This is interesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLhiWw3pzQk
They interpret Final Fantasy as Anti-Religious. Mostly against the Christian religion
A few things:
1: It took people what? Twelve years to figure out that FFX and Tactics are anti-organized religion? Seriously? This is shocking news somehow?
2: I don't think that religious references during the final boss fight in VI intended any criticism. I think it was seen more as "cool western stuff" by Square the way westerners see things like the Yin-Yang symbol and Buddhism as "cool eastern stuff."
3: Actually, a lot of JRPGs tend to spew bile at organized religion now that I think about it.
I feel that whenever I play most jRPGs that the writers making the game were carefully plotting out everything in the beginning, but somewhere along the half-way point they were informed that they needed to ship out the game the following week and started putting in any stretch of ham-handed plot they could come up with in order to make the game grandiose and memorable as possible.
Indeed, but I firmly believe in game play before narrative.
I think that the FF series ruins itself by trying to bring the game to an end that is simply too cataclysmic or weighty for the plot to gradually develop to reach that point without excessive suspension of belief. Also the series has this obsession with amnesia and sometimes relies on it as a plot device to achieve the previously mentioned point.
You really don't see amnesia as commonly as you see the protagonist having an astonishing revelation about their past that was a secret, even to themselves. But again, game play before narrative.
I think that the FF series structures itself on a bifurcated model. The first half involves gathering party members, searching for crystals, or some type of fetch story model that allows you to find other members or allows you to explore more of their personality. This tends to be the part that I prefer over the second half which tends to push some type of world wide dilemma that had been developing to epic proportions that the characters are obligated to fix.
Congrats, you've played FFVI.
A pet peeve of mine is that unit customization is limited. Granted the FF series gives you weapons and maybe jobs, but it doesn't really involve game play that rewards extensive time outside of the story for bolstering up your characters. Boss monster levels are more or less capped after sixty-seventy hours of play and when you finish the side-bosses along with the main quest, there isn't much to commemorate the game. That means that the storyline is the central selling point of the game and even that is objectively lacking.
"Unit customization."
Excuse me, but Final Fantasy is not Fire Emblem. On top of that, this entire paragraph here isn't doing much to convince me that you've actually taken the time to look into character customization in Final Fantasy if you think the entire series relies off of "jobs."
The FF series cannot really be considered a strategy series.
They're not.
The actual game play of most jRPGs fall short if they aren't action oriented (Kingdom Hearts), puzzled based (Grim Grimoire), or occupy some other unique niche (Okami) often being just some minor subversion of button-mashing with a slightly higher level of micro-complexity (healing) and some minor form of macro-management for skills & abilities.
Someone here has clearly never played a JRPG.
Also, if Okami is a JRPG then Legend of Zelda is too.
And doing some research into Grim Grimoire, that's an RTS.
I don't think that the series has aged well or is going to age well in the future. Neither do I think that the classic SNES series represented a superior or flawless comparison with respect to the latter installments of the series. What most people state as being a superior storytelling elements from older games trend more towards cliched climax conventions that come without much warning. Newer games are also guilty of this, except they don't need to rely on it as heavily due to expansive graphics and movie sequences offering players a new hook to have them keep on playing.
After reading over your severely misinformed opinion based on statements made by what sounds like someone who has limited experience with Final Fantasy and JRPGs as a whole I have come to this conclusion:
