DISCLAIMER:Everything and anything I say here is a matter of subjective personal opinion.It's not forced upon you,you don't have to agree with it.And as long as we respect each other everything will be fine
The Final Fantasy series has been known for reinventing it's mechanics ever since the second game on NES(remember when you had to hit your own party to level up their stats.....UGHHHH)but in general the series,from 1 all the way up to 10,was more or less adding and experimenting on an already existing system since the ATB feels like a natural extension to the usual Turn based battle system that exist in JRPGs.XI was an MMO so the change there isn't unfamiliar to the MMORPG community and FF XII's system is more or less a modified version of of an MMO battle system that would suit a single player experience,but from 2007 onward Square has been experimenting with Action-based battle systems.It worked for small scale projects like Crisis Core FFVII on the PSP but on home console releases like Dirge of Cerberus or mainline games like the XIII trilogy and XV it ranged from a mixed bag in XV to a big failure in XIII where the battles felt like it's on auto-pilot with little input from the player beyond paradigm shifting.
It might be just me but personally:I don't think an action RPG mainline Final Fantasy title would work,not without suffering from major issues
*Meanwhile somewhere out there someone is shouting at me*
Ok here me out.The series from the very beginning,wasn't built for action based combat from the ground up.The reason this type of combat worked for games like Secret of Mana or the Kingdom Hearts series was because those were built with action RPG elements from the get-go where you control one character and to compensate for the party's AI your characters are usually designed to fill bits and pieces of each role so that you won't get screwed and good game design that even if your party constantly dies you still can beat it on your own with enough item,MP management and strategy which is why Kingdom Hearts 2 worked so well
In modern Final Fantasy however they try to force action elements into it with mixed results and sometimes complete failures.in Final Fantasy XIII,you only control one character in a pseudo action\somewhat ATB battle system where your party is controlled by the AI and unless you have enough TP to cast the spell Libra,your party members will be rock stupid and rarely will they ever cast the spell you ever want them to even when you shift their paradigm roles.For example:I once was at a very low HP,the lowest of my party and I'm only one hit from death,shift my party to medic while I'm on sentinel anticipating a heal while defending from an upcoming attack,instead Hope doesn't heal me and go to heal Fang instead,and since if you(the party leader) die it's instant game over,I had to redo the entire dumb long battle with the Proudclad all over again just because of circumstances beyond my control.It begs for you to have complete control over your party like the older games yet it doesn't do the setup the Gambit system offers nor does it give you the option to move and dodge like a proper action game to avoid getting screwed by your party members.It only gives you 10% of control over what role your party should be and insist on you controlling one person with a level up system that artificially locks you at the level the game wants you to be in so no grinding either until you beat the boss.The game isn't hard by any means cuz like I said once you cast libra and remember when to shift paradigms you'll auto-battle your way to victory but the fact that each normal enemy boss has a mountain of HP and your AI do whatever they want can screw you over on multiple occasions is just not a good game design when it's up to RNG not your performance
Final Fantasy XV is nowhere near as bad sure but it's still a big problem despite the game's easiness.I like the game but it's still a huge issue
Your party's AI is so incompetent and rock stupid in this game it's almost like you have a party of three Donalds that can't heal
They stupidly charge into danger,barely guard when they need to,die all the time to the point I had to spend over 5 Phoenix Downs,30 hi potions and 7 Elixirs just to keep the assholes alive because YOU WILL NEED THEM as your team up attacks and tech attacks are the best way to deal damage in the game with how useless summons and magic are.Sure you can set Ignis to heal using potions but doing so will cause him to drain your potions like nothing else.This might not be a problem on most story missions,but on sidequests,superbosses and Raid missions it gets infuriating(and no wait mode doesn't fix the issue either and it's one of my biggest gripes with Final Fantasy XV
They desperately try to shift the series to an action oriented franchise yet they can't seem to integrate them without putting you in dozens of situations where you wish you could just CONTROL what the dumb AI on your team does rather than design the game around the fact that you control only one person.They want an action game that heavily conflicts with the ideology of Final Fantasy as an RPG franchise that emphasizes party management and strategy over button mashing and fear that unless they use dat quote unquote "BOOHOO DATED TURN BASED COMBAT" that they won't get their precious sales
Let's look at Resident Evil 7,yes it's a different genre but it's a good example of returning to roots and selling millions.
