just when you think things can’t possibly get any worse:
this is how you know FF7R is working
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Hey if we brought redacted and redacted back I can have my precious boy Tidus back
the tetsuya nomura cinematic universe
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Y’all and the internet need to get over your-teenage-too-cool-for-school selves and deal with it Nomura owns. You want overtly complicated meta-stories? You want games that are about relationships? KH3 and FFXV and 7R owned.
And honestly 7R is the weak one for Nomura’s strengths. Battle system in that one was so good though.
Take it from me a guy planning to buy Neo World Ends With You on release day. I hated X but Square Enix Big Budget Final Fantasy has been great every time.
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I thought the manga where Yuna blew up Tidus’ head with a beach mine that she thought was a volleyball was FFX-3.
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Final Fantasy xXx
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Rudie coming in here with the Hinge Problems Official Hot Take and I love it.
nomura hate is definitely an internet “received opinion” thing. i remember people thinking the character designs in the bouncer were cool when it came out, and those are maybe the most stereotypically nomura of all
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also I thought about whether I have a nomura opinion and it turns out I do and it’s similar to a lot of my opinions – I really like FFVIII’s melodrama, I think it’s funny and unique and works, but 90% of what he’s done since then is like, wholly derivative of itself on a level that I can’t really seem to reach
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yeah fwiw i’m ambivalent on nomura, ff8 owns and he’s done some sick spritework for sure
i just fucking hate ffx
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ffx is good 
, 
kh is bad 
this is truth prism through which all nomura misdeeds can be refracted
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I don’t like most of Nomura’s creative output, whether it be design, direction, story, etc., and never have, and the internet had nothing to do with that opinion, having formed it myself consuming what he’s done over the past 25-ish years. I like the girl with the big yellow sweater’s design in The Bouncer but only because I developed a thing for big sweaters around that time. 
That’s more Nojima and Kitase. Nomura apparently contributed character backstory and the school setting.
FFX doesn’t feel like some grand adventure like prior titles which was a huge disappointment considering it was the “next generation” Final Fantasy and it felt less grandiose than the game that had come out a year or so prior on older hardware. It’s also probably the only FF game that has actual characters where I have no favorite. Everybody likes Auron, but he’s just as bland as the rest.
(ETA: The reveal of Anima was pretty cool, though, the faster battle system was nice, and different composers helped the soundtrack feel a bit more “fresh”).
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I like KH and FFX and FFVIII. I have more experience with Nomura than Sakaguchi. This may disenfranchise me from discussions about Square, which I totally get.
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ffx is sort of ok/ffviii rules/nomura sucks team
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Kingdom Hearts 3 lures you in with the new song and somehow feels even worse to play than 2 with the combined powers of UE4 and the world’s worst parkour system
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ff7 just slaps so hard i can’t really hold his later indulgence against him
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Hard to see how subscription-based platforms don’t include playtime as at least part of their revenue share model or incentive. I know it’s Apple Arcade’s key bonus metric; I know Xbox Game Pass nudges the games they sign to have ‘longtime play’. The most optimized Game Pass game is honestly State of Decay.
Both those stores are also opening some new doors; like Netflix, they can more consistently ask for B-games and certain niches because they know it hits a user segment; they want every household member to find value in the service. And they rely on their scouting to find those smaller and more niche titles. That means that it’s subjective and probably the first thing to get peeled off as metrics are sharpened and quadrants identified.
I think Nomura is good when working as part of a team like in VI or VII, bringing out a fashion and squelchy flair, especially when working in an Amano direction, and he probably earned some time in the director’s chair but nobody should hold that power for 20 years. Square desperately needs new blood for their look and story tone and high concept and they’ve need it for more than a decade. Hopefully XVI is just the start of projects helped by a new generation.
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matsuno come home
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I honestly think the prevailing source of nomura hate is people of a certain age group reacting to kingdom hearts – for a lot of us at the time, kingdom hearts represented a very deep kind of cringe that aligned with the emo/myspace/scene subcultures. so many people around my age at the time went to great lengths to distance themselves from “that kind of thing”.
full disclosure I fully participated in this behavior at that time and these days I think it was all so incredibly silly, but I think it did have a lasting effect on nomura’s rep as a hack/buffoon/purveyor of trash/etc
I’m a lot more ambivalent about him these days, but I don’t know if I ever thought he was great writer. a lot of his designs are great, I don’t always hate the whole zippers, belts n pleather thing, but I still cannot find it in myself to actually enjoy anything about kingdom hearts, and I honestly think everything good about FFXV is a result of tabata’s directorial work, and everything good about FF7R is basically despite his involvement. I tried watching advent children after playing FF7R, and while I don’t hate it, I think it’s really boring and paper-thin, and all the boring and paper-thin parts of the remake are basically trying to be advent children 2.
I just… really think he should stick to art direction and character design and let literally anyone else write.
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