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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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I think Sephiroth is the superior villain… but that the thing they were going for never quite hit the mark long term.

I think someone mentioned earlier how Cloud just wrecking Sephiroth, thus proving that Sephiroth was NEVER all he was hyped up to be, is like… that's something I never really thought about and makes the overall thing they're going for hit way harder.

…But then they walk it back slightly, having it have been something else, a suicide on Sephs part or Zack being more involved. Because, I mean it's Sephiroth, you couldn't just beat Sephiroth that easily , right? When the entire point was yeah, you can, that's why Sephiroth was fucking Livid.

Still after all this, I've finally learned to put my issues with FF7 to rest.










…IN ORDER TO FIGHT MY REAL ENEMY! FUCK YOU ADVENT CHILDREN, YOU ARE THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT!!!!!
 
Wade Garrett said:
"Blah blah blah I have an absentee father and a domineering mother BILLIONS MUST BE SLAUGHTERED LIKE ANIMALS" does not become psychological depth just because you bare your chest to say it.
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I mean, even if we take that at face value, we're still putting that up against "Honk Honk Honk they put me in a machine that turned me into a magic clown BILLIONS MUST BE SLAUGHTERED LIKE ANIMALS."
 
It's even funnier because AFAICT, Sephiroth never finds out Hojo is his dad. He's not malding over his 'absentee father', he's malding over being shanked by Cloud; the reason he latches onto Jenova so hard is, y'know, because she's the first parent he's aware of having at all.

(and the mind control, of course)

But yeah 'bad Joker knockoff who gets handed SoD-breaking victories out of nowhere' just left me cold, reading the LP; Sephrioth at least had some kind of style and a degree of coherency.
 
To put on my serious hat for one second, this does ultimately come down to "My opinion > Your opinion" and all that but:

In Sephiroth's favor he has an absolutely visceral connection with the protagonist of his game that gets a lot of focus and time for development, Kefka has individual moments with members of the ensemble cast that hit hard (Doma and Cyan's family, the Slave Crown on Terra) but those are isolated events and they never get the narrative space and time to cook Sephiroth's hatred for and extended gaslighting campaign of Cloud does, absolutely a point in his favor.

In Kefka's favor, his motivations may be "We did mad science to create a clown serial killer with super powers now let's make him a general, what could possibly go wrong" but he's recognizably himself for the entire plot of his game, from the first flashback at Narshe to the final battle atop the tower his characterization is consistent (offscreen Golden Kefka power ups aside). This contrasts with Sephiroth and the fact that (Advent Children et al aside) you can make a coherent argument that Sepiroth our main antagonist is just a Sepiroth shaped anglerfish lure Jenova is using to jerk Cloud around, that's a weakness in his writing and there you can give Kefka an advantage.

Which one makes for the better villain is (IMO) a case of where those narrative strengths and plotting weaknesses land for you personally.
 
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My first exposure to Final Fantasy Seven was not any sort of official media - it was, in fact, fanfiction. Seems to be the way with a lot of my favourite media, honestly; I find something that someone has loved enough to write about, and I seek to find that love in it myself. But it inevitably and invariably taints my view of it, because it's never the original, canonical versions of the characters that are my first exposure to them. It's the lens of someone else's interpretation - their love for the setting painting over the cracks, filling in the holes, shifting the faces and voices of the characters to something closer to their ideal. Vincent, for example. In the fandom, Vincent is so much more expressive, and that's sometimes a good thing - but sometimes it destroys the mystery of him, the ghosts that haunt him, the chains that kept him in that coffin for nearly thirty years. I can't say I love or hate a character, because I don't have an unbiased view of them. My interpretation looks through the filters of a hundred different stories, a gestalt of every version I've ever read. I don't have the console to play the game as it was originally meant to be played, nor the attention span to grind on something I'm not truly and deeply invested in - and Final Fantasy is not and likely could never be that for me. The series just... isn't my style, not in that way. The only way I can experience these things unfiltered is through Lets Plays; through the writing and videos of people more passionate than me. Thank you, Omicron, for sharing that passion here.
 
