Final Fantasy Wish list

[Zweihander]

I happened to like the setting of FF9, and the game as a whole. It had some cool characters, Zidane, Vivi, and Freya I liked in particular. It had designated classes, so that if you wanted the black mage in your party, you needed Vivi, you didn't just swap some materia or GF or dress card. And Tetra Master was a blast. But anyway, things I'd like to see:

-Make up your mind about the setting. Stop trying to have both tech and magic in the same place. Tech that acts like Magic, with abilities that do the same thing but are explained in a scientific way are good. Xenosaga did this well, just saying "quantum physics and nanotech" is good enough for me. Conversely, if its a Magic world, having robots and flying airships are unacceptable. Golems are fine, as long as they are Golems and filled with clay and not circuits.
-Is it that difficult to write a script that doesn't have the two main characters falling in love with each other? "Oh, the entire netherworld is chasing us down, and trying to kill us all, but we have time to fall in love." No, you're trying to save your ass, not find the love of your life. Its fine the first couple times, but now its gotten dull.
-Attention costume designers: stop smoking crack.
-Stop having the monsters being recolored versions of lower leveled ones.
-Stop giving enemies glaring weaknesses. If these things are a huge threat to humanity, the should have as few weaknesses as possible, and be hard to kill. A single fire spell from a mage should not take out an ice enemy in one shot.
-Seriously, stop the angst. I'm sure teenagers relate to it, but most gamers are in the "able to purchase alcohol" age range.
-Chill with the silly looking villains. I mean, Kuja and Seymour? C'mon, you can do better than that. Also, stop with the Sephiroth clones. One more long-and-silver-haired pretty boy waxing poetic and I will decapitate your entire staff.
-Classes that mean something. I want rewards for mastering the weirder and more difficult classes. In Dragon Warrior 3, the Jester was seriously the dumbest class ever, and complely useless. When class change time came, they immediately had access to Sage, which was the best class in the game outside of Hero. So, give Blue Mages spells that actually work and are freaking powerful. If they can survive something like Nova or Ultima, they should get that spell and be able to devastate enemies.
-Staus effect spells. Make them work against enemies, unless the character fails his to-hit roll or whatever. Stop and Slow and Demi should affect everything. Since when are bosses immune to gravity or time? Do they just lift off the ground from not having a weak atomic force?
-Back to the storyline gripes. Just so you know, Squeenix, most people are getting sick of hearing how friendship and love overcomes all. Its a nice philosophy, but getting old. I wanna see a badass character that doesn't need his friends, and just uses them as cannon fodder.

[Terex4]

-Stick to the mideval age. I like those better than technological settings.
-I agree with effect magic, way to good against you, crap against enemies, lets have that fixed.
-Have a survey or something in the beginning of the game that determines who your main character is (ala one of the dragon warriors)
-If you want to use graphics, USE them. Make the characters look different according to their clothing and armor.
-Please no euro-mideval based characters with katanas! Eastern culture used to add flair to a game, now its grossly overdone (mostly in D&D but I'm getting sick of it)

[ChaosMage]

For the record, I'd like to point out that alot of the sugestions that were just made could be found in some of the older FFs. (No real main character, FF6. Strong female lead, also FF6...yeah, I know. Celes, Terra. Non-Linear: FF6. Linear: FF6. Non-Angst ridden character: FF4-6.)

What would I like to see?

-An RPG by S-E not called Star Ocean: XXXXXXXX or FF##-#.
-A creative idea. What? I don't know what, if I did I'd be making video games. I'm looking for something you havn't done yet. You know why FF1-6 (and to some extent 7) were so popular? Because they were ORIGINAL! They did something unique, wierd, or unheard of and made it work. What did FF10 do? It rehashed the stuff from 1-6/7 for people who hadn't played them before. Square took a chance with FF1 because it figured it was about to die anyway, lets see some daring. I know you people have financial trouble, so do it again and give me a real reason to buy your next game.
-I'd like to see a case where there wasn't one ultimate Esper/GF/Sword/Armor/Helmet/Glove/Item that ruled everything. Rather, I would like to see multiple items that have different effects, possibly based upon who wears them (to ward off people becoming materia slots)
-I want a villian that inspires me to new heights of evil like Kefka. He did what he did because he enjoyed it, not because he was a meglomaniac. A monument to nothingness. Still scares the crap out of me.

[Atma]

Originally Posted by EVILNess

I have but one wish.

That it doesn't suck, and look half thrown together in an effort to appease an army of lunatic fanboys.

YES, thank you. That's the only thing I wish from Final Fantasy games these days, that they don't suck.

[KefkaTaran]

Cruelty 13:

1.) FF7 and 8 came out for PC. They were bad ports and I don't think they sold too well, which explains by none of the others have since.

2.) How do developers give you "more reasons to play without the cheats on"? The idea of playing without the cheats is that YOU HAVE SKILL and DID IT ON YOUR OWN. If you can't do it on your own and need to use cheats, that's your thing, but I don't see how they'd give more reason?

