Quote:
Originally Posted by Benoit
You're talking as if Dragon Quest is generic, when it's more original than Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy, now that's generic.
|
Okay well let me just go over a checklist of why I find DQ generic and then you can do one of FF:
-
Exact same monster cast throughout each game except for the bosses
- Same overall graphical style since the beginning beyond the transition to 3D maps with VIII
- Same battle system that kind of went out of style in the 80's.
- Same overall premise of story. Evil threatens the land, heroes set out to defeat evil, gain new spells, level up, get new equipment, beat evil, find out there's an even greater power behind the evil and then defeat said evil after about another 1/3 of the game.
- Character designs by Akira Toriyama who as much as he's a legend can only draw in one style and
item creation system that was developed 8 years before it's time.
It leaves one with the feeling of a franchise that hasn't evolved at all with time and is still stuck trudging the same ground as it's forebearer which came over 23 years ago. I'll just say that Final Fantasy feels like the opposite, always evolving and/or changing with each iteration and trying new things with it's gameplay system (some gimmicky, some revolutionary) for better or worse. Of course some of the oldfags would argue it's changed so much so as to resemble it's earlier titles in name only and that that's not a good thing. It's up for debate.
Tales of Phantasia when it first came out with it's Linear Battle System was hugely revolutionary though. Nothing like it had ever been seen before on a console and even the ATB created for FFIV seemed hands off by comparison. Not to mention it also had a full length intro with vocals that required a legendary tricking out of the SNES' SPC sound chip's 64 KB sample limit (which despite that shortcoming I still say was the best pre-redbook audio sound processor of all time with it's awesome reverb effect) . Of course it had the drawback of only being able to control Cless directly, which would would be remedied with later games in the franchise which would ultimately give the player even more control over the battle and participating characters.