Ben-DutkaThis isn't a rhetorical question. I'm not placing the question in the headline and then following it up with an article that describes the answer. I'm not criticizing Square-Enix. I really don't know what they're doing.
This isn't a knock against their games, per se; it's more a question of their intended direction, which is an absolute mystery to me. In some ways it has been a mystery since our beloved Squaresoft merged with Enix and things went awry for a while, but even then, we at least got the great Final Fantasy titles and a few other top-notch productions. Now, as they attempt to target more of the Western crowd, I can't help but ask after their ultimate goal. I know they opened up their Los Angeles studio last year but as of right now, I have no idea what their intentions might be. Let's see…there's FFXIII, which I still say is more of a nod to the twitch-gaming group that would rather push buttons and watch flashy things rather than perform actual strategy in gameplay. It's super fun and I love it, but it's certainly my least favorite FF. Then there's that ill-advised Front Mission Evolved , which takes the standard turn-based strategy formula for the series and turns it into MechWarrior .
And what's up with Nier ? I understand that it's an action/RPG but has Square-Enix noticed that few have even heard of the game at this point? And what's with this very obvious – even blatant – attempt at going all "M" with the over-the-top language and bizarre characters? It almost seems as if Square-Enix is so desperate to make a game that caters to the Western audience that they really don't care about the millions of avid followers. Those followers fell in love with Squaresoft back in the PlayStation days, and even tolerated a falling-off in terms of overall quality in the PS2 generation. They're still around. I'm still one of them, too. But am I the only one who feels slighted? Am I the only one who wonders why Square-Enix is suddenly trying to transform themselves into a Western developer merely with Japanese tendencies? Here's a general rule: stick to what you're good at. If you can't do the Western thing very well, you won't actually cater to anyone . Stop trying to get everyone ; it doesn't work .
The Japanese fans and other long-time fans around the world won't understand it, and the Western gamers who really won't play anything besides shooters in the first place won't care. So what are you doing ?! I really am confused. I just don't get it. As for Final Fantasy Versus XIII , we know nothing and until I see more than pretty CGI, there's nothing that can really be said. But I can pretty much guarantee it won't feel anything like the Squaresoft of old.
What is square Enix doing?
It is creating awesome games.
Just beat star ocean = Awesome.
and started Final fantasy = Awesome.
am still a couple of hours into Final fantasy and the environment is soo catchy that i dont even care it is linear. And the voice acting is soo good too , and people who think vanille is annoying , it really isnt , you want annoying look at serah in star ocean , most annoying character in the game , but also the best healer ever 🙂
Square-Enix just help publish the Star Ocean series of games, they didn't make that game. Tri-Ace makes Star Ocean. Same people who made the awesome Resonance of Fate game. THAT game is awesome, lol. Oh, and with Serah in Star Ocean; They probably made her annoying to make you pay for having a really awesome healer, lol.
Last edited by DeathOfChaos on 4/7/2010 9:48:07 AM
Er…Star Ocean is far from "awesome."
Accounting for the way Final Fantasy has been going, Star Ocean is the better game now. You have so much more you can do in The Last Hope, and the gameplay is quite fun, but there are certain thing with Star Ocean that just doesn't pull me in all that well. But in certain departments (especially in JRPG tastes), Star Ocean is better than FFXIII.
Last edited by DeathOfChaos on 4/7/2010 10:37:18 AM
It really isn't. In FFXIII, the story is better, the characters are better, the sound and graphics are infinitely better, and the combat is far more refined with a better character advancement system.
Yes, SO is more open right from the start but that's about it. Besides, once you get to Gran Pulse, you deal with an area that's massive and suddenly, SO has absolutely nothing over FFXIII.
It was the first star ocean i Played , yea the graphics were kinda bad (compared to FF XIII) , somecutscenes were soo damn boring , the story is not original and really expected , but still the story was good , combat was awesome , character development and weapons were great , plus japanese voices were really cool , environment was really good too.
I dont know , it felt like a classic JRPG to me.
i spent about 60 hours in that game , and really had fun with it.
As for FF XIII am still a couple of hours into it , but as far as i can see the game is awesome and worthy of the great FF title.
Yeah I'm still cranking on the post game content in FFXIII, but as of right now I'd have to say I enjoyed SO4 a lot more than FFXIII.
(though SO4 still pales in comparison to SO2 and, of course, the best Final Fantasy games)
k lil offtopic here….
but has anyone played resonance of fate? how much of a jrpg is it? i like turn based, or ATB like stuff, is it good? its a pita to find here where i live and ill order it if its worth it but i just dont know how good it is, story seems weak in reviews but i only trust psxe reviews so….
