>>539684310
Vanilletruth. That's why I'd say that the series should return to the approach that Sakaguchi used up to and including IX. There should be a quantitative balance of new and old elements. If the series decides to be an anthology, it must find that balance of new and old so that each new project offers enough new elements but still has enough traditional characteristics to avoid losing its personality in the eyes of the audience. The differences between games of the series after X are too drastic, which simply from a marketing standpoint hinders audience growth. Experience with III will help a person learn VI, VII, or IX, but experience with XII won't help a player learn XIII, and so on. People who loved XII's experience will never find anything like it in the series again, and a huge portion of them will leave the series after a few iterations because of unmet expectations. Now let's imagine this happens with every new game in the series, every time. It's a marketing hell. One can flatter themselves all they want with Sakaguchi's “FF's identity lies in constant change” slogans, slogans that Sakaguchi himself didn't stick to too much in practice during Squaresoft's time, but that's not going to create a clear brand vision in the audience's perception.
The Squaresoft era had a much more rational balance of new and old elements than the Square Enix era. We need to get back to that.
