Warrior of Light: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you died, but got sent back in time by the Fiends, who you then sent forward, so they could send you back. So if you're the one who sent them forward in the first place and they were the ones who sent you back first, so you could send them forward, then how the hell did this time loop start?
Garland: I...uh, well, it's like, um...uh...
Warrior of Light: I don't think we should do time travel again in this series.
Garland: I...uh, well, it's like, um...uh...
Warrior of Light: I don't think we should do time travel again in this series.
Final Fantasy didn't suddenly shift towards Kudzu Plots, hallways, and spin-offs — they were there from the very beginning.
- Exploration was largely an illusion even in the franchise's earliest games. Even if the game gave players two or three different directions to go, most of those directions are blocked off or don't provide them with much to do until more of the game is unlocked. You do still have to find the path to a degree, but the game pretty much always puts you on the same course. Starting with Final Fantasy X, however, this illusion was completely shattered because by this point, the player wasn't even allowed to wander around almost-empty space anymore to provide the illusion of freedom. Further, around this time, open-world sandbox games had really become the norm, which meant that linear paths were much less tolerable. Still, reaction to this was tame compared to future installments, because while FFX does do the linear pathway, you're given a lot of NPCs to speak to and some variety with mini-games and puzzles, as well as an in-story explanation of as to why you're stuck in a pathway note . Final Fantasy X-2, for as polarizing as it was, brought a more open-ended approach to the world of X and allowed players to explore almost the entire world from the beginning, which helped keep the idea of the linear focused games somewhat refreshing. Final Fantasy XIII, on the other hand, stripped away the mini-games and puzzles and minimalized the NPCs, making the straight narrow path much more obvious. Fans were also extremely critical of Square's justification (not wanting exploration to distract from the story)note , with some seeing it as the developers being out-of-touch. With Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning Returns, and Final Fantasy XV, however, they abandoned that approach and featured some type of open environment for each of those games. Final Fantasy VII Remake moved back towards a linear approach, but largely faced praise for it, with reviewers burned out by the increasingly bloated sandbox games of 2020 praising Remake's focus and intimacy. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin also does away with open world exploration, instead featuring a number of expansive missions for the player to fight through.
- The series has alternated between having "classic" medieval fantasy settings such as those found in FFXIV, XVI and Tactics, and more overt science-fantasy settings such as those found in VII, VIII, XIII and XV, or some combination thereof (X being the odd one out, having been inspired largely by Southeast Asian cultures). This has led to a sort of rift within the fandom between those who prefer the medieval fantasy style and those who prefer a more science-fantasy aesthetic, with both sides arguing over which approach is more "faithful to the series' roots." Those in the latter group argue that the science-fantasy approach allots more creative freedom to the developers; providing more avenues for the series to experiment and evolve. Those in the former group have often criticized the more science-fantasy-based titles for feeling less "grounded" and "relatable" due to their shift towards technologically-novel concepts and away from established fantasy conventions which most fiction fans would already be familiar with. However, the series has always featured strange combinations of sci-fi and classic fantasy elements from the very beginning, with the former often serving to "spice up" and complement the latter. FF1 had a relatively Medieval-European setting but also included airships and a villain who was a time-travelling WarMECH, and one of the last bosses of the first arc of V was a giant laser cannon, just to give two examples. Final Fantasy IV also had characters travel to an artificially-constructed moon and Final Fantasy IX had some steampunk elements along with a villain seeking to restore a lost civilization through genetic engineering. Final Fantasy VI was the first game in the series to really start making heavier use of sci-fi elements which would go on to define later entries, with the plot revolving around a technologically-advanced empire, your party beginning the game piloting mechs, a Super-Soldier villain created through genetic experimentation and a Defector from Decadence hero who had gone through the same program. Final Fantasy VII continued that trend when it shifted to full-on Urban Fantasy with a plot involving