Square-Enix was one of my favourite developers. "Was" being the key word. Lately, I'm just really disappointed with what they've been doing, and I know I'm not alone with this thought. Ever since Final Fantasy X-2 (which I didn't quite like for many reasons), I feel the quality of their games has really started to slowly fall. I never tried Final Fantasy XI, which apparently was a little bit of a fail to put it lightly but I did give Final Fantasy XII a go. I thought it was okay but at the end of the day, I felt this just wasn't a very good game. Especially with the whole... playing with itself combat system.
I think for me the biggest kick in the balls was Final Fantasy XIII for PS3. I remember seeing the trailer back in 2006 and thinking "Shit, shit, holy fucking shit, oh my God" because the trailer looked freaking amazing. The trailer made me think the combat system was going to be insane. The graphics were insane. The music was insane... I remember going to a good friend's house on a regular basis. We'd play games (mostly Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 special ops co-op), have a few beers and... as some kinda strange nerdy ritual, we would always watch one of the latest trailers of Final Fantasy XIII. I know that sounds incredibly sad, but we're nerds, it's what we do. Four years later, the game finally came to us in 2010 and... well...
The combat system wasn't insane. It felt almost like Final Fantasy XII except with a little more input. I hated the whole "Commando" and other in class system thingo. It also annoyed the hell out of me that there was no world map and all the areas in the game were pretty much "go from point A to point B" in tight invisible wall corridors, despite the environments looking huge. It felt like a lie.
Okay, the graphics and music were still sweet, but still, I think the game play kinda sucked. The storyline was also a little weird and all over the place. My biggest problem with this game? Apparently, in order to get to "the good part" of Final Fantasy XIII, you need to put in twenty five hours of game play. Twenty five, fucking hours, to get to "the good part". That's bullshit. Criminal.
I'm not quite sure why Square-Enix is trying yet another MMO with Final Fantasy XIV. Apparently upon release it was filled with bugs and didn't do well, so now they're trying again and kinda re-doing stuff with it? Mean while, they made Final Fantasy XIII-2 and are now aiming at XIII-3? Really? XIII wasn't even that well received compared to other Final Fantasy games? I don't understand why XIII needs more sequels?
Just give us Kingdom Hearts 3 already. That gave deserves a high definition "true" sequel.
At the very least... Square-Enix's involvement with other games and developers is pretty cool. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was such an awesome game, I enjoyed Hitman: Absolution and I'm really looking forward to next year's reboot of Tomb Raider.
I'm hoping the reboot of Tomb Raider is as incredible as it looks.
-Cr33g (Craig)