This argument would have more weight with examples.

Elite with a bullet. You’d have to be around my age to understand, that game seemed like it was absolutely from the future. “How is my commodore 64 doing this”.

What are you talking about, FFVI came out THIRTY years ago.  Got your math all messed up here.

The back half of FFXV is a real serious slog, and a lot of it has to do with the separation of the part imo.

The ending does right be re-centering that. Ironically the games biggest criticism pre-release, the boyband road trip, wound up being the saving grace.

Man, if FFXV supposedly has the “best” ending of any Final Fantasy game...

I don’t even think that qualifies as “damning with faint praise”

I enjoyed this game but it did feel like something was lacking by the time I was finished. This scene didn’t hit as hard for me because something about it didn’t feel earned. It kind of goes from a goofy romp to dead serious without a lot of ramp-up.

the final party was always “who has the multi-hit Limit Breaks”, so endgame basically became the Cloud/Cid/Tifa show because they could burn down any “standard” boss in the game with minimal effort. that was the only really worthwhile defining feature of the characters.

Even story aside, gameplay is insanely generic. Swapping materia to most characters made them play very similarly, if not exactly like the others. 

I think FFVI’s storyline is extremely straightforward, even if you fail to hit all, or the really good, backstory elements of the game. It basically boils down to “Stop madman from exploiting ancient technology and a race of magical beings from destroying the world just for shits and giggles” The only deviations from…

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree here. I feel like the fact that every character has their own fleshed out backstory and often the links to one another (i.e Sabin + Edgar, Shadow + Relm + Strago), is one of the greatest aspects of the game. And they all come together for the common purpose of stopping arguably…

Or how the Empire was our ally for a portion of the game, as they sought ‘to ally with the Espers’ with our aid?

There’s nothing confusing about the storytelling in FFVII. And to be clear were talking about the original game here. Not Crisis core, Dirge of Cerberus or FF7R.

Huh. I must have imagined the defection of Celes and General Leo standing up for the Espers, or the mix of imperial soldiers that were both for and against ending the conflict after the Empire’s capital was razed. Good thing you were there to remind me that these things didn’t exist and that the entire empire was…

No matter how many times I play VI, I can’t get invested in the game because none of the characters have emotional depth or growth and there is zero political tension in the story

I think this is a case where personal preference plays a huge role. VI has an external story that happens around the characters, whereas VII has an internal story that happens to the characters. No matter how many times I play VI, I can’t get invested in the game because none of the characters have emotional depth or…

As much as I love 6, Even FF6's story can be handicapped by it’s basic translation (Not as poor as 7's) or rendered incomplete if you miss quests in the games 2nd half. Playing through the Pixel remaster recently, reminded me how easily missed important plot threads are hidden, just as they were in Chrono Cross.

X’s story is explicitly about the summoner’s pilgrimage. It has every reason to be as linear as it is. My first time through I resented it, but later I came to really appreciate how that linearity gave it a focus on place and culture that the other games didn’t really have. And the “open world” of previous FF games…

The problem isn’t really the linearity, a lot of games are linear, and I think there isn’t even a problem with a largely linear RPG. FFX works despite being nearly as linear. The problem is XIII makes no attempt to disguise it. It doesn’t give you even the illusion that you’re doing anything other than running in a…

I acknowledge VII’s impact on the series as well as the fact that it was the first game in the series to be experienced by most...but from a story telling perspective it has nothing on the masterpiece that is VI, with VII being a confusing mess in comparison. I’ve played the vast majority of the FF games and VII does…

Wayyyy too much credit was given to XIII. That was the only FF game which I got frustrated, quit, and threw the game away out of spite.