I don't play Final Fantasy anymore...

[popimpi]

After, what X-2 was like, and XI being online, and, to me, the atrocity of XII, I don't see myself putting much to any time away to play the new ones once they are released, after the company was handed over to Yoshinori Kitase, from Hironobu Sakaguchi, and merged with eNIX, (WHY?!) the series just dwindled from being Final Fantasy to something completely differrent, which to me, is not Final Fantasy anymore. Just basing this off XII, which I played from start to finish, the storytelling has become overly predictable, the characters; uninspiring, the music is unbeleivably bland, a pretty face was never all that made a video game, just the same as a woman. To me, not only were Squaresoft and Enix making original, higher quality games independently, but furthermore, and to some I'm sure, predictably, Mistwalker is the New... or maybe I should say Old Squaresoft to me, because, well, it is. Also, what has happenned to Dragon Quest, (not including DQ8 which was a triumph) with DQ9? No home console release? And now an Action-RPG? Unfathomable to me. I guess on the plus side it's really made me appreciate some - in some ways - better series of games, (compared to the Square of now,) like Shin Megami Tensei, Tales of... Suikoden, Ys (most of which have been held higher over my head than FF before I can even remember.) Maybe this is why I stick to old-school SNES RPGS, because, to me, and how many others, maybe they are just better? Final Fantasy isn't  Final Fantasy anymore to me. What does everyone else think?

[Nightcrawler]

I don't think you're quite being fair. I mean, there's nothing wrong with Dragon Quest for example. You're criticizing Dragon Quest IX, but that hasn't even been released yet. I'm a bit upset it's tiny handheld only as well, but from a business perspective, I can see the reason. The DS is a more lucrative platform right now to sell a game on compared to any of the big brother consoles.

As for Final Fantasy. I'll agree they aren't what they used to be. However, I think that's because they have tried to do some different things with the series. Obviously FFXI was a vast departure. They were trying to cash in online world with the Final Fantasy name. Then with FFXII, many people liked it and many people didn't. They tried something a bit different. Do you expect them to make the same old Final Fantasy over and over and over? Some would say the series was starting to stagnate and needed to go in a different direction.

I don't know. It doesn't bother me either way. As you mentioned, there's plenty of other companies in the mix that make some other games to try out. SquareEnix might be a big player, but they're not the only one, that's for sure.

If you ever get too irritated with modern games, there are probably still tons of games you probably don't know about for classic systems. If you look at the sheer number of systems emulated right now and really get into the games, you'll find there's always new classics to be discovered.

[popimpi]

There is nothing wrong with Dragon Quest, I love the series, and have played through all except 3 & 4 I think, but honestly, if Dragon Quest IX, doesn't deviate from the way it's looking now, before release, I'll be pretty dissappointed. It's not only that it's written in stone that it is a handheld only release, but it seems to be alienating itself from the rest of the series, playing more like what seems to be action-rpg. The strange things are from 1-8, Dragon Quest has not changed its formula, and it has stayed the number one RPG franchise in Japan, second only to Final Fantasy and third SMT I think. I brought it up sheerly because if they change too much it wont be Dragon Quest too me anymore either. You can't fix what isn't broken comes to mind for me. It's the reason why PoPoLocrois on the ps2 was so unpopular, they changed too much from the first 2 (not inc. PoPoRogue) and it wasn't the same anymore.

As for the other series on classic consoles, I want to say your exactly right, people need to give some other series a try, Suikoden games can have stories that will make a grown man cry, SMT games can make you see religion, or government, even your own life, in a whole new perspective, the Saga is the western RPG elements in an eastern RPG series, even more underground, and one of my favourite developers Falcom, refine the RPG genre to it's most traditional form, whether its Legend of Heroes, or Ys, once you start, you will be pulled in by their entire series. Theres also, FEOE, Lunar, Xeno, SH, Neverland, ONI, the list goes on, although some are hindered by language barriers.

I think companies should just introduce sub-series of games if they want to make a drastic change of formula, like with XII. This is one reason why Nintendo is so dominant, every character in the franchise has it's own genre. Mario - Platforming, Zelda - Adventure, Metroid - Shooting, Fire Emblem - Strategy, Pokemon - RPG, people know what they are going to get when they purchase one of these games, just look at Pokemon or Fire Emblem, the formula hasn't strayed, and yet there always introducing new and interesting features into their sequels. If they want to change the formula so drastically, why dont they just introduce a new sub-series? Shin Megami Tensei, (simiarly to Nintendo) does this with only RPGS brilliantly. SMT is their crowning acheivement, (which Pokemon was essentially born from), with it's turn based battles, dealing largely with religion. Their Devil Summoner series which has evolved into an Action-RPG, incorporating real life eras of time, in the form of a kind of secret history, Also the, Persona series, which slowly has become an abstract, pop culture, mish-mash, of teenage students, that live a double-life like superheros, that deals with many philosophical and psychological elements. If any of these elements were missing from the series, they just wouldnt feel like the same game, wouldn't you say so?

When I can remember the battle tune from Madara 2, and not remember any one tune from FFXII, I know something is not right  .

