I think a return to "turn-based" combat could work out really well. And I think now is the best time. Companies are now starting to cater more to their fans. Look at the Mortal Kombat series that went downhill when it was trying to be 3D because that was the trend at the moment. That series came back, and that was thanks to going back to its roots with a 2D fighting plane. Smash [Bros will finally have Ridley in it. SE themselves have been doing turn-based smaller titles. Mega Man 11 is coming!



And by "turn-based" combat I don't mean combat like in either XII or XIII. Technically, only FF I-III and X are turn based. But that's not the point. The point is how people perceive the combat. The strength of the combat systems in I-X is that the player feels in-control of all the decisions made. XII and XIII, in their own ways, took away that feeling. So even though these games are technically the same ATB system, they feel different to fans. XII is all preparation, and watching the effects of that prep in combat, with some micromanagement if you choose (I only put on gambits for auto-attacking and healing because I wanted to preserve some of that FF feeling). XIII's big mistake is that you can only control one character in battle and also focusing on macromanagement. People want to make decisions DURING battle, at the micro level.

There is still room for turn-based combat to evolve. We are already seeing them do interesting things in Project Octopath and Bravey Default with turn-based combat. They did a lot of great things with the combat in Final Fantasy X, the last mainline FF to have combat that was perceived as traditional. And again, they showed that they had more ideas in X-2... And I think it's somewhat regrettable that they stopped there. Things were starting to look interesting. My argument it is that turn-based combat still has room to be improved upon and modernized.


To bring it to modern standards, the new turn-based combat system should NOT have screen transitions or random battles. It should be seamless. FFXIII was weirdly archaic in that regard. New shiny battle system, and no random encounters, but still had screen transitioning. Felt like a step backwards after the seamless experience in FFXII. But seamless and "characters standing still in a formation" can be done together and it's been done before - look at Chrono Trigger!


If done correctly I think it could succeed and make a lot of people happy.