What is wrong with Turn-Based Combat?

[Ayen]

Well, if you look at the charts -shot-

[Mirage]

Alot of the younger generation seem to prefer action based rpgs because they're just quicker and they're less complicated, and they have grown up with games like Kingdom Hearts and Crisis Core and just prefer that system- Square could be just aiming towards the teens and tweens because they're going to be the ones able to buy the games and play them the most and won't be affected by things like work, babies, married life etc.

Not to mention it's the younger ones who have been complaining about FF VII's graphics and refusing to play the OG because of the graphics, while adults don't mind/ could care less- so Square might as well try and aim for the younger fanbases, while throw the oldies a bone now and again.

TL;DR- We are old grandpa's and grandma's and times are changing.

Why is action gameplay less complicated?

When I look at Xenoblade and XCX I don't exactly see any lack of depth in the combat system or character development system

[Wolf Kanno]

Wolf Kanno is Pokemon not popular anymore?

I know Pokemon isn't as popular with people my little brother's age, but the anime is still ongoing so I figure maybe?

It's also mostly a handheld exclusive, going back to my point about how turn-based combat is relegated to the land of handhelds while action-rpgs are console territory for some people.

[Fox]

FFX's combat was also criticized for being slow, which is why X-2 brought back ATB and sped it up to make it faster.

Yes but now, FFXV and VII:R's real-time systems are being criticised for being too fast and not tactical enough. So does that mean actually, action RPG mechanics are out of date and need to be phased out?

I fully understand all the arguments about why turn based is not a popular system anymore, I just don't see much in the way of corroborating evidence for it. It's not like SE kept making turn based Final Fantasies until the sales started to plummet and then tried something new, they just tried something new anyway and since then the series has struggled (relatively speaking). On home console alone, Persona 4 sold almost twice what Persona 3 did in all its releases. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is turn based on PC and consoles and sold upwards of 4 million copies. Valkyria Chronicles sold more than twice as well on the PS3 than its sequel did on the PSP. Then you look at the modern handhelds and see huge success for... Persona 4 Golden. Pokemon. Fire Emblem. Bravely Default. Lots and lots of very successful turn based games. And these wouldn't work on console because...?

This looks to me like one of those cases where the cause is being assumed from the effect. "These popular games tend to be on handheld, therefore these games can only work on handheld". Well, I don't see any reason to think that. Show me cases where these games didn't work on consoles, and I'll reconsider. But the few examples we do have to look at so far point to the opposite - there is nothing wrong with turn based systems, and they can work and be successful if and when developers choose to make them.

[Mr. Carnelian]

I think the reason why Square Enix are trying to make combat more 'real-time' is because they're trying to appeal to a young, Western market. For this market, turn-based is not the norm for console games, or even for RPGs.

Before I started Final Fantasy, my only experience with turn-based combat was Pokemon. Apart from Pokemon, I'd never played any JRPGs before FF. Coming across turn-based combat in FFX - which Formy had to persuade me to play, originally - was a complete surprise for me. If I'd known it was turn-based before starting, it probably would have put me off the idea.

For me, the norm in RPGs was the kind of system which FFXII had. Most young people in the West may well - like I did - associate turn-based combat with Pokemon. If they heard that the FF7 remake was turn-based, they'd just think, "Oh, that'll be just like Pokemon then. I won't bother getting that".

If Square Enix want the series to go on, they can't just appeal to established fans: they have to bring in new ones. And new, Western fans might be turned off by turn-based combat.

[Fynn]

It's not really something they have to do, since games like Persona - console games with turn-based combat - are gaining more and more traction. It's simply a safer route, and it is understandable that they took it, since they are afraid for the future of the genre if FFXV does poorly.

Though really, we still have no idea what VII's system will look like. It has an ATB gauge and looks pretty action packed - but what does that really mean?

[Fox]

If Square Enix want the series to go on, they can't just appeal to established fans: they have to bring in new ones. And new, Western fans might be turned off by turn-based combat.

