Can Final Fantasy survive if overall review scores never get back to the 9-10 range? I guess what I’m really asking is, is FF moving into being a full-fledged “media” franchise instead of one with a core of critically-acclaimed games that are seen as relevant and innovative by the mainstream gaming press? In other words, if we still love the games but their Metacritic scores no longer reflect that, is Final Fantasy going to become what other franchises like Sonic already are?

Anonymous asked:
Can Final Fantasy survive if overall review scores never get back to the 9-10 range? I guess what I'm really asking is, is FF moving into being a full-fledged "media" franchise instead of one with a core of critically-acclaimed games that are seen as relevant and innovative by the mainstream gaming press? In other words, if we still love the games but their Metacritic scores no longer reflect that, is Final Fantasy going to become what other franchises like Sonic already are?

Final Fantasy became a “media franchise” long before now. I could direct you to The Spirits Within, if you like.

The last main series title to get 9-10 review scores in the West was Final Fantasy XII. As much as quite a lot of the fanbase hated XII, the gaming press loved it; most people apparently forgot just how well it did critically. Since then and spin-offs and sequels aside like the FFVII compilation, X-2 and XIII-2, critics didn’t start really questioning the main series until 2010 when XIII largely failed to live up to expectations and when XIV released too early to even be considered playable.

Final Fantasy is in an odd situation I’d say because it’s really currently the only JRPG to have reached mainstream recognition. For a variety of reasons that almost all come down to Japanese vs. Western tastes, Japanese RPGs just don’t get the kind of popularity FF’s built up. Western gaming trends now aren’t what they were in the 90s when Japanese games largely set the standards. That, coupled with the fact that whatever Square Enix puts out now has an impossibly high name to live up to, guarantees that everyone will scrutinize down to the very last detail.

But I don’t think FF could turn into Sonic. If anything, Final Fantasy has the sheer nostalgia factor I don’t think Sonic has. Whether people love or hate the series now, I would like to think that either way people are still going to pay some sort of attention to it. Square Enix still has Versus XIII left to release which almost everyone’s been waiting for, and Final Fantasy XV is inevitable. At this point, it’s come down to proper execution and presentation more than anything else; and suffice it to say, they learned their lessons with XIII and XIV unfortunately the hard way. As much as I liked it, it’s simply in their best interests not to try again what they did with XIII.