Can Square ever recover?

>>713711420 (OP)
Yes, make FF turn based, the end

>>713711420 (OP)
>Squaresoft stopped doing turn based FF games after the Gooch left
hmmm...

>>713711497
Maybe it's time to acknowledge that you've said everything that needs to be said regarding Final Fantasy after... what are we up to now? Sixteen entries?
For fuck's sake, make something new.

>>713711497
You're forgetting all the pozzed western shit they still cling to

>>713711420 (OP)
No one but nuFans and MMO addicts disagree.
Square Enix fell off a cliff when he left. And not so coincidentally, Mistwalker's games held a consistent quality even without Square Enix, that Square Enix never managed to replicate.

>>713711420 (OP)
He has a point. Modern FF doesnt feel like FF in decades. Advent Children was the beginning of the end.

The moment they changed their name from SquareSoft they started sucking.

Square-Enix "collapsed" after Sakaguchi left because they let the retarded Squaresoft president stay president after the merger even though he okay'd Sakaguchi's shitty movie that ruined Squaresoft.

>>713711420 (OP)
I don't think so. Their heads are way up their own asses.

>>713711420 (OP)
literally who

>>713711804
Final Fantasy is for the most part, not a series of sequels. They share common elements like chocobos and characters named Cid, but in general they are each original stories that take place in new worlds.

>>713712242
He said "who" like a retard.

>>713712191
The financial consequences of Spirit Within's box office failure haven't been relevant to Square's operations for at least fifteen years. It's also a good movie.

>>713711420 (OP)
Context: He’s referring to the company immediately after he left, and thinks they’re fine now. It’s not necessarily about the quality of their games, but his leadership of the company.

>>713711497
>Yes, return FF to the same gameplay loop that didn't help improve its sales past the 7th iteration, the end

I wonder what you cocksuckers will bitch and moan about when XVII with it's turn based combat didn't good sell enough

>>713712394
He's not wrong either. While FF is deader than ever the latest entries are not the low point, 13/15 era is the bottom.

>>713711420 (OP)
It's true. There hasn't been a good FF since X.

>>713712417
That was then when it had been played out for a decade at that point. XIII and XV both showed people were there for the series but how disappointing they were left people with a bad taste in their mouths. Wasn't XIII the best selling FF game until XV came out?
People weren't tired of JRPGs, they just wanted a break for a while and the current climate shows people are aching for a return to traditional JRPGs just more broad than action RPGs.

>>713711420 (OP)
>Can Square ever recover?
From what? The highest stock value ever in SE history?

Cope and seethe.

>>713712385
>The financial consequences of Spirit Within's box office failure haven't been relevant to Square's operations for at least fifteen years
Then Sakaguchi leaving shouldn't be relevant either?

>>713712769
If XIII and XV come out in like the PS1 era where there was a new FF game every 1-2 years people would be way more forgiving, I think, but games just take way too long now for the dogshit they end up releasing.

>>713712417
>I wonder what you cocksuckers will bitch and moan about when XVII with it's turn based combat didn't good sell enough
You are retarded
>waaaah if you make it turn based that automatically makes it good
No dumbfuck, they still have to actually design a good world, good characters, good ost, good story, good systems to interact with ON TOP of making it turn based
Making 15 or 16 turn based wouldn't have changed it, because even if you ignore the gameplay (which is dogshit) those games are fundamentally bad on every level and nobody fucking likes them for a reason except brainrotted ff14 players basically.
However the easy example here is the 13 trilogy, because the characters were mostly poorly written but at least their designs didn't suck donkey dick, the osts were great, the stories were mediocre but they at least attempted something fairly unique, their setting was unique, the environments were nice with good atmosphere even in the shitty corridor zones of the first ff13, and it being turn based and having at least SOME rpg systems even if they were objectively worse than every system that came before made them at least playable. Hence why they are better games than 14, 15 and 16 despite all their extensive flaws. I have replayed 13-2 at least twice. Not a soul alive will ever replay 15 or 16 from now until the end of time.
So yes, obviously 17 needs to be turn based AND not fucking dogshit at the same time you retard