[honookatana]

I haven't been here for ages but I still haven't completed a Final Fantasy game. I recently started on FInal Fantasy VI again, we'll see where that goes. I started it a while back but got distracted.

I am a big fan of Suikoden though. Suikoden II even managed to knock Terranigma off as my favourite game. I've beaten I, II, Gaiden I, Gaiden II, III, IV and am in the middle of Tactics. So far II is still my favourite but I've heard good thing about V.

Edit: I see I've lost my custom title. Serves me right for disappearing I suppose.

[ultpaladin]

Isn't Dragon Quest 9 still a traditional turn based RPG?  I thought there was some controversy in the Japanese public about it being too action-RPG like so they switched it back.  

As for the original topic, I really don't play any of the new Final Fantasy games, some of the changes starting irking me and the main characters always seem kind of weird, especially from FF12.

I really do hope however that Square-Enix releases the FF4 remake on the DS as that is one of my favorite games in the series.  Even more so, I hope SE releases the Dragon Quest remakes 4-6 on the DS, especially 4 and 6 since with a little luck, there will be a translation patch for DQ5 for the PS2 sometime this year.

[CookieSkoon]

In my opinion, Final Fantasy IX was the last good title in the franchise. I played and enjoyed one through nine, with the exception of eight (I could not get into eight) but really disliked ten and beyond.

Even then, my absolute favorite ones are eight bit and sixteen bit. There was something about that era that bred the greatest RPGs.

[RX79]

My love died for the Final Fantasy series when they changed the names of the magic

Stupidaga!!!!!

[Next_Gen_Cowboy]

While I do agree that many of the changes have not been things that I absolutely loved, XII's insane grinding for specific items, and essentially being an offline MMO. 13 being a straight line for 85% of the game, and lacking towns or non-battle sidequest. The fact remains that the systems had to change; there's a reason turn-based RPG's are relegated almost exclusively to handhelds: most wouldn't sell on consoles.

Before laying blame on entirely on the company, which I agree does deserve some of the blame for choices that it made, series that it let die, or altered to be unreconizeable (the new Front Mission) one also has to blame the consumers who have the attention span of a chimpmunk on cocaine.

In addition for all the faults with the game, I absolutely loved FFX, and thought it had the smoothest, most streamlined turn based battle system ever.

I love turn based RPG's as much as anyone, and I've been playing them since Dragon Warrior came out in the U.S. but even I understand that they're an extremely hard sell to the average gamer nowadays.

[RX79]

Sorry I have to disagree with you. Lost Odyssey was the last turn base rpg to hit a major console, and it did very well. 

[Gideon Zhi]

Lost Odyssey was the last turn base rpg to hit a major console

This statement is categorically incorrect. NIS America has released several turn-based RPGs since Lost Odyssey: Trinity Universe, Atelier Rorona, Cross Edge, Last Rebellion. Last Remnant came out after Lost Odyssey, as did Resonance of Fate (which is still turn-based even if those turns look very different from what you'd normally think of.) Most of these sold middlingly or poorly by AAA standards. Because of their small size, publishers like NIS and Atlus can turn a profit and keep shoveling their games at us despite sales that any large publisher (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square-Enix, etc) would consider an outright failure.

And that doesn't even count downloadables of reasonable budget (such as Faery: Legends of Avalon) or XBox Live Indie Games (such as Aphelion or Cthulhu Saves the World.)

[RX79]

Trinity Universe & Cross Edge would count,  but it only has a certain nitch of fans so I didnt count them.

If your in the need of a Card Captors fix Atelier Rorona will have you covered, But most rpg goers want something a little more serious. And the Atelier series does very well. Why do you think there are so many in the series.

I have never heard of Last Remnant, most likely because I dont own an Xbox, but it does look promising. 

Resonance of Fate: I left out because of obvious reasons. In other words its not hard to see why this one didn't do well.

[I.S.T.]

That's just moving the goal posts, though. You originally said "last turn base rpg to hit a major console", not "last successful turn based rpg to hit a major console".

[RX79]

Sorry,  you cant win for trying on this forum.

[Next_Gen_Cowboy]

I don't understand that statement, but you also do know Atlus will release at least 2 more turned based RPG's in the next few years? It's been about 8 years since the last true Shin Megami (in Nocturne) came out, so I wouldn't be suprised to see another fairly soon. Barring word on that it's common knowledge that Persona 5 will be released at some point, it has a huge following in the U.S. and is their cash cow at the moment.

Not that it's a bad thing, but my point is I don't see either of these games changing their tried and true turn-based systems, not after sales of P4 breaking 110k in the United States.

[Rpgfreak]

It's less then 8 years ago for the last Shin Megami release. I believe Devil Saga should be considered as the next game from that series. I believe that series follows pretty much the same line with a few changes. So I would say the last release is only about 6 years ago.

Persona is probably one of the few really well known turned based RPG's nowadays.

Final fantasy probably has changed quite a bit. And people probably start to dislike it because of that. But actually the biggest reason every FF is somewhat unique is because of how FF was started. They try to make it unique everytime. With an revolutionary gameplay everytime. Obviously this can't work everytime. The name final fantasy stands for being an unique game. And although this clearly results in some "failures", I think it's a good thing they do it like this as from time to time they will make a big hit.