FF began to suck balls?

[Treize]

I also think that Final Fantasy is falling downhill. I did like Final Fantasy X, but it was not as good as its Playstation predecessors, and in my opinion there hasn't been a really good Final Fantasy game since (I have not and do not plan to play FFXI so it is pretty much not included). I like the battle system in Final Fantasy X-2, but the story just isn't even comparable to the original. I think Square Enix is not as good as it once was.

This doesn't really relate completely to the topic, but I'm pretty disappointed now. It has been eight years since Final Fantasy X, a good Final Fantasy game, was released. Final Fantasy Tactics, VII, VIII, IX, and X, which are all great games, were released in five years. I'm getting pretty sick of waiting for Square Enix to get their act together.

I really have not liked what Square Enix has been making these past few years. It seems that they have been more interested in making remakes and horrible spin-off games than continuing the improve the main series. They have remade FFI(2), FFII(2), FFIII, FFIV(2), FFV, and FFVI despite the fact that all of these except for FFIII have already been remade... They also made these "kiddy" Tactics games, which in my opinion have not compared to the original in any way except for maybe the battle system. I'm not even going to talk about Crystal Chronicles or Chocobo's Dungeon.

I'm not sure about other people's opinions, but I'm pretty hesitant with Final Fantasy XIII right now too. I guess we'll just have to see how it turns out. I just hope it isn't worse than Final Fantasy XII.

First I would like to say that I do not completely dislike FFXII. It is just that I feel it is inferior to the majority of the previous FF games. I enjoyed some parts of it, but there were several parts that I did not like.

@Zargabaath
Final Fantasy XII is not bad simply because it "changed." I would be completely fine with change as long as the changes are to improve the game and the series as a whole.

I'll just list the reasons why I feel Final Fantasy XII isn't as good as it's predecessors. These are mainly just opinions, but you can take them as you will.

1. The Story: I have not finished this game yet, so I cannot fully comment on the story, but from what I have played, it is certainly not as good as the previous FF games. The story here seems pretty generic, and I feel this could have been the story to any RPG because it seems very familiar to other games story wise. I also saw this compared to Final Fantasy Tactics. In my opinion even the story in Final Fantasy Tactics is better than this story, and Final Fantasy Tactics isn't even known for it's story. Also the characters in the game are pretty generic as well. Fran and Balthier are pretty cool, but the others aren't very interesting.

2. The Battle System: I admit that the battle system in Final Fantasy XII is pretty addicting initially, but later on in the game, the flaws start to appear. First of all, the License Board is very easy to complete. After this, the game kind of loses its incentive for level grinding, and just battling random monsters in general. This also makes all of the characters exactly the same. Easily, all your characters will have the same skills, magick, and be able to equip the same weapons and armor. This leads to the characters being generic once again. Also the Gambit System turns out to be pretty ridiculous. You could set up all your characters so that they would automatically attack, heal, and everything else so that in battles you no longer had to do anything and could destroy just about anything by only walking up towards it and letting the characters fight with their Gambits. This might have worked well for the characters you weren't controlling, but it just turned out to be bad that you could have all of your characters do everything without any thought from the player. This took a lot of the difficulty out of the game. I know that it is possible to control your characters without the Gambit system, but I don't think there should even be such an easy way out as the Gambit system.

3. Mobility: This has been said before, but I still miss the ability to move about the world freely in an airship or other vehicle like was in previous games. I also missed this in Final Fantasy X. This isn't a major issue, but it still is a downside in my opinion.

I could go on, but I've been typing this for awhile now, and I'm tired. Maybe I'll come back and post some more at a later point.