>>713711420 (OP)
You left out the part where he says he praises them for getting back on track in time
Wonder why

>>713711497
We hear you loud and clear, anon-san
We will make more FF13 starring Lightning

>>713713040

>>713711420 (OP)
>Sakaguchi leaves square
>Spends years producing the extremely mediocre Blue Dragon series and weird shit like lost odyssey
>Has only made IOS games since 2014, no new games since 2021
>Only good game ended up being published by square anyway
>Spends every day playing FFXIV, sometimes up to 12h per day according to himself

did Square really lose anything when he left?

>>713711420 (OP)
Name a good turn based Final Fantasy game. Most entries are mind numbing because of how easy they are. H-game combat is more strategic than Final Fantasy.

>>713712580
Not to say that 13 or 15 aren't trash, but I think that 16 is still worse than both of these.

>>713713040
16 with Turn Based Combat (and the RPG mechanics that go along with Turn Based combat like a full party), would have actually been a brilliant FF game. Every bad decision of 16 stems from not being an RPG.

>>713713357
Can you substantiate why you think that? Because 16 is a flawed game, but 13 and especially 15 are kusoge. They feel like something made by a totally amateur developer.

>>713713387
Yeah Clive alone was boring

>>713711420 (OP)
Square died in the merger and nothing good came out Square Enix.
When did the dude leave?

>>713712869
An employee's experience and skillset are not replaceable or unimportant in the same way money is, given that money is just a virtual abstraction used to justify resource allocation.

>>713713290
Games aren't made by one person. Square without Guch is shit. Guch on his own also can't accomplish anything. You need the band

>>713713898
you don't need square for anything. they are more replaceable than anything

So far the arguments are:
>"Make it turn based and it will sell, how do i know? I JUST DO OKAY?!"
>"Gooch was never bad lol"
>"this one movie has ruined SE and they've remained dead ever since"
>"Just don't make a dogshit FF game bro"

>>713711420 (OP)
Afraid not. The movie flopped way beyond Squaresoft's expectations and tanked the company's reputation.

>>713711420 (OP)
I've been saying it for years, they cancel Kingdom Hearts and fire Nomura, and SE will overnight soar to Square Soft levels of quality.

>>713711420 (OP)
The literal only reason SE still exists today is the FF14 MMO skinnerbox. That's it.

>>713712261
That means there's even less reason not to explore alternatives. You know, except shareholder greed and a lack of confidence in selling your games based upon their own merits rather than, you know, coat-tail riding. I'm not singling out Square on this one, this shit is endemic to the modern world.

>>713711420 (OP)
>Barry is deliberately misinterpreting quotes again
What else is new? lol

Anyway, SE stock just went up another 19% this month. Please tell us how furious that makes you. :)))

>>713714216
>Just don't make a dogshit FF game bro
I don't see how this one is bad advice.

>>713714548
And Tifa tetas figures

>>713713534
Well 13 is a beginning of an end to the series in my opinion. It clearly shows that square's prioritises were to make the game seem bigger than it actually is while being on the cutting edge of technology, to simplify it's RPG elements such as interacting with NPCs or your party members, make combat to appear flashy and bombastic. All these things require a lot of developer time and don't contribute towards what final fantasy actually supposed to be. The most memorable part of 13 is it's art direction which still quite unique to this day and while the paradigm shift sucks, it was improved upon in xiii-2 and can still offer some gameplay variety or force the player to experiment with the party composition.

>Step 1: rehire DA GOOCH
>Step 2: make a low budget four mystery niggas in a row game that will run on everything
>Step 3: Get Uematsu to compose the OST
>Step 4: release on everything
Thats it.

>>713711420 (OP)
That's what they get for betraying nintendo and supporting the inferior playstation.

>>713714635
As expected from a troon who has to leave out context

>>713714635
You understand that this means it's about to crash, right?