But by a similar token... why do what everyone else does? I've lost count of all the Call of Duty wannabes that have fallen by the wayside trying to copy that success. If people want to play Call of Duty... they're gonna play Call of Duty, not your derivative.

So to say "Oh hey, all the Western RPGS are doing X and Y, let's do them same!" is hugely risky. It takes away something that made Final Fantasy unique in the western market (a market which, I feel compelled to remind everyone again, was perfectly happy to buy millions and millions of turn based Final Fantasy games) and forces it suddenly to compete more with Bethesda RPGs, Bioware RPGs, CD Projeckt Red.

[Skyblade]

I think the reason why Square Enix are trying to make combat more 'real-time' is because they're trying to appeal to a young, Western market. For this market, turn-based is not the norm for console games, or even for RPGs.

Before I started Final Fantasy, my only experience with turn-based combat was Pokemon. Apart from Pokemon, I'd never played any JRPGs before FF. Coming across turn-based combat in FFX - which Formy had to persuade me to play, originally - was a complete surprise for me. If I'd known it was turn-based before starting, it probably would have put me off the idea.

For me, the norm in RPGs was the kind of system which FFXII had. Most young people in the West may well - like I did - associate turn-based combat with Pokemon. If they heard that the FF7 remake was turn-based, they'd just think, "Oh, that'll be just like Pokemon then. I won't bother getting that".

If Square Enix want the series to go on, they can't just appeal to established fans: they have to bring in new ones. And new, Western fans might be turned off by turn-based combat.

But when FFVII came out, turn-based combat was everywhere, everyone was super used to it, and it was the norm for the market at the time, right? That's why it was such a massive success?

Oh, wait, no, the PS1 was dominated by racing games, sports games, actions games, etcetera. It had almost no turn based games, and that didn't hinder FFVII at all. If anything, it enhanced it by showing off something different from the rest of the market.

These days, FFVII R and FFXV just look exactly like every other game on the platform.

[Fynn]

I think the reason why Square Enix are trying to make combat more 'real-time' is because they're trying to appeal to a young, Western market. For this market, turn-based is not the norm for console games, or even for RPGs.

Before I started Final Fantasy, my only experience with turn-based combat was Pokemon. Apart from Pokemon, I'd never played any JRPGs before FF. Coming across turn-based combat in FFX - which Formy had to persuade me to play, originally - was a complete surprise for me. If I'd known it was turn-based before starting, it probably would have put me off the idea.

For me, the norm in RPGs was the kind of system which FFXII had. Most young people in the West may well - like I did - associate turn-based combat with Pokemon. If they heard that the FF7 remake was turn-based, they'd just think, "Oh, that'll be just like Pokemon then. I won't bother getting that".

If Square Enix want the series to go on, they can't just appeal to established fans: they have to bring in new ones. And new, Western fans might be turned off by turn-based combat.

But when FFVII came out, turn-based combat was everywhere, everyone was super used to it, and it was the norm for the market at the time, right? That's why it was such a massive success?

Oh, wait, no, the PS1 was dominated by racing games, sports games, actions games, etcetera. It had almost no turn based games, and that didn't hinder FFVII at all. If anything, it enhanced it by showing off something different from the rest of the market.

These days, FFVII R and FFXV just look exactly like every other game on the platform.

There you have it. SE is so worried about its damaged reputation that they're simply not willing to risk doing something different than the accepted mainstream, out of fear of losing what little hope for financial gain that they have left.

Right now, though, I'm just laughing my ass off because all my predictions from the FFVII article are just coming true XD

[Wolf Kanno]

FFX's combat was also criticized for being slow, which is why X-2 brought back ATB and sped it up to make it faster.

Yes but now, FFXV and VII:R's real-time systems are being criticised for being too fast and not tactical enough. So does that mean actually, action RPG mechanics are out of date and need to be phased out?