I feel like part of the charm to Sephiroth as a villain is also one of his weak points.

Specifically his villainy is not from him, per se. If anything what little bits and pieces we find suggest that while he might not have exactly been an Upstanding Person, he did at least try to do what went right by him. He clearly doesn't have much respect for people like Hojo, made genuine motions to remember information from his underlings and let them be people, was nowhere near as Extra as a lot of fan reinterpretations tend to portray him [or even official works, such as that First Soldier mobile game]. He doesn't even unambiguously snap out of being pushed too far to dig up some uncomfortable inner truths of his character: Dude's running on three days without sleep reading cherry-picked false information while an malevolent alien parasite's in his head whispering "Dude let me in I'm your mother you can trust me".

There's a lot to unpack there. But just that: There's a bunch to unpack. In many regards he's just as much a victim of Hojo & ShinRA & Jenova as anyone else, which I can see entirely how that might not be somebody's cup o' tea.
 
Also, hard Rec for machinabridged. It's more comedy focused side, but it gets what FF7 was going for and personally, honestly improves in a handful of areas.

Cait Sith gets just… soooo much better characterisation.
 
Omicron said:
'the best Final Fantasy game is the first Final Fantasy game you played.'
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Unfortunately, my first FF was Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube. It was a fun game, but had about as much characterization as FFI and FFIII.

Sorry if this has already been covered (it probably has been), but which games are you planning to cover? I thought it was just the main series (I-XVI or whatever the latest is by the time you run out of games), but you've mentioned Tactics now. Is it just whatever games are available on Steam or…?
 
TrueNeutral said:
Sorry if this has already been covered (it probably has been), but which games are you planning to cover? I thought it was just the main series (I-XVI or whatever the latest is by the time you run out of games), but you've mentioned Tactics now. Is it just whatever games are available on Steam or…?
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Some of the mainline games are MMOs, so cant really be covered. As such, important spin-offs and sequels, such as FFT, are considered as replacement.
 
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So! It's time for the comparison in length between this entry and previous entries. I said that FFVII would be the longest game in the Let's Play, and we all know it has managed that so far. But, by how much is it winning?

FF - 7 threadmarks (no double update ones) - 18,2 k words
FF II - 12 threadmarks (5 double update ones) - 27,9 k words
FF III - 16 threadmarks (9 double update ones) - 44,8 k words
FF IV - 20 threadmarks (5 double update ones) - 69 k words
FF V - 30 threadmarks (12 double update ones) - 110 k words
FF VI - 26 threadmarks (5 double update ones) - 140,5 k words
FFVII - 41 threadmarks (11 double updates, + 1 triple update) - 299,6 k words

That's easily twice the words and nearly twice as much threadmarks as FFVI, and also a comfortable ten threadmarks lead on FFV; it falls just 400 words short from reaching the 300'000 words mark. And that's without an additional 3k or so words about the Emerald Weapon which might be coming up if Omicron decides to get around to fight it, or a possible Advent Children update.

Well, it's clear that FFVII easily takes the lead over the rest - but, my claim was that it is going to keep being in the lead even as the following titles try and fail to match it for length. I said FFVIII was second, FFIX third, and everything else in-between. We'll see if I'm correct.

Before I move forwards, I do have a couple of comments to make over the "final thoughts" post:

Omicron said:
Just, as a whole, FF7 blows every past game out of the water. Yes, the Job system is great, but Final Fantasy V is a children's story. Galuf's death is an amazing moment but the calculated violation of expectations of Aerith's death is a masterpiece of writing craft.
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So, I want to clarify that I agree with both of those points; Aerith's death is more impactful than Galuf's, and FFV is certainly a children's story whereas FFVII is undeniably far more adult. I don't want to suggest I disagree with that judgment. I just happen to think that those particular choices FFV made are more appropriate to its story, and overall, when considering what each wanted to do, FFV pulled it out better, which makes FFV (slightly) better than FFVII.

