Wada: “We’re So Bad We’ll Have To Rebuild Our Brands”

10 years to late.... also... they still the top average for the industry... so tell me whos to blame for buying all their crap?

What amazes me is that people are only just now figuring out that Squeenix makes terrible games. They've been making horrible titles since they came out with Final Fantasy VII and discovered they could get away with it.

Well, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Agito and Versus XIII will surely be the fabled return of Square quality. Those two titles will realize the need for the company to be rent from the hands of Wada and Kitase. In all of this hate, which is not unfounded, let's not overlook the quality titles SE has brought: KH II,358/2 days, Birth By Sleep, The World Ends With You, Crisis Core, and Dissidia. It's a lot more accurate to say that SE completely screwed over their console efforts (360 *cough*) and did not seek the level of advancement and quality that brought them notoriety in the first place. All hope lays in Versus now.

Here is the regrettable truth.

Final Fantasy 7 was an excellent example of what happens when a decent - not amazing, as many seem to believe, but decent - RPG is made for a system whose technology is still being explored due to its recent foray into the market. Except for the cut-scenes, the game was unquestionably ugly...but it played fairly well and gave RPG fans the fix they had been waiting for since Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger, and thus is was well-received. (It was also the start of the pointy-haired whiner as the protagonist.

Final Fantasy 8 was a game whose lesson was clearly not learned. The graphical upgrade from Final Fantasy 7 to Final Fantasy 8 is immediately apparent to anyone who has played both games, but everything else fell to pieces. From the mandatory and irritating card game to the system that punishes you for even dabbling in magic to the unlikeable characters (with one or two exceptions, neither being the protagonist), Final Fantasy 8 was a train wreck and should have taught Square Enix one key lesson: Pretty Is Not Enough.

Final Fantasy 9 was very much a reversal of the mistakes of Final Fantasy 8. While it may have lacked the stylistic charm of 8, it had decent graphics and a very inventive system. It was a return to the old days of Final Fantasy, but with the new innovations that had come throughout the series, along with some new ones and some VERY memorable characters. In my opinion, Final Fantasy 9 was one of the strongest Final Fantasy games. Unfortunately, it was coming off of the dismal failure of its predecessor, and thus never got the acclaim it deserves.

Final Fantasy 10 was, in a word, a very beautiful game. Regardless of what you may think of its gameplay - which I feel was well-executed, even though it did tend to pigeonhole the characters into various roles - it was a feast for the eyes and, on many occasions, ears. While the gameplay lacked the innovation of 9, it was still decent, and the open-ended nature of character advancement and myriad of unlockables combined with an interesting and unique story to produce a positive experience overall.

Final Fantasy 11 was a mistake. In a world that was already saturated with MMOs, Square Enix opted to release their own and ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room named WoW. With game mechanics that failed to live up to standards set by earlier entries in the field and a poorly designed economy, it was never among the top three MMOs during its time, and has proven to be a venture that should have been eschewed in favor of Square Enix doing what it does best.

I can offer no informed opinions on entries after that, as I finally gave up on the series once the MMO was released. I have heard good things about Final Fantasy 12, poor things about Final Fantasy 13, and the reviews I've seen of Final Fantasy 14 are jaw-droppingly bad...so much so that I assumed that it had to be some kind of hoax, only to be disappointed.

I would like very much for Square Enix to pull themselves out of this hole and create the excellent games that I know they are capable of producing, but I am no fool: the brand "Final Fantasy" has been permanently ruined for a large portion of their target audience. Would it be better for them to try to salvage the brand or to start a new one? I don't have the marketing experience to offer a coherent opinion on that either, but I know this much: IF they have the chance to pull away from death, this is their last one.

This is what you get for kicking out Sakaguchi, Squeenix.

Serves you right.

Now's the time to buy Square Enix stock.
The stock is bound to go only up. They are far from dead: Deus Ex, FF Agito, Tomb Raider reboot coming next year, and I am sure they will have something else up their sleeve. Even if not, Eidos profits will keep them from death.

So if we buy stock now for dirt cheap and they rebuild it according to plan we can make a killing.

I want Wada's fucking head on a silver platter. This guy should be forced to resign.

Seriously, we've all seen people in the game indutry being cut for way less than this ass-hat has pulled off.

I dearly love some of Square's games of old, so I wish them good fortune in their rebuilding.

so.... rebuild and repent? oh my at this rate they might come around again with some great games :D