Well there are a lot of problems with SE's handling of combat systems as of late, and part of the core issue is that SE is trying to appeal to both camps by blending Action-RPG combat with Turn-Based and frankly they have very opposing views on what makes combat fun. So trying to rectify this has been an issue for them.

I fully understand all the arguments about why turn based is not a popular system anymore, I just don't see much in the way of corroborating evidence for it. It's not like SE kept making turn based Final Fantasies until the sales started to plummet and then tried something new, they just tried something new anyway and since then the series has struggled (relatively speaking). On home console alone, Persona 4 sold almost twice what Persona 3 did in all its releases. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is turn based on PC and consoles and sold upwards of 4 million copies. Valkyria Chronicles sold more than twice as well on the PS3 than its sequel did on the PSP. Then you look at the modern handhelds and see huge success for... Persona 4 Golden. Pokemon. Fire Emblem. Bravely Default. Lots and lots of very successful turn based games. And these wouldn't work on console because...?

A few points to make here:

X-COM and VC are Tactical RPGs whose genre of combat systems have always been Turn Based and frankly neither game is close to being a core RPG. The combat is the main event in both games and the genre requires tactics and strategy. Neither sold very well in terms of the numbers SE is looking for.

Persona is easily the most financially lucrative property Atlus owns right now but again, when you compare the sales figure to the top ten selling RPGs of the last decades, they are laughable. It is not helped that fans of the games are also divided by the combat system as newer fans push for the system to be less complicated and more user-friendly while older fans want the series to go back to it's more unforgiving roots.

Fire Emblem and Bravery Default also have a numbers issues. The only reason why these two are special is because they did surprisingly well in Western countries despite being more Japanese focus. In fact BP sold better than Lightning Returns, but there is more to this than "Turn-Based is awesome".

Pokemon is the lone exception here as it's easily the best selling RPG in the world, but even Pokemon is heavily criticized for feeling old and stale, and Nintendo's heavy resistance to move the main series beyond the handheld market continues the stigma.

This looks to me like one of those cases where the cause is being assumed from the effect. "These popular games tend to be on handheld, therefore these games can only work on handheld". Well, I don't see any reason to think that. Show me cases where these games didn't work on consoles, and I'll reconsider. But the few examples we do have to look at so far point to the opposite - there is nothing wrong with turn based systems, and they can work and be successful if and when developers choose to make them.

A lot of this is that actually. The problem comes from last console generation. The best selling JRPG on the PSP was Crisis Core, an Action-RPG whose sales crushed every traditional turn based RPG released on the handheld. Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon sold mediocre and their "old school" combat systems were heavily criticized, franchises like Tales Of, seriously flourished last gen while other JRPGs retreated to smaller scale handhelds because people were kind of sick of the old school mechanics and wanted something simpler and more reactive. The fact that one of the most popular JRPGs in Japan (doing well in the West as well last I checked) is Monster Hunter, an Action-RPG whose sales have been dominating in Japan, and has been one of the most influential games in Japan for several years. If you're whining about the flood MMO elements and crafting mechanics in the JRPG genre that have popped up in the last few years, it's actually this game's fault and not WoW.

Granted, there are a lot of factors that contributed to this problem, largely stemming from Japan's terrible design process finally catching up to them after all these years. The real problem here is that Western style RPGs overtook the market. Skyrim is one of the best selling RPGs last gen with universal praise, and Mass Effect is probably one of the best new IPs in the genre to come out in years. These WRPGs largely outsold the JRPG market except on handhelds and it really threw off some Japanese companies opinions. There has been discussions on why this was happening and part of the reasoning is because WRPGs are not limited to some traditional stuffy system. These games are more action packed and the shift of combat system created a more organic flow to exploration and interaction with the world. The ability to blend RPG elements with other type of gameplay gives them more variety whereas JRPG sometimes feel the same regardless of who made it. The better development process also saw these games getting quick releases with reasonable budgets, whereas SE floundered to get anything worthwhile out the door last gen. While there are certainly many high profile, universally praised JRPGs with more traditional combat systems that did well during this time frame; it becomes a different story when you look at sales numbers and demographics.