Obviously, this is just my opinion, and nobody needs to agree with it, but I want to expand on it a bit.

As mentioned, both have excellent gameplay, but I find that FFV has more replayability, and additionally, the fact that FFV forces the individual members of the team to develop a personal identity through mechanics is something that I find better. As for story, while it's true that FFV is a much more simplicistic, cartoon-like narrative, my opinion is that it actually performs its own particular narrative goal nearly flawlessly, whereas FFVII has a lot more stumble on it's (admittetdly vastly more ambitious) story. So... I guess I think that, when judging a game's quality, while ambition and execution of those ambitions both matter, I value the execution a bit more highly. I also think that FFVII, while it does quite a lot with the tools at its disposal, is visibly harmstrung by its need to experiment with new things, whereas FFV makes a much better use of the (yes, inferior) tools at its disposal, which I also value highly.

Just providing my opinion on comparative quality - I do think that FFV is better than FFVI as well, obviously, and would rate FFVII above FFVI, since, aside from the terrible ending, FFVII generally gets closer to its lofty ambitions than FFVI does with its own, equally lofty ones.

Omicron said:
Sephiroth eats Kefka's lunch any day as a major antagonist. They have the exact same issues (vanishes from the final act, omnicidal maniac with a god complex), but what Kefka has going for him is a clown aesthetic and a pretty good final villain speech against the heroes, while Sephiroth has an aesthetic that would define Japanese villains for a decade afterwards and actual psychological depth and history and mystery.
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I do find that Kefka and Sephiroth, each for different reasons, are somewhat overhyped; I don't know which one I'd value as the better villain over the other. It doesn't really matter, to me anyway, because FFVIII is about to provide the best villain in the entire Final Fantasy series, better than any before it and unmatched by any after it - but I should probably hold back for that unavoidably inflammatory discussion until you've had the chance to give us your own opinion on the matter. I just wanted to have it stated here, for the record.

Finally, as is traditional, here comes the follow up question about what you know about the next game you'll be playing, @Omicron. You mentioned having played (but not finished!) FFVIII, but not having tried Final Fantasy Tactics (yet). So, since you're unsure which one you'll go with, would you be willing to share what you already know of them both? I'm actually quite curious about how well you remember FFVIII, since it's a much more nuanced game than most people realize, and I think a comparison between your memories of it and the experience of actually playing it might be the best way to provide empirical evidence towards that belief of mine.
 
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Egleris said:
FF - 7 threadmarks (no double update ones) - 18,2 k words
FF II - 12 threadmarks (5 double update ones) - 27,9 k words
FF III - 16 threadmarks (9 double update ones) - 44,8 k words
FF IV - 20 threadmarks (5 double update ones) - 69 k words
FF V - 30 threadmarks (12 double update ones) - 110 k words
FF VI - 26 threadmarks (5 double update ones) - 140,5 k words
FFVII - 41 threadmarks (11 double updates, + 1 triple update) - 299,6 k words
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Well based on this i think we can safely conclude than FF XVI will take around 300k*(2^8) words. 77 billion words give or take.
 
Wade Garrett said:
Which one makes for the better villain is (IMO) a case of where those narrative strengths and plotting weaknesses land for you personally.
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I think for me it's ultimately a question of scope. That is, Kefka remains himself, but it's easy to remain yourself in a game that's so much more narratively threadbare that the character has less than half a dozen scenes. Meanwhile Sephiroth exists in a game whose narrative layer has room to sprawl, sprawl enough to trip over itself in places, but I regard that as both a weakness and a strength.

You can indeed make the argument that 'Sephiroth' for much of the game is just an anglerfish lure Jenova is waving around, but to my mind the fact that there's enough meat to these characters to examine them to that degree is the strength - the real weakness is that, as Omicron points out, his portrayal is ambiguous enough that it's hard to tell whether this is deliberate ambiguity or inconsistent writing.

