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Tropes are figurative ways to explain metaphoric themes, complex story messages, and archetypes. Oftentimes they are reoccurring over a long-running series and become an important part of franchises. Some get old as the modern world progresses, while others are timeless.
Final Fantasy may be an untouchable juggernaut within the gaming world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not full of cliché tropes and themes that it falls for time and time again. Sometimes these happen so often that fans wish they would pick a new one to beat into the ground, while others can keep happening ad infinitum and fans would still be happy with it.
10 Overdone: Girls Are Always Better At Magic
It is almost always true in video games with magic that the girls are going to be better at magic than the boys. Boys are stronger, hit harder, and are typically more flighty than their female counterparts and therefore need to be pushed to the back, protected, and often times even saved. Final Fantasy is horrible at this, having nearly every single one of their female characters condemned to a magician role.
Those that aren’t are typically still much weaker than their masculine counterparts, or pushed away in the back for other roles such as the party ranger. Payne in X-2 is one of few examples where a female character is not better suited for magic or lighter roles, which is great considering there really aren’t other options.
9 Can’t Get Enough: Being Able To Ride Different Creatures
One of the most famous non-equine mounts in all media is a Chocobo. They are giant, chicken-like creatures that also vaguely resemble ostriches and emus. Typically, a Chocobo is used as a mount to traverse the world or engage in races.
While the franchise is moving forward and becoming more modern, Chocobos stick around. There are also some other creatures that the players can ride if the game allows, such as the Magitek Armor enemies. Adding even more fantastical creatures and objects to their repertoire would be much appreciated, so that trope can live on as long as it wants to.
8 Overdone: Mystical Magical Rocks That Can Do Anything
Within the Final Fantasy games, there is always this extra powerful Materia that can do extremely amazing feats or a crystal out there that is going to be the end of the world. The example of Jenova and all of the cells which were used to make Sephiroth and Genesis and then their cells demonstrates this perfectly.
This happens so frequently in so many games that at this point, it’s becoming tiring. Fans are getting a little sick of the Mystical Magical Rock trope which really just falls back on this one item that is so perfectly capable of doing things that it makes everything else feel redundant. It also typically is left for a late-game reveal, which just degrades the rest of the story.
7 Can’t Get Enough: Ridiculously Fantastical Weaponry That Probably Shouldn’t Be Useable
Sure it is cliché and overcompensating for the protagonist to have the gigantic, overly unwieldy sword or the party archer to have a bow that looks absolutely nothing like one. That doesn’t make them any less cool.
Final Fantasy in its heart is still a fantasy, even if it’s moving closer to more cyberpunk and technology than strict fantasy. Allowing the characters to have over-the-top weapons and armor helps keep a little bit of that fantasy flair that would otherwise be squashed by the games’ overall grittiness.
6 Overdone: Underdeveloped Fantasy Races That Are Lesser Than Humans
All the humans look a certain way and are extra perfect, whereas any other humanoid race isn’t treated as well. They also tend to have really cliché tribal lifestyles whereas humans have highly advanced societies. The stories will barely address these other cultures, people, or just about anything about them other than if humans are okay with them or not, such as Moogles which are everywhere and seen positively, but they rarely get any in-depth work with them.
Then, even if there is a point made to include them more positively, it feels rushed and glossed over. Not to mention that if any tension between them and humans get solved, it gets solved simply, unrealistically, or in few lines of dialogue.
5 Can’t Get Enough: Rogues & Thief Types Are Fun
Most games make their rogues and thieves edgy and gritty. For a series like Final Fantasy which adores their dark and gritty nature, they almost always flip the tables and make their pickpockets fun and carefree sorts. They are almost always those colorful, happy, trickster sorts of characters instead of the moody and the broody.
Zidane from IX or Rikku from X and X-2 are prime examples of this. While each of them has their own issues and stories to deal with, they often find a lot of joy and silliness to make up for it and tend to fall back on a comedic relief that would otherwise have few places to go.
4 Overdone: One-Sided Characters With Little To No Depth
One of the things that really made Sephiroth great was he had such a complex story with depth, coupled with a massive amount of power. Yuna was able to get her own game where she had a ton of character growth and was able to build herself into something greater than she started as. Freya Crescent had such a complex story and such amazing motivations that ended up going nowhere but was still far more complicated than so many characters.
There are lots more characters within the series that have weak motivations, are incredibly shallow, or just meant to be a pretty face to fill a requisite role in the party. There’s little to nothing about them to unpack other than being upset over losing someone they just met, their entire life is their fighting style, or they like this one thing and only this one thing.
3 Can’t Get Enough: Found Family Themes & Larger-Than-Life Drama Works Better For Them
The best games are the ones where the party feels like a family with lots of interactions, whereas the weaker ones involve parties that feel like they were smashed together and have little to do with one another. Close-knit relationship drama works well, like an opera with overdramatic world quests and super fairytale-like relationships. They really suffer when they try to force themselves to be as dark, gritty, and moody in absolutely every aspect.
This is why so many of the characters in VII, IV, and XII are so much fun. The characters are fun and it doesn’t matter what some of their deal is. Watching the larger-than-life interactions between the characters and watching them build relationships with one another works amazingly well and in their favor, even if the overall story is crunchy at best in some titles.
2 Overdone: Pretty Graphics & Effects At The Expense Of Story
So many of the games, especially the more recent ones, are just full of gorgeous graphics that other games strive to achieve. There is no questioning that Final Fantasy tries hard to be gorgeous, especially when they shove so many cinematics down the player’s throat in an attempt to demand appreciation for their skills.
Instead of spending their budget making a rich story full of believable characters with complicated lives and engaging plot hooks, it very clearly goes to making it as pretty as possible instead. Presumably, this is in hopes to make players miss the shallow, subpar storytelling and characterization.
1 Can’t Get Enough: Tons Of Minigames & Miniquests
The thin line that needs to be followed with the minigames is that they need to lean more heavily on being optional rather than forced or they stop being fun. With modern trends falling towards more open-world settings, fans are really hoping for more opportunities for rich miniquests and fun little minigames to spend time with away from the main plot of the story. Especially if that main plot is obnoxious and boring.
XII has a terrible story but there are so many fun and engaging minigames that made the game worth playing regardless. Catching and racing Chocobos to get a Golden Egg in VII should have felt like a horrible grind but players all but demanded its return, as well as the return of the Gold Saucer in the remake and the entire miniquest where players had to dress Cloud up as a girl. Fans were horrified that modern standards would convince Square Enix to cut that from the roster and were stoked to see they were still being included.
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