[Square-Soft] Call me Jaded but...

[HasteInTime]

Do you remember when we used to call SE Sqaure-Soft? Cause, Pepperidge farm remembers! (LoL ) Seriously though, I do. It just seems to me that SE has been making more than its fair share of mistakes and not enough good risky choices like another full AAA console KH, or a FF that isn't on rails like FF13 and is more open-world with rich engaging characters and settings. Also a FF that would learn from Legend of Dragoon would be amazing. For once this isn't nostalgia biting me in the rear...

I love the Kingdom Hearts, Tomb-Raider, Dragons Quest series and just about everything SE does publish and/or develop, but its seems to me that they have let themselves go or traded all that fine Dev power for marketing power. If anything I would hope that they take example after Ubisoft whom listens to it's crowd's needs while still providing new experiences like Watch Dogs and balanced their Devs and marketing beautifully.

FF14RR is about the only game I have interest in with SE now and it would seem that we have heard nothing but a solid no on KH3 for a long time and other long time series like DQ cant get enough funding to staff itself for another game I have heard.

So there it is, I believe in the old version of Sqaure. The new one almost totally sucks. As a long time fan I want more RPG's from them and to see them offer a robust publishing deal with Ubisoft whom is better equipped than EA in my opinion. This way they should be able to focus on pure Dev time almost. To say the least overall I have many mixed feelings about SE and where they are going.

Because of this I support Mistwalker where the founder of Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi resides as the company's President. I have played Lost Oddesy and Blue Dragon both of which are amazing and Wii's The Last Story was a breath of fresh air I hadn't expected on a Nintendo Platform so full of 3rd party shovelware at the time.

Of course I have tweeted Sakaguchi and he was elated at my kind words as a fan and encouraging him to do whatever he felt right. So that was a highlight moment for me. Someday I should hope that I get him to sign and autograph his work.

Q1. So how do you feel about SE currently?
Q2. What do you want from them most?

[Fynn]

You should try Xenoblade Chronicles.

On topic, I don't really care anymore. I mean, KH is probably my favorite game series now and I am looking forward to certain titles, but I just don't care about them as a company. I won't go looking for new SE games because I think they're awesome, I just look for different stuff now. My devotion has wilted

[dandy da oak]

Square Enix are different to Squaresoft but the market has changed too. You might complain but maybe you aren't the market Square Enix wants, or the one that is going to give them the money they want. Things like this happen, nobody buys point and click adventure games any more but that doesn't mean they aren't good (and conversely everybody buys FPS games these days but that doesn't mean they are bad!)

[maybee]

Do you remember when we used to call SE Sqaure-Soft?

We did ?

[Quindiana Jones]

Squaresoft was a game developer, but Square Enix has considerably more things on its plate. The duties and thus the priorities changed.

I wish we could have both Squaresoft and Square Enix, because while I miss the quality of old Final Fantasy games, SE is probably one of my favourite publishers in today's market.

[HasteInTime]

You should try Xenoblade Chronicles.

On topic, I don't really care anymore. I mean, KH is probably my favorite game series now and I am looking forward to certain titles, but I just don't care about them as a company. I won't go looking for new SE games because I think they're awesome, I just look for different stuff now. My devotion has wilted

It's just like ya know, that they cant seem to get a grip on what the fans want anymore, they seem distant and disconnected for being a Japanese based company. :/

I will try Xenoblade Chronicles.

Square Enix are different to Squaresoft but the market has changed too. You might complain but maybe you aren't the market Square Enix wants, or the one that is going to give them the money they want. Things like this happen, nobody buys point and click adventure games any more but that doesn't mean they aren't good (and conversely everybody buys FPS games these days but that doesn't mean they are bad!)

Not saying that its all bad, just not what it used to be. Yes things do change but the fans are the gamers and they are the company's customers. Just where did it all go wrong?

Squaresoft was a game developer, but Square Enix has considerably more things on its plate. The duties and thus the priorities changed.

I wish we could have both Squaresoft and Square Enix, because while I miss the quality of old Final Fantasy games, SE is probably one of my favourite publishers in today's market.

Agreed.

[Polnareff]

Ever since they became Square-Enix, they've released more broken, less inspired games, as well as dampened the quality of the stories/character designs in these games. Look at Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. Pure fanfic through and through. A 5th-grader could make a better game or at least write a better story. FFXII to me was all slog and no fun. And then they had the nerve to leave the IJS version in Japan only, even though it's a thousand times better.

Kingdom Hearts got bogged down with unnecessary games like Re:Coded and Chain of Memories, just so they could make some quick bucks off KH fans. 8 years later and there is still no KH3.