But as a big fanfic reader who's familiar with the idea that the best 'fics come from settings that have plenty to go on, enough good writing to get people engaged and juuust enough dogshit to get people frustrated enough to roll up their sleeves and declare, "fine, I'll fix it my own damn self!" I do think I come down on the side of Sephiroth as the better villain, not so much because I think he's less flawed on the meta level, but because I think the flaws in his writing are better flaws to have.
 
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Coming back for a second...
Omicron said:
You can't teach every spell that matters to every character, at least not within the expected time/leveling frame of the game.
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As you say, within any reasonable timeframe is key here. You can technically fit every character out with a set of Master Materia, at which point they could all do absolutely anything, but that's a genuinely insane time commitment to accomplish. Even one set is ridiculous. Hell, even the one set you get for beating Emerald Weapon is pretty ridiculous considering that "beating Emerald Weapon" is one of the only things in the game that'd justify having that kind of power on a character.
Omicron said:
One of my main complaints with VI has been the way characters lack mechanical identity, and VII has gone even further into this. No character has a unique skill. Without Materia, all characters are a list of stats, the Attack and Item commands, and a Limit Break. Now, Limit Breaks are great. They are maybe the best innovation the game has brought to the franchise and are going to stay with us forever, if XIV is anything to judge by, and while they are annoying to grind on characters you don't use much, much moreso than most Materia, they are great flavor and mechanically interesting. But they're not unique skills available at all times. VII characters have less mechanical identity than VI characters, because what would have been skills in VI are now also Materia and can be equally passed around and shuffled as you will.
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There is some minor mechanical identity from their default stat distributions as well, such that (before Sources) different characters are better suited for different roles. Plus pre-endgame there's the split between ranged and melee as common weapon types for a character. But that's still a level of optimization that you don't need to care about much.

VIII is going to be about as bad on this front. Squall's gunblade mechanic is the only character-specific thing that I can remember besides limit breaks, and firing up a spreadsheet so you can get everyone fully junctioned leaves them all a bland slurry of party members defined by their socketed spells-you-can't-use-because-it-literally-costs-you-stat-points.

IX is genuinely the best here, in my memory. Everyone has a distinct thing that's character-specific baked into their default actions, and then the AP skill-learning lets you customize them all pretty heavily, with it being strongly guided based on the gear that's available to them to keep a vibe for individual characters until well into the endgame.
 
Kemayo said:
VIII is going to be about as bad on this front. Squall's gunblade mechanic is the only character-specific thing that I can remember besides limit breaks
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Without going into too much spoilers, which this post might already be doing, one thing that the Final Fantasy VIII "limit breaks" have going for them over the FFVII version is that they're all very mechanically different, in addition to each also having a more varied spread of abilities that add personality. But, again, this is better discussed once the thread gets there.

Kemayo said:
IX is genuinely the best here, in my memory.
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Yes, your memory is correct, FFIX is the best.
 
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In the interests of fairness, despite 9 having an excellent battle/customising system… it also has 2 major issues that when we come to, I will honestly ask for mod recs.
 
You know, I think the materia system would work better for a Western style RPG with a blank protagonist you get to define through dialogue, with other characters being locked into predefined roles (possibly they can still use materia, but only some of them?). You do lose the aspect of freely swapping combat blocks around, but it allows for a stronger sense of character personalities while still maintaining your ability to customize.

Even in JRPGs it's not unprecedented, as Persona series, starting with the third game, basically utilizes this system: everyone has a predefined skillset, except for the protagonist who gets to carry around 6+ Personas covering everything from healing to killing, which is textually reflective of the protagonist's malleable personality and penchant for manipulating people by presenting them with a mask they want to see instead of an empty void beneath it.

In any case, it's interesting to think about the tradeoffs those systems have to consider, not just in terms of customization depth or user friendliness, but in how it connects to the game world and what it says about the characters.

