I understand exactly how and I've written it off because they're desperate for sales and attention so badly, they use the name as a convoluted license to slap on "Game X" to attract fanboys, boost sales and magazine ratings. Really, once XI and X-2 came out, the name lost a lot of meaning and it's gone downhill ever since. I'm almost amazed they don't try adding Final Fantasy to these new Mana games to help them sell better. It's not even worth considering to me, now that RPG's are so numerous nowadays. The idea of Final Fantasy is absolutely silly at this point, especially with Sakaguchi and Uematsu not affiliated with it and the fact I haven't liked anything I've seen of the series since...X.

So yeah, I see "Final Fantasy", I see a widely recognized namebrand from a company that's low on both ideas and production talent (if Kawazu and Nomura are two of the top names still there, they're in deep trouble) and I just see it as a cheap way of expanding their audience. And I've been saying that for 4 years now...It's only gotten worse (even I couldn't have foreseen 143, 561 FFVII incarnations in the pipeline or three different FXIII's coming out or the 4 generation of FF1 and 2 remakes).

So blame Square if people consider FF a "series"...That's what their marketing and accounting staff is hoping for.

No, it just means I bought them.  After not playing (and by "playing," I mean playing seriously; I've certainly tried all of them) the last however many FF games I bought, I decided it was time to stop buying them.  The last new FF game I played seriously was FF7.  I bought FF8-X2, FFT, FFTA, and FFCC, but none of them grabbed me.  Then I played FFXI at a show and later, FFXII, and that was enough for me to say enough with FF.  I'll still buy remakes of the old ones that I liked, but otherwise I'm done with FF.

This amused me.

The original Seiken Densetsu was subtitled "Final Fantasy Gaiden" I believe.

Anyway, I picked up Etrian Odyssey for DS the other night, and am surprisingly having fun with it.  The feature to draw your own dungeon maps and stuff is pretty cool.  That, and the game is HARD.  Anyone else grab this?

after seeing the gameplay videos from dawn of mana, it looks a lot like a cross between dewprism and musashi...  it may not be the SD2 2-player style engine we had hoped for, but it still looks like a worthwhile play. i like how the enemies squeal when they get hit and how you can pickup and use the surrounding scenery to whack them...

And don't forget it was called FF Adventure in the US. And the FF Legend games too...

-Joshua

Yep, back when Square had limited brand awareness. So does that mean we have finally come full circle with the Final Fantasy brand? Does ubiquity equal homogeneity?

Yeah, I thought that when I saw videos too, but the gameplay demo at TGS last year was pretty much completely awful.  The controls are pretty atrocious... :\

Yeah, I didn't forget about that or the original GB "Final Fantasy" games. Back when RPG's were a fairly new concept, I don't think it was a big issue because they were still trying to find their audience and attract whatever they could to the games. Now, it's being done blatantly with $_$ and far worse.

Worst part is...I wasn't even joking about adding FF to the new Mana games. $_^

Well, if they do that, it'll make it a whole lot easier for me to stop buying them.  :-)

Ok, I put about 1.5 hours or so into Dawn of Mana.  On the bright side, it's not the worst Mana game ever (Children still holds that crown), but it's not very good either.  It's basically a repetitive action game with RPG-esque statistics and a physics system.

It's nice to see some of the franchise's classic enemy designs in 3D, but since both enemies and objects repawn and there are no experience points, you're really only motivated to kill them enough times to boost your HP and attack power temporarily.

If the levels and enemy placements were better designed, there could have been some cool potential to make the game into an action/puzzler where you'd try to figure out the best way to drive a group of enemies into panic mode in order to reap the most stat-boosting power-ups, but sadly that's not the case. 

Also sorely missing are any exploration elements since there are no towns and you just get pushed along from mission to mission to mission with the story interspersed.

And the camera really sucks.

Anyway, it's not a flat out bad game like Children of Mana, but it's exceedingly mediocre and definitely not worth the $50.