The next Final Fantasy is an action RPG. How does this make you feel?

[APZonerunner]

Comparing KH to Dynasty Warriors? please.
The missions, area structure and multiple characters makes DW a different game. Also, XV already looks a step up over auto-pilot XII and XIII.

Obviously there's a great deal of difference between KH and the Musou games in mechanical sense, but I'm simply talking at the most base level at the player end - both games can be pushed through by hammering X rhythmically with the occasional press of triangle or circle and so on. I'm talking about stripping away mission structure and things like that to the very core of the gameplay. A combat encounter between a playable character and -- let's say 4 small enemies and one larger one. KH has more options, but there often isn't much incentive to do much more than hammer X. That's a design problem, imo.

Don't get me wrong! I actually rather like the Musou games as a guilty pleasure, but where I start to tire of the formula is over the course of a 20 or 30 hour RPG, which Kingdom Hearts is and FF15 will be. KH as a series has a lot of combat options beyond the simple attack, but I feel the way the game was designed - with an FF-style menu as a method of not alienating that sort of core RPG fan - is grim. It's never been a good way of putting action and RPG together in my eyes - but it was the solution for a Japanese team not very versed in action stuff a decade ago - and it's stuck for KH. FF15 already looks to have a slightly different take on this, which is great, but I still have concerns with their ability to grapple with action combat versus RPG tradition, with it coming from the same team as KH.

FF13 I concede in areas - though I feel after a time, FF13 really begins to 'click' in combat. It takes time to get there, but is it really auto pilot by the time you hit the later encounters after the airship? The need to shift paradigms, to stagger, etcetera, makes it a surprisingly twitch-focused game. After playing two hours of content from around a third into the game a couple of weeks ago, Lightning Returns seems even more-so. Combat is one of the things the 13 series has handled better, I think - it has many flaws, but I don't really see Combat as much of one.

We'll have to agree-to-disagree on FF12, mind. I think that game is a bit of a masterpiece, but it's really apples and oranges to what FF15 and even FF13 are doing. It's a slower, more methodically paced, tactically-driven game.

 

[Jenova]

I'm fine with it. Change is good sometimes.

 

[Death Penalty]

Obviously there's a great deal of difference between KH and the Musou games in mechanical sense, but I'm simply talking at the most base level at the player end - both games can be pushed through by hammering X rhythmically with the occasional press of triangle or circle and so on. I'm talking about stripping away mission structure and things like that to the very core of the gameplay. A combat encounter between a playable character and -- let's say 4 small enemies and one larger one. KH has more options, but there often isn't much incentive to do much more than hammer X. That's a design problem, imo.

Don't get me wrong! I actually rather like the Musou games as a guilty pleasure, but where I start to tire of the formula is over the course of a 20 or 30 hour RPG, which Kingdom Hearts is and FF15 will be. KH as a series has a lot of combat options beyond the simple attack, but I feel the way the game was designed - with an FF-style menu as a method of not alienating that sort of core RPG fan - is grim. It's never been a good way of putting action and RPG together in my eyes - but it was the solution for a Japanese team not very versed in action stuff a decade ago - and it's stuck for KH. FF15 already looks to have a slightly different take on this, which is great, but I still have concerns with their ability to grapple with action combat versus RPG tradition, with it coming from the same team as KH.

FF13 I concede in areas - though I feel after a time, FF13 really begins to 'click' in combat. It takes time to get there, but is it really auto pilot by the time you hit the later encounters after the airship? The need to shift paradigms, to stagger, etcetera, makes it a surprisingly twitch-focused game. After playing two hours of content from around a third into the game a couple of weeks ago, Lightning Returns seems even more-so. Combat is one of the things the 13 series has handled better, I think - it has many flaws, but I don't really see Combat as much of one.

We'll have to agree-to-disagree on FF12, mind. I think that game is a bit of a masterpiece, but it's really apples and oranges to what FF15 and even FF13 are doing. It's a slower, more methodically paced, tactically-driven game.

This is somewhat related to your complaints about Kingdom Hearts- which I find very valid even as a diehard fan of the series and its combat system- but I remember being very tantalized by the Versus XIII 2011 gameplay trailer for this very reason. You have to understand that I've been a slavering fan of Versus XIII/XV just for its core concept from the very beginning, so I picked apart each trailer and watched it over and over. So if you hear me pointing out some of these details and think it takes an obsessive weirdo to notice this sort of thing, be forewarned that I am one.

Anyway, I digress. In the 2011 trailer the flow of combat was quite promising, to my eyes. There are of course the basic attacks that, just like in Kingdom Hearts, wail on a foe with not too much meaningful variety beyond knowing when to dodge out before continuing your hacking. However, I noticed that much like in Kingdom Hearts, the hacking and slashing replenished the MP of the characters which had a very noticeable cap. The lowest, Prompto, had a maximum of four bars with each bar translating to one (I assume) low-level spell. The low cap on the magic and the easy replenishment of MP encourages the player to weave spells into their attacks. Not only that, but regular attacks deal something like 100 damage, combo finishers deal something like 200 damage, and spells deal anything ranging from 350 to 500 damage.

It all seems relatively simplistic, right? But the cool thing to me was that a person who just hacks and slashes was not dealing ideal damage. If you're attacking when your MP bar is full, you're dealing piddly damage compared to what you could be doing and wasting MP that could be refilling bars. The high damage that magic dealt seemed to make it more than worth it to weave it into your combo, especially since it seemed to fire off so quickly and seamlessly. And this with only the most basic spells at the fingertip of the players! It created an interesting back and forth style of gameplay where attacks dealt moderate bread and butter damage and spells acted more like combo finishers that you achieved through attacking. Assume that there are more complex spells (no chance there aren't, really) with things like AoE damage to consider and it seems like this could be a lot more complex than Kingdom Hearts, particularly if the difficulty is high enough that optimal choices will make your life a lot easier.

Of course, if like Kingdom Hearts it's quite easy, you might end up with the same syndrome where you're spoiled for choice but have no need to do anything but hack. It should also be mentioned that the MP bars and quick firing magic disappeared in the newer trailers in favor of a resource that seems to dictate how often Noctis can warp and a fire spell that took a dog's age to cast but exploded on a massive scale. The removal of the MP bar is what worries me at this point, as to my uninformed eye it seemed to add a really basic and positive mechanic to combat that gave it a flow that keeps a player involved.