Like Jawknee said somewhere, their trying hard to cater for the xbots who don't give 2 sh*ts about them, that's what their doing!
Its very sad cause its like trying to get a skank or a slut to love you by getting her everything she wants and still wouldn't appreciate!
Wada loves money too much. Hes taking the company down hill.
Enix has lost their mind. is there a change of leadership that would correlate to this change of direction?
E3 2010: *Sqaure Enix executive comes out* "We're very pleased and happy to announce that Final Fantasy versus XIII will be coming to the Xbox 360." *Xbots rejoice* *PS3 owners head to Sqaure Enix HQ with Shotguns and RPG's*
Last edited by LittleBigMidget on 4/7/2010 7:03:48 AM
If that happens, say goodbye to Air ships, Towns, and a fun game.If they were to put it to the 360 and kept all that hard work, then you would probably have to switch to a different disc titled 'Airship', 'Towns', or 'World Map'. Hell, two other discs; 'Battle' and 'Story'. Most confusing game in the world.
Last edited by DeathOfChaos on 4/7/2010 9:44:06 AM
I think they have an extremely shallow and basically "cliched" view of Western gamers. We lack the depth to "understand" things, and we just want to play as big macho men who shoot everything all the time. Everybody knows that Americans are nothing but a bunch of cowboys. Yawn.
As far as Neir, if they're going to give us an xbox port and keep the PS3 version of the game exclusive to Japan, they can forget it.
Someone please explain to me why people think that male gamers want to see big macho male characters running around in their games? After all the majority of male gamers are more interested in pretty girls than they are men with huge biceps and thighs. Well, I would at least have thought that was the case. In fact now I think of it, why are action game characters dominated by half naked guys? If I was developing an action game for a predominantly male audience, my character roster would be mostly female, just as half naked and pretty.
Oh, wait, the DOA girls have already cornered that market, except that people think anyone playing a DOA game is a perv. Odd indeed. If my son expressed more interest in playing a game with the DOA girls than in playing a game with muscle-bound heroes, I think I would congratulate him on his choice and send him on his way.
i personally dont hate the Xbox , in fact as a person who loves games i wish i had one.
I dont mind any game going multiplatform , i dont own any shares at sony or microsoft.
All i need is for the net result to get and play an amazing game.
Some people even hated FF XIII before looking at it just cause it was multiplatform .
Some people dont even know what they think they just go with the flow they hear a game is bad then its just bad , they dont even try it themselves.
And just to make something Clear.
Final fantasy isnt a bad game , its amazing.
And SE hasnt fallen down , they still got it.
Atleast they didnt remove stuff from the game to release it as DLC after a month or so for 15$ like most games are doing nowadays riping us off!!
What games remove things from games and then add it as DLC later? lol. Only game I've heard that had taken something out was God of War III, and they said they had to do that or they would have payed too much attention to that one part and would have affected the overall game, and painfully took that part out BUT plan to release it as DLC when and if they can…for free…
MW2
SE has lost it, games like the Last Remnant kinda prove that point.
The death of the traditional JRPG format (at least in SE developed games) is something that can't be underplayed. FFXIII is an oddity in that it strives to visually capture the SE JRPG style, while at the same time dispensing with virtually everything else that makes a JRPG a JRPG.
The fact that FFXIII is a multi-platform is not itself a problem, the fact that SE were misleading everyone into believing it was an exclusive and then revealed that it wasn't, that's a problem. In fact IIRC the way that was done was downright underhanded because it was being called exclusive pretty much right up to the last moment, so much so that when the multi-platform nature of the game was finally revealed it left Sony looking rather foolish.
As for FFXIII being a bad game, I don't know if I'd call it a bad game, but I do know I would call it a terrible JRPG.
@DeathofChaos,
Resident Evil 5, Lost Planet 2, Assassin's Creed 2 just to name a few.
All had content cut from what was originally intended to be released then sold back to us at a ridiculous price. Obviously Lost Planet 2 isn't out yet but Capcom already confirmed content was cut due to DVD limitations and it will indeed return as DLC.
Last edited by Jawknee on 4/7/2010 12:03:36 PM
It was hard for me to read the whole interview with Square in this month's Game Informer. They make it sound like XIII is the new way it's gonna be, and that's that. I really want a great Dragon Warrior for the ps3, though. I don't know how the battles are set up anymore, but I'm guessing maybe Squeenix will keep it closer to it's roots than they have FF.
If that's the case, then SE as a company better prepare for a slow and painful decline because they are betraying their core audience.
Many valid points. It does seem pretty confusing.
Personally I think they have their formula all wrong. Think about their situation. They have millions of fans who are going to buy a game no matter what as long as it has the title "Final Fantasy". It's understandable to want to cater to a western audience for more profit, but at the same time you need to hold true to what WORKS.
