I have been playing Final Fantasy 6 Advance and it has become increasingly clear to me that someone at Square Enix really wants to make a new 2D turn based Final Fantasy and they would do an amazing job of it. While many people scoffed at the Advance releases of 4 through 6, perhaps because of some of the downgrade to the music, but probably because of the fact there was no drastic changes.
So what is the reason for no game like this? Probably money.
It’s sad but they can’t guarentee the sales. That or it would be against the “trend” of Final Fantasy to go “down” to a handheld. DQ can do this because graphical showcasing isn’t one of the big things for the series. Final Fantasy is not so much.
But with so many companies like Atlus heavily reusing assets these days, I can’t see why one of these random attempts on the handhelds can’t be a 2D turn based RPG. Crack out that Active Time Battle engine with a few tweaks, recolor some previous sprites or just slam in some similar ones and make an adventure. It can’t be worse than some of the shit that has been hitting us these days.
I had hoped MM9 would start the flood of “neo-retro” coming in but we haven’t see it quite yet. Some argue that the systems are antiquated and slow, but it was really just load times and poor menus. FF3, argue what you will about the gameplay between the Famicom and DS versions, but you can’t say the menus are better in the Famicom version. Hell, they could have been a bit better in the DS version, but game companies feel afraid of using all the buttons on the controller. I’m not saying that we need to be overloaded, but if the button has no action, maybe setting it to something to speed up moving through the menus would be a nice choice.
And some argue that the ATB started to “show its faults” with Final Fantasy 9, but with FF4DS being goddamned awesome, it’s clear that the poor load times of the game are the only real slowdown. Perhaps certain game designs can be inhibited by technical issues, but that hardly means the design should be thrown out the window.
I really wonder why it is no other company has attempted to go the route of the ATB. So many other battle systems have been straight up lifted into other games, DQ as a big example, but I really can’t think of a non-Square game that holds something like the ATB.
Someone educate me. I’m looking for more, even if they are old games.
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