Final Fantasy was on a rocky road for a good while after the turn of the millennium; Squaresoft merged with Enix following significant financial difficulties and many of their biggest names split from the company over the next few years; most prominently Hironobu Sakaguchi, Final Fantasy's creator. It certainly didn't help that the company's first forays into HD gaming - The Last Remnant and Final Fantasy XIII - were underwhelming messes that left a sizable portion of their fanbase feeling disappointed and betrayed. That left a perfect opening for Sakaguchi's new company to reclaim his crown with a big budget high-quality RPG release, so he did just that, right? Well... no. If Lost Odyssey was a poor man's Final Fantasy X (which was already a craptastic game, by the way), this one is the poor man's Final Fantasy XIII, trying way too hard to be 'cinematic' and forgetting all about important elements like gameplay and competent writing. With clunky, poorly explained and confusing mechanics, 100% railroaded progression, awful party AI, a messy narrative with countless plot holes, a thoroughly obnoxious and unlikable central cast compounded with terrible acting every step of the way, and tons of lag and framerate issues due to being shoehorned onto aging Wii hardware, it's just a wretched experience all around. But, being codeveloped by the team that brought us amazing classics like Ju-On: the Grudge, Vampire Rain and Bullet Witch, is that really a surprise? If you're wondering why Mistwalker has mostly moved into making low-stakes mobile games and Sakaguchi is only spoken of fondly in the past tense nowadays, well, look no further.
Developer: Mistwalker, AQ Interactive
Publisher: XSeed Games
Released: 2012
Platforms: Wii