Quote:
Originally Posted by RedRedSuit
FF7 and FF12 stories not complex enough for ya?
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Yes and no.
FFVII was a good story but seemed to have a lot of holes in it that were only more fully explained with subsequent games that built on the lore. What I like about Suikoden and SMT games is that they're essentially self-contained. But of course, talking about FFVII is going after a fairly sacred cow to a certain generation of gamer. It's still a landmark in the genre, with iconic characters, but the story as a whole for FFVII didn't really "come together" until after all the ancillary material and games fleshed it out. FFXII on the other hand was very, very good and had a plot that was extremely reminiscent of the political intrigue that I enjoy so much in Suikoden titles. However, I think the game ultimately suffered from the original director leaving the project and the game itself being hastily finished in order to ship it out on time. It's not quite as bad as what I experienced in the first Fable, but I did feel that FFXII had a good story going on that was diminished somewhat by the end, where they were trying to wrap things up too quickly, and a lot of the careful character development and political nuance got lost in the rush to bring you to the final boss fight.
I love both games, but I think that the smaller games, though suffering from a lack of budget for all the visual fireworks, might be better balanced in a narrative sense. Of course, having a better narrative still doesn't have quite the same wow-factor as the first time you saw a summon at work in FFVII, but that's why we play those games...