Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins is it. Developed by Team Ninja from Tecmo and published by Square Enix in 2022. Their in-house stuff has been disappointing since PS3/X360 came onto the scene.
Bravely default 2, FF16, Neo: World end with You, Strangers Paradise, are the games which i like the most and clicked with me. Surprisingly NEO, much inspiring for me.
Rebirth is first and remake second. Then maybe dragon quest 11 followed by octopath traveller 2. Some excellent games there. I own star ocean 2 remake but not started it yet.
I know this game has a lot of haters here, but for me is FF16 and FF7 remake as a distant second. Rebirth was a disappointment for me, I liked the small size of remake.
Kingdom Hearts III - Got too bored to continue before finishing even the first world
Final Fantasy VII Remake - never wanted a remake, but I enjoyed it
Final Fantasy XVI - Whoever decided to title this 'Final Fantasy' and give it a proper main series roman numeral: Fuck you. Might be a decent generic action RPG, but as FF it's pure garbage.
NieR Replicant - First play through was OK, getting the rest of the endings was a tiresome, ponderous chore. Automata is like 10,000,000x better.
Forspoken - Could only stomach a couple of hours before going into a cringe coma.
***WINNER*** Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - It wore out its welcome somewhere after the halfway point, and the final boss battle felt like the developers giving me the finger and laughing in my face due to zero checkpoints, but overall I thought this was the best Square RPG I've played since FFX.
NieR is a really special game, so I chose that. But Rebirth is probably the correct answer, it was just incredible. In time, and depending on how the FF7 part 3 turns out, it could outrank NieR.
Quite a few on that list I love, but it has to be 7 Rebirth.
I put in over 100 hours into that game. The characters were superbly done, especially considering the absolutely huge cast you just don't get in other games.
The game world is beautiful and varied and imaginative in a way you don't see these days. It's a testament to the artistry in the company in the 90s and also to the old/new guard still at the company being able to interpret it so well 3 decades later and develop such a big game in under 4 years.
Once there's a beefed up PS5 Pro or PS6 version I'll be playing it again. Until then hurry up with the final part.
Octopath Traveler 2, followed by Bravely Default 2.
The other games, while decent, just don't do it for me in terms of gameplay/combat/RPG mechanics. The 7 remake series' game design is just poor where everything takes-too-long (sit on the bench to heal, unlock fast travel point, menu animations/loading taking longer, needless mini-games like clean mako energy with vacuum, etc).
For just pure fun and enjoyability Octopath II and Star Ocean 2. Sometimes I just want a straight to the point story and a good balance of grind and progression and a compelling OST.
Out of the larger scale games probably Rebirth, which despite it's flaws I had a much better experience with than FF16.
Rebirth for sure. Love the characters and repeating the same things didn’t bother me, because I could spend more time with the characters.
Honestly at 42 now I am not that interested anymore in most games and rather spend my time watching something, but I had such a great time with Rebirth that I am considering a second playthrough real soon.
At launch, it was not bad, but after that long wait, was lacking in key areas compared to previous games. Story was poorly paced, with stilted cutscenes and acting which is odd because all the previous games always had good presentation. Combat was not great, too floaty and overly reliant on finisher commands and attraction rides. Game had what felt like fewer worlds but longer. Some were fantastic, like toy story, and some were awful like frozen. Ultimately, compared to even the handheld titles, it felt really disjointed and a bit rushed. I still really liked it overall, but it was obvious it could have been much more.
Then the Remind DLC came out, with reworked combat, and some of the best boss battles in gaming, good fanservice, the game was much much better now, and is now worthy of previous entries...
sort of...but not really
See, the reworked combat is just tied to certain new keyblades and new abilities, which if you had a complete save is great, but if you start over, these are dulled out slowly over the course of the story, so your still stuck with the issues the game always had. At least critical mode lets you disable attractions.
Hoping all the feedback they got gets poured into KH3.
Dragon Quest XI easily. FFVII Remake trilogy’s storytelling is quite bad. The original on PS1 had better pacing and felt cooler overall.
I absolutely loved FFXIV Endwalker and cried a couple times in the story, but its not something I can recommend to general population due to its mmo-gameplay which many people won’t like. Plus its just an expansion so not sure it would even count in this poll.
Trials of Mana
Dragon Quest XI
The Diofield Chronicles
Those stick with me the most, but I'll say I definitely noticed something with Squeenix after the last entry. The sense of progression in most of their games is very samey. Pass a story beat, go to hub and get new items to upgrade stats. If one lacks the funds or items, do a side quest or two. Then next main mission gain and rinse & repeat until finish. Granted this is mainly for their more linear games, but it meant the surprise was absent and I felt no real sense of reward for progression, merely attaining a new stat buff for the next wave of challenges. I have a feeling this is part of how Square runs things internally, as they have a design ethos that seems a bit different than their competitors whom I feel are vastly superior with far more limited budgets.
