It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
I’ve never played dragon quest, but as a long time final fantasy enjoyer, final fantasy 15 sucked so much I put it down and I never went out of my way to play 16 because of that.
FF7Remake was amazing. FF7Rebirth was good in many ways but also had way too much garbage and goofy shit so I have very mixed feelings about it. Also like the post said it’s a very long wait for a complete story. It also is not really an entry point because FF7 is a huge franchise in itself.
If you take those out of the equation, the last FF games were 13 lightning returns in 2013 which I think is probably good but very different (I didn’t end up finishing but not because I didn’t like it) and 13-2 which in my opinion is one of the best in the series but gets slept on because it’s gated by 13 (2009) which I like but I wouldn’t call amazing or transformative.
I think FF12 might would qualify as a worthy childhood formative game, which means (excluding 16 since I just don’t know) the last good FF that is also an entry point came out in 2006. 20 years ago.
Tldr; I don’t know if FF16 is a worthy childhood formative experience, but if it’s not, the last candidate is TWENTY years ago, so ofc young people aren’t getting attached to the franchise. They’re probably playing jrpgs that are actually good instead.
As a non FF player who played 8 and 9 I thought 13 was kinda bad.
Lots of hallways when the previous games had more discovery to them.
Have not really played one since as I wasn’t into MMOs and figured I would try the 7 remake when they finished which it looks like they never will.
A lot of people have the hallway complaint, and honestly I think it mostly came down to visuals and sound design. So many games people love have exactly the same level design, including FFX, but there is normally enough to look at, and you don’t have the “high heels on tile” footsteps exacerbating it. I’m also pretty sure a large part of it was a YouTube video pointing it out and people jumping on the bandwagon.