>>713712962
Yeah, the issue is how long it takes leading to an unrealistic hype for them. The thing is that Squeenix is making these smaller games with Harvestella, Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default, Triangle Strategy, etc. but they don't advertise them and barely anyone knows they exist. I guarantee you if Nintendo wasn't bankrolling the advertisement for Live a Live no one would even know that came out.

>>713712813
This is only because they did the MTG cards

>>713715046
Millennials are really embarrassing kek

>>713715026
Psx is what made them big though, you cultist

>>713711420 (OP)
Its not over yet

>>713712962
Jrpgs in general just take too long
Just look at atlus struggling with Persona and Yakuza, and these ones recycle tons of shit and are half visual novels

>>713715208
>Psx is what made them big
Psx made them into the bloated piece of shit that they are now. And like all Pisstation-adjacent studios, they are CRUMBLING.

>>713715303
Holy kek you tendies are still butthurt about psx, grow up

>>713715292
Atlus doesn't do Yakuza, that's entirely on RGG Studio.
Atlus just does the Purse Owner games, SMT, and now Metaphor.
Both sides have the budget of used chewing gum and Yakuza has only just recently started to seemingly get a budget that's not A at best and is more of an interim between A and AA.

>>713713534
>>713714823
15 is basically an unfinished frankenstein's monster of game but at least up to the altissia the game is fairly cohesive in what it's trying to be and it sort of works. This part of the game is still mediocre at best, though, but there are glimpses of what it might have been.
16 just feels like a product made to appeal to focus groups, not something born out of creativity. It's a very basic action game unsuccesfully masquarading as an RPG that takes formulaic approach in making a FF XIV expansion and applies it to a mainline entry.

>>713715026
Imagine being this anally annihilated by SE when they drop your inferior restrictive ass and you force your bought-out scamco employees to shit out offline gacha MMOs for the tendiecucks to consume

>>713711497
I hope they do this just to see it fail even harder.

>>713715364
Snoys are still assmad about being psyoped by the pisstation advertisement into buying trash consoles with no real games. They are secretly jealous at nintengods which is why they are so angry.

>>713715458
Metaphor needed 7 years, and Yakuza still recycles a lot and they don't sell over 5 millions. This means a high budget jrpg is too risky
>Chewing gum budget
And even then they are struggling with P4R and p6.

>>713715548
Sorry anon I enjoyed PS1 and PS2 games, keep crying about it while you act like a cultist who only defends the same game if it's released on Nintendo only like when you shilled Octopath 1 to death and completely forgot about 2 for being multiplatform

>>713715513
I think 16 is the game with a complete vision of what it wants to be and it feels like a complete game. 15 is a mess that drops you into the middle of a nothing plot that escalates in the most unnatural way to a resolution that makes no sense.

>>713715515
>Imagine being this anally annihilated by SE
Nintendo dominates while Square are going out of business. Should have listened to nintendo and not made cinematic trash. Cope.

>>713715513
Nah, the Kaiju fights in 16 were cool as fuck. And were pretty unique

We like Final Fantasy. Yes, including both 15 and 16.
We like 14 and Yoshida.
We like their mobile games and spinoffs.

If you don’t, your name is Barry and you’re obsessed. We represent the entire consensus of gaming and we ALL like Final Fantasy in its current iteration. Got it?

>>713715712
>while Square are going out of business
You said the same about Sega and Capcom. Even Konami is coming back somehow
Must be sad when less popular companies still get threads, feels insulting to your company, right?

>>713715685
All JRPGs should be on nintendo consoles only. The Switch dominates the japanese market. Thankfully, stockholders are taking these companies to account and forcing them to release on the superior platform.

>>713715862
>Nintendo consoles only
Fuck off, atlus is happy with PC. Meanwhile sentinels 13 is rotting in the switch

>>713715803
>You said the same about Sega and Capcom
And they have been dying slowly but surely.

>>713715559
Oh I'm not saying to make a high budget JRPG, you just have to do what you can to make it look high budget like E33 did.

>>713715961
Yeah tendie anytime now

>>713715862
>shoulda, would, coulda
A pissed off tendie really does help lift ones spirits, thank you.

