Final Fantasy Found Its Footing – Now It Needs Fans

Square Enix announced is financials this morning and the outlook isn’t so hot. HD Games – including Final Fantasies XIV and 7 Rebirth – underperformed to the tune of ¥8.1 billion ($57m).

This is terrible news for a franchise which has finally found its footing. Those two Final Fantasy games are the best the franchise has been in years. Rebirth, although I’m biased, will likely be this generation’s Red Dead Redemption for me. A game so big, so high quality and so over-delivered that I almost can’t believe it exists.

I can already hear the obvious comments. People were angry that Final Fantasy XVI was a character action game, and that it wasn’t a harder character action game. “MORE RPG” was the battle cry of a million annoyed fans who’d hated every game since XII, and probably since X. Actually, the battle system is fantastic in XVI, it just doesn’t reward experimentation in the way it should. But that’s a different story.

Rebirth is an epic adventure that beautifully explores the story of Final Fantasy 7 in a greater depth than I ever thought possible. There are a million wonderful moments in there. But a lot of folks were angry about changes in the first, and some are still bitter it wasn’t one long 500 hour game from the get go.

These are great games. After literal decades of the franchise flailing about trying to find its HD identity, it finally feels like it’s becoming something worth paying attention to. And nobody is here to see it. What does that say about the state of the RPG genre, and, more importantly, what does it say about fans of Final Fantasy?

The Changing Tides of Final Fantasy

There’s a lot to say about all this. One article is not enough. Years of in-fighting, exclusivity, disappointing decisions and changes within the franchise has killed interest. And, to be clear, it’s not a case of people not liking the current iteration. People didn’t like XV either, and it sold gangbusters.

Instead, it’s a case of gradual irrelevance. Single player games aren’t popular, with only a few exceptions. RPGs aren’t really a thing anymore, and when they are they’re on a much smaller scale than Final Fantasy needs to be. Interest in 100-hour stories has gone. People don’t have time when they’re playing 10,000 hour shooters.

Final Fantasy has never had a particular identity. Too much changed from game to game. The closest they came to was the ATB battle system. And that’s the biggest request for new games from old fans: just go back to that.

Outside of moogles, magic and chocobos, there were few things connecting one game to the next. When it was a flagship PlayStation franchise, you bought it because you expected good graphics and amazing storytelling. You bought it because everybody was buying it. It was in gaming magazines. A release was an event.

Final Fantasy hesitated its way out of the spotlight. It was seven years between XIII and XV and another seven between XV and XVI. In that time casual fans simply moved onto other games that offered decent stories and great graphics.

It’s heart breaking. Not just as someone who loves the old games, but as someone who has been really impressed with Square over the last year. They deserve to be rewarded for finding their footing. But in doing so, they also need to find a new set of fans.

The bad news? That might mean adjusting the budget accordingly.