, each new entry has sought to appeal to a global audience with a taste for high-octane action-oriented games.

Since FFXIII, Square Enix has steered the franchise in a more action-oriented direction. Final Fantasy XV, XVI, and Final Fantasy VII Remake all outright abandon the turn-based systems of old in favor of real-time action combat.

[Hofstaderman]

Underrated? It sucked.

[Hofstaderman]

Linear to a fault, no towns and cities with the flimsy excuse that they are on the run as a justification for them to focus in graphics and effects rather than an explorable world. Cringey characters especially Hope and Snow and the coupe de grace; needless convoluted definitions and lore entries to try and prop up the lacking story. They claimed this was going to be the next FFVII back then, lol.

[kingnick]

Crystal Tools was a mess so it was a case of engine tech limitations dictating how the game was designed. Once you got to the later open area performance really suffered and the FXIII sequels had awful performance in some areas.

[dumahim]

They even modeled Lightning after Cloud.

[solideagle]

I think XIII-2 was gameplay was awesome, it was Final Fantasy Pokemon. :)

[roadkillers]

Honestly, people disagree’d with you… but this title literally killed Final Fantasy until FF7 Remake brought Square back to grace

[VladimirBootin]

FFXI is the second largest money maker for square at something like 2.1billion. or was it 1.8? It has outlasted world of Warcraft and every other MMO from that era

It's come to a point where private servers of the old era are more populated than the retail servers. The problem with square Enix is that it doesn't listen to its fan base. It's marketing team is as terrible as most Japanese devs . They put out the best product but are terrible at promotion. Instead of trying to make their own battle royale, they should have done something like a crossover with fortnite.

And what they really need to do, which I don't think it's too late, is fully remaster or even remake final fantasy 11, and have some kind of reward for players coming from the original final fantasy 11. It's still the best game they have out there

[bangoskank]

Agreed. This is the only FF to date that I couldn't bring myself to finish. I didn't give a shit about the characters or the story. The leveling system and overall design wasn't for me either. I'll give it that it still looks pretty good for its age if you use the hi res mod and the music is okay.

[Itzbeastin614]

FFXIV by far the best they ever made I still play it to this day going home at 5 when I get off work to play on my little taru taru character if they were to remaster it keep the game play the same up the graphics and character creation same maps moves weapons spells jobs just basically just remaster it without messing it up like final fantasy 14 it would be awesome and bring it back to consoles to the game is great and lots of ppl still play it 4500 plus on my server just saying its a great ideal.

[Magatsuhi]

Why are people suddenly talking about this game again?

[kingnick]

Probably because people are hoping FFXVI takes the series back to its glory days and there's some whitewashing of history going on.

FXIII was a good game but depending on your idea of what constituted a good FF game it could be fairly judged as a terrible FF game.

[sadraiden]

Seriously. After the almost-universally loved FFX, and after 12 more or less successfully combined open-world exploration with MMO-lite mechanics, 13 was such a huge let down. Not a bad game outright, but certainly not a good FF.

[VladimirBootin]

Because it was the beginning of the woke premise that hurt the title.

It was an ok game. Pretty to watch. The summons weren't very good imo. The beginning of the story was.. well you'd huff and puff and wish you could skip. Mid-game is better than the first third if it

[Knightofelemia]

FF13 might have its fans I tried it and I was bored out of my tree.

[DVAcme]

Who are these people all of a sudden 3 trying to retcon history into FF13 being somehow a good game? Is it some sort of collective insanity?

[Lexreborn2]

Nah, 13 was definitely a slow start but it really paid off narratively in the end. I enjoyed 13 and 13-2 really fixed a lot of the gripes 13 had. But lightning returns is the one game of the 3 I really struggle with.

It’s nothing wrong with people appreciating a game some don’t like. There are plenty of games i don’t like that others swear are perfect

[Lexreborn2]

@ruhroh did you not read what I said? I said 13 was a slow start that narratively paid off by the end. I didn’t say it was perfect but from what I played it was good and when the world opened up it had plenty of extra things to do side quest wise that I enjoyed it.

13-2 was mechanically a much better game but the narrative and dependency on multiple play throughs was weak for me. I think narratively it was fine but 13s narrative was better.