Bravery Default sold well, it's numbers are good for small companies but nothing compared to mainline FF or Skyrim's numbers. It surprised SE that it did well for a number of reasons: it outsold an FF sequel featuring a popular character, it did well in the West despite SE having so little faith in it that Nintendo had to actually publish the game to get it out here because SE felt it would bomb, and BP did better than the game its actually a sequel to, the mostly forgotten FF: 4 Heroes of Light which got reamed for being too old school and kiddy for modern gaming taste. Here's the thing though, just because the game did better than expected over here doesn't mean that Turn-Based is still "in". All it means is that there is still a sizable group of people in the West whom that style of game appeals to, but the numbers don't justify retaining VII's traditional combat system in favor of something that may have wider mass appeal. It simply means that there is a market for those types of games, but I wouldn't be surprised if the demographics show that BP was largely bought by older gamers who grew up with those types of games as opposed to a younger generation. Hell even Pokemon gets reamed for this as the series actually has its greatest appeal with both young children and older gamers in the 25+ range, leaving out the core demographics of tweens and teens that most companies shoot for.

My point is that there is nothing inherently wrong with Turn-Based combat, its a style and preference that seems to be out of favor due to changing tastes. It's not going to vanish or anything, just take a backseat for a few more years before something comes along and puts it back into favor. The issue here is that the business side of all this is looking at how Skyrim, Fallout, Monster Hunter, Tales of, and Mass Effect have shifted the market in the last decade; and how SE can take a sure fire hit like VII and make it an even bigger hit with mass appeal for a younger generation that didn't grow up on stuffy PS1 Turn-Based RPGs. This is a marketing and business decision, nothing else. SE wants to make sure that VII doesn't just grab the nostalgic fanboys, they want to make a whole new generation become nostalgic fanboys, and to do that, they need to market the game to them. Despite the grumbling of some of the traditional fans, chances are, most of you will pick up this Remake despite the changes, and SE knows that. So why bother appealing to the demographic who will buy it regardless? The Compilation already proved these fans would grab anything regardless of quality, gameplay style, and medium. The smart business move here is to focus on the non-fans. This is the same principle that Hollywood uses for adaptions of books, TV Shows, and comics, why should gaming be any different?

[Fox]

Bravery Default sold well, it's numbers are good for small companies but nothing compared to mainline FF or Skyrim's numbers.

Those numbers are meaningless without context though. Skyrim was a AAA production on the major home platforms with an absolutely massive marketing campaign behind it. Of course it's going to sell more than a 3DS RPG with a relatively tiny amount of advertising behind it. Also Bravely Default outsold Skyrim in Japan, so it really didn't do badly all things considered.

Also Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon didn't do as badly as you think. Their trouble was the platform they were on, because nobody owned an Xbox 360 in Japan which drastically limited the numbers. Both of those games outsold both Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Xillia in North America and Europe, with the scales only being tipped thanks to the Japanese market where pretty much everyone with a home console owned a PS3.

[Wolf Kanno]

Bravery Default sold well, it's numbers are good for small companies but nothing compared to mainline FF or Skyrim's numbers.

Those numbers are meaningless without context though. Skyrim was a AAA production on the major home platforms with an absolutely massive marketing campaign behind it. Of course it's going to sell more than a 3DS RPG with a relatively tiny amount of advertising behind it. Also Bravely Default outsold Skyrim in Japan, so it really didn't do badly all things considered.