For years Capcom and the gaming industry claimed that survival horror is such an outdated relic that won't sell in today's market yet time and again games like Amnesia,Outlast...etc proves that there is a market for it and lo and behold,Resident Evil 7 returned to it's survival horror while incorporating elements from Amnesia and Outlast and proved to be a success
That's a proof that the old style of the series was never outdated,it's just a stupid thought the industry decided on for no reason
Heck Square's own game,Bravely Default,sold so well that Square themselves were so surprised that the genre THEY USED TO PIONEER is still making money for them(those out of touch CEOs and investors never cease to amaze me).Heck Pokemon,a series that's been turn based for 21 years now has been selling double the amount FFXV sold with each and every entry with Pokemon Sun & Moon selling over 14 million units in the span of three months compared to FFXV's 6 million units
To add to that,despite how fast the original XIII and FFXV sold,neither of them reached the sales of the original Final Fantasy VII which sold over 10 million units.Yes the market was different back then but the fact remains that,despite them reinventing the series to be more action based over and over again they still can never reach the milestone that "EWW TURN BASED" game reached heck they didn't even get close to the amounts 8 and 10 sold either.XV might sold it's sweet 6 million mark for the short term but whether it maintains a steady long term profit is debatable regardless of the DLC support of(paid story DLC stuff that should've been in the game)
What made XV sold over 6 million units is not the fact that it's an action game.It's because of a very aggressive marketing campaign, the recognition of a brand that's been going for 30 years and finally the return of one of the elements that defined a Final Fantasy game:An explorable world
Much like survivor horror,turn based was never outdated.It's just a different genre on it's own that has as much right to live and have it's own market as action RPGs
Shoving a genre like Action RPGs to Final Fantasy ignorantly without knowing what made either work caused the series to suffer from an identity crisis for almost a decade.
I still believe that it's possible to make a AAA Final Fantasy game that's true to it's roots(much like RE7's return to survival horror) that still can sell millions of units without having to go through nonsensical revisions and identity crises.
I'm not saying that a great action RPG Final Fantasy game can't be done but so far only small scale projects like Crisis Core proved to excel in that while suffering when it's applied to mainline.I'm very doubtful of the Final Fantasy VII remake being able to acheive the essence of what made the original the beloved classic it was when Nomura is bragging about how he will change everything yet contradict himself by saying he'll still maintain the essence of the original.
But hey that's just an opinion,A PEEERSONAL OPINION,thanks for reading (Watch out Matpat,Personal Opinion will give Game Theory a run for it's money )
DISCLAIMER:Everything and anything I say here is a matter of subjective personal opinion.It's not forced upon you,you don't have to agree with it.And as long as we respect each other everything will be fine
The Final Fantasy series has been known for reinventing it's mechanics ever since the second game on NES(remember when you had to hit your own party to level up their stats.....UGHHHH)but in general the series,from 1 all the way up to 10,was more or less adding and experimenting on an already existing system since the ATB feels like a natural extension to the usual Turn based battle system that exist in JRPGs.XI was an MMO so the change there isn't unfamiliar to the MMORPG community and FF XII's system is more or less a modified version of of an MMO battle system that would suit a single player experience,but from 2007 onward Square has been experimenting with Action-based battle systems.It worked for small scale projects like Crisis Core FFVII on the PSP but on home console releases like Dirge of Cerberus or mainline games like the XIII trilogy and XV it ranged from a mixed bag in XV to a big failure in XIII where the battles felt like it's on auto-pilot with little input from the player beyond paradigm shifting.