Omicron said:
Where did this strange talking cat-dog came from? All these questions actually have answers!
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But do they? Do they really? Like, why are there both the cat and the moogle? Why not just control the moogle? Why megaphone? Why Reeve?

Omicron said:
Ultimately, the best thing about Cid… Is Shera. Because watching that absolutely insane woman try and achieve a bizarre death wish by getting herself incinerated with rocket fuel or crashing into the sun or burning on impact with Meteor was, if nothing else, entertaining. In a kind of baffling way.
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As for the thematic connection between Shinra and Jenova, it's interesting and probably deserves more exploration somewhere down the line, but here is a more unsettling thought to end this post: Jenova is Scion. because this is SV, and you can never escape Worm fandom. It is within you and around you, and it speaks in your own voice.
 
Joining Wade in serious mode. I didn't experience VII personally as a kid because I was The Nintendo House in my friend group. Not sure how common that was for other people, but I had the N64, someone else had the Playstation, and someone else had the X-Box, and so between all of us we had full coverage. I could have gone over and played through it, but if I'm going to hang out, I wanted to play magic or command and conquer or whatever with everyone, and so I mostly only experienced the playstation era of RPGs second-hand. VII was popular in my friend circle. Uematsu's still cookin' on the soundtrack, the team's sheer ambition from VI is clearly still in full effect. It's a good game.

I like VI better though

Squirtodyle said:
Kefka being the Jonker absolutely cannot match up to Sephiroth's perfect petty hater behavior. Omnicidal funny clown is good but the personal nature of Sephiroth's hater behavior is the key aspect of his appeal. He's a fucking loser who spent five years malding his way out of the afterlife because in the middle of his developing god complex he got got by a random dipshit country bumpkin, that's absolutely peak.
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The3rdCorinthian said:
I think Sephiroth is the superior villain… but that the thing they were going for never quite hit the mark long term.

I think someone mentioned earlier how Cloud just wrecking Sephiroth, thus proving that Sephiroth was NEVER all he was hyped up to be, is like… that's something I never really thought about and makes the overall thing they're going for hit way harder.

…But then they walk it back slightly, having it have been something else, a suicide on Sephs part or Zack being more involved. Because, I mean it's Sephiroth, you couldn't just beat Sephiroth that easily , right? When the entire point was yeah, you can, that's why Sephiroth was fucking Livid.
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Yeah, the long-term miss on Sephiroth's writing doesn't get enough weight I think. Like, I now agree with Squirtodyle and others in the thread that the intent here legitimately was to subvert Sephiroth's hype. This was one of the things that this LP brought out for me that I hadn't thought about before because that's not what... most people took from the game?

Like, if they were trying to do something else (and like I said the thread convinced me this is the case) they failed. Badly. Part of it probably does have to do with how Sephiroth's archetype, and every other version descended from him seems to be inexplicably popular in Japan. And they don't walk it back slightly. Much like with Aerith, Squeenix themselves have leaned into the mischaracterization it in everything since. I mean, shit, I haven't played kingdom hearts, maybe him being a cuckbaby gets brought up there.

I don't fault the writers for intent here. Sephiroth is a part of a pretty distinguished tradition of failed-satire-recreating-its-subject.

We'll have to see which version of the landing that Remake sticks*

*will we get to the relevant parts of the Remake in part II, or will we have to wait for the third?

Wade Garrett said:
To put on my serious hat for one second, this does ultimately come down to "My opinion > Your opinion" and all that but:

In Sephiroth's favor he has an absolutely visceral connection with the protagonist of his game that gets a lot of focus and time for development, Kefka has individual moments with members of the ensemble cast that hit hard (Doma and Cyan's family, the Slave Crown on Terra) but those are isolated events and they never get the narrative space and time to cook Sephiroth's hatred for and extended gaslighting campaign of Cloud does, absolutely a point in his favor.

