It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
RPGs got worse for me as soon as they shifted to adding VAs for every line. FFX (1&2) were the last Final Fantasy games I played all the way through. (FFX-2: would not play again even though the combat system was better). I’m fine with voice acting, but I liked when I could read dialogue and advance it accordingly.
If you ever get the itch, I thought XII was better than X. But if you didn’t like X, you almost certainly won’t like any of the XIII series or XV. I haven’t played XVI or VII remake yet
And yeah X-2 was pretty bad. Of the ones I’ve played I think I’d only put XIII-2 behind it
YES, absolutely. The child in the street looking for his hide and seek buddy is cute world building, but it should take up 0.0003% of my playtime. Don’t quintuple that occasion by making his line fully voice acted.
I feel like there’s an absolute banger of a JRPG opportunity if someone can nail the interruptive timing of Guardians of the Galaxy or Class of 09. Forget AI; comedic timing is the true rare technology.