Final Fantasy fell off the rails for me starting with 11. I hated XII and was kind of all right with XIII, except for the stupid narrow corridors. The Tactics Advance games were decent, but definitely didn't beat the original, IMO.

Now they're only really catering to the phone market. Games that fans want, they don't wanna make, but they'll gladly port stuff over to the smartphones. Stuff like this is why Squenix is suffering right now.

[Bolivar]

Ask old school fans of Interplay, Bioware, or Bethesda: no one's making RPGs like they used to. But lately SE's published a lot of great console games, developed a bunch of great handheld RPGs, and FFXIII was no more polarizing than any other entry in the series.

Square Enix never fell off, the gaming industry did. The talent's still there, I'll always have faith in them.

[Fynn]

Kingdom Hearts got bogged down with unnecessary games like Re:Coded and Chain of Memories, just so they could make some quick bucks off KH fans. 8 years later and there is still no KH3.

While I'll agree with you on coded, Chain of Memories is both very important to the overarching plot, as well as very "inspired", what with its interesting story concepts, an overhauled battle system, and one of the best written stories in the series. Actually, I think KH is an example of SE doing things right (aside from everything being released on a different console). Aside from coded, I think every entry is a great game.

[Aulayna]

Kingdom Hearts got bogged down with unnecessary games like Re:Coded and Chain of Memories, just so they could make some quick bucks off KH fans. 8 years later and there is still no KH3.

While I'll agree with you on coded, Chain of Memories is both very important to the overarching plot, as well as very "inspired", what with its interesting story concepts, an overhauled battle system, and one of the best written stories in the series. Actually, I think KH is an example of SE doing things right (aside from everything being released on a different console). Aside from coded, I think every entry is a great game.

Agreed, and also agreed that the biggest problem is it being spread over so many platforms.

[maybee]

8 years later and there is still no KH3.

Don't worry I'm sure that it will come out for a 2098 Christmas Release !

[Polnareff]

Kingdom Hearts got bogged down with unnecessary games like Re:Coded and Chain of Memories, just so they could make some quick bucks off KH fans. 8 years later and there is still no KH3.

While I'll agree with you on coded, Chain of Memories is both very important to the overarching plot, as well as very "inspired", what with its interesting story concepts, an overhauled battle system, and one of the best written stories in the series. Actually, I think KH is an example of SE doing things right (aside from everything being released on a different console). Aside from coded, I think every entry is a great game.

I actually made an error. I was talking about Re:Chain of Memories. I always get those two confused.

Anyway, IMO, the only really good KH games were 1, 2, and the original CoM. 358/2 Days got immensely boring because you took on the same types of missions over and over in the same locations. There were a lot of playable characters other than Roxas, but since there was no story for any of them other than him, it didn't really matter. It's good as a portable game, but fails as a KH game.

Re:Coded was Squenix spitting in the fans' faces. You could actually tell it was originally meant for mobile phones. It's so lackluster and bereft of focus that you end up wondering if they could make a decent KH game after that.

Re:Chain of Memories looked good, but wasn't really necessary.

Birth by Sleep was decent, until you realized that the story is essentially the same for all three characters. In a fairly (read: very loosely) similar manner to 358, you went through almost exactly the same story with all three characters. The battle system was pretty good, though, but the game was too short and too easy to really get much fun out of it.

KH3D was a good game, ruined by the stupid Drop mechanic. It can sometimes totally take you out of the experience. I never did like timers in games, so maybe that's just me. I loved the Flowmotion feature though.

I have to disagree about the entire industry falling off as well. Squenix has done it worse than most. Look at Mistwalker. They're still around making great RPGs. While Namco Bandai pumps out a new Tales game pretty much every year, they're still pretty damn good, and I'd venture to say they get better with each new game (at least.....after Tales of Destiny 2 came out, anyway, which is IMO the best Tales game). Gust hit a rough spot with some of their games, like Ar tonelico and some of the less-awesome Atelier games (looking at you Rorona!), but have since recovered and are back to making excellent games.

Hell, even Nintendo/Intelligent Systems are still making great RPGs, and Ninty as a whole isn't known for RPGs. But play games like Fire Emblem Awakening and Bowser's Inside Story, and they're some of the most top-notch games you'll find. Meanwhile, Square digs itself deeper into mediocrity. They ruined the Mana series with Children of Mana, pretty much said screw it to the Saga games (although Saga 3 on DS was quite good), have milked Kingdom Hearts for all it's worth with crazy gimmicks, and are now making Final Fantasy into a Fisher-Price pop-up book. They even kind of screwed over Dragon Quest by making it more like FFXII! And let's not get started on their iOS stuff. All The Bravest alone is enough to make any former Square fan puke. It's no wonder that most fans just prefer to play their older games.