>>713715738
>turn based party based FFXVI
>Mythos power let's you swap Eikons for your party members which act like the GFs/jobs.
>Can swap between on foot and Kaiju combat on the fly as the situation demands ala Xenogears
>Actually let's you visit the capital cities
>Everything else is exactly the same.


There, now XVI is the best Final Fantssy ever made, didn't even take 10 minutes of thought.

AYOOO LIL CUH YAPPIN TS PMO- ACK!


Ok now that zoomer comments are out of the way reminder that ffx was the last decent game

I gave up on Final Fantasy like 15 years ago. I'm concerned they'll ruin DQ12 turning it into a garbage action game like FF16

>>713715862
Fuck off Nintendo jeet marketer

I just want another Kingdom Hearts game. What's taking so long?

>>713712079
The "Soft" went to Monolithsoft.

>>713716306
Missing Link was supposed to tide us over and come out like a year or two ago but you saw how that went so now the wait is for KH4. I have no idea why they're taking so long to make now compared to the past since it's still ultimately stylized and the worlds don't have to be enormous.

>Square Enix collapsed
>Still around after 25 years

>>713715738
>basically cutscenes that just show random big damage numbers.
I can clearly see Yoshida's train of thought be like "what if final fantasy summon magic but with god of war QTEs".
They're somewhat more interactive than this, of course, but even that was done earlier by Bayonetta, so only easily impressable brainlets or someone who haven't played enough videogames would consider them unique.

>>713716608
Unironically the Kaiju battles in XVI are more interactive than Bayonetta 3's Kaiju combat. The only battle that is
>basically cutscenes that just show random big damage numbers
Is the one in the demo

>>713712580
>While FF is deader than ever the latest entries are not the low point
One of the most hyped and anticipated remakes in gaming history was turned into an episodic sequel with alternate universes and introduced the company's ethics department while the latest mainline game is less Final Fantasy and more Devil May Cry and Game of Thrones

>>713712385
>>713712869
Its about as relevant as MTG's recent boost. Without that dogshit movie he would have been involved in the games more, and maybe without that failure he would have stayed

spirits within was good

>>713711497
Very white and very based.

>>713716803
>while the latest mainline game is less Final Fantasy and more Devil May Cry and Game of Thrones
FF16's pre timeskip was doing fine until the story switched to must kill God cliche.

>>713715515
Stop living in the 90s, it was almost 30 years ago.
Company-wise, Nintendo never was so high and Square never was this low. And both situations were caused only by their own merit.

Square-Enix is a mess since the early 2000s, they didn't support multiplatform when they should, then they didn't support Xbox when they had to, then they didn't support PC gaming when they should, then they didn't supported Switch as how they should have when they should, and today you have a shell of company which basically reduced it's influence when their direct rivals, as how it is with Capcom, Bandai Namco and Sega all grow in influence in both domestic and western branches.

And, for Sony and Playstation, it's obvious that their "Squresoft" from the 2020s is Atlus. Square-Enix is around five or so years to become the main character from "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor.

>>713711420 (OP)
>Can Square ever recover?

>>713711420 (OP)
But can Sakaguchi appeal to zoomers?

>>713715694
You are not wrong. But 15 at least has it's owh identity (or at least something that was left of it after the development hell): the car, the road trip atmosphere, Pronto's photos, the fishing mini game. 16 has none of that, it just mindlessly furthers the trends that began way back in 13, see >>713714823 .
All the while structure wise being a carbon copy of a ff 14 expansion, which in itself tried to parrot world of warcraft's approach to development.

>>713711497
Worked out well for Fantasian right?
>mobile port slop
I thought turn based was good enough to not need good graphics?