Yes, and Square doesn't want to market anything that doesn't look like a sure fire hit. As I said, Bravely Default only left Japan because of Nintendo and that was because the original turn based 4 Heroes of Light did poorly on the DS which is one of the best selling gaming units on the market. This also doesn't change that Demon's Souls and to a lesser extent, Dark Souls also sold relatively well with little to no PR outside of their console communities. Oblivion itself was a PC/360 exclusive that did better on console, and got nearly half of its sales as a port for the PS3 a year later. Marketing does give you results but it's speculative at best to think BP would have sold significantly better had it had actual marketing on Skyrim's scale. Hell Squenix is one of the worst companies in terms of marketing their titles besides maybe Nintendo. Again. 4 Heroes of Light actually had some marketing and did terribly despite being a pretty decent game. The other issue to remember is that Elder Scrolls, Diablo, Fallout, Mass Effect, and the Tales of franchises have pretty much outsold every non Action-RPG on the market in the last ten years. Only the mobile titles have probably turned more of a profit and that has nothing to do with preference and more about development and tech.

Square took a hit last gen with just about every game they released getting hit with mixed reviews and mediocre sales compared to previous generations. Combined with high cost of production, it's not a surprise that SE's best selling products are subscription based MMOs and mobile titles based off old properties. The last true Turn Based RPG that SE has made that broke 4 million in sales was Dragon Quest VIII and it did terrible in the West. Before that, it was FFIX. Squenix's best selling property that isn't FF or DQ is Kingdom Hearts, of which the pure Action-RPG console entries have fared much better than the more experimental handheld units.

In short: SE has simply convinced themselves that Westerners don't care about Turn-Based combat despite the numbers not really being there to support it. They believe their own hyperbole and sadly there is nothing we can do to change VII's fate. We can change the trend by still supporting games that offer old school combat but who knows.

[Skyblade]

FFX's combat was also criticized for being slow, which is why X-2 brought back ATB and sped it up to make it faster.

Yes but now, FFXV and VII:R's real-time systems are being criticised for being too fast and not tactical enough. So does that mean actually, action RPG mechanics are out of date and need to be phased out?

Well there are a lot of problems with SE's handling of combat systems as of late, and part of the core issue is that SE is trying to appeal to both camps by blending Action-RPG combat with Turn-Based and frankly they have very opposing views on what makes combat fun. So trying to rectify this has been an issue for them.

I fully understand all the arguments about why turn based is not a popular system anymore, I just don't see much in the way of corroborating evidence for it. It's not like SE kept making turn based Final Fantasies until the sales started to plummet and then tried something new, they just tried something new anyway and since then the series has struggled (relatively speaking). On home console alone, Persona 4 sold almost twice what Persona 3 did in all its releases. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is turn based on PC and consoles and sold upwards of 4 million copies. Valkyria Chronicles sold more than twice as well on the PS3 than its sequel did on the PSP. Then you look at the modern handhelds and see huge success for... Persona 4 Golden. Pokemon. Fire Emblem. Bravely Default. Lots and lots of very successful turn based games. And these wouldn't work on console because...?

A few points to make here:

X-COM and VC are Tactical RPGs whose genre of combat systems have always been Turn Based and frankly neither game is close to being a core RPG. The combat is the main event in both games and the genre requires tactics and strategy. Neither sold very well in terms of the numbers SE is looking for.

Persona is easily the most financially lucrative property Atlus owns right now but again, when you compare the sales figure to the top ten selling RPGs of the last decades, they are laughable. It is not helped that fans of the games are also divided by the combat system as newer fans push for the system to be less complicated and more user-friendly while older fans want the series to go back to it's more unforgiving roots.

Fire Emblem and Bravery Default also have a numbers issues. The only reason why these two are special is because they did surprisingly well in Western countries despite being more Japanese focus. In fact BP sold better than Lightning Returns, but there is more to this than "Turn-Based is awesome".

Pokemon is the lone exception here as it's easily the best selling RPG in the world, but even Pokemon is heavily criticized for feeling old and stale, and Nintendo's heavy resistance to move the main series beyond the handheld market continues the stigma.

This looks to me like one of those cases where the cause is being assumed from the effect. "These popular games tend to be on handheld, therefore these games can only work on handheld". Well, I don't see any reason to think that. Show me cases where these games didn't work on consoles, and I'll reconsider. But the few examples we do have to look at so far point to the opposite - there is nothing wrong with turn based systems, and they can work and be successful if and when developers choose to make them.

