I had fun with FF16 demo but the actual game is really boring to me so far (beaten shadow Clive.) Characters are so dull and the world look drab as hell. Summon battles are fun to look at with all the HDR sparkles. Combat is repetitive and tedious. I’m not good at character action games so I’m using ring that tells me when to dodge and just mashing through battles. Probably more engaging with the ring off but I don’t want to dmcing my FF! I’ve probably pressed more buttons so far than all of FFs I’ve played combined. Why am I pressing buttons 500x to just kill a bunch of peons?!! I really hope this is dead end of FF combat going all the way action.
Square needs to look at the recent successes of turn based rpgs and go back to turn based for FF17. Maybe let Saga people give another go at it. Do multi character thing like saga, octopath, live a live, dq4. Give little status bumps after battles. Romancing Saga 2 remake is pretty decent so just double the budget of that and give them FF17.
I enjoyed FF16 and finding fun combos/builds in the combat but yeah, if you’re using the stuff to make it easier, it’ll feel even more repetitive. I hope it at least makes it faster. In the late game when it’s lost its lustre, it can become a real chore. The character action stuff isn’t very deep, so it’s moreso timing your cooldown rotations like an MMO. Getting those rotations with good positioning will make battles faster.
Respectfully disagree on going back to turn based or ATB. That’s a system that also struggles to remain interesting past 20 hours. I’d like to see Squeenix continue trying new things, but hopefully with more RPG mixed in. The gear system and skill tree are pretty terrible, and I like the pseudo ATB in FF7 Remake a lot.
To a point it is, but even then I found myself bored of the rhythms and repetition of it by the game’s halfway point or so
That demo sure did have a lot of promise, though…
I really think this is the way forward for the series if they’re going to stick to action combat. Square just doesn’t make the sorts of games where full on character action works and I’ll never understand why they thought such shallow combat would carry FFXVI for 60 hours…
I’d love them to, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. “Recent successes” are all relative - saga, octopath, live a live, megaten, persona… those are still small fish compared to what Final Fantasy sells (or at least, what they’ve convinced themselves it should sell). From how they see it, Dragon Quest and the small stuff they do like Octopath and Bravely Default - those are for the people who want their turn-based combat. Final Fantasy is full steam ahead AAA action game.
I’m happy with FF7Remake’s combat and if we aren’t getting X, XII, or XIII’s combat back any time soon, then I think that’s the way forward. Let’s see it under another context, the way the original ATB system was paired with things like espers or junctions or dresspheres.
A thousand times this, please! I often wonder if part of the fondness for the ATB era (which more or less lasted from *FFIV to FFXIII) comes from the way they didn’t really re-invent it every game, but rather played with the things around it to create a fresh experience
I’d love to see their designers commit to a format again like that. I have a sneaking suspicion we’d get better Final Fantasy games if they did, since having that baseline also works well for helping them to understand how to structure the rest of a game around it
I think so, and there’s a lot to work with in the old systems that could be brought forward. Like what if 17 had action combat with some of the paradigm system, or dress spheres. Lots of cool ways left to take old school nostalgic systems and merge them with modern design like they have with 15, 7 Remake and 16.
I definitely like FF7r combat way better over 15/16 thanks to the variety of characters and moves. FF went action combat for awhile now and it doesn’t look like it helped expanding FF player base much while annoying the hell out of old farts like me heh heh. Not even counting BG3, turn based games like Metaphor has bigger mind share than FF16 it seems, and Clair Obscur probably will beat FF16 even in sales numbers so having turned based combat definitely not hurting anything. I’d even say most interesting games are turn based like slay the spire type games or even balatro. Whereas action combat didn’t help dragging FF16 out of the muck I think. We got MMO FF, Tales FF, Souls FF, DMC FF so now’s time for JRPG FF. How about FF game with Calculator as main character. Do some number scumbaggery.
Well not exactly true. Every time they change the combat, which (to varying degrees) is every time, we hear this. There’s a lot more to it than combat of course, but 15 is often brought up as where Final Fantasy lost its way and it’s one of the best selling entries in the series. 13 was a huge shift from traditional ATB that got clowned on for being a bunch of hallways and fantasy-jargon and even that one made dump trucks of money. I think it’s just really really hard to gauge what people want in a hit based industry.
Also worth mentioning, people do want action combat in their RPGs as well as turn based. Genshin Impact is one of the biggest games in the world right now with action combat that’s kinda good but bolstered by a huge variety of characters and builds. Honkai: Star Rail is also huge, though not like Genshin, and it’s regular turn based.
Maybe all Final Fantasy needs is gooner bait gacha to go with the NFTs the CEO was so excited about?
I’m looking this FF sales number site and yes, FF15 did sell a lot but not that much more than FF13 or even FF10. FF7R also sold a lot but still lower than 10. Rebirth and 16 are lower still. So I don’t think those FFs with action combat expended the player base. FF is just on the downward trajectory so going back to turn based probably won’t help it much but worth trying I think.
Yeah I really wished they leaned more into the whole DMC stuff. I was genuinely excited to see a character action game with Square/FF money. It was more character action with strict-ish MMO rotations.
Elden Ring sold 28.6 million copies apparently so I don’t get this idea that you have to dial things back for broader appeal.
stray thought: I think the job system should be the thing they pair with the 7Remake ATB combat next. We haven’t seen it in one of the straight action titles yet and the last time we got it was XII (in its explicit form) or LR:XIII (in its implied form)
Now I’m looking at an IGN article listing the top most sold games. Minecraft comes second with 200 millions sold whilst Tetris tops the list at 520 million (counting all Tetris games feels like cheating).
So really Square just needs to make another super high budget Dragon Quest Builders.
I still think there’s a lot more that could be done with 13s paradigm system. I don’t think it’s been fully explored. Maybe we can toss every Final Fantasy into a pot and stir up some sort of JRPG gumbo.
I’m kind of baffled they shifted away from ATB after XIII. At the time of release I remember plenty of lists putting it as by far the best Final Fantasy combat (always with the caveat: ‘once it gets going’"). It took them remaking VII to understand that, I guess?
Wild conjecture: I think they threw the baby out with the bathwater on that one, and maybe took longer than normal to learn lessons from the design of the game thanks to some poor reception of the cast(iykyk), too obvious linear nature and dearth of npcs in the early game.
BG3 sold a lot also along with other recent turn based games so there are plenty of reason to go forward with turn based. The idea of turn based being old fashioned and outdated is also old and outdated at this point. Proven wrong again and again.
Square’s been trying to find the thing that hits the broad appeal for awhile and going action doesn’t look like it mattered much to me. FF7 Remake hit big thanks to homerunning the core nostalgia but doesn’t look like its modern gameplay updates were enough to retain players for Rebirth. Stranger in Paradise sold decently for what it is but didn’t move the needle much. It’s been more than 10 years since Lighting Returns, you had your actiony FF for 10 plus years, so can I please just get 1 turn based FF (main, gaiden, whatever) before I die please??!
To be fair, “spiritually”, for lack of a better term, turn based Final Fantasy never went away. It just turned into Bravely Default and others. When I played Bravely Default on 3DS, one of my first thoughts was that it’s literally just old school Final Fantasy with a lighter tone. It’s shifted to lower budget and smaller scopes under Squeenix. I’m thinking you probably want a AAA version of these with Big Graphics, however, and that’s fair.
I remember Square being surprised at Bravely Default sales, and then again surprised by Octopath Traveler sales. I had to buy that one digitally because physical copies were all gone!
