Topic: Is Final Fantasy VII too dated?

Okay, that actually makes a lot of sense. Reducing themselves to FFVII's fame would really be more hurtful than beneficial to them, not until a successor has passed it. But that just leaves the issue of Squenix' current approaches, which are embarrassing, to put it mildly...

Looks like we're never getting a Final Fantasy VII remake, then. :/

Hey now, FFXV is looking pretty sweet. Then again, I should know by now not to get my hopes up.

It hasn't aged well I can tell you that. It's extremely slow compared to RPGs before and after its time. It was ground break for the genre at it's release and I played through it multiple times. But I could easily go back and run through VI or IX before going back to VII.

Things they could improve would be game speed in general and most importantly, editing out filler story elements.

It's aged OKish. Some of the gameplay and graphics seem archaic by modern standards. Never understood why then went for those origami field models when the battle models looked so good for the time.
To a certain extent, you kinda needed to experience it at the time. Similar deal with Ocarina of Time. Both games were huge leaps forward but you can't see that in retrospect as it all blends into history.
FF7 will always be one of my favourite games because it completely altered my gaming history but I think maybe FF9 has aged a bit better.

I still feel to this day that it has the best battle system thanks to the gems you can attach to the weapons and armor. So much variety and yes a very compelling story, one of the best in gaming history! Graphics don't hold up as well but this game has so many good things going for it! I say stay the course as it only gets better. I still like FF IV and VI more overall but all 3 score 10's in my book!

Honestly that isn't even the real excuse. Sqaure would love to put out a remaster of VII but he issue is that the game would have to be completly redone from strach to make it appealing to audiences and you lose alot from the more campy 3D models that conveyed humor left. Without that your stuck with a game that's tonally like all the VII spin off content which is very dark and depressing.

Right. But only because they've admitted they lost the original model data for the backgrounds (I think). If they still had it, they could easily remake it in HD with a minor amount of fiddling!

Except XII, Final Fantasy has been vanity projects and tech demos since the beginning of PS2. If they stay that course, no, they will never again hit the highs of the SNES/PS1 era.

...IX is actually way slower than 7. I clocked it.

Except, you know, people still like that style of gameplay. They'd definitely have to tweak a few things to get it to run better and look better, maybe get rid of random battles (not a necessity, though) but it'd be no more complicated than remaking Dragon Quest VII...maybe even less...

Final Fantasy has always been a style-over-substance series where they're constantly experimenting with the formula. The only difference is before they were character-focused narratives that introduced ideas that were new to western audiences, though they usually weren't actually new - other games had done them in some form before. In fact, I think Final Fantasy IV's ATB system was the only Square-era FF system that I can't pin-point from other games that came before it, and that may simply be due to the limits of my knowledge than anything else...

Now they're more story-focused than they used to be, with battle systems in XII and XIII having systems that could more easily be argued as unique.

You're definitely right on that. Auto-haste is necessary in FF9 to keep you sane just as much as it is for strategic advantage.

I enjoyed it thoroughly when I first played it, about a year ago. Where in the game are you?

I just past the part where Red XIII finds out about his father. The feels, man. THE FEELS!!

While I don't find this game fun overall, it certainly does have it's moments.

Also, even though the battles in IX may be slower than VII, I still found that game a more enjoyable experience. That's just my opinion though.

Ha, that's cos one of their most influential members of staff once said that the most important thing about a character is that they have an interesting hairstyle. (paraphrasing, his (Nomura's) actually words were nearly as idiotic)

...I don't think that's even remotely close to what he said, but I can't find the quote anymore...

In all fairness it looked a bit aged even when it came out as the 3D on it was pretty poor, it was just the marketing juggernaut Sony threw at it to screw th competition (in particular Nintendo since they had FF) along with the high quality stills, music, and still fairly 'new' FMV based sequences to video games that really let it sit well with people. Now even with all the minor touch ups it gets the movies went from sketchy to terrible, and the visuals are like watching a cubist movement in motion. The game is just painful unless you're such a fan you can overlook the entire mess. It's clear they could clean it up with that PSP Crisis Core game with Cloud in it, but they won't.

I would just like to point out that FF7 still plays wonderfully and has a solid battle and class system that still holds up well today. It only looks ugly, and the less you think about the story, the better.

Words to live by for...just about any Square-Enix RPG that isn't going for barebones storytelling...

Shudder To each their own, but FFXV looks atrocious to me (and I've loved FF, even the poorly-aged, overrated FFVII). It looks like Xenoblade Chronicles X with:

+Better Graphics (One day Monolith will get faces rights )

-Worse world (Mechs and survial suits vs. Emo pants and music-video cars....hmmm)
-Likely nonsensical quests (if we can use the XIII trilogy as a hint)
-J-pop characters
-Worse history of recent games (Baten Kaitos Origins, Xenosaga III, Xenoblade Chronicles Vs. FFXIII: Lighting Returns, Last Remant, etc....T_T, not counting the better games coming out of Montreal)
-Worse art direction (not graphics)

They could always make a comeback with gameplay, but Xenoblade Chronicles already beat FF XII at it's own game and with multiple classes per character and very likely online co-op for Xenoblade Chronicles X...FFXV has a long slope to climb IMO.

Yeah, I couldn't re-find it either. Maybe I'm being unfair. It was definitely something about the character's hairstyles being important though. Which is a terrible set of priorities, no matter how it was phrased and makes me wonder to what extent his promotion from character designer to director of various projects has been part of the problem at Square. Maybe it's an unfair prejudice, but I just don't imagine that fashion nuts are that good when it comes to story-telling.