Lightning returns I just can’t speak on because I haven’t finished it. I’m loading it to my steam deck to try it again but I have no urgency with it at all. But my sister loved it so I see it has an audience.

I’m not going to trash it because it didn’t resonate with me.

[Elda]

Exactly. There have been several games the gaming community loved & I didn't like, like the game RDR2. There have been games I like & the gaming community didn't like. It's to each their own.

[Moegooner]

I loved the Trilogy tbh. FFXIII was well received and sold insanely well. A vocal minority however is hellbent on painting it as a bad game.

[DarXyde]

I enjoyed it.

It's kind of like Metal Gear Rising for me: a really fun game, but not what you want if you're looking for the MGS experience. Granted, it's a spinoff, so fair enough. But I had great fun doing all of the side quests and the OST was great.

I can see FF purists disliking it, and I don't like it as an entry in the series, but in itself, I felt that it was solid.

[CrimsonWing69]

I mean 13 isn’t my favorite by a long shot, but it is not as horrid as people say. Now, Lightning Returns on the other hand…

[giovonni]

I heard how bad it was. I tried to give these new final fantasies a go but, I just couldn’t get into it. I like the classic turn base gems the last one I played dudes looked like they were a traveling boy band in an expensive car looking for gigs

[GoodGuy09]

I think 12 is what really did that. Man do I miss turn based mainline ff...

[VladimirBootin]

12 was basically single player ffxi

[MadLad]

I've hated the direction the series has taken since XIII, so I'm not exactly going to congratulate them for how the series plays now.

[sadraiden]

More SE astroturfing. FF13 and FFX2 have been out for more than a decade, lots of opportunity to write about them, but we only see this deluge of "FINAL FANTASY RA RA RA" when SE is publicly facing a crisis.

[Elda]

I'll say it again FFXIII is one of my top favorite FF games. I'm playing it again on the XBSX where the resolution has been enhanced to 3072x1728p & it looks great. The XIII sequels I really couldn't get into.

[JacobJay99]

I truly missed the turn based FF. I don’t understand why they change something that didn’t to. If I want an action game I’ll play god of war. Octopath 2 is pretty good and that is square Enix.

[JacobJay99]

Go back to turn-based

[VladimirBootin]

It is. You have to wait your turn to pull off a move. You can't just button mash your way through like in dynasty warriors

[VladimirBootin]

I'm not sure the writer of the article has played these games.

Final fantasy XI and all of its expansions over the past 20 years, precede and succeed ffxiii . It is still active today even with its many flaws. It has outlasted every MMO from its era and is the second highest grossing game that square Enix ever had.

The problem with 13, was the first third of the game. I never rolled my eyes and kept pushing the "next button " so much. It got better later. I had more fun grinding for other friends that were further along in the story, than I did actually playing the story.

Final fantasy xiv.. is the biggest money Maker square Enix ever had by far. So it hasn't fallen off at all since the claim of this article, saying that final fantasy has been struggling since final fantasy 9. 12 was very popular, and 15 was popular. The final fantasy 7 remake won game of the year..

The problem isn't really the games. It's the marketing team. They are terrible like most Japanese developers are. They have absolutely no interest in the consumer base. They do a terrible job hyping their product and keeping attention to it. They are just fortunate that most of their products are so good that it keeps its own cult of fans .

The problems you can refer to, is there foolish exclusivity to Sony. Releasing the remake right at the death of the PlayStation 4, and then it was nearly impossible to get your hands on a PlayStation 5 if you weren't crazy. It's far past the hypertension for the second part of the remake. And I'm not buying a PlayStation 5 for part two of the remake.

In my eyes, square Enix isn't even interested in making money anymore. They are at the point where they won't do anything about the bots and real money trade in their MMOs because they pay the subscriptions. They would probably lose half of their profits if they were really to end these terms of service abusers.

And if they really wanted to make money, they would have heard the cry of their players to remake final fantasy 11.

All three parts of final fantasy 7 remake should have been finished by now and released. There should have been no exclusivity, and they would have made a damn fortune. All the other failed final fantasy games would not have failed because they would be riding the hype of final fantasy 7r

[Itzbeastin614]

How about making a spin off to FFX FFX-2 both game are great but liked FFX better then the spin off to it bring back yuna and everyone.