In Kefka's favor, his motivations may be "We did mad science to create a clown serial killer with super powers now let's make him a general, what could possibly go wrong" but he's recognizably himself for the entire plot of his game, from the first flashback at Narshe to the final battle atop the tower his characterization is consistent (offscreen Golden Kefka power ups aside). This contrasts with Sephiroth and the fact that (Advent Children et al aside) you can make a coherent argument that Sepiroth our main antagonist is just a Sepiroth shaped anglerfish lure Jenova is using to jerk Cloud around, that's a weakness in his writing and there you can give Kefka an advantage.

Which one makes for the better villain is (IMO) a case of where those narrative strengths and plotting weaknesses land for you personally.
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I think this extends to the cast, too. A lot has been said here about the smaller roster and expanded limitations allow much more depth than previously, and this is true! As I said before though, more doesn't always translate to better, and a deep psychological study is not inherently superior to a broader ensemble. And in my particular case, unfairly or not the whole edgy prettyboy loner thing scans to me as "I don't have a personality" and when both Cloud and Sephiroth are trying hard to be that for the vast majority of the game (Jenova Anglerfish, or Cloud's actually cool side for the last like 5% of the game notwithstanding) it makes it hard for me to vibe with the rest of the game when it all is resting so hard on those two despite all the other good work going on.

Kadmus said:
But yeah 'bad Joker knockoff who gets handed SoD-breaking victories out of nowhere' just left me cold, reading the LP; Sephrioth at least had some kind of style and a degree of coherency.
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More fodder for the hypothetical FFVI Remake: What if you just don't fight Kefka at Narshe? Introduce one or two more Imperial minibosses, and have them take the fall in that particular battle, and earlier when you face Kefka at the siege of Doma, rather than him running, make it more explicit that he's misleading Sabin/Shadow with illusions, which will serve double-duty as foreshadowing the confrontation with Leo.

It never bothered me that much for reasons I think were covered when that was current to the thread, but the people who did have a problem with it largely hated because of the offscreen powerup, but I think if you just make those one-and-a-half changes, you can actually have Kefka as an actual powerhouse all along, and then the 'bullshit' part of his boost after the empire learns about magicite doesn't have to be as gigantic.
 
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The problem with evaluating Sephirot is not only if you consider him more or less than Jenova's mask. It's that, because what we see of him post flashback is mostly Jenova playing with that mask, the most you can really say (I think) of him is how good of a victim he is.

The real character Sephirot was the gentle veteran who cared for the men under him, and then reading ruined his life. The villain that people so adores is Jenova with Traumatized Sephirot flavor. I believe the character adoration that has been practice since the game came out is a disservice to both characters.

Anyway. I've criticized VII a few times, which loses some impact because I'm only experiencing it second hand. And if I had to play it now, I don't think it would rate high in my preferences. But I'm glad it exists, warts and all, because SE learned from it for the future. I'd hate playing FFVII, and I get the impression it's overhyped (doesn't mind it doesn't have enough merit to receive praise!), but it's good that it exists. And we should all be thankful for it in this season of festivity and joy and share it with our friends and the people we love. Poyo.

illhousen said:
As for the thematic connection between Shinra and Jenova, it's interesting and probably deserves more exploration somewhere down the line, but here is a more unsettling thought to end this post: Jenova is Scion. because this is SV, and you can never escape Worm fandom. It is within you and around you, and it speaks in your own voice.
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Clearly, it was a missed oportunity that the few FF crosses only have Taylor get super op by giving her/become All The Summons/Primals (and then sum magik) instead of giving her All The Mastered Materia. :V
 
SerGregness said:
Much like with Aerith, Squeenix themselves have leaned into the mischaracterization it in everything since. I mean, shit, I haven't played kingdom hearts, maybe him being a cuckbaby gets brought up there.

I don't fault the writers for intent here. Sephiroth is a part of a pretty distinguished tradition of failed-satire-recreating-its-subject.