>>713712813
>line go up everything good
retarded golem

>>713714635
>>713717414
now make a line graph of final fantasy series sales lmao

>>713717371
Games should be multiplatform no matter how much you seethe. You only want it to be exclusive so you can shill it
You are like the modern art meme were people praised some modern art when someone put the wrong label kek

>>713717646
Nobody cares about other jrpgs, at most Persona for zoomers and even then let's see if 40 years old zoomers will like being called old in a future Persona
It's about FF being turn based, with tons of cutscenes and realistic graphics, the rest is just larp

>>713716763
Anon, are trying to make me look I've only played the demo or something? I haven't finished 16, yes, because it's a piece of shit (duh) and I've only played it up to the point where Clive gets to summon shiva through the pover of sex. But phoenix, garuda, titan and bahamut all were interactive cutscenes or lame rail shooter segments with random big numbers showing up on the screen during attacks. And I really doubt that odin is any different.

>>713711420 (OP)
Eurogamer are retarded, Umestu didn't say Square Enix 'collapsed' he said Square collapsed as in Square Soft.
Which is true it did collapse requiring it to merge with Enix to become Square Enix.

How does a journalist rag not READ the most basic point Umetsu was making?

>>713717864

>>713718397
That's not a line graph.

>>713718103
I honestly don't think a game like FFXVI would be a better game if it was turn based.

Speaking of Squeenix, the Steam Summer Sale is about to start. Over the past few days some SE games, like
>Visions of Mana
>Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven
>Star Ocean Second Story R
are at 40% discount, which is historical low so far, but it goes away in 10 min. What's the chance these will continue to be discounted during the Steam Summer Sale? Does SE normally do that, or do they fuck around and not have their main titles on sale during the actual Steam sale for some reason?

>>713712079
Yup. Damn I miss squaresoft. Fuck squenix.

>>713718719
>It goes away soon
Damn

>>713712582
VI
6 is VI, not X. x is 10, which was flaming hot garbage.

>>713711420 (OP)
Every "superstar" developer at square enix is due to retire in the next 5-8 years.

>muh line chart
So should they kill fire emblem?

If you people didn't buy Rebirth, then you weren't going to buy a turn based Final Fantasy. Also, pretending that Final Fantasy didn't have great music even at its lowest points is quite an inaccurate statement and I dare you to even remotely prove that wrong. If there's one thing the series is doing right, its the music.

>>713719074
Why'd you only cut out a piece of the entire line chart?

It's not a pie chart.

>>713719074
Isn't this good? 10 years ago people complained that awakening was a mistake because it opened the floodgates to casuals and waifufags so Engage returning the series to a smaller, more focused audience seems like a good thing.

>>713719559
>isn't this good
no because the direction it focused on isn't good either.

>>713719559
Line is lower now you marketer, if this was any other game you would spam FLOPPED

>>713719706
I liked it

>>713711420 (OP)
The Gooch was the spirit of Square.

>>713718004
>Games should be multiplatform no matter how much you seethe
Are you retarded or something? That's exact the point I mentioned.

But Square-Enix, for some reason, was sucking Sony's dick so eagerly during 2000-2010 that they failed to realize how the market was directing itself.

But what to expect from a third party company that announces a full multimillion dollar project exclusive to a platform three years before the release of the said platform, and it turns out the first game of this project being so bad they had to separate and de-canonize the whole thing?

>>713719819
Only if I don't like the game. Same as you: if I dislike a game and it does poorly, it's a flop and objectively bad. If I dislike a game and it does well, it means that the series has forsaken it's origins for mass appeal and casuals ruined another franchise.

>>713718485
It would change the core design of the game, so resources that went into the action combat would be put elsewhere to make the game better
At the very least, as a turn based game, FFXVI would need to have elemental weaknesses, status effects and party control

>>713720281
The combat design wouldn't affect the audio team not making memorable music. It would still be a Game of Thrones / FFTactics like edgy war setting. I think the cast would probably be more memorable though. The focus on one controllable character loses a lot of party dynamics on and off the battlefield. I think a lot of people would still not be happy with the game.

>>713714671
SE defenders will tell you rebirth is a great game despite every fundamental aspect of it being completely mind numbing for 20+ hours, so the critique of making a good game rather than the design equivalent of a bathtub full of corn syrup is lost on them

I saw somebody call FFXVI combat an evolution of XV and then another person say its identical to Strangers of Paradise. The FF base are genuinely fucking retards when it comes to mechanics and I am now doubtful they actually played Expedition 33 to the end when it straight up turns into a rhythm game. At least not on normal.