Archbio: Generally console RPGs, especially Final Fantasy, are all about lineality. I don't think this will change much, and I'm not sad about that, really. If I want non-linear RPGs, I turn to PC RPGs. And lack of lineality tends to lead to boring story or, worse, no story at all. It can be done well, it's just isn't very often.

Spok: How do FF games rehash earlier material? I can see similarities in story/setting and even smaller similarities in gameplay, but generally everything is pretty different.

Zwei: You'll be glad to know that while FF12 is supposed to have some sort of love backstory, the male and female lead are supposedly not falling in love. Also, no offense to you of course, but just the idea of a character who doesn't care about his friends and 'uses them as cannon fodder' is something that only a bad guy would be able to do in most instances, unless he does various heel/face changes throughout the game a la Kain from FF4.

Chaos-Mage: You'll be getting your wish. Dragon Warrior VIII is coming out some time in the near future.

I'll agree on a couple points. I think getting rid of the teenage-angsty-stuff would be good and trying to present deeper character and story like in FFVI would rock. I think this might happen with XII from how it's looking. Here's hoping.

[ChaosMage]

Ok. Let me put my above statement another way. How about a game that doesn't have to have a number tag somewhere in its name to denote that it is a sequel? =P I can attest to the suckiness of FF7 and 8 on the computer. I tried playing them both that way. FF7 crashed when you're supposed to win the Chocobo Race for your freedom, a crash which I eventually fixed using a 3rd party patch but no longer had the patience for the game (until a friend lent me his PS2 with FF7) and FF8....I couldn't bring myself to finish Disc 2. I was at the Battle of the Garden scene, apparently the best part of the game, but I was just so damn bored. I abused GFs though, which is probably why. The main problem with FF7, besides the crash, is that somehow they managed to condense the entire playstation controller onto the numberpad, but its just not the same as playing with a gaming pad.

[AndyBloodredMage]

By the end of disc 2, I had the lionheart for squall. Twas able to one-hit ko seifer twice.

[Illuminatus]

Originally Posted by KefkaTaran

Cruelty 13:

1.) FF7 and 8 came out for PC. They were bad ports and I don't think they sold too well, which explains by none of the others have since.

I had FFVII for the PC. 'twas the only FF game I ever played. It was awesome, and I liked it, but it was apoor port. I never finished it, because doing Omnislash would crash the game. Cid's hyper jump had a similar effect. It was very frustrating

[CelesJessa]

I might be biased, but I agree on all of the points so far as far as concerning girls in the game go. Lets have an independant girl in one of these new FFs sometime (note: independant does not mean angsty). And not just thrown in there for romantic interest, or the ones who aren't romantic interest are completely boring and uninteresting.

I want characters that are INVOLVED in the plot other than just the main characters. Big whoop that they're saving the world for the good of it. I want a personal connection with each character. I don't want them to just follow along because "Hey, my friend here is going to save the world, I will too!" They need to have their own personal reason for risking their lives.

Lets break our traditional barriors a bit. Lets have a male white mage, a female fighter, (we do get that sometimes, but they are usually very boring characters)

Expand on all of their personalities. I want to KNOW these characters, to CONNECT with them one way or another. I don't want some random mystery angsty man who is there for no reason. They can be angsty, but give them a good enough back story to give them REASON to be angsty.

Let some character interaction happen between them, even with something as small as getting to choose some choices of what I can say to them. Let me effect a little bit of the main character's relationships with the characters.

And, this is a smaller thing, but I can understand why they do fan-service, but PLEASE, I would like them to keep it a little more modest. I don't want to see the victory poses and go "How the heck is she not falling out of her dress?!" And maybe they could change clothes when they go to different climates. That would be cool. Because people like Rikku should be dying of frostbite on snowcovered mountains. ^^

But those are just a few complaints. I've seen previews of FF12 and it looks good to me. ^^

[Lockeownzj00]

- Instead of a whiny prick for a main character how bout we have a strong female lead.

But how about one of those real female leads, not the overly-independent-because-i-can-be one, just the one that thinks for herself and isn't a goth or a ditz. Any time a company's tried this, they threw in one scene where it was like, "hey! I'm a girl, hear me roar! but tihi I'm still innocent." I wish they'd cut that shit out. Why not exemplify her attitude throughout the game?

-I also would like a variable story where there are only a few very different. Like if you have to have a love story you get to pick who with, and that decision radically changes the story.

Agreed. My favorite type of...this thing is when there is one situation that you replay in several different characters' minds (or bodies as it were).

-A better selection of weapons and armor. Like you can have a summoner with a sword in one part of the game, and a pike in a different part. The weapons should have a defining trait.[/quote]

YES. No more, "conveniently, umbrellas are stocked in every store!"

-Also the characters should all have a defining strenth and weakness. Also the characters should each have specific abilities unique to them so they aren't interchangeable

Uh welcome to every RPG ever.

I want to see more mid-battle decisions like FFX. I loved changing weapons and armor, and even party members in battle.