We'll have to see which version of the landing that Remake sticks*

*will we get to the relevant parts of the Remake in part II, or will we have to wait for the third?
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One of the core selling points of the Remake is that they absolutely understand what the characters were in the original game, and more importantly, what they were intended to be. The characterization has received enormous praise from basically everyone, because it's actually walked back the substantial character drift that the FF7 characters have been subjected to since 1997 and instead have nailed the actual intent of them from way back when, with Aerith as the prime example.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that they'll nail Sephiroth, they've already done so in the first game and I can't imagine they won't continue to do so in the next.
 
Connelly said:
Anyway. I've criticized VII a few times, which loses some impact because I'm only experiencing it second hand. And if I had to play it now, I don't think it would rate high in my preferences. But I'm glad it exists, warts and all, because SE learned from it for the future. I'd hate playing FFVII, and I get the impression it's overhyped (doesn't mind it doesn't have enough merit to receive praise!), but it's good that it exists. And we should all be thankful for it in this season of festivity and joy and share it with our friends and the people we love. Poyo.
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This is pretty much my take - like a lot of games of its era it was a learning process that was leaps and bounds ahead of or different to what came before, full of mistakes and half measures but necessary for more fully baked games in the new mode later on, but it gets better remembered than those fully baked successors (and more fully baked predecessors in a previous mode) because it did the new mode first and so felt revolutionary where the better (or at least fuller) games were iterative evolutionary.
 
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The3rdCorinthian said:
Still after all this, I've finally learned to put my issues with FF7 to rest.

…IN ORDER TO FIGHT MY REAL ENEMY! FUCK YOU ADVENT CHILDREN, YOU ARE THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT!!!!!
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Others have spoken of these events before, but this is a good place to remind ourselves what was happening at Squaresoft at this moment in time.

Final Fantasy 7 was massive. It's hard to overstate how massive it was. It was so massive that, flush with success and cash, Squaresoft looked to broaden their horizons and break into the movie business.



Imagine a Looney Tunes ACME safe full of greenbacks plummeting into a bottomless pit.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a huge, expensive undertaking, attempting to bring pioneering CGI animation to new heights and shelling out for big-name American voice acting. In 2001 it released to a general round of indifference, recouping slightly more than half its $137 million budget. (The film itself isn't...terrible, to my recollection, but it sure wasn't good either, and apart from similarity in theming it sure wasn't what FF fans were expecting from a Final Fantasy movie.) It was a disaster that threatened to sink Squaresoft, and between its failure and the delays of Final Fantasy X, were what led to Square, desperately looking for a way out, merging with publisher Enix.

And Enix said "monetize your IP, you idiots."

And from FFX came FFX-2, and within a few short years dropped Dirge of Cerberus and Advent Children; the letter two being looked back on as dogshit nowadays but which were undeniable financial successes at the time and set Square-Enix on the path to becoming the monster corp we know today.

Until Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 dropped and threatened to sink the entire company into a financial pit because it was such a massive undertaking that was received badly and Square-Enix desperately needed a way out-

Yahtzee Croshaw: "Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything, tee-hee-hee."

Final Fantasy 8 & 9 still bear the Squaresoft logo, as they were made while Spirits Within was in production, but this is it right here, where the seeds for the end of an era were sown.
 
Wade Garrett said:
"Blah blah blah I have an absentee father and a domineering mother BILLIONS MUST BE SLAUGHTERED LIKE ANIMALS" does not become psychological depth just because you bare your chest to say it.
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True, but what does Rufus ShinRa have to do with this
Omicron said:
Yuffie

Yuffie is the best character in the game.
Look, I know she's battling that top spot with Cloud, Aerith and Tifa, but these are serious characters. They are about that drama. Meanwhile, Yuffie is absolutely unrivaled as a comedy party member in all seven games so far.
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Yes. Yes! Now: please play Intergrade. Please. They improved Remake's combat and she's so good, Omi. So good.
 
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