>>713720686
>The combat design wouldn't affect the audio team not making memorable music
We are not doing this. FFXVI's OST is good. Your opinion on everything else, fine, but we are not pulling this fucking idiocy and treating it objectively.

>>713718962
Think we got lucky, it appears that the same things that were on sale previously are now on sale as part of the Steam Sale! The site is completely fucky though as it just went up, so you can't even type/search for games yet.

>>713720937
We had people here calling every action rpg FF Kingdom Hearts, that tells you everything about how retarded they are.

>>713714635
you dumbasses who keep bringing this up seem to believe there correlation between perceived stock value and game quality
one and the other are not intertwined
the kind of creative drive squaresoft used to embody is all but evaporated from squareenix
their output is not even comparable to the kind of artistry squaresoft used to make
period

>>713721029
Eh too cinematic for my tastes. If I can't hum a tune after I finish a game then I didn't really care about it. It did it's job but I wouldn't say its good.

>>713711497
and like 1-9

>>713721104
Looks like the other games I noted above are on sale but at least so far
>Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven
is full price, strangely. All the others listed have their same discounts as before, plus plenty of other SE titles.

Maybe its an error but fuck its annoying if they decided to just not put that one on sale for some reason. .

>>713721235
Okay, I think I was a bit too hostile there, then. I thought it was memorable myself. I love Find the Flames and Away and a couple other tracks. I'm just so used to everything being treated as fact with this game now that I was a little hot off the collar there. That is obviously an opinion that makes sense to have, especially when compared to the variety from the other games.

Frankly I think they've been nailing it across the series.

>>713714635
I keep wondering why people post stocks like this means anything. Is this suppose to be the new Metacritic?

>>713721206
There are people that think Ghosts of Tsuhima and Onimusha play the same. And despite the fact that neither play like Souls games, with GoT being VERY OBVIOUSLY A BATMAN GAME WITH SAMURAI DRESSING, they have been both called Souls clones.

I don't know what's happening but people are actually retarded when it comes to recognizing mechanics. It reminds me when Stellar Blade trailers were dropping and people called it a Devil May Cry because they saw a double jump. As if the double jump was a fucking exclusive mechanic to DMC.

>>713714635
I'm going to genuinely ask something. Does anybody in this thread even have stocks in SE? Why do we keep doing this? If Ubisoft can stay afloat despite cratering every prime release, then what makes you think SE is going to collapse with their far more diverse catalogue? Are you hoping for Yoshi P's studio to collapse? Cause that's not happening either.

>>713722190
Tendies want yoship to make a game exclusive for switch, not kidding. Most chart threads are old manchildren coping and wanting Nintendo buy out everything

>>713722190
Millennials are really bad at understanding basic economics. They don't understand merchandising or long term selling. A lot of people don't buy RE games at launch but wait to buy it. Every sale has a lot of normies buying the designated RE game
That said Square Enix is really stupid, but once you fix the retarded boomers it's very easy to keep afloat.
Like they said Konami is another example and silent hill fucked up even worse and was dead for 20 years. Everything can come back either through nostalgia or to join the "CANT BELIEVE THIS BAD GAME IS NOW GOOD!!!" grifter trend

>>713722190
No one here has stocks, it’s legitimately fucking retards that SE is going die anytime soon because they are shitposters, retarded, or children. It’s like the same people saying Sony will die soon. If we had any decent mods they would ban threads like this asap

>>713711497
All they have to do is forget about the west and make a game for Japan again

>SE has fallen so low that even Japanese colleagues from 20 years ago who are support to speak on good terms about formal employment are kicking SE in the kidney.
This is worse we thought.

>>713723260
>Another retard that skipped the rest of the content

>>713724082
Just shows that clickbait works.

>>713723149
You mean the same japan that only plays mobile and switch games?

>>713711497
Fippy Bippy

>>713711420 (OP)
Will we ever see a port of blue dragon and lost odyssey?