corporatocracy and environmental degradation, human experimentation, genetic enhancement, an extraterrestrial villain with interdimensional powers, and a magic system which allegorized nuclear power. However, in entries I through VI, these elements were fairly subdued. For instance, despite all its sci-fi tropes, VI still has a fairly straightforward plot about a rebellion fighting against an evil empire, and the story features many fantastical elements like European villages, sacred artifacts, possession by demigods and ancient monsters (Kefka was also the first to go all One-Winged Angel set to Ominous Latin Chanting). The sci-fi elements only started to become a problem when a detailed understanding of them became necessary in order to follow the narrative, with said elements often becoming so convoluted that you needed outside information. Final Fantasy VII may been seen as the origin of this, with external materials like the Ultimanias providing more detailed information about the world and backstory. But even then, the main plot of the game could still be understood and enjoyed without them—a significant amount of screentime is dedicated to explaining how VII's world operates, and the narrative is paced in such a manner as to avoid overwhelming players with too much novel information at once. By contrast, Final Fantasy XIII literally thrusts the player right into the middle of its story without doing any world-building, thereby necessitating that players rely on supplementary materials and datalogs in order to understand how the world operates and what the characters are talking about when they use in-universe terms such as "Fal'Cie", "L'Cie", "Cie'th" and "Ragnarok"—consequently alienating a large number of viewers who may have already lost interest by the time they've finished piecing the story together. Final Fantasy XV was similarly criticized for having its story divided out across many different pieces of media (including an online anime series, a feature-length film, numerous DLC and a novel), while Final Fantasy VII Remake suffered from Continuity Lockout, with fans noting that many plot details—especially the ending—won't make sense to players who aren't already familiar with the rest of the Compilation and/or already well-versed in the lore of the lifestream.
- As detailed in this article
from Cracked and this video, Final Fantasy VII, with its focus on flashy visuals, cutscenes, and production values to rival Hollywood blockbusters, birthed many of the problems that plagued not only later games in the Final Fantasy series, but also AAA gaming in general, which became increasingly dominated by gorgeous graphics and cinematic spectacle at the cost of highly linear gameplay that's barely interactive. The difference was that Final Fantasy VII still had a deep combat system and a well-written (if poorly-translated) story to make up for it.- You could even trace it back to VI, one of the first games to really go head-on with the attempt at a dramatic storyline. The field sprites were enlarged to make the characters far more expressive, and moments like the Opera or various Mode 7 cutscenes stretched the limits of SNES hardware to convey things like spoken song or rapid flight or dramatic camera angles, and some of them aren't particularly relevant in the story (though they are memorable in their own ways). These aren't remembered as complaints simply because the SNES didn't have a lot of hardware to stretch, making the technical achievement all the more noteworthy and also reducing their use to fairly brief sequences — compared to multi-minute FMVs or attack animations, a short scene of synthesized singing sounds spartan.
- Final Fantasy VIII came up with the innovation of giving the hero a cool piece of jewelry (that could be made for real and sold to fans). Squall's "Griever" lion charm fit the character and setting (modern high school drama) well and it was incorporated into the plot reasonably well, with Rinoa wearing the Griever ring once she becomes involved with Squall and Ultimecia using it as a weapon in the final battle. Later attempts at doing this would be a lot more forced, often including characters who wouldn't have any reason for wearing flashy custom jewellery, or didn't live in settings where modern-style jewelry was a thing. In at least one case (Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children) it involves a character decking themselves out in an emblem representing the animus of their depression.
- The numerous spin-offs and sequels have eclipsed the main series. During earlier years, there were still plenty of spin-offs and Dolled-Up Installments, such as Final Fantasy X-2, the Ivalice Alliance, and the early installments of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. However, Square's milking of the Cash-Cow Franchise has started to leave its mark, to the planning of Fabula Nova Crystallis as a series from the get-go, to a constant barrage of mobile games. Meanwhile, the wait between main-series games keeps getting longer and longer.