It might be just me but personally:I don't think an action RPG mainline Final Fantasy title would work,not without suffering from major issues
*Meanwhile somewhere out there someone is shouting at me*
Ok here me out.The series from the very beginning,wasn't built for action based combat from the ground up.The reason this type of combat worked for games like Secret of Mana or the Kingdom Hearts series was because those were built with action RPG elements from the get-go where you control one character and to compensate for the party's AI your characters are usually designed to fill bits and pieces of each role so that you won't get screwed and good game design that even if your party constantly dies you still can beat it on your own with enough item,MP management and strategy which is why Kingdom Hearts 2 worked so well
In modern Final Fantasy however they try to force action elements into it with mixed results and sometimes complete failures.in Final Fantasy XIII,you only control one character in a pseudo action\somewhat ATB battle system where your party is controlled by the AI and unless you have enough TP to cast the spell Libra,your party members will be rock stupid and rarely will they ever cast the spell you ever want them to even when you shift their paradigm roles.For example:I once was at a very low HP,the lowest of my party and I'm only one hit from death,shift my party to medic while I'm on sentinel anticipating a heal while defending from an upcoming attack,instead Hope doesn't heal me and go to heal Fang instead,and since if you(the party leader) die it's instant game over,I had to redo the entire dumb long battle with the Proudclad all over again just because of circumstances beyond my control.It begs for you to have complete control over your party like the older games yet it doesn't do the setup the Gambit system offers nor does it give you the option to move and dodge like a proper action game to avoid getting screwed by your party members.It only gives you 10% of control over what role your party should be and insist on you controlling one person with a level up system that artificially locks you at the level the game wants you to be in so no grinding either until you beat the boss.The game isn't hard by any means cuz like I said once you cast libra and remember when to shift paradigms you'll auto-battle your way to victory but the fact that each normal enemy boss has a mountain of HP and your AI do whatever they want can screw you over on multiple occasions is just not a good game design when it's up to RNG not your performance
Final Fantasy XV is nowhere near as bad sure but it's still a big problem despite the game's easiness.I like the game but it's still a huge issue
Your party's AI is so incompetent and rock stupid in this game it's almost like you have a party of three Donalds that can't heal
They stupidly charge into danger,barely guard when they need to,die all the time to the point I had to spend over 5 Phoenix Downs,30 hi potions and 7 Elixirs just to keep the assholes alive because YOU WILL NEED THEM as your team up attacks and tech attacks are the best way to deal damage in the game with how useless summons and magic are.Sure you can set Ignis to heal using potions but doing so will cause him to drain your potions like nothing else.This might not be a problem on most story missions,but on sidequests,superbosses and Raid missions it gets infuriating(and no wait mode doesn't fix the issue either and it's one of my biggest gripes with Final Fantasy XV
They desperately try to shift the series to an action oriented franchise yet they can't seem to integrate them without putting you in dozens of situations where you wish you could just CONTROL what the dumb AI on your team does rather than design the game around the fact that you control only one person.They want an action game that heavily conflicts with the ideology of Final Fantasy as an RPG franchise that emphasizes party management and strategy over button mashing and fear that unless they use dat quote unquote "BOOHOO DATED TURN BASED COMBAT" that they won't get their precious sales
Let's look at Resident Evil 7,yes it's a different genre but it's a good example of returning to roots and selling millions.
For years Capcom and the gaming industry claimed that survival horror is such an outdated relic that won't sell in today's market yet time and again games like Amnesia,Outlast...etc proves that there is a market for it and lo and behold,Resident Evil 7 returned to it's survival horror while incorporating elements from Amnesia and Outlast and proved to be a success
That's a proof that the old style of the series was never outdated,it's just a stupid thought the industry decided on for no reason
Heck Square's own game,Bravely Default,sold so well that Square themselves were so surprised that the genre THEY USED TO PIONEER is still making money for them(those out of touch CEOs and investors never cease to amaze me).Heck Pokemon,a series that's been turn based for 21 years now has been selling double the amount FFXV sold with each and every entry with Pokemon Sun & Moon selling over 14 million units in the span of three months compared to FFXV's 6 million units
To add to that,despite how fast the original XIII and FFXV sold,neither of them reached the sales of the original Final Fantasy VII which sold over 10 million units.Yes the market was different back then but the fact remains that,despite them reinventing the series to be more action based over and over again they still can never reach the milestone that "EWW TURN BASED" game reached heck they didn't even get close to the amounts 8 and 10 sold either.XV might sold it's sweet 6 million mark for the short term but whether it maintains a steady long term profit is debatable regardless of the DLC support of(paid story DLC stuff that should've been in the game)
What made XV sold over 6 million units is not the fact that it's an action game.It's because of a very aggressive marketing campaign, the recognition of a brand that's been going for 30 years and finally the return of one of the elements that defined a Final Fantasy game:An explorable world
Much like survivor horror,turn based was never outdated.It's just a different genre on it's own that has as much right to live and have it's own market as action RPGs
Shoving a genre like Action RPGs to Final Fantasy ignorantly without knowing what made either work caused the series to suffer from an identity crisis for almost a decade.
I still believe that it's possible to make a AAA Final Fantasy game that's true to it's roots(much like RE7's return to survival horror) that still can sell millions of units without having to go through nonsensical revisions and identity crises.
I'm not saying that a great action RPG Final Fantasy game can't be done but so far only small scale projects like Crisis Core proved to excel in that while suffering when it's applied to mainline.I'm very doubtful of the Final Fantasy VII remake being able to acheive the essence of what made the original the beloved classic it was when Nomura is bragging about how he will change everything yet contradict himself by saying he'll still maintain the essence of the original.
But hey that's just an opinion,A PEEERSONAL OPINION,thanks for reading (Watch out Matpat,Personal Opinion will give Game Theory a run for it's money
)