The Evolution of Final Fantasy Battle System

[vik589caa]

I've just started playing Final Fantasy 2 on the GBA and I am really enjoying the game. Going back to the oldschool gaming has left me thinking about the entire series and how Square has changed Final Fantasy from a battle / strategy perspective.

With the newest FF now out, I have not enjoyed any of the newer battle systems Square has introduced..namely FF12 and FF13. I think this is the wrong way Square is taking the series.

From 1 - 10, there was en element of the unknown through the random encounter system. I always felt a sense of panic and urgency and I prayed that a enemy wouldn't showup that could kill my party. With the new games you can see the enemy and you can battle it when you wish. I don't like that at all, cause that takes out the element of the unknown and minimizes the risk a player is facing. Now, we have players saying, "Woah.....that guy looks powerful...I'll fight it when I'm more powerful and know I can kick its ass."

Like c'mon...don't you remember in FF4 when we would be walking through a cave and we would fight a powerful beast that you barely beat, used up most of your Hi-potions and MP to heal, and prayed not to fight that thing again, only to suddenly get into the next battle and see that same bastard of a beast again. Or in FF8, fighting a T-rex early in the game and it leaving a bad taste in your mouth not to mess with it again...and even half-way through the game, seeing a T-Rex show up again still made you worry.

What I would have liked Square to do is a fusion of the old FF's and new FF's. Keep the randon encounter system alive, but give us the freedom to move in battle like the newer FF's. For Square that would free up a lot of disk space and allow them to use the extra space to beef up the grapics or contents and keep the games challenging and stressfull.

For some of us who haven't played an old-school FF in a while....go play one and you'll see what I mean. Let me know what you all think. Thanks.

 

[Martel]

Really, RPG battle systems haven't evolved at all. They've just added a couple of gimmicks here and there to complement them. The core system remains the same, and I highly doubt that will ever change. They're always either turn-based or active-time-battle, and no amount of pretty paintwork or complex network of stat increases will disguise the fact.

There are two types of FF games - those without an ATB bar, and those with them. The only difference between FFXIII and the rest of them is that the ATB bar lets you do more than one attack at a time - hardly revolutionary when you think about it - and FFXII just lets you move around. When you go into combat mode, you've still got that bar, telling you that if you downgraded the game's graphics and removed its gimmicks you'd have exactly the same game as its predecessor.

Just for once, I'd like to have a real-time Final Fantasy game. Like Dissidia, perhaps - only with multiple playable characters (swapping between them shouldn't be particularly problematic - they could take a leaf out of Dragon Age's book and have it so that the shoulder buttons swap characters) and multiple monsters, and a fully explorable overworld. Hell, I'd even take the straight-line maps of FFXIII (they didn't bother me all that much, actually) if I could just take control of the characters and have them do those flashy moves through my own power, instead of just mashing the X button and sitting and watching the pretty result.