A lot of this is that actually. The problem comes from last console generation. The best selling JRPG on the PSP was Crisis Core, an Action-RPG whose sales crushed every traditional turn based RPG released on the handheld. Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon sold mediocre and their "old school" combat systems were heavily criticized, franchises like Tales Of, seriously flourished last gen while other JRPGs retreated to smaller scale handhelds because people were kind of sick of the old school mechanics and wanted something simpler and more reactive. The fact that one of the most popular JRPGs in Japan (doing well in the West as well last I checked) is Monster Hunter, an Action-RPG whose sales have been dominating in Japan, and has been one of the most influential games in Japan for several years. If you're whining about the flood MMO elements and crafting mechanics in the JRPG genre that have popped up in the last few years, it's actually this game's fault and not WoW.

Granted, there are a lot of factors that contributed to this problem, largely stemming from Japan's terrible design process finally catching up to them after all these years. The real problem here is that Western style RPGs overtook the market. Skyrim is one of the best selling RPGs last gen with universal praise, and Mass Effect is probably one of the best new IPs in the genre to come out in years. These WRPGs largely outsold the JRPG market except on handhelds and it really threw off some Japanese companies opinions. There has been discussions on why this was happening and part of the reasoning is because WRPGs are not limited to some traditional stuffy system. These games are more action packed and the shift of combat system created a more organic flow to exploration and interaction with the world. The ability to blend RPG elements with other type of gameplay gives them more variety whereas JRPG sometimes feel the same regardless of who made it. The better development process also saw these games getting quick releases with reasonable budgets, whereas SE floundered to get anything worthwhile out the door last gen. While there are certainly many high profile, universally praised JRPGs with more traditional combat systems that did well during this time frame; it becomes a different story when you look at sales numbers and demographics.

Bravery Default sold well, it's numbers are good for small companies but nothing compared to mainline FF or Skyrim's numbers. It surprised SE that it did well for a number of reasons: it outsold an FF sequel featuring a popular character, it did well in the West despite SE having so little faith in it that Nintendo had to actually publish the game to get it out here because SE felt it would bomb, and BP did better than the game its actually a sequel to, the mostly forgotten FF: 4 Heroes of Light which got reamed for being too old school and kiddy for modern gaming taste. Here's the thing though, just because the game did better than expected over here doesn't mean that Turn-Based is still "in". All it means is that there is still a sizable group of people in the West whom that style of game appeals to, but the numbers don't justify retaining VII's traditional combat system in favor of something that may have wider mass appeal. It simply means that there is a market for those types of games, but I wouldn't be surprised if the demographics show that BP was largely bought by older gamers who grew up with those types of games as opposed to a younger generation. Hell even Pokemon gets reamed for this as the series actually has its greatest appeal with both young children and older gamers in the 25+ range, leaving out the core demographics of tweens and teens that most companies shoot for.

My point is that there is nothing inherently wrong with Turn-Based combat, its a style and preference that seems to be out of favor due to changing tastes. It's not going to vanish or anything, just take a backseat for a few more years before something comes along and puts it back into favor. The issue here is that the business side of all this is looking at how Skyrim, Fallout, Monster Hunter, Tales of, and Mass Effect have shifted the market in the last decade; and how SE can take a sure fire hit like VII and make it an even bigger hit with mass appeal for a younger generation that didn't grow up on stuffy PS1 Turn-Based RPGs. This is a marketing and business decision, nothing else. SE wants to make sure that VII doesn't just grab the nostalgic fanboys, they want to make a whole new generation become nostalgic fanboys, and to do that, they need to market the game to them. Despite the grumbling of some of the traditional fans, chances are, most of you will pick up this Remake despite the changes, and SE knows that. So why bother appealing to the demographic who will buy it regardless? The Compilation already proved these fans would grab anything regardless of quality, gameplay style, and medium. The smart business move here is to focus on the non-fans. This is the same principle that Hollywood uses for adaptions of books, TV Shows, and comics, why should gaming be any different?