- The series became increasingly experimental with its combat systems and progression mechanics. While the series has always been experimental with its battle and growth systems (Final Fantasy II for example gets much flak for its more obtuse mechanics) the later games in the series took this tendency to the point where many fans began to feel that the series was losing its identity. For example, Final Fantasy VIII replaced a traditional magic system with the Draw and Junction systems, which was criticized for being "tedious", "confusing" and making actual leveling largely pointless (as Junctioning did a much better job without also leveling up the enemies the party would face). This trend would continue with Final Fantasy X not using the ATB system for the first time since Final Fantasy III and dropping leveling in favor of a skill-tree-esque mechanic. This would continue with further minimizing the turn-based aspects for more real-time battle mechanics to the point where Final Fantasy XV is unambigously an action RPG, while Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a hack-and-slash game with some RPG elements. It's at the point where some fans don't see the new games as even truly being in the same series as the older ones.
- The combat system being streamlined to the point of borderline non-interactivity has become a criticism of more recent games in the series. Although it's often been stated that you can mash your way through the old games, complaints started to appear the around the time of Final Fantasy XII, which introduced its controversial Gambit system which allowed for players to set-up their own AI and watch the characters battle the enemy. The Gambit system was offset though by the freedom by which you could customize each character, allowing multiple unique builds and combinations, plus no Gambit was one-hundred percent always going to work, so the player still had involvement. Final Fantasy XIII saw similar complaints with the inclusion of an auto-battle feature, meaning that the player was free to choose to do nothing but sit there and just click Auto-Battle, while changing their characters' Paradigms, when they felt to do so, which made the game boring to a number of players since there was almost nothing they could do to spice up the gameplay. Final Fantasy XV, again had similar criticisms for allowing the player to simply hold down a single button if they wanted to dodge or attack.
- The Rummage Sale Reject character designs have pretty much always been there, but it wasn't evident in the early games because it simply wasn't possible for systems to convey them. One look at Yoshitaka Amano's concept art says that "Bishōnen wearing an entire thrift store" was the intended aesthetic from the first game. Hell, Tetsuya Nomura was initially hired because his artwork was less overdesigned at the time than Amano's; compare Terra's design◊ to Cloud's.◊ But up until the later PS1 era, the closest you could get to that was deep into Super-Deformed. By the time the PS2 rolled in, not only did technology get to the point where those designs could be shown in standard gameplay, but if anything, the designs became more excessive, reaching its height in Dirge of Cerberus's many Fashion Victim Villains.
- Fans of the Job System often decry the later games for having very convoluted or indistinct character mechanics, which also often have the side effect of making a lot of characters play the same apart from one or two personal gimmicks (for instance, in VII, pretty much the only thing distinguishing the party members at a certain point is weapon choices and their Limit Breaks, since everyone can learn all kinds of magic and most stat boosts come from materia) or being very easy to exploit (simply drawing magic, running away from every battle, and playing the occasional round of Triple Triad turns VIII into an absolute joke). These design aspects were probably at their worst in... the second game, which had an utterly broken leveling system where the only thing distinguishing party members was slightly different base stats, and included such absurd stunts as party members attacking each other to increase their stats, turning virtually every enemy into a toad, or easily beating the Final Boss to death with bare fists. The difference was that II was largely seen as an obscure Oddball in the Series, and the following games went for more standardized systems, so most people didn't see it as a trend.
- One of the longest running complaints about Final Fantasy IX was the Final Boss Necron being a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere that doesn't get any explanation in game. This was a complaint the series had for a long time, as several previous games had final bosses that felt like they came out of no where, such as Chaos, the Cloud of Darkness, and Zemus. What made Necron stick out was that the previously mentioned examples had a unique element to them that made them still work — such as Chaos being a Meta Twist at the time by being the very first boss in the game coming back more powerful than before — and they were at least relevant to the plot as The Man Behind the Man. Furthermore, starting with Final Fantasy V, the games made a conscious effort to avert this issue by establishing the main villain somewhere before or near the half-way point in the game, meaning villains like Exdeath, Kefka and Sephiroth were given time to establish their villainy and end the game as the Final Boss. Necron, however, quite literally appears at the end for the finale, is never given a proper explanation as to what he is or what he is even doing beyond a vague idea of some kind of death being, and his fight robs the real Big Bad Kuja of the chance to be beaten for good. Additionally, most of his predecessors happened relatively early in the series, which could be forgiven for their lack of buildup by the limited technology of the era and/or early stories being fairly basic — Necron, at the tail end of the PS1 era, didn't have that excuse.
