Might 15 be the Final Fantasy?

With the progression of the Final Fantasy series and the direction in which Square Enix is taking its game (or rather, games), we might start feeling that the series is pretty much coming to an end.

Someone has joked about the series reaching number 27, and it felt really close to the joke coming true, what with Final Fantasy 15 successfully being released for the PS4.

After that, though, there’s no further news or information, official or leaked, about the next Final Fantasy game to continue the series.
(Except an April Fools’ joke)

Final Fantasy is basically developing on just its spinoffs now. Final Fantasy 15 has a mobile version with chibi versions of the characters, perhaps to adapt to the lower specifications of mobile devices. The XBox One’s file size is 51.82 GB, while the PS Store states 40.5 GB. There isn’t a mobile device, tablet nor phone, that contains such storage yet, so such simplification of the character arts merely serve to reduce space rather than provide new content. A friend voiced frustrations about how the mobile version is exactly the same as the PS version, sans chibi-fied characters.

If you really love Final Fantasy 15 enough to replay the whole game, well… Perhaps seeing it in a different artstyle can still provide the replay value a fan yearns. Playstation 2’s Persona 3 had a male protagonist, which provided the option to change to a female version on the Playstation Portable. That was the only change in it, yet, it feels like quite the sensation of playing your favorite Persona game from a different angle. Sort of.

From a personal perspective, it might be more worthwhile to try an actual spinoff of the game, rather than to replay the exact same thing. Final Fantasy 7 Before Crisis gave the spotlight to the Turks, the main villain group in the game, which unfortunately could not see an English release, but nonetheless spawned a community of Turk-lovers to bolster the Reno and Rude factions. Plus, it could well have been the inspiration to Final Fantasy Type-0 and its class of various specialists.

Admittedly, some of Square Enix’s other games do have engaging quality. I’m referring to the Kingdom Hearts series that, although leverages on the Final Fantasy fan base thereby supposedly makes it a spinoff of the Final Fantasy series, is surprisingly able to create its own unique and exciting world of funky weapons, convoluted relationships, and pleasant twists in the storylines. Storylines, in plural, because they are all interlinked in every way possible, including the mainstream and spinoff titles. Furthermore, the interlinked stories are not of existing Final Fantasy or Disney characters – they are of Kingdom Heart’s original characters, Sora, Kairi, Riku, Roxas, etc.

Considering the success of a different game, this perhaps spurred on Square Enix to not put all their proverbials eggs into one game.

The development of further sequels of Final Fantasy may not even yield positive results. Did you know that the majority of the original Final Fantasy development team has been replaced? The remake of Final Fantasy 7 is now being headed by mainly Yoshinori Kitase, Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima. Square Enix even released to press in 2012 that they may shelf the remake of Final Fantasy 7 until they make a modern FF that surpasses it.

None have come close, thus far. At least, not on the same scale. Not hopeful, much?

This may have been a pessimistic post about the decline of the Final Fantasy series, but even so, the hopes for a brand new Final Fantasy 16, or even only a brand new Final Fantasy 7, still burns in us. More non-Final Fantasy titles? No, please. Octopath Traveler isn’t as unique or eye-catching as Final Fantasy 6. They can also add half of the world’s indie games into their Square Enix Collective, but those are still not Square Enix’s game, nor are they anything like what they used to make.

We want back the good old Squaresoft.