They should have kept Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy and explored the western style of gaming with IPs. At the same time, the quickest way into this new style or market was to have a huuuge title that they knew everyone would buy.
Conundrum.
SE is a Japanese developer/publisher, their most important market has historically been their home market, and yet they are alienating that market by striving to make their games more westernized. As much as they try though, their games are not westernized, they simply no longer have the very flare and Japanese style that brought the western RPG audience to them in the first place. It makes no sense at all.
Yup, the Japs weren't pleased at all with Final Fantasy XIII. When its release hit Japan it only held a 2.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon Japan and that was out of 800+ user reviews. Ever since then, i new this was going to be a disappointment even though i tried to convince myself it wouldn't everyday until release day in the US. Square needs to stick with what they're good at, but that may not happen.
People have criticized me for my stance on FFXIII. That's fine, I'd already read many user comments of Japanese gamers (albeit translated) about the game and read the post launch reports and reviews. They were not the glowing reviews and experiences we were led to believe they would be. It was crystal clear that all was not well with regards to the game.
It's not so much that it's a bad game, it's not, it's more that it's a terrible RPG. At heart, FFXIII is an action game that's been given the FF treatment.
I'll tell you your conclusions aren't that far of base. If you haven't bought it yet, wait till its cheap or rent it.
I still don't see how anyone can call FFXIII an action game if you don't control the character(s).
It seems more like an in-action game or, as I said in a previous article, an RTS with only a few units.
But I haven't played it, so I'm basing that opinion solely on what other people have said.
Last edited by Fane1024 on 4/9/2010 7:36:23 PM
What Ben said about SE wanting to be a western developer with Japanese tendencies hits the nail square (hah) on the head. While I cannot speak for anybody in Japan, historically the country has been parroting the West's technology. This caused a _huge_ identity crisis, leading a whole lot of Japanese to try to figure out how to be "Eastern Westerners" and not just sell out completely to the technology of the West.
I guess SE doesn't quite realize that what kind of games we make isn't necessarily because of our national identity. Or whatever; regardless, I haven't quite been impressed lately.
But I can't blame them for catering to the "twitch" gamers; after all, the market has changed now. I'd say that the "old-school, better" gamers are still here, it's just that we're outnumbered. So, naturally, SE caters to the bigger group.
They really just leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.
SE doesn't understand the market. As you point out the original RPG market is still there, and a newer market segment of shooter/action has grown. However SEs strategy is to dump it's RPG audience in favor of the shooter/action game crowd? That's not a sound strategy. You don't alienate your existing consumer base before you have secured another consumer base.
The two audiences are not the same, if SE wants a slice of the new shooter/action pie, then let them make a game for that group. Taking a beloved JRPG series and morphing it in the direction of shooter/action fans serves no one. The game is neither one thing nor the other.
I understand the point you're making, but SE is catering to neither group. A more sound strategy would be to make games that service the traditional JRPG market (and making better games in that market will GROW that market), and at the same time make/publish separate games that serve the shooter/action market. That grows SE into another genre instead of trying to blend two incompatible game genre into one.
Last edited by TheHighlander on 4/7/2010 11:29:10 AM
Absolutely. (you are right that the new games don't really fit into either) (and yes, they don't appear to be picking one group–just straddling the fence between the two)
You should be their new CEO.
I loved Squaresoft and im sad till 2day cause FFX changed the way i am and now i some how hate Square Enix… they sold they soul… and they left all of us in the darkside…its sad cause they won't do anything like before…
I liked X. A lot. As i did XII. Square IMO didn't start ot fall from gamers grace until this gen when they started out only release Xbox games.
might been better if they didn't merge with ENIX
Maybe they dont understand westerners… swearing and odd clothing… no wait, that describes Soho in london exactly…
listen im a long time final fantasy fan i know that the series has changed a lot but the series has a large amount of games change isnt a bad thing people didnt like ff8 because of the changes put to its battle system and magic but they also make it unique a standout i thought ff12 was a huge mistake but ff13 assured me at least they are branching out with new ideas moving forward we all have our own opinions i think that SE with all its huge mistakes will have some good games in the future
the glory says of square/squaresoft are over. it sucks, because the square logo on the cover of a game used to mean it was unequivocally awesome. nowadays, people's faith in them is wavering, and square doesn't seem to know, or care.
makes me sad, really. remember the SNES/PSone days? *sigh*
To be honest, Ben, I think you already did answer your question, you're just trying to neglect it for some reason.
The new genre Square Enix wants to depend on is the action RPG. A lot of you are blind as to not see this. It's the reason why they have Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, to test whether a turn-based approach or an action approach to RPGs is more appealing to the West. Whilst doing so, they're also trying to keep the Japanese fans.