First, don't use the term "universal praise" for Skyrim. I bought it, played it, and was bored out of my mind. Even if I'm the only one, the praise isn't universal. That game was garbage.

But, what's more, you're just pointing out that Square is continuing to shoot themselves in the foot. They don't know what the heck, they're doing, and they keep going for the "biggest sellers", thrusting themselves into an over-inundated market that they can't compete in. There are, as you say, TONS of action games out right now. Why would anyone get FFVII R? What makes it special compared to the thousands of available action games out there? Nothing.

This is something that Square had supposedly noted. "We tried to change Hitman to appeal to a more mainstream audience, and it didn't sell at all. Then when Bravely Default went back to its roots, it sold buckloads. We sort of figure we should keep the core of our genres in mind when developing." Never mind that lesson.

If Square doesn't want to make RPGs, then fine, they can quit making RPGs. But they should stop pretending that they're good at making anything else. Because, frankly, Square sucks at appealing to mainstream gamers.

[Wolf Kanno]

First, don't use the term "universal praise" for Skyrim. I bought it, played it, and was bored out of my mind. Even if I'm the only one, the praise isn't universal. That game was garbage.

By "Universal Praise" I mean there is enough praise to drown out whatever dissenting voice there could be. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it can't be everyone else favorite game of all time, or until when the next greatest game of all time gets released.

But, what's more, you're just pointing out that Square is continuing to shoot themselves in the foot.

Crap, my subterfuge has been blown.

There are, as you say, TONS of action games out right now. Why would anyone get FFVII R? What makes it special compared to the thousands of available action games out there? Nothing.

Well not a lot of Action RPGs are attached to genre-defining games that defined a generation and is still whispered in the hallways of forums and gaming news sites as some mythical beast that was once plentiful, but became the rare unicorn we all appreciate and wished we had one more chance to take a glimpse of. As I said, the fact it's a VII Remake is enough to get the fans on board, the changes are just to update the crappy relic for the new kids and if the old codgers don't like it, you've got plenty of fan mods to fix your problems on your old copies. The game is going to sell millions and probably be the best selling non-MMO entry in the franchise and solidify Action-RPGs as the sub-genre to be.

[Ayen]

I think the reason why Square Enix are trying to make combat more 'real-time' is because they're trying to appeal to a young, Western market. For this market, turn-based is not the norm for console games, or even for RPGs.

Before I started Final Fantasy, my only experience with turn-based combat was Pokemon. Apart from Pokemon, I'd never played any JRPGs before FF. Coming across turn-based combat in FFX - which Formy had to persuade me to play, originally - was a complete surprise for me. If I'd known it was turn-based before starting, it probably would have put me off the idea.

For me, the norm in RPGs was the kind of system which FFXII had. Most young people in the West may well - like I did - associate turn-based combat with Pokemon. If they heard that the FF7 remake was turn-based, they'd just think, "Oh, that'll be just like Pokemon then. I won't bother getting that".

If Square Enix want the series to go on, they can't just appeal to established fans: they have to bring in new ones. And new, Western fans might be turned off by turn-based combat.

But when FFVII came out, turn-based combat was everywhere, everyone was super used to it, and it was the norm for the market at the time, right? That's why it was such a massive success?

Oh, wait, no, the PS1 was dominated by racing games, sports games, actions games, etcetera. It had almost no turn based games, and that didn't hinder FFVII at all. If anything, it enhanced it by showing off something different from the rest of the market.

These days, FFVII R and FFXV just look exactly like every other game on the platform.

There you have it. SE is so worried about its damaged reputation that they're simply not willing to risk doing something different than the accepted mainstream, out of fear of losing what little hope for financial gain that they have left.

Right now, though, I'm just laughing my ass off because all my predictions from the FFVII article are just coming true XD

Why would they risk doing something different when every time they do something different it blows up in their face?