Final Fantasy Chat

[NateDog]

Question for the group on something Final Fantasy related. Something that's been on my mind and I'd be curious to get other people's input? Has anyone else noticed that the rise of Atlus' catalogue has risen as Final Fantasy's has fallen?Obviously FF is still an extremely popular series, but it doesn't feel as big a deal as it was in the PS1/PS2 era, which goes sort of hand in hand with when Final Fantasy evolved (de-volved?) from it's turn based system. I'm still curious as to whether the rise of SMT/Persona would've happened if FF hadn't changed systems, or if the appeal or Atlus' RPG's would've happened anyway, because stylistically and conceptually they're very different games.

I suspect that it might be a little of both what Person/SMT offered by themselves along with Final Fantasy changing it's gameplay significantly, but I was curious if anyone had a similar opinion on it. This might be too simplistic of an analysis.

It has definitely been noted by a lot of people with interests in JRPGs for sure. Square had a rough time of things really since the beginning of the HD era and it has taken a long time for them to recover. XIII's long development time and being received fairly poorly and XIV's disastrous launch being the main culprits. Trying to then fix XIV meant they had to reallocate staff and resources, and that naturally had a big impact on titles like Kingdom Hearts 3 and eventually resulted in FF Versus XIII never seeing the light of day in its original guise. I think they've managed to recover well given XIV's popularity and success and the success of the VII Remake project (which, let's be honest, could have easily been a disaster).

Meanwhile Atlus seems to have gone from strength to strength over the years and has managed a steady stream of output. I think the success and critical acclaim of titles like Metaphor: Refantazio and Clair Obscur in the last year or so should give Square plenty of food for thought. Personally I don't buy into the idea that I see some putting forth, that Square think FF is above turn-based battle systems or that their attempts to make action-oriented games has been a failure (VII Rebirth is one of the most fun action RPGs I've ever played). But I do think some reflection on what made the series popular and successful in the first place is important. Not to mention some focus on female characters and party members. I mean XV's cast was probably the best part about that game, and I do like Clive, but there's no reason to keep focused on such heavily male casts. XVI started off with some excellent female characters and then completely tanked them.