But you're right in a sense, Square Enix haven't decided which way they're going yet, they're testing a new path to see if they can appeal to both audiences. It is the fear from Western RPGs and FPS games like Modern Warfare 2 that have influenced them to decide to appeal to the West more than ever.
Oh and another thing, Final Fantasy Versus XIII will be completely different to Final Fantasy XIII as it's being developed by the Kingdom Hearts team. I wouldn't expect too much traditional Final Fantasy gameplay in it.
I think by the standards of most Playstation fans and RPG fans (both of which I feel I qualify as) I'm a bit of a strange duck. Seems like most people here are yearning for a return to Square's PSone days, but I wasn't a huge fan of the direction the company took starting with FFVII. I missed my old fashioned Final Fantasy, I didn't like the sci fi trappings and I really didn't like Tetsuya Nomura's character designs. I still enjoyed the games, but it wasn't really what I wanted, you know? Similar to how a lot of you feel now I guess.
Then we get to the PS2 era and we got FFX, which took the franchise's storytelling to new levels while unfortunately becoming even less like what I really wanted. Then some genius at Square got the idea to start letting Nomura design games. I know a lot of people like Kingdom Hearts, and I was pretty excited by it too being both a Disney fan and a Square fan, but in terms of game design I thought it was a disaster. And worse, to me, it further represented the creative direction Square was going — lots of flash, lots of fancy cutscenes, and now instead of getting opera scenes in my games, I was getting infectious pop songs. It wasn't what I wanted.
There was one exception to this — Yasumi Mitsuno, the guy behind Final Fantasy Tactics. I was a huge fan of that game and pretty much everything he touched. Then they gave him the reins to Final Fantasy XII and suddenly I thought that maybe the Square I wanted was going to be a reality after all. Then the game hit, and I did love it, but it also suffered because a focus-tested pretty boy named Vaan had been shoehorned in to make it still feel like this post-FF7 Final Fantasy that everyone apparently knew and loved. And then Matsuno left the company, and now we have a guy like Nomura designing FFXIII Versus. I can pretty much guarantee I am not going to like that game.
Enix on the other hand was doing the exact same thing they had always done. You want a franchise that doesn't mess with its formula, you play Dragon Quest. I find it odd that some people think Square would have been better off if they never merged with Enix. I'd argue that the Enix branch has just kept doing what it's always done while the Square slice has continued in the same direction it was already going in.
But that brings up another point — and one that I think is relevant to what Ben is asking — Square isn't just Square any more. It's also Enix. And Taito. And Eidos. For better or worse, Square "grew" and they aren't just that RPG company any more. Neir looks rather strange and I can't say I'm interested, but I'm not going to hold it against Squeenix to make games that aren't necessarily RPGs. Square is quite literally not the company they were… and I think that's most of the answer right there.
Last edited by AirplanePeanuts on 4/7/2010 7:30:54 PM
*applauds*
-Arvis
They're all smoking crack. They think us "westerners" want more "westerner" games although our "westerners" are making those games for us. I want some "asian-islanders" to give me some god DAMN turned based, open mapped, intriguing games to put my RPG desires to bed already.
Do we have to frickin' stalk them at their homes to run this idea home?! C'mon man. Give "Square" back it's "Soft". Enix needs to merge with a different frickin word. Like.. "Half". "Half-Enix" that'll be the new phrase for Half-Assed.
"Give "Square" back it's "Soft". Enix needs to merge with a different frickin word. Like.. "Half". "Half-Enix" that'll be the new phrase for Half-Assed."
epic man, just …..epic! lol you sir , have made my night lol
Together, we will change the fate of those lousy bastards! 😀
SE needs to check their own "lost & found", cause that's certainly where they've misplaced their now wandering soul.
They're busy trying to become the Japanese Electronic Arts.
I wanna see a new Dragon Warrior or Dragon Quest as I guess they call it now and a new Ultima on the ps3 and I hope if the next Elder Scrolls is an mmorpg it won't have a stupid monthly fee and will be a hard M for Mature which was the main thing that made Fallout 3 so epic.
SE is failing this gen so far, how could they make us wait 4YEARS for FF13 and it not being up to par with something as simple as FF1. i was expecting FF 13 to be the best game i've ever played, or at least be about the same as FF 12, all they did was downgrade the FF series,although the dragon quest series seems to be getting better. who else thinks they care more about dragon quest than FF?
Talented Developers are the true heart of software companies, and SE has lost their heart because of people like mitsuno, sakaguchi and Uematsu running away from that nonsense corporate hell.
So, if you want good FF games, they are named now MISTWALKER.