Greetings friends. Well I’m really surprised at the number of positive responses from this little number, I knew there were a lot of Kingdom Hearts fans on this forum so I thought I was just gonna get absolutely skewered for this one. Haha.
Looks like I got off pretty easy, XD… but allow me to add an appendix.
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Originally Posted by NeoFighter5
thank God i read this. . . .i was goin to buy kingdom hearts. . .now i know better. . .i choose dirge of cerberus instead( a better choice?)
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As Terminal Est touched on, as the FF titles begin to age, a younger generation is inevitably taking over the direction of the series and making it their own. As a result, the Kingdom Hearts series has been influenced by the voices and interests of today’s younger gamers and, as a result, has become incredibly popular. I see this as a sort of a “made-for-you” style game of today’s modern age. This is not to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, for there is obviously a market for this. I simply object to the game’s perversive use of many of the FF characters I have come to love. Alas, if you like the style and art of the Disney Corporation then you would probably like this game, and you are spared the confusion of having to know anything about the FF character’s previous story lines in order to enjoy it.
As for Dirge of Cerberus… well, I don’t think anything has ever gone quite so wrong with an RPG sequel before, and probably never will again as a result of this game’s very obvious flaws and public embarrassment. But we all know my opinions on this game, we have beaten this dead horse enough in various threads in this forum, so I guess I’ll just leave it at that.
But of all the spin-offs that have been released, I would have to agree with Terminal Est that FF Tactics has stood out so far as the best of the shoddy bunch. Hot off the coattails of FFVII, the original FF Tactics for the Sony PlayStation was mountainous in it’s endeavors to be sure. If you are an old fogy like me (and may I daresay Terminal Est
) and were an experienced gamer when this title was first released, you would of seen a time when Square really decided to stretch some creative muscle and master their skills at battle strategy. The story became less important (but didn’t disappear); instead the decisions and actions of the players were based on something far more technical… art of war. They began to experiment with things like area-of-effect damage and rotatable isometric playing fields and, well, it was all delightful. I remember playing a similar game called
Ogre Battle long ago when strategy RPGs were just emerging into the mainstream. It was definately audacious, but it didn’t capture the finer elements of the battle system that Square perfected in FF Tactics.
Although over extended periods of gameplay I usually find myself characterizing strategy RPGs as somewhat vexing and often cumbersome, I nonetheless believe the Tactics series is as good as a FF spin-off we are ever likely to see… but nothing would make me more happy than to one day be proven wrong.
It is of course worth noting that there is an inherent uniqueness between the spin-offs and the sequels. My initial post was about the FF spin-offs. But although the sequels are far more rare, they are usually just as bad. Aside from the FFVII compilation I suppose the most obvious example would be FFX-2. When I finished playing FFX I was content with how the story ended, even if it was a rather sad albeit touching summary. After all, FFX was above all else intended to act as a heartbreaking fantasy love story. And overall this worked… it was sad, but I liked it. I didn’t need a sequel about a bunch of girls who ran around and changed their wardrobe constantly in mid-battle to tell me how the story REALLY panned out!!! Come on Square.
But what is true for spin-offs usually hold true for the sequels as well... they are not necessarily bad games, per se, they just haven’t traditionally lived up to the expectations of their epic connections.
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Originally Posted by Terminal Est
Well, none of the Final Fantasy titles are actually related with one another-they are all to be taken as different, individualistic adventures, aside from the spin offs like Dirge of Cerberus or Crisis Core.
Some of them, of course, have returning elements, like the moogles, chocobos, enemies or summons, and a few of them (FF Tactics, FF Tactics Advance and FFXII-as well as Vagrant Story which are not part of the series.) occur in a world named Ivalice. But none of them were ever directly linked by any specific events, characters or timelines.
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LOL, ah yes, thank you T, you are always like the forum’s wise encyclopedia who always has the perfect way of explaining things…
Exactly.
Addendum:
There is an interesting bit of trivia about my initial post which I’m actually surprised nobody brought up. I used the word “Fraggle” for a reason, so named after the “mutant clone” relatives of
The Muppets... so I curse this name upon the FF spin-offs discussed in this thread. And allow me to share one more bone-chilling prospect with you friends… I feel it is very dangerous that the image and character rights of the Jim Henson Muppets are owned by Disney, after all, nothing would be more terrifying to me than to see the Fraggles end up on the next installment of Kingdom Hearts... God help us all if they do. LOL