[Wolf Kanno]

There are a lot of reasons I felt SE fell off the bandwagon, it wasn't just one bad game, its really been a series of uninspiring titles and I felt overall, the company has become misguided by the direction of the franchise. I feel most of the talent has run away and what's left has largely been given too much leeway to mull over development hell pet projects or churn out quick sequels to games no one really gives a smurf about. I do agree abit that its also the industry, RPGs have fallen out of mainstream and have returned to niche markets that are supported solely by small devoted fanbases. There are Tales of Fans, there are Atelier Fans, there are Persona Fans, but I don't see much uniformity as RPG fans like you had back in the 90s. To me the Japanese industry is having a sort of revolt going on, with long time creators of the famous franchises jumping ship from their parent company and trying to go indie again.

I think, in order for Squenix to get back on top, they need to stop using their flagship series as a crutch, side games and spin-offs are fine but if you really look at the difference from the series before 2000 and after, the number of titles with FF in the main title has exploded (35 new titles between 01-13, not counting ports and remakes which would knock this number up to 72 entries as opposed to the 19 titles released between 87-00) and I feel many of these games were weak and have thus tarnished what the brand used to be.

The other real problem with SE is the lack of leadership. There is no one over there that seems to have a clear idea and goal for the franchise. Some have tried to assert a direction but the mixed reviews and fan backlash has SE now second guessing itself. I feel Kitase and Toriyama are a bit discouraged because their idea of making FF into a game that felt like a film did not go over so well with the fanbase. Nomura is too involved in his own projects to care about heading the main franchise (and I'm sure some of the backlash from his early career with the series has made him have second thoughts about taking the reins of the franchise) and people like Ito and Kawazu don't seem interested in taking over the franchise either.

I feel the company needs a strong creative leader to direct the franchise and I feel the company needs to change how they market the franchise and maybe do a rebranding. SE has pulled a Capcom and kind of ran their franchises into the ground in the last few years.

[HasteInTime]

There are a lot of reasons I felt SE fell off the bandwagon, it wasn't just one bad game, its really been a series of uninspiring titles and I felt overall, the company has become misguided by the direction of the franchise. I feel most of the talent has run away and what's left has largely been given too much leeway to mull over development hell pet projects or churn out quick sequels to games no one really gives a smurf about. I do agree abit that its also the industry, RPGs have fallen out of mainstream and have returned to niche markets that are supported solely by small devoted fanbases. There are Tales of Fans, there are Atelier Fans, there are Persona Fans, but I don't see much uniformity as RPG fans like you had back in the 90s. To me the Japanese industry is having a sort of revolt going on, with long time creators of the famous franchises jumping ship from their parent company and trying to go indie again.

I think, in order for Squenix to get back on top, they need to stop using their flagship series as a crutch, side games and spin-offs are fine but if you really look at the difference from the series before 2000 and after, the number of titles with FF in the main title has exploded (35 new titles between 01-13, not counting ports and remakes which would knock this number up to 72 entries as opposed to the 19 titles released between 87-00) and I feel many of these games were weak and have thus tarnished what the brand used to be.

The other real problem with SE is the lack of leadership. There is no one over there that seems to have a clear idea and goal for the franchise. Some have tried to assert a direction but the mixed reviews and fan backlash has SE now second guessing itself. I feel Kitase and Toriyama are a bit discouraged because their idea of making FF into a game that felt like a film did not go over so well with the fanbase. Nomura is too involved in his own projects to care about heading the main franchise (and I'm sure some of the backlash from his early career with the series has made him have second thoughts about taking the reins of the franchise) and people like Ito and Kawazu don't seem interested in taking over the franchise either.

I feel the company needs a strong creative leader to direct the franchise and I feel the company needs to change how they market the franchise and maybe do a rebranding. SE has pulled a Capcom and kind of ran their franchises into the ground in the last few years.

First I have one thing to say of Capcom, SE is not Capcom and vice-versa. While I believe Capcom takes its own time to adapt to the market/current-trends that are on going and it is Japanese based like SE. However, Capcom is uniquely suffering for different reasons entirely I feel than what you or the next may guess. I personally have more faith in their decisions than SE and they are currently restructuring their marketing and staff here in the US where they struggle. They currently think that digital sales trends are now supposed to be their focus since they are losing profit due to lack of extra content and are right to think so if you have been seeing Nintendo's worldwide data for the 3DS EShop vs retail and it's just gaining numbers like crazy for their Eshop having those games sold digitally and they at Nintendo also wish to bring DLC that matters to their customer base. (which Capcom also hopes to do as Nintendo suggests)

Other than the comparison you made poorly I might say, everything else about SE I feel you said is spot on. They need a leader of vision who is a Game Designer that can figure how to work out a team with powerful ideas and test them for Final Fantasy. I always believed that they need two different teams to handle FF as a "flagship" series so that we get the not just the okay stuff they have been grinding out but also the really great stuff and the best stuff possible on both the MoRPG and RPG on console front. Much like Betehsda does with Obsidian's games Elder-scrolls and Fallout (Yes the first Fallout 3 game was all of Beth together, although Obsidian is Beth too- its where their best and brightest are) on a bi-yearly basis by rotating them and having mostly separate teams that communicate with one another.

I feel that SE is using the handheld and Cell phone market as their safety net, where they are only catering to Japan itself instead of the world like Capcom or Ubisoft. The time of specific markets has long since passed, its pretty niche to only cater to one kind of crowd these days. I'm also not saying that they should try to cater to the casual either- no just focus on the core players of your audience and sprinkle refined ideas for the hardcore and casual players. Find a balance that works and stick with it. In Ubisoft's case they hire more Devs than they do Marketers and the same with Capcom. In SE's case I feel that there is too much Marketing focus and not enough on the Dev side.

Kingdom Hearts got bogged down with unnecessary games like Re:Coded and Chain of Memories, just so they could make some quick bucks off KH fans. 8 years later and there is still no KH3.

While I'll agree with you on coded, Chain of Memories is both very important to the overarching plot, as well as very "inspired", what with its interesting story concepts, an overhauled battle system, and one of the best written stories in the series. Actually, I think KH is an example of SE doing things right (aside from everything being released on a different console). Aside from coded, I think every entry is a great game.

I actually made an error. I was talking about Re:Chain of Memories. I always get those two confused.

Anyway, IMO, the only really good KH games were 1, 2, and the original CoM. 358/2 Days got immensely boring because you took on the same types of missions over and over in the same locations. There were a lot of playable characters other than Roxas, but since there was no story for any of them other than him, it didn't really matter. It's good as a portable game, but fails as a KH game.

Re:Coded was Squenix spitting in the fans' faces. You could actually tell it was originally meant for mobile phones. It's so lackluster and bereft of focus that you end up wondering if they could make a decent KH game after that.

Re:Chain of Memories looked good, but wasn't really necessary.

Birth by Sleep was decent, until you realized that the story is essentially the same for all three characters. In a fairly (read: very loosely) similar manner to 358, you went through almost exactly the same story with all three characters. The battle system was pretty good, though, but the game was too short and too easy to really get much fun out of it.

KH3D was a good game, ruined by the stupid Drop mechanic. It can sometimes totally take you out of the experience. I never did like timers in games, so maybe that's just me. I loved the Flowmotion feature though.

I have to disagree about the entire industry falling off as well. Squenix has done it worse than most. Look at Mistwalker. They're still around making great RPGs. While Namco Bandai pumps out a new Tales game pretty much every year, they're still pretty damn good, and I'd venture to say they get better with each new game (at least.....after Tales of Destiny 2 came out, anyway, which is IMO the best Tales game). Gust hit a rough spot with some of their games, like Ar tonelico and some of the less-awesome Atelier games (looking at you Rorona!), but have since recovered and are back to making excellent games.

Hell, even Nintendo/Intelligent Systems are still making great RPGs, and Ninty as a whole isn't known for RPGs. But play games like Fire Emblem Awakening and Bowser's Inside Story, and they're some of the most top-notch games you'll find. Meanwhile, Square digs itself deeper into mediocrity. They ruined the Mana series with Children of Mana, pretty much said screw it to the Saga games (although Saga 3 on DS was quite good), have milked Kingdom Hearts for all it's worth with crazy gimmicks, and are now making Final Fantasy into a Fisher-Price pop-up book. They even kind of screwed over Dragon Quest by making it more like FFXII! And let's not get started on their iOS stuff. All The Bravest alone is enough to make any former Square fan puke. It's no wonder that most fans just prefer to play their older games.

ALL the Bravest was my utter last straw with everything else SE in-house, on that note I agree. SE has gone down a dark path and I want to hold out hope for them. It's just that as I said though- not enough Dev power and not enough focus on fans like us and/or a Core audience. RPG's are still widely popular, cause series such as Elderscrolls and Fallout sells well for Bethesda. There is room for them to still do RPG's as long as they focus on the "meat of gaming" being a Core player audience instead and get superb collaborative teams of writers, devs, and artists behind each one (series or game). DQ though has its very own creative leader but SE keeps giving him the "shaft" and cold-shoulder as it were. That only happens cause of the mistakes SE keeps dumping its money into, such as All the Bravest instead of another great DQ game. If SE feels that it doesn't have the writers it needs, maybe they should call Funimation up and ask for a great scriptwriter that they can hire for their project, they have all of the best tools in their own nation's backyard. I suggest that they start using them effectively. As Anime is widely popular still and should no longer be considered niche.

Alternatively, if I could I might lead SE myself into a happier direction with solid 1st party RPGs, Shooters, and One Strategy type, cause they can take big teams to do. With the MoRPG FF idea still running. Its a big task and not easy to do a MoRPG, I would hope that they found that balance with FF14RR. In my opinion it might be healthy to avoid a new FF of any kind on the market for about 3 years outside of the FF14RR MoRPG. Giving focus to FF in a good way and adding support where it will be needed, on the side all the while working on a team and FF that would be for the consoles as a basic FF RPG w/good solid DLC/Expansions planned. Spacing the FF game releases while adding new content expansions allow for the games like 10-X2 to be put in the same world setting and add new areas, characters and dialog. This can become a good use if they focus on full expansions being apart of the FF experience and add back in "world exploration" which would be key to the experience and DLC expansion additions. They would need a flexible but really powerful engine built for this and should update often as it's needed for the games to evolve and become better, I do not wish for a FF game series to become like CoD has in any regard, outside of successful.

Edit:
Maybe SE just aims too high market wise?

[Polnareff]

Capcom's predicament is very unique, and nothing like Squenix's at all. Whereas Squenix spits in the fans' faces all the time now, Capcom at least tries to please their fanbase, as long as they're willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Capcom seriously has one of the worst fanbases of any company in recent memory. They cry and scream and moan (especially on Capcom's forums!) about wanting certain games, and then when they release the games, the fans don't buy them. So Cap is forced to basically stop throwing fans bones and focus on games that actually sell.

A good example is the recently released Darkstalkers Resurrection. Fans clamored about having a 'Stalkers collection for years, that you could play online. Capcom does it and it doesn't make their (pretty low) sales quota. Everyone gets mad when they say they won't be re-releasing much anymore.

Another good example is Ace Attorney Investigations. After Apollo Justice sold fairly poorly, Capcom was reluctant to release the game here. Fans bitched and moaned and we got the game. Pretty much bombed. AAI2 was kept Japan-only and fans' jimmies are still rustled over it.

Capcom's problem is, they can't win. They still make damn good games, other than RE5 and RE6. They have, for the most part (other than character color DLC) reasonably-priced DLC for most of their games. But people cry and moan, likening Capcom to EA for DLC, and the fact that some of it was day one. But other companies like SNKP, Arc Systems, Midway, etc. got away with overpriced day-one DLC with nobody complaining. That's not even mentioning games like CoD, Battlefield, etc. There was all that backlash about the DLC for SF X Tekken, but it was reasonably priced. I'd pay 20 bucks for 12 characters, instead of 9 bucks for one character (like with Blazblue).

Mega Man was another sore spot. Since the Legends games, the MM games have either sold mediocre amounts (Zero) or outright bombed (Star Force). Yet, like the other parts of the fanbase, they whine like little Johnny did when his parents took his Game Boy away, after Capcom tells the MM fanbase (rightfully) to screw themselves.

It's no wonder Capcom said screw the fans and just started doing what they wanted to. They've already stared down the barrel of bankruptcy three times, why on earth would they wanna do it a fourth?

There was something I forgot to touch on in my last post. It seems that Square is too focused on cinematics over gameplay. Without all the fancy cutscenes, I bet FFXIII could have been made in maybe 2 years. Why is it that a company like Namco (who used to really suck until the Bandai merger) can pump out 1 or 2 Tales games a year and make an arguably better game than a company who spends 4-7 years making one game? Or Gust, who can make a new Atelier in NINE MONTHS and have it still be pretty fun, albeit derivative?

Logic dictates that it is indeed because too much emphasis is put on how the game looks. You don't spend almost 5 years making a game full of narrow corridors. C'mon now. Squenix wants that next big success like FFVII, so they keep taking the same approach they took with that game. I don't blame them, but it's starting to get old by now. At least back then, we got games like FFIX and FFX out of the whole deal.

I will say that I absolutely loved Type-0 because while it had the best graphics on the PSP, it was more focused on how the game played. The World Ends With You was the same way. Really, all